The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

The Philosophy of Recognition

The Philosophy of Recognition Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Edited by Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher F. Zurn

L EXINGTON B OOKS A division of ROW M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D P U B L I S H E R S , I N C .

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published with generous support from the Hans-Böckler Foundation. Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The philosophy of recognition : historical and contemporary perspectives / [edited by] Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher F. Zurn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-4425-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7391-4427-5 (electronic) 1. Recognition (Philosophy) I. Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph. II. Zurn, Christopher F., 1966– B105.R23.P55 2010 128—dc22 2009038852

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

1

Introduction Christopher F. Zurn

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Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition (Amour Propre) Frederick Neuhouser

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Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism J. M. Bernstein

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“The Pure Notion of Recognition”: Reflections on the Grammar of the Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Michael Quante

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Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Contemporary Practical Philosophy Ludwig Siep

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Recognition, the Right, and the Good Terry Pinkard

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Producing for Others Daniel Brudney

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“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis Andreas Wildt

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Rethinking Recognition Nancy Fraser

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Contents

10 Work and Recognition: A Redefinition Axel Honneth 11

Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory: Saving Marx by Recognition? Emmanuel Renault

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12 Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch

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13 Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Defense of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition Jean-Philippe Deranty

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On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality Arto Laitinen

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15 Making the Best of What We Are: Recognition as an Ontological and Ethical Concept Heikki Ikäheimo

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Index

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About the Contributors

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1 Introduction Christopher F. Zurn

The theory of recognition is now a well-established and mature research paradigm in philosophy, and it is both influential in, and influenced by, developments in other fields of the Geistes- and Sozialwissenschaften.1 It is constituted by a core set of concepts and assumptions, a series of well-defined substantive theses, relatively settled ways of approaching puzzles, and a set of focused disputes concerning particular claims and concepts. As a philosophical paradigm, of course, there is not the kind of deep consensus—on accepted techniques and methods, on solved versus outstanding puzzles, on settled background assumptions, and so on—that often characterize paradigms in the Naturwissenschaften. Nevertheless, the theory of recognition is currently generative of a wide variety of inquiries and investigations in domains ranging over ontology and epistemology, moral and political philosophy, social theory, action theory, legal philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and the history of philosophy. This volume compromises a collection of papers by those working at the forefront of recognition theory and provides an unparalleled view of the depth and diversity of philosophical research on the topic. Its particular strength is to show the fruitfulness of interchange and dialogue between those working from more historical sources and those working from contemporary sources. For we are convinced that progress in the philosophy of recognition will only be made through careful attention to the insights available from the past combined with scrupulous attention to both the specific character of contemporary debates in moral, social, and political philosophy and contemporary moral, social, and political life itself. To locate the papers presented in this collection, I would like to present an overview of the various historical roots of the current paradigm (1), articulate the current constellation in 1

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moral, political, and social philosophy that the theory of recognition can be seen as a response to (2), indicate how the paradigm addresses some of the specific problems faced in continuing the project of critical theory under current social conditions (3), before concluding with brief overviews of the individual contributions collected here (4).

1 From a historical perspective, the theory of recognition has decipherable antecedents stretching back from the classical Greek understanding of friendship, to the reanimation of such themes in Renaissance humanism, on through the Enlightenment-era scrutiny of social passions rendered by various forms of sentiments theory, and culminating in Rousseau’s subtle accounts of the essential sociality of truly human nature. Despite this rich philosophical history, contemporary recognition theory has more frequently understood itself as rooted in German idealism, especially in the work of Fichte and Hegel concerning the ways in which structures of intersubjectivity are constitutively and regulatively related to the development of subjectivity. Hegel’s analysis—or rather, his various differing analyses—of intersubjective recognition in particular have been reworked and put to use by quite disparate traditions of philosophical, social scientific, and especially political thought over the course of two hundred years. Not all of these descendents explicitly employ the word ‘recognition’ or its cognates. But in a broad sense, one can see that they are employing a family of ideas, rooted in Hegel’s insights concerning the irreplaceability of intersubjectivity for the human form of life, in order to redirect and reshape the fundamental questions of their respective disciplines and research traditions. These insights were influentially taken up and reframed in Marx’s early analysis of the identity-constitutive character of our social relations in work contexts, and the deformations in those processes caused by the capitalist organization of productive relations. The exploration of such themes—especially the crucial concept of alienation—were central for the development of Western Marxism in the early decades of the twentieth century. On this side of the Atlantic, and in quite different intellectual conditions, one can detect an inchoate but unmistakable imprint of British Hegelianism on the development of American pragmatism, particularly where it sought to employ socio-psychological evidence to support distinctly intersubjectivist theories of perception, knowledge, emotions, actions, socialization, and the development of a sense of self. From a quite different direction, and with different theoretical aims in view, rethinking Hegel’s account of the masterslave dialectic inspired a generation of French phenomenologists to take

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up a series of questions concerning intersubjective recognition for the constitution of experience and knowledge. Hegel’s insights also had a decisive impact on the development of a phenomenologically motivated theology attempting to rethink the structure of interpersonal relationships in terms of humans’ relationships with the divine. Finally, one must mention here the unmistakable import of the development of psychology as a discipline independent of philosophy, specifically the flowering of psychoanalysis, and the extension of its methods and ideas from therapeutic contexts into broader cultural formations. After the end of World War II, the concept of recognition increasingly took center stage in some schools of psychoanalysis, centered on objectsrelations theory, and in developmental psychology research, both of which stressed the centrality of early forms of intersubjectivity between primary caretakers and children. Philosophically, phenomenology in France in the postwar period increasingly turned towards themes of intersubjectivity as its research domain was simultaneously expanded to include issues of ontogenesis, embodiment, and socio-political theory. In Germany, the recognition paradigm was not only reanimated through historically oriented philosophical research on the crucial transformations in late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century German idealism, but also had an indirect influence on the distinctive tradition of philosophical anthropology. Further impetus came from the specific way in which the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in twentieth-century analytic philosophy was taken up into a broader theory of linguistic intersubjectivity and the constitution of social life through communicative interactions in the theory of communicative action. Finally, two other intellectual streams descending from Hegelian insights became significant on both sides of the Atlantic. First, the interest among feminists, especially among second- and third-wave theorists, in overcoming androcentric forms of ontology, epistemology, and axiology motivated attention to the specific intersubjective and social conditions of identity formation that contribute to the maintenance of patriarchy. In particular, there was a strong desire for anthropological models that could be productively opposed to the intellectual, cultural, and sociopolitical legacies of masculinist idealizations of the individual—as atomistic, rational, self-aware, self-controlled, disembodied, and affect-free man—and could be employed by feminists in both philosophical and social scientific explanations, and the development of alternative normative systems of moral, political, and aesthetic value. Second, the sociopolitical challenges of comprehending and adequately responding to the fact of cultural and evaluative pluralism in modern complex societies led to the specific use of the concept of recognition as a way of thinking about what is legally and socially owed to different types of minority groups in multiethnic and multinational polities. Productively drawing on these various streams, the theory of recognition

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has now come into its own as a scholarly framework, to a large part due to the integrative accomplishments of Axel Honneth’s theory.

2 Turning now to current constellation in value theory, there are three main rival cognitivist paradigms, that is, paradigms that assert that some types of evaluative claims are justifiable to others in some more or less robust sense of ‘justifiable’: utilitarianism, Kantianism, and neo-Aristotelianism. In normative moral theory, broadly construed to include questions about what individuals owe to others and about how one ought to live, this constellation can be characterized in terms of three rival types of theory: consequentialism, deontology, and forms of virtue ethics such as the ethics of care or various forms of moral particularism and situationism. In normative political theory, the prevailing constellation has a somewhat different realization. Forms of consequentialism range here from economically focused theories such as welfare economics to theories of liberal perfectionism; Kantian theories are centered around the notion of justice with varying emphases on liberty, rights, equality, democracy, and the social contract; neo-Aristotelian themes have seen their greatest impact in political communitarianism. As a moral theory, recognition theory seems most closely allied with neo-Aristotelianism. It focuses on the constitutive connection between social circumstances, Bildung, and the development of a good, or at least not deformed, life; it takes the development of a sense of personal identity as an irreducible element in moral life; it does not radically separate questions of moral motivation from those of justification; it stresses the central role of affect and emotion in moral life; it claims that moral theory cannot ignore the decisive import and role of commonly shared horizons of value and meaning on moral identity; it turns its focus away from the philosophical search for a code of rules and principles that should be applied in the same way by all persons, and rather towards the cultivation of social forms of life that will promote healthy self-realization; and it emphasizes the diversity of practical considerations relevant to individual action choices, the development of a plan of life, and the evaluation of organized social life. Yet it is not indifferent to the concerns of consequentialism; even as it rejects the simple preference-aggregation models assumed in classical utilitarianism and welfare economics, it places central import, like liberal perfectionism, on the degree to which the broadest number of individuals are not denied the opportunity for rich forms of self-realization. More importantly still, recognition theory desires to retain some of the attractive features of Kantianism, in particular the claim to be able to explicate and justify normative standards of evaluation that are neither culturally nor

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socially contingent. It rejects the pure proceduralism of Kantian strategies for underwriting the universality of its normative claims, however, preferring to see them as grounded in the anthropologically universal structural interconnection between forms of intersubjective life and individual development and self-realization. Further, it promises to be able to take seriously the meaning and value of individual rights and political democracy without the empty formalism that Kantianism often seems to be susceptible to, and without limiting practical considerations to the domain of moral duties and justice alone. The distinctive claims of the theory of recognition arise from its integration of Hegel’s early analysis of intersubjective recognition, a moral phenomenology of experiences of disrespect, an account of the intersubjective conditions of ontogenesis drawing on both Mead and more recent work in objects-relations psychoanalysis, and a theory of the intersubjective character of the justification of value claims. This then yields a morally centered philosophical anthropology that can insightfully differentiate between three different forms of intersubjective recognition—stylized as love, respect, and esteem—their relation to the development of different forms of one’s relation-to-self, and the various types of social relations that promote or impede the development of a well-rounded and healthy personal identity. But it is not merely as an account of moral life that the theory of recognition has shown its most promise. Rather it is precisely because that moral philosophy is systematically connected up with both explanatory and justificatory claims in political philosophy and in social theory that it has been found to be so fecund. From the perspective of normative political theory, recognition theory once again proposes an innovative combination of foci and theses that crosses over traditional dividing lines between rival political theories. With neo-Kantianism, the philosophy of recognition endorses the way in which modern legal systems and structures of constitutional democracy safeguard individual autonomy through individual civil liberties and equal opportunities for political participation. Recognition theory gives a distinctive twist to the analysis of the institutions securing equal civic autonomy by understanding them as legal realizations of the intersubjective conditions required for self-respect, that is, those conditions of consociation necessary for persons to understand themselves as free and equal legal subjects and political citizens amongst other subjects and citizens. Yet in contrast to prevailing versions of neo-Kantianism, neither legal rights nor political democracy are justified in terms of a hypothetical social contract, but are rather understood as the outcomes of historical struggles that can be rationally reconstructed: namely, social struggles that led to the gradual differentiation and specification of diverse forms of recognition. In particular, the social relations that generate differential esteem were gradually

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disconnected from kin structures and tied increasingly to individual accomplishment, at the same time as the bases of social esteem were separated out from the political and legal structures that were increasingly relied upon to secure equal respect among persons considered as autonomous. These various changes can be understood as developmentally progressive both with respect to the individualization of social esteem and the egalitarianization of social respect. Like various forms of political consequentialism, recognition theory emphasizes the importance of promoting individual well-being, specifically in the sense of individual development. Yet the philosophy of recognition is more akin to capability approaches than to traditional welfare economics in rejecting aggregative measures of value and their typical operationalization in welfare metrics tied to simple revealed preferences or market prices. While, therefore, the justificatory structure of recognition theory is similar to liberal perfectionism or the capabilities approach to promoting freedom, its topical concerns are, once again, broader than individual autonomy alone, comprising as well concerns for basic psychic integrity and qualitatively rich self-esteem. Because of these broader concerns, it has proven to be a paradigm particularly well-suited to analyzing political struggles over the extent of sex-specific injustices associated with the differential allocation of care responsibilities and unpaid household labor. In addition, as this volume demonstrates, much recent work in recognition theory has been concerned with rethinking the justificatory basis of the modern welfare state and exploring new and alternative conceptualizations of the interrelations between capitalist economic systems, redistributive state policies, and a society’s underlying principles and practices of productivity, merit, and remuneration. As already intimated, in rejecting hypothetical contractarianism in favor of situated historical analyses of changing forms of life, the philosophy of recognition shares affinities with many of the methodological and analytic concerns of contemporary neo-Aristotelianism most evident in political communitarianism: the focus on a thoroughly social conception of the self; the concomitant emphasis on relatively thick conceptions of ethical life and competing horizons of value; the concern to broaden philosophical analysis beyond a liberal focus on individual rights and autonomy to encompass the political and social conditions of the good life and individual self-realization as well; the move away from philosophical justification in abstract terms drawn from pure practical reason and towards more substantive critique in terms of norms and ideals drawn immanently from existing forms of life; and so on. Accordingly, recognition theory has played a large role in some of the same debates where communitarianism has also been influential: struggles concerning the proper relations between religious understanding and state policies and forms of social organization and power, debates over multiethnic and multicultural policies and practices,

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and expressions of critical concern about the excessive individualism fostered by leading institutions of modern life. Yet unlike communitarianism, and much more in tune with its intellectual roots in critical social theory, recognition theory has never paid justificatory deference to that which is socially and historically given simply because it is so given. Neither extant groups, nor individual identities, nor traditions are immune to critical scrutiny; none are ‘self-authenticating sources of valid claims’ (to appropriate a phrase from Rawls, out of context). This can be seen in the distinctive twist recognition theory gives to debates over the priority of the right or the good. Preferring to move beyond the facial, first-order conflict between the proponents of liberal rights and those of collectively shared goods, recognition theory draws on its Hegelian roots to show how the particular type of individual human agency—autonomous agency—that the laws and institutions of justice are designed to foster are themselves the results of distinctive practices of intersubjective socialization and recognition characteristic of modern societies. In this sense, the type of autonomous individuality that liberalism seeks to protect and foster is understood as a result of those historically specific forms of intersubjective, ethical life that enable it to flourish in the first place. Perhaps the most active area of research has not been in normative moral or political theory, but rather in normatively informed, interdisciplinary social philosophy. Axel Honneth’s particular account of the connections between intersubjective recognition and social change is exemplary here, and generative of much subsequent work in the last decade. To put it very briefly, his account promises to be able to analyze many if not most of the central social struggles evinced in modern, complex, societies by demonstrating the internal connection between individual experiences of misrecognition and disrespect, and the development of broader social struggles for expanded and more adequate social recognition. This has proved particularly productive in thinking about, for instance, not only the new social movements that are often denigrated under the label of ‘identity politics’, but also struggles on the part of subaltern and despised minority groups for expanded social, political, and cultural autonomy, and, in general, for conceptualizing how liberal societies and democratic constitutional states can negotiate the difficult shoals between identity and difference, universalism and particularism, individuality and community. Finally, more recent work has also seen the extension of the recognition paradigm into a domain of questions it may have earlier seemed to be opposed to at the level of theory construction itself, insofar as its starting points for social analysis are practices of intersubjective regard rather than macrosocial structures and processes: namely, questions concerning the equitable distribution of income and wealth under capitalist conditions, struggles for the satisfaction of material interests, and, hence, class politics itself.

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The ambitious sociotheoretic claim underlying this further development of the recognition paradigm is that we can understand the historical changes from traditional, to feudal, and to bourgeois-capitalist forms of social organization as the progressive differentiation of three recognition spheres according to their historically and socially specific institutionalization of three different principles of recognition. The intimate sphere of the family is first differentiated from a general public sphere according to the recognition principles of care and love, whereby the mutual recognition of persons is tailored to their particular affective, bodily, and conative needs. Subsequently, the feudal fusion of the legal status of persons with their predetermined location in the estate order of society is split apart. On the one hand, a distinct sphere of legal rights and duties for persons qua legal subjects develops that enables the mutual recognition of subjects according to the universalized principle of equal respect. On the other hand, the differential esteem that was previously fused with one’s place in a naturalized status order is separated off from legal relations, and tied, rather, to the social recognition of one’s individual achievements. Specifically, bourgeoiscapitalist forms of society connect the evaluation of one’s capabilities and accomplishments to a specific interpretation of the achievement principle: namely, that the appropriate degree of one’s merited esteem can be evaluated in terms of the differential evaluative scheme of the division of labor. Differential esteem recognition then is taken to simply track the quantitative market valuation of one’s monetary and remunerative worth in the sphere of civil society. Needless to say, this appears to be an ideologically distorted interpretation of the achievement principle due to the specifically capitalist organization of the sphere of esteem. One’s capabilities and accomplishments are measured only according to economic metrics, and what gets counted as work, which forms of work are considered valuable, whose work is systematically denigrated, or worse, made invisible, and so on, are all largely dependent on asymmetrical and hierarchical relations of production.

3 With such social-philosophical concerns, it is perhaps no surprise that the theory of recognition integrates well with the concerns of critical theory, that is, of an interdisciplinary social theory aiming to foster the emancipatory impulses it finds both explicitly and inchoately expressed in the very society it is analyzing. I believe that it is on this terrain that some of the most exciting—but also most unsettled and problematic—issues have recently arisen for recognition theory. Let me explain. In critical theory’s specific incarnations centered around the Institut für Sozialforschung in

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Frankfurt, there was always a more or less common and well-understood model of society presupposed by the various researchers, even if it operated only tacitly and in the background. For the first generation of critical theorists, this social model was supplied by the analysis of capitalism that, having its deepest roots in Marx, had taken on the specific form we now call “Western Marxism” by incorporating the refinements and insights of Lukács and especially Weber. In the second generation of critical theory—paradigmatically in the work of Jürgen Habermas—the preferred social model was explicitly developed out of a propitious arrangement of sociological functionalism (via Parsons and Luhmann), tempered by a Weberian theory of modernization as rationalization, and combined finally with an action theory based in the insights of pragmatism and analytic philosophy into the reproductive and integrative capacities of linguistic interaction. Combined with a proceduralist account of moral and political justification that proposed to reinterpret Kantian practical reason in intersubjectivist terms, this led ultimately to a focus on the formal features of morality, democracy, law, and official political systems. But these transformations, in turn, seemed to lead critical theory ever farther away from some of its historically distinctive concerns, and more towards technical philosophical and methodological concerns about the form and grounds of rationality, on the one hand, and formal normative theories of political justice and democracy that seemed, as it were, relatively ‘de-socialized’, on the other. What had become of the great critical areas of interest of the past: the phenomenal changes in cultural life through the industrialized mass media and new communications technology, the transformations of personality structures, the nature and role of ideology in the maintenance of structures of domination and oppression? What had become of the leading social concepts imbued with emancipatory content: alienation, anomie, commodification, reification, ideological naturalization, propagandized culture, the authoritarian personality, surplus repression, social fragmentation and diremption, inchoate forms of socially rooted suffering, and so on? In short, what happened to the focus on forms of social life that cause distorted and distorting forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity—what happened to the focus on social pathologies? Some of these developments are surely explainable in terms of the variable personal interests of researchers and the interaction of those interests with changing social conditions. But it seems plausible to say, in addition, that much of the loss of confidence in the old research domains and social concepts stemmed from a loss of confidence in a single, shared, and unified explanatory framework for understanding social transformations and their effects on various social groups. Some of the original impetus and much of the early success of the recognition paradigm, I believe, stemmed from dissatisfactions with then-current

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models of social conflict and the social groups that expressed and carried on those conflicts. The older tradition of critical theory had, of course, already experienced significant problems in this area. Given that the commonly shared Marxist-inspired social model focused on the economic sphere as the central and defining locus of social conflict, and that it thereby looked almost exclusively to class struggles as the site of socially progressive struggles, the demise of the revolutionary power of workers’ movements and activities in the consolidation of liberal capitalism before, and especially after, World War II led to theoretical conundrums and practical uncertainties for a theory always oriented towards social emancipation. The upheavals of the 1960s and their aftermath in the formation of new social movements—not to mention the resilience and adaptability of the capitalist form of productive relations—indicated deep problems in the shared sociotheoretic assumptions. The first generation of critical theory had already been forced to face the fact that class struggles could not be confidently counted on to forward emancipatory hopes and actions. Yet now, in addition to these disappointments, new social movements for liberation—anticolonial, antiracist, antipatriarchal, antiheteronormative—had identified social problems not obviously related to the ravages of capitalist modernization, and pointed to a hitherto unnoticed landscape of sociomoral concerns and normative claims. Unfortunately, the second generation critical-theoretic marriage of functionalism and hermeneutics, though theoretically sophisticated and highly developed, led again to a set of social diagnoses that seemed insufficient to “grasping the struggles and wishes of the age in thought.” To put a complex claim about the second generation analysis briefly, the attempt to connect the theoretical hypothesis of “colonization effects” to the formation, concerns, and aims of the new social movements seemed unsatisfactory: both as an explanatory account of the rise and import of these new forms of social struggle and contestation, and as a critical-theoretic thesis that could illuminate the character of current social problems for social movement participants themselves. The theory of recognition, by contrast, presents an account that articulates a straightforward connection between individual experiences of suffering and their social causes, an account, furthermore, that also explains the current prominence of many different actual social struggles: not only those for the expansion of the content and application of legal rights and entitlements, but also those for nondominating forms of personal life, as well as those for a sociocultural environment free from denigration and discrimination. Equally important, the recognition paradigm promises to systematically connect these sociotheoretic analyses to a convincing normative account of the justificatory claims made in such struggles, and articulates a differentiated set of normative standards for judging the cogency and worth of particular claims. Finally, it also promises to make good on

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a crucial desideratum of critical theory: to articulate an interdisciplinary social theory whose emancipatory impulses are located immanently in the actual world of extant social relations, but which can be refined, through the help of conceptual and theoretical clarification, into insights that can then be reflexively employed by society’s members in order to identify and overcome pathological social arrangements and relations. By this systematic constellation of moral theory, social theory, and political analysis, then, the theory of recognition reanimates the tradition of a critical diagnosis of the social pathologies of the present—a tradition already present, in nuce, in Hegel’s original hints that a theory of intersubjective struggles for recognition could be useful as a diagnostic lens on the simultaneously progressive and painful processes of modernization.

4 The fourteen papers collected in this volume take up the philosophy of recognition and its manifold themes and puzzles by approaching them from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Although one might think that the two-part division of the volume reflects two different philosophical methodologies—one a form of history of ideas and the other a form of problem-based analysis—we hope that the individual selections belie any such facile division of philosophical labor. For in fact, as the following brief overview of the papers will reveal, the philosophy of recognition takes real inspiration from the history of reflection upon recognition and allied concepts, even as the careful study of that history reveals unsurpassable insights for contemporary theory formation. Contemporary work helps to bring insight into hitherto unnoticed nuance and subtly in historical texts, even as careful study of historical texts can yield claims and arguments crucial for contemporary discussions. As the selections in this volume show, the best work in the philosophy of recognition occurs precisely where the two perspectives meet and fruitfully interact. And this dialectical interaction is crucial to the ongoing viability of recognition theory as a research paradigm. As basic challenges are posed to the paradigm by both historical and contemporary arguments, its strength is measured, in part, by the extent to which it can productively integrate and adapt to puzzles and problems, rather than allowing them to pile up as unaddressed anomalies. The papers collected here, we believe, demonstrate that the theory of recognition is a robust paradigm. Even if the recognition paradigm calls for further internal development and refinement, these papers show that it is not yet time for revolutionary theory change. The volume opens with Frederick Neuhouser’s investigation of Rousseau’s account of amour propre as the essential human drive for recognition.

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Although recognition theory often looks to German idealism for its origins, it is in fact Rousseau who is the first to place the struggle for recognition at the very center of human life and so also as a fundamental concern for moral, political, and social philosophy. By giving a comprehensive account of Rousseau’s theory of amour propre—explaining exactly what kind of a passion it is, how it can be at the root of the many evils of the human condition, how those evils can be ameliorated through education and through specific social and political arrangements, and how the very development of human reason is dependent upon amour propre—Neuhouser suggests that much of the following work on recognition through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be productively regarded as “essentially a series of footnotes to Rousseau.” Of particular interest, he shows that whereas previous thinkers had regarded the desire for regard from others as little more than a troublesome manifestation of human vanity, Rousseau saw both its destructive and constructive characteristics. Insofar as amour propre is not only malleable in the light of education and particular social conditions but also interacts with other social arrangements such as levels of inequality and status disparities, Rousseau viewed it an essential precondition for both spiraling competitions for symbolic ephemera and for the development of practical reason’s capacity to adopt the viewpoint of the generalized other and thereby enter into the normative space of reasons. According to Rousseau’s theory, then, even as some of the most destructive aspects of “civilization” itself can be traced to the core human drive for recognition, that drive is nevertheless one requisite component that must be employed to arrange moral and political life in ways that can overcome the tendency of the drive toward producing evils. In his piece, J. M. Bernstein argues that Fichte develops the first conception of rights as forms of, or modes of, intersubjective recognition. Insofar as recognition—and by implication, having a right—is a matter of how one stands in relations to others, in how one is taken and treated by those others, in having a certain normative status in a social world, recognition and rights appear to be paradigmatic versions of idealism: one’s being recognized as a person with rights is essentially mind-dependent. Of course, in opposition to Kant’s transcendental idealism, the idealizations involved in Fichte’s account of recognition are located in the concrete practices of social communities rather than the solitary acts of consciousness of abstract individuals. The question is then raised for Fichte’s account, as it is for all forms of idealism: is the idealist price for securing normativity, even recognitive idealism, too high, is such a mind-dependent account doomed to tearing human beings away from their natural context, from their evolutionary setting, from the thick materiality of their everyday existence? Bernstein argues that Fichte attempted to close this gap between idealism and materialism by arguing that intersubjective recognition is essentially tied to

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our physical embodiment. Detailing the insights and curiosities of Fichte’s recognitive account of rights and embodiment, Bernstein both shows some of the limitations of Fichte’s approach and indicates its potential fecundity for contemporary theories of recognition. Michael Quante offers a new interpretation of one of the most famous passages of the Phenomenology of Spirit: Hegel’s analysis of self-consciousness and its development in the master-slave dialectic. Quante focuses on the relation between “self-consciousness,” “spirit,” and “recognition” and carefully elucidates the specific claims and arguments Hegel advances in that section of the Phenomenology. Focusing on Hegel’s famous characterization of spirit as the “I that is we, and the we that is I,” Quante shows that Hegel’s claim that self-consciousness itself is socially constituted does not thereby entail a “totalitarian” overwhelming of subjectivity by the social. If it is interpreted in strictly ontological terms, rather than attempting to bring in ethical concerns, so Quante argues, Hegel’s conception of self-consciousness, spirit, and recognition can be shown to be of great interest for contemporary action theory and philosophy of mind. Quante makes this case by showing that Hegel’s arguments in support of the social constitution of self-consciousness and human actions anticipate central insights of contemporary analytic philosophers such as Jaegwon Kim and Alvin Goldman. Of course, Hegel’s account of recognition has been important not only with respect to ontological issues, but also with respect to broad swaths of practical philosophy. In his article, Ludwig Siep considers whether in fact a principle of recognition can serve as the central principle of ethical thought. In order to do this, he analyzes some of the central differences between Fichte’s and Hegel’s respective accounts, and then offers a typology of contemporary recognition theories. He shows that contemporary theories focused on relations of mutual respect between free and equal autonomous agents take their inspiration from Kant and Fichte. He argues that although this type of theory has important insights, it cannot offer a principle broad enough to gauge the rationality of all recognitive social relations and institutions. Turning to a second contemporary strand of recognition theory that focuses on individual identity and the constitution of individuality, Siep argues that although it is inspired by Hegel, it does not have a sufficiently capacious account of the relations between individuals and social entities such as families, communities, and polities. A third strand concerned with the recognition of distinct cultures in multicultural societies is also inspired by Hegel but, with the loss of faith in Hegelian or Christian teleology, a principle of recognition can no longer provide us with the resources for reconciling ourselves with history. In conclusion Siep presents a number of important considerations to show that, even as a principle of recognition can serve as one of the central ethical principles for modern life, given the importance of questions concerning the relation of

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humans to nature in contemporary ethical thought—concerning everything from ecology to genetic engineering—recognition theory cannot provide all of the conceptual tools we need today to come to terms with the ethical dilemmas we face. In his “Recognition, the Right, and the Good” Terry Pinkard takes on the pressing question of the priority of the right over the good endorsed by Kant and contemporaries influenced by him, by exploring the relationship between intersubjective recognition and the good. Pinkard contends that recognition is not just one good among others, or even a condition for the realization of some other goods, but is rather itself world-disclosing and constitutive of human agency. He explores three central theses advanced by Hegel and argues that they give the most convincing answers to contemporary questions in action theory, the philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. First, Hegel’s dialectical metaphysics of agency can be understood by seeing that, although agency is a normative matter of responding appropriately to reasons, what counts as responding appropriately is itself socially constituted through social practices. For instance, even as we perceive goods in the world which spur us to action, those goods can themselves become the objects of practical reflection and thereby can be transformed into new goods to be perceived and responded to in the world. Second, goods are essentially social facts which are instituted and sustained by social relations of recognition. Social recognition practices thus not only disclose the world of what is worthwhile and best for us, they are also constitutive of our practical agency insofar as we orient our actions to those goods. Third, if our social practices of recognition do not institute and sustain appropriate goods, then recognition is experienced as alienating rather than reconciliatory. Recognition, on Pinkard’s reading then, is important from the point of view not only of human agency but also of the prospects for being at home in the modern world. In his contribution, Daniel Brudney argues that the 1844 Marx had a specific conception of a well-ordered society, and shows how the true communist society Marx then envisioned is essentially bound up with a specific social recognition practice that could sustain the self-worth of its members. Communist self-realization is self-realization through others, that is, through a specific practice of social recognition of individuals’ productive activities. However, in contrast to most accounts of recognition that historically have focused on respect-based recognition, Marx (like Mill and others in the sentimentalist tradition) focuses on concern-based recognition. Hence one central part of the paper is devoted to explicating precisely what kind of concern-based recognition Marx envisioned, explaining how that set of recognition practices could fundamentally transform individuals’ senses of themselves and their places in a community, and considering whether that form of recognition is up to the task Marx set for it of over-

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coming the alienating effects of socially enforced egotism. Another central aim of the paper is evaluating various objections that might be brought to Marx’s vision of the true communist societies by challenging the conceptual and practical sustainability of Marx’s envisioned extended concern for all humanity that is the centerpiece of well-ordered recognition practices. Brudney argues that, correctly understood, a concern-based recognition practice is neither conceptually nor practically impossible, thus recasting Marx’s envisioned new communist society and its individual members as realistic utopian visions of a well-ordered society that must be gauged alongside other such visions of well-ordered societies, such as those like liberalism founded in respect-based recognition. The paper concludes with some considerations about the relative sustainability of less than wellordered respect-recognition and concern-recognition societies. Andreas Wildt investigates the degree to which a proper psychoanalytic understanding of the concept and import of recognition integrates well with the recognition paradigms articulated in philosophy and critical theory. Drawing on a conceptual inventory of the various uses of the concept of recognition in Freud, in psychoanalysts following in the tradition of Melanie Klein, and in more recent objects-relations theorists such as Donald Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin, Wildt proposes to clarify the issues by distinguishing between two different senses of recognition. What he calls “propositional recognition” concerns the developing child’s cognitive and conative acknowledgment of, and affective coming to terms with, the propositional content, as it were, of the painful facts of relational life: namely, that the child is fundamentally dependent on the mother, but that she is independent of the child. By contrast, “personal recognition” concerns the positive affirmation of another person in light of their individual interests, capabilities, achievements, and rights, where this form of intersubjectivity is capable of becoming fully reciprocal. He supports the thesis that propositional recognition has genetic and conceptual priority over personal recognition on a number of different grounds both within and across the various psychoanalytic discussions of recognition. Wildt also shows how his theses concerning the relation between propositional and personal forms of recognition have important, and potentially destabilizing, consequences for the account of ontogenesis presupposed in the regnant paradigm of recognition employed in current philosophical and sociotheoretic debates. Nancy Fraser’s “Rethinking Recognition” defines one focal theme for contemporary recognition theory (and for several chapters of this volume): how exactly are we conceiving of the relationships between social and political recognition struggles, on the one hand, and economic systems and the justice of their distributive outcomes, on the other hand? While Fraser agrees with recognition theory that there is an important justice component

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in many recent struggles for the recognition of cultural differences, she worries at the same time that the focus on recognition threatens to displace or even eclipse the traditional grammar of emancipatory movements for distributive justice. In an age of globalizing capital markets and increasing economic inequality both within the populations of nations and across the globe, Fraser worries that recognition theory has nether the conceptual nor normative tools necessary to address distributive injustice. Furthermore, to the extent that recognition theory appears to encourage not only patently emancipatory struggles for cultural acceptance but also downright reprehensible movements based in culturalistic and xenophobic chauvinism, Fraser contends that a focus on identity and the politics of difference threatens to simplify, reify, and so artificially solidify group identities. Thus, even as social recognition may be a necessity in a multicultural world, it also threatens to encourage separatism, intolerance, patriarchalism, and authoritarianism. Fraser argues that contemporary theories of recognition should turn toward a status-based rather than identity-based model in order to combat the problem of reification, and that it should forswear monistic ambitions to be a comprehensive account of social relations in favor of a multimodal analysis that analytically separates the cultural dynamics of recognition from the economic dynamics of redistribution. As one of the leading contemporary theorists of recognition, Axel Honneth rejects Fraser’s preference for separating out a functionalist account of economic dynamics from an hermeneutic account of the normative infrastructure of recognition relations. In his article here, Honneth is concerned to render the concept of meaningful, secure, and emancipatory work more than a mere utopian ought in the face of what many intellectuals regard as the obdurate reality of a globalized capitalist labor market. For even as economic transformations have rendered work, and especially wage labor, ever less dependable, well-paid, safe, and available, the world of work still retains primacy in the social lifeworld—both in the organization of everyday life and as the center piece of identity formation. This essay proposes a new conception of the category of societal labor for the purposes of critical theory. In particular, it shows first how certain normative demands concerning work can be understood through a form of immanent critique that highlights the way in which such demands are rational claims embedded in the structures of social reproduction. It also argues that a critical theory of the contemporary world of work cannot be based in a romantic universalization of the ideal of organic, holistic craftspersons, even as it must go beyond the limits of functionalist accounts of the economy to explore the moral infrastructure of the modern organization of work. Second, it shows how societal labor can operate as an immanent norm only if it is understood in terms of the conditions of recognition obtaining in modern exchange relations. Finally, when the market is conceptualized from

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the point of view of social integration rather than system integration, the connection between work and recognition is shown to give rise to a robust normative conception of the division of labor, thereby providing a substantive reservoir of moral principles for the evaluation and transformation of contemporary social life. Emmanuel Renault explores similar terrain concerning the relationship between recognition theory and the economy in his piece through an exploration of whether and how Honneth’s philosophy of recognition can be understood as renewing the initial program of critical theory elaborated in the 1930s by Max Horkheimer. Yet because the original term “critical theory” referred only euphemistically to Marxism, Renault contends that the controversial question of the relationship between the theory of recognition and the initial program of critical theory can only be solved by solving the problem of the former’s relation to Marx. The paper analyzes several of the key components of the theory of recognition in order to assess the degree to which it is capable of renewing the critical tasks laid out by Marx by means of its own sociotheoretic framework. It focuses on questions concerning: 1) whether the proper role of the theory is as normative philosophy or as social theory; 2) the specific conception of social struggle employed; 3) the analysis of and interrelations between interpersonal interactions, institutions, and social structures, especially as they relate to the explanation of capitalism and of social evolution; and 4) the relations between different historical diagnoses and specific critiques of contemporary society evinced in competing models of contemporary social theory inspired by Marx. In the end, Renault contends that recognition theory can save the proper inheritance of critical theory—that is, as an interdisciplinary theory that intends to transform the abstract questions of political philosophy into issues best addressed by a materialist social theory—but only if it seriously connects its critical acumen to a comprehensive social theory more convincing than either original Marxism or the theory of communicative action. Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch contends that the best way to carry forward a simultaneous analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism is in fact a suitably tailored recognition theory. He supports this by first outlining the basic contours of Honneth’s recognition theory, reconstructing the criticisms it has received (most prominently from Nancy Fraser) concerning its analysis of capitalism, and then showing how careful attention to the relationship between social esteem and economic activities can allay these criticisms while simultaneously giving more convincing answers to pressing sociotheoretic questions. In particular, Schmidt am Busch argues that theory must carefully distinguish between different senses of social esteem, self-esteem, and their particular relationships to one’s economically relevant work if critical theory is to accurately explain how current practices of meritocratic esteem lead to endless striving for wealth and professional

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success, conspicuous consumption, and the decline in support for the social welfare functions of the state. With such explanations, however, the supposed need for a separate functionalist account of the economy is obviated, and the way is cleared for developing a rich, recognition-based analysis and critique of capitalism. In his contribution, Jean-Philippe Deranty also argues that Fraser-style critiques of recognition-theoretic approaches to political economy miss their mark, though he attempts this defense from a different direction. Going right at the allegedly greatest weakness of recognition theory—its attempt to employ a moral, psychological concept of recognition to explain the sources of distributive injustice—Deranty first reconstructs the criticisms before arguing that it is only the sensitive hermeneutical apparatus of recognition theory that can properly detect social pathologies at the level, and in the grammar within which, they are experienced in the everyday lifeworld by those who suffer from the depredations of economic injustice. While this “critique through experience” shows that recognition theory possesses greater critical acumen for detecting social pathologies than that provided by alternative functionalist accounts of economic phenomena, it does not yet show the explanatory advantages of the former. For purposes of explanation, Deranty suggest that contemporary forms of unorthodox political economy including institutionalism and especially regulatory theory have important overlaps with recognition theory and thus hold out the promise of integrating recognitive forms of social theory with economic theory. With the prospect of such an integration, critical theory need not settle for a bifurcated analysis that separates off the moral from the economic and that, at least tacitly, concedes that contemporary capitalist markets constitute a relatively norm-free block of social reality resistant to emancipatory transformation. The last two articles turn back to fundamental problems in ontology, action theory, moral psychology, and ethics by giving careful analyses of acts of recognition themselves. In his contribution, Arto Laitinen sets out to make sense of exactly who or what can count as an object of recognition, who can count as a recognizer, and what the proper scope is for features that may be responded to through recognition. This analysis is accomplished in the light of the basic insight of recognition theory: namely, that recognition matters to individuals and in social life precisely because recognition has an important connection to individuals’ practical self-relations, in particular to their individual sense of self. However, Laitinen detects a tension that has arisen in recognition theory between those who focus on one of two distinct insights. On the one hand, some stress that successful acts of recognition occur when a recognizer properly responds to some normatively relevant features of an object, such that successful recognition can go forward without any normatively governed reciprocity on the part

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of that which is recognized—Laitinen calls this the “adequate regard” intuition. On the other hand, some stress that successful acts of interpersonal recognition can only go through when the recipient of recognition has certain capacities, in particular, capacities for recognizing the recognizer as a competent recognizer—Laitinen calls this the “mutuality insight.” Because both insights have good reasons to support them, and since emphasizing only one of them would unduly restrict the scope of phenomena captured by a theory of recognition, Laitinen suggests that we need a two-part account that distinguishes between two senses corresponding to each. While admitting that it is a rather technical terminology, he recommends that we use the terms “recognizing/being recognized” for the one-way sense of adequate regard and the terms “getting recognition/giving recognition” for the reciprocal sense of interpersonal mutuality. Heikki Ikäheimo aims at an analytic account of recognition that can systematically connect themes from different philosophical traditions and different areas of philosophy. He argues in general that we ought to conceive of recognition in terms of “practical attitudes of taking something/someone as a person.” Such a conception is intended to capture the main thrust behind talk of “recognition”—as different as the substance of that talk might be—that is found in contemporary critical social theory and in contemporary Hegel scholarship. He claims that his account is broad enough to capture the various themes broached in these literatures under a unified, holistic conception of recognition. He also argues that this concept can unify the various discussions about recognition in different areas of philosophy: in ontology, philosophical anthropology and action theory, as well as in ethical, political, and social theory. The strategy here is to show how recognition is constitutive of various aspects of full-fledged personhood, on the one hand, and is (perhaps) the fundamental factor concerning evaluative judgments of actions, persons, interpersonal relations, and sociopolitical institutions. Ikäheimo concludes by connecting his analysis of recognition to the idea that social recognition is the motor of progressive history. In the end, he aims to show that the philosophy of recognition aims at a holistic philosophical picture of social life that is both ontologically accurate and critically insightful.

NOTE 1. The first three sections of this introduction incorporate, in significantly modified form, material first published as part of my “Schwerpunkt: Anerkennung,” a guest editor’s introduction to a special section on recognition, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Vol. 53, no. 3 (2005): 377–87. My thanks to Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch for very helpful comments on this version.

2 Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition (Amour Propre) Frederick Neuhouser

Although it is seldom realized, Rousseau is the first thinker in the history of philosophy to place the striving for recognition from others at the very core of human nature1 and, so, to emphasize it as a central concern of moral, social, and political philosophy. What is more, the views of Kant, Hegel, and all later theorists of recognition can be regarded as elaborations or revisions of Rousseau’s position that operate within the same basic framework set out in the Discourse on Inequality, Emile, and the Social Contract. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, like the relation later philosophers have to Plato, nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophies of recognition are essentially a series of footnotes to Rousseau. In this essay I attempt to outline the main contours of Rousseau’s reflections on the human drive for recognition—or, as he calls it, the passion of amour propre. My aim here is not to examine the details of Rousseau’s complex view2 but to present a more general picture of its principal dimensions and of how they fit together to constitute a compelling and comprehensive philosophy of recognition. More specifically, I shall address four questions fundamental to Rousseau’s theory: 1) What kind of passion is amour propre? 2) Why is it the principal source of the many evils that have appeared to many—to Hobbes and Augustine, for example—as intrinsic to the human condition? 3) What social and political measures can remedy these evils? 4) Why does the only solution to these evils—the development and exercise of human reason—depend on the proper cultivation of amour propre rather than on its suppression or extirpation?

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I. THE NATURE OF AMOUR PROPRE As its name indicates, amour propre is a species of self-love—a love of what is “proper” to (or belongs to) oneself. “Self-love” in this context means self-interestedness: to love oneself is to care about one’s own good and to be disposed to pursue whatever one takes that good to be. Yet clearly amour propre is something more specific than self-interestedness in general, for Rousseau makes a point of distinguishing it from another form of self-love, amour de soi (or, equivalently, amour de soi-même). Since it is in distinguishing these two forms of self-love that Rousseau comes closest to defining amour propre, it is with this contrast that we must begin: It is important not to confuse amour propre and love of oneself [amour de soimême], two passions very different in their nature and their effects. Love of oneself is a natural sentiment that inclines every animal to watch over its own preservation and that, directed in man by reason and modified by pity, produces humanity and virtue. Amour propre is but a relative sentiment, artificial and born in society, that inclines each individual to think more highly of himself than of anyone else, inspires in men all the evils they do to one another, and is the true source of honor (DI, 221–22/OC 3, 219).3

The first thing to notice is that Rousseau distinguishes the two forms of self-love in terms of the object, or good, each inclines us to seek: amour de soi-même is directed at self-preservation,4 whereas amour propre is concerned with judgments of merit and honor, with how highly one is “regarded.” As Rousseau tells us elsewhere, a being that possesses amour propre is moved by the desire “to have a position, to be a part, to count for something” (E, 160/OC 4, 421); such a being, in other words, feels a need to be esteemed, admired, or thought valuable (in some respect). A second feature of amour propre, according to this passage, is its “relative” nature, in contrast to the “absolute” character of amour de soi (E, 215/OC 4, 494). “Relative” here means relative to other subjects, and Rousseau’s point is that the good that amour propre seeks is defined by certain relations one has to subjects other than oneself. In fact, amour propre is relative in two respects. First, the good it seeks is comparative in nature; to desire esteem is to desire to have a certain standing in relation to the standing of others.5 In other words, the esteem that amour propre seeks is a positional good, which implies that doing well for myself (finding the social esteem I seek) consists in doing well in comparison with others. This means that the extent to which I find my need for recognition satisfied depends on how well—or how badly—those around me fare with respect to theirs. It is important to note that a relative standing is not necessarily a superior or inferior one. If what my amour propre leads me to seek is simply the respect I deserve as a human being—respect I am willing to grant to others in the

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same measure—then the standing I seek is comparative (defined in relation to others) but not superior; in other words, equal standing is still standing relative to others. This feature of amour propre contrasts with the nonrelative character of amour de soi in that the value of the goods sought by the latter is independent of how much or how little of the same is possessed by others. If we recall that amour de soi is directed at self-preservation, the point of the contrast becomes clear: the extent to which my food, my shelter, and my sleep satisfy my bodily needs is independent of how well others fare with respect to their needs. In the case of amour propre, in contrast, my satisfaction depends on how the quantity and quality of the esteem I receive from others compares with the quantity and quality of the esteem they enjoy. Amour propre is relative to other subjects in the further sense that, since the good it seeks is esteem from others, its satisfaction requires—indeed, consists in—the opinions of others.6 Amour propre is relative in this second sense because its aim—recognition from others—is inherently social in nature. Here, too, amour propre contrasts with amour de soi: since the opinion of one’s fellow beings is not constitutive of the goods sought by amour de soi, it does not directly and necessarily tie us to other subjects, as does amour propre. Of course, in any but the most unusual of human conditions, satisfying the needs of self-preservation will also require, as a means to achieving one’s ends, cooperation with others. Even so, the good one hopes to achieve through such cooperation—if it is truly an end of amour de soi—remains external, and hence only contingently related, to one’s relations to others. Finally, amour propre is not only relative but also “artificial” (factice). In this respect, too, it contrasts with amour de soi, a “natural” sentiment. It is important to note that when Rousseau calls amour propre artificial, he does not mean that the drive for recognition is a merely accidental feature of human reality or that humans would be better off without it; he means, rather, that amour propre is an inherently social phenomenon and that because of this the particular forms it takes are highly variable and dependent on the kind of social world its possessors inhabit. Although humans cannot exist as such without amour propre, how it manifests itself in the world depends on the social institutions that shape it. The considerable malleability of amour propre is a thesis of crucial importance to Rousseau, and it must not be lost sight of when one encounters passages, such as the one cited above, that appear to ascribe a fixed and pernicious character to amour propre. When Rousseau says that amour propre “inclines each individual to think more highly of himself than of anyone else [and] inspires in men all the evils they do to one another,” “inclines” and “inspires” must be read as “disposes” or “makes possible,” not as “compels” or “necessitates.” As I have already noted, Rousseau does think that amour propre is the principal source of the evils that beset human beings, but

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he does not believe that it leads to evils necessarily, in all its possible forms. Thinking more highly of oneself than of others is certainly one common way that amour propre manifests itself, but because of amour propre’s artificial character—because the forms it takes are always the effects of contingent circumstances that depend on human will—it is by no means necessary that it do so. Emphasizing the artificial character of amour propre helps to clarify the source of its great plasticity. In short, amour propre is capable of assuming highly variable forms because of the extent to which an individual’s “opinions”—more precisely, his conception of himself—mediate his pursuit of social esteem.7 The self-conceptions at issue here consist not only in beliefs about the extent of one’s own merit or worth, but also in the ideals one measures oneself by and aspires to achieve. Because these self-conceptions are themselves highly malleable, amour propre, too, is capable of assuming a remarkable variety of concrete forms. Moreover—to underline, as Rousseau does, the link between the artificial with the social—one principal reason self-conceptions are highly malleable is that they are shaped by historical and social circumstances that are themselves highly variable. Since processes of socialization give particular shape to the desires and ideals that motivate individuals, and since social institutions encourage certain ways of finding esteem while ruling out others, different societies will tend to instill in their members different conceptions of personal worth and, with them, different configurations of amour propre. One further characteristic of amour propre that will figure heavily in Rousseau’s account of its capacity to wreak havoc in human society is the ferocity and power with which it grabs hold of individuals and moves them to act. The fierce and passionate character of amour propre is explained by the fact that something of great importance is at stake in its activity. Its ferocity, its power to consume those who have it, its ability to infect every human enterprise with its own meaning are all signs of the overriding significance with which the aims of amour propre are invested. It is no accident that Rousseau’s account of human motivation gives amour propre roughly the same fundamental status it accords to the self-preservative drives of amour de soi. This equal status is a reflection of the fact that what is at stake in both forms of self-love is, in some sense, the very being of the self. This is obvious in the case of amour de soi, for which physical survival is the first and overriding concern, but it is no less true for amour propre, which aims at what might be called the self’s moral or psychological survival. This is the idea Rousseau means to communicate when he says that in being recognized by others an individual acquires a “sentiment of his own existence” (DI, 187/OC 3, 193; my emphasis).8 The failure to find recognition from others does not, of course, threaten one’s existence as a physical entity, and yet, as ordinary language acknowledges, a person who lacks standing in the eyes of others

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is, in some meaningful sense, a “nobody.” The kind of existence at issue here is nicely captured by N. J. H. Dent’s description of Rousseau’s idea of moral presence and its relation to amour propre: [Being recognized by others] is testimony to personal power and force in encounter and contention with other persons. The display of personal power is a proof to oneself of one’s possession of real, effective existence as having living presence . . . in . . . the world of other humans. We crave, as the condition of having any sense of ourselves as living, vital, existences at all, proofs of our reality; this we secure only by enforcing ourselves upon our surroundings such that we experience a world showing the effects of our presence.9

If, generally speaking, the capacity to produce effects in the world is the sign of a being’s reality, then being recognized by others, especially when exhibited in their speech and action, can be taken to confer on the self a being, or reality, of a certain distinctively human kind: to achieve recognition is to acquire a confirmed existence for others as a substantial, effect-producing subject.10

II. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF HUMAN ILLS Rousseau’s announced project in the Discourse on Inequality is to uncover “the source of inequality among men” (DI, 124/OC 3, 122) and, by implication, the source of the various evils that accompany it: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. The part of Rousseau’s position that is of interest here is its guiding presupposition that the key to explaining all nonnatural forms of human inequality lies in locating its psychological source.11 Rousseau’s psychological approach to explaining inequality is of special interest because it is precisely the origin of amour propre—the birth of the human desire for recognition—that he singles out as “the first step towards inequality and vice” and the ultimate cause of developments that “eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence” (DI, 166/OC 3, 169–70). My aim in this section is to outline some of the ideas on which this central claim of the Discourse on Inequality rests. In doing so I shall be concerned primarily with explaining why Rousseau regards amour propre not just as one of several necessary conditions of inequality and vice but as their principal cause—as a passion that, once it has inserted itself into the human psyche, makes inequality and vice not merely possible or probable but nearly unavoidable. Implicit in this project is the view that in the absence of amour propre these human evils would not exist. In other words, Rousseau’s account of amour propre is predicated on the claim that the elements of original human nature—the pity, amour de soi, perfectibility, and

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free will that individuals possess “in themselves,” independently of social relations—cannot by themselves explain the human tendency to fall into conditions of enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. I mentioned in the previous section that part of Rousseau’s explanation of the pernicious potential of the human drive for recognition appeals to the ferocity and power with which amour propre impels individuals to seek a kind of “being” for others. Indeed, none of the other problematic features of amour propre would be of much consequence to human affairs, if amour propre, like natural pity, spoke only “under certain circumstances” and in “a gentle voice” (DI, 152, 154/OC 3, 154, 156). Rousseau draws our attention to the ferocity of amour propre when he notes that once civility had become an established social practice, “any intentional wrong became an affront, because along with the harm that resulted from the injury, the offended man saw in it contempt for his person that was often more unbearable than the harm itself. It was thus that . . . vengeances became terrible, and men bloodthirsty and cruel” (DI, 166/OC 3, 170). Taking note of the passionate character of amour propre is important because it plays a crucial role in explaining why conflict is so pervasive in human society. It is not, for Rousseau, the urgency of self-preservation but the “desire for reputation, honors, and preferences” that “makes all men competitors, rivals, or . . . enemies” (DI, 184/OC 3, 189). Rousseau’s suggestion is that if ordinary conflicts of interest were unaffected by the needs of amour propre—if such conflicts were not regularly transmuted into contests over the worth and dignity of the opponents—struggles among humans would be rare, short-lived, and without enduring significance. When one individual steals the fruit another has gathered for his next meal, what prompts the latter to seek revenge is less that he is hungry than that his amour propre has been wounded. For Rousseau, it is not material scarcity but unfulfilled needs for recognition that are most responsible for the warlike relations among individuals that can easily appear to constitute the enduring, “natural” condition of humankind. A further source of amour propre’s dangers is its relative character in the first of the two senses distinguished above (the fact that the standing sought by amour propre is always defined relative to that of other individuals). This feature of amour propre is fraught with danger precisely because it is so easy for humans to take “doing well” (in relation to others) to imply “doing better,” in which case the quest for recognition becomes a drive to be recognized as better than others. It is easy to see how amour propre must give rise to serious problems once individuals acquire the sense that having their worth affirmed requires being recognized as superior to their fellows. One obvious difficulty with the desire for superior standing, if widely shared, is that the systematic satisfaction of amour propre becomes impossible. This is because when amour propre seeks superior standing, recognition becomes a

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scarce good since “everyone could not want preference without there being many malcontents” (E, 215/OC 4, 494). If some are to achieve superiority, others must end up in an inferior position, and so, rather than being accessible to all, recognition becomes the object of endless competition, conflict, and frustrated desires. A further problem resulting from the desire for superior standing is the “rat race” phenomenon, or the struggle to “keep up with the Joneses.” This problem stems from the fact that superiority, even if attained, is insecure and short-lived as long as it is achieved in relation to others who desire the same for themselves. In order to outdo the competitor who has just overtaken me or to maintain the position of preeminence I now occupy, I must constantly be engaged in enhancing my own current standing. In such a situation, individuals are burdened with a nearly limitless need to better their own positions in response to or in anticipation of their rivals’ advances, which results in a restless and unceasing game of oneupmanship. The problem is not merely that the only satisfaction amour propre can find will be fleeting and insecure but also that needs and desires become boundless in a way that is inimical to human happiness. Whereas “amour de soi . . . is content when our true needs are satisfied” (E, 213/OC 4, 493), amour propre, configured as the desire for superiority, quickly multiplies our desires and perceived needs beyond any plausible conception of what our “true” needs might be.12 Such ever-expanding desires impose on those who have them the need to expend vast amounts of labor and energy in pursuit of the goods and honors they hope will satisfy their drive for superiority. But no matter how elaborate and exhausting, such schemes are doomed to fail, first because the labor they require typically outweighs the satisfaction they bring and, second, because once individuals’ motivations have been permeated to this degree by the drive for superior standing, they lose the capacity to enjoy their possessions and achievements for the intrinsic (nonrelative) benefits they afford. This condition represents a genuine perversion of human desire, for beings such as these “value the things they enjoy only to the extent that others are deprived of them and, without any change in their own state, . . . would cease to be happy if [others] ceased to be miserable” (DI, 184/OC 3, 189). The points just discussed demonstrate how the quest for superior standing tends to engender both conflict and unhappiness (frustrated desire) among those who pursue it. There is, however, a further problem with this manifestation of amour propre, namely, its tendency to produce vice, or immorality. In this context, vice is understood as a callous disregard for the sufferings of others or, in its more pernicious forms, an inclination to harm others or to take delight in their misfortunes.13 Defined in this way, vice requires a suppression of our natural pity, and so the propensity to vice that is so widespread among civilized beings is not simply a consequence of

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human nature but demands some further explanation. Rousseau finds this explanation in the essentially comparative nature of amour propre: if doing well for oneself is conceived as doing better than others, then it is possible to promote one’s own well-being by doing harm to those with whom one compares oneself. Once I measure my own standing in relation to others’, I can further my standing either by improving my own lot or by worsening yours. Thus, the desire to be recognized as superior provides humans with an incentive they would otherwise lack to rejoice at, or even to seek, the adversity of others (DI, 171/OC 3, 175). As I have argued, amour propre is relative to others in a second sense as well, and it, too, is a source of human ills. Because the good sought by amour propre includes esteem from others—because it involves a concern for how one appears to other subjects—beings who have this passion are directly dependent on others for the satisfaction of one of their most keenly felt needs. For such beings, relations to others are necessary not only as a means to satisfying nonrelative needs but also because the favorable opinion of others is constitutive of the good they seek. Some of the danger that springs from this aspect of amour propre can be understood in light of Rousseau’s larger view concerning the dangers of dependence in general.14 (Dependence in this context is contrasted with self-sufficiency: an individual is dependent when he has to rely on the cooperation of others in order to satisfy his needs.) Rousseau’s social and political thought is founded on the idea that any form of dependence carries with it the danger that individuals will have to compromise their freedom in order to satisfy the needs that impel them to seek the cooperation of others. If freedom consists in “not being subject to someone else’s will” (LWM, 260/OC 3, 841)—or, equivalently, in obeying only one’s own will15—then dependence poses a standing threat to being free since it opens up the possibility that in order to get what I need I may have no choice but to tailor my actions to conform to the (often arbitrary) wills of those on whose cooperation I rely. When constantly faced with a choice between getting what one needs or following one’s own will, it will be no surprise if satisfaction frequently wins out over freedom. Applying this principle to amour propre, Rousseau warns that depending on others for esteem often results in the loss of freedom: Even domination is servile when it is connected with opinion, for you depend on the prejudices of those you govern by prejudices. To conduct them as you please, you must conduct yourself as they please. They have only to change their way of thinking, and you must perforce change your way of acting (E, 83/OC 4, 308).

Rousseau’s thought is that someone who needs recognition will regularly be subject to the temptation to let his actions be dictated by the values and

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preferences of others and, so, to determine his will in accordance with their wishes or values rather than his own. But this is precisely how Rousseau defines enslavement, or loss of freedom, and it is for this reason that he views amour propre as a serious threat to our capacity to be free. There is a further danger following from the fact that amour propre seeks a good that consists in the judgments of others. This danger is best described as alienation (or self-estrangement), even though Rousseau himself does not use the term in this context.16 “Alienation” as I use it here denotes the phenomenon Rousseau has in view when reproaching the civilized individual for existing “outside himself,” as in the following passage: There is a kind of men who set some store by how they are looked upon by the rest of the universe, who know how to be happy and content with themselves on the testimony of others rather than on their own. This is, in fact, the true cause of all these differences: the savage lives within himself; sociable man, always outside himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others; and it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence (DI, 187/OC 3, 193).17

Existing outside oneself certainly sounds like a species of alienation, but in what precisely does it consist, and how does it differ from the loss of freedom described above? According to this passage, existing outside oneself involves gaining the sentiment of one’s own existence from the judgments of others. As we saw above, having a sentiment of one’s own existence is central to what it is for Rousseau to be a self in a moral, or nonphysical, sense. It involves a sentiment (or sense)—in any case, a more than purely cognitive affirmation—that one is “somebody,” that one has a noninstrumental worth or dignity superior to the value of mere things. Because the valued self that is the object of this sentiment depends for its being on the affirming attitudes and behavior of others, there is a sense in which such a self exists externally. This implies that the source of my own existence (as a self) lies not just in me but also in others and, so, that my very being depends on the uncertain, possibly arbitrary opinions of my fellow beings. It would be a grave error, however, to conclude that existing outside oneself is equivalent to alienation. On the contrary, the two must be carefully distinguished if Rousseau is to have a coherent response to the problems of amour propre that does not require the latter’s elimination. Given his view of the self as completed only through the recognition of others, Rousseau is committed to the claim that the human subject must always to some extent exist outside itself. In other words, external existence (in the judgments of others) is necessary for selfhood in any of its forms and does not by itself constitute alienation. Where, then, does the difference lie? A careful reading of the passage above suggests that what makes the self’s external existence

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an instance of alienation is one’s existing always outside oneself, one’s living only in the opinion of others, one’s being able to be happy with oneself on the basis of their judgment alone. An alienated self, then, is not one that merely needs recognition from others but one that at the same time has no, or only very meager, internal resources for self-affirmation; an alienated self contains within itself none, or too little, of the sources of its own being. Understood in this way, alienation is made possible by the self’s external character, but it is not a necessary consequence of selfhood. Perhaps the best way to clarify what it means to lack sufficient internal resources for self-affirmation is to examine why having too few is a bad thing—why, in other words, alienation is an evil. The first reason is that, without such resources, our enjoyment of the specific good to which amour propre directs us is bound to be contingent, inconstant, and perpetually insecure. Even in the best of worlds, other subjects will be imperfect sources of recognition, capable both of withholding it altogether and of providing it at the wrong times, in the wrong amounts, and for the wrong reasons. Thus, in the absence of any resources for affirming oneself from within, one’s very being (as a valued self) is vulnerable to a host of vicissitudes outside one’s control; one’s existence is insubstantial—unsteadfast—in the way that a log’s ashen remains are subject to being reduced to a pile of dust by a single tap from without. The second reason alienation is bad is that being overly dependent on the recognition of others can interfere with one’s achieving not just the good of affirmation but other essential goods as well. Too great a need for the affirmation of others—craving it at every moment, in exaggerated amounts, or for every imagined merit—makes one easy prey to the temptation to sacrifice other essential goods, such as health, peace of mind, security, or freedom, in pursuit of the recognition one desperately longs for. In reconstructing the dangers of the human drive for recognition it is important to bear in mind that, strictly speaking, amour propre is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the evils just described. There are two reasons for this. First, though always a relative passion, amour propre does not necessarily—under all conditions—manifest itself as a desire for superior standing. As noted above, the quest for standing in the eyes of others can also take the form of wanting to be recognized as an equal—as a human being, say, who has the same rights and dignity as every other.18 This is important for Rousseau’s theory of recognition because his solution to the many problems caused by amour propre—a solution articulated in The Social Contract and Emile—will require not the extirpation of amour propre but, instead, its proper cultivation so that the quest for recognition is rendered compatible with universal freedom and happiness. Since to eliminate amour propre would be to eliminate the conditions of rationality, of love—of subjectivity itself—Rousseau’s ultimate aim will be to find a way of cultivating amour propre so that it continues to motivate human beings without giving rise to the evils it tends to produce in its uneducated form.

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The second reason amour propre by itself is not sufficient to generate human evils is that a host of other, nonpsychological conditions must be in place before even the desire for superior standing can translate into the state of war and degradation depicted at the end of the Discourse on Inequality. As long as the quest to be recognized as better than others is confined to the simple desire of primitive beings to be regarded as the best singer or the most beautiful, significant moral inequality cannot arise. This is why Rousseau says that in order for inequality to gain a foothold in human existence, it “needed the fortuitous concatenation of several foreign causes” (DI, 159/OC 3, 162). Included among these fortuitous causes are rudimentary technological advancements, the development of latent cognitive faculties, specialization occasioned by the division of labor, and, most important, the origin of private property, of states, and of codes of justice, all of which institutionalize and give permanence to the various inequalities that beings driven by amour propre are led to create. It would be too large a task to unravel the various ways in which each of these causes contributes to moral inequality. One prominent theme in Rousseau’s account, though, is the momentous effect of the increasing interdependence among individuals that these developments bring with them. The increase in dependence occasioned by an expanding division of labor, for example, makes it possible for amour propre to seek new forms of satisfaction that introduce more enduring inequalities than were possible when individuals were self-sufficient (DI, 167/OC 3, 171). For alongside the old strategies of striving to be merely the best singer or dancer, new opportunities for achieving preeminence arise, including the possibility of exploiting others’ dependence for the purpose of subjugating them. It is easy to see that a peasant who produces only one of the many foods he needs to subsist is more vulnerable to exploitation than his self-sufficient counterpart. As Marx might put the point, dependence creates one of the conditions necessary for inequalities in class. The interesting implication of the Discourse on Inequality is that subjugation of this kind is rarely, if ever, motivated by purely economic ends. For in addition to the economic benefits it brings, establishing oneself as the exploiter of others—especially when the roles of exploiter and exploited are publicly sanctioned by social institutions—presents itself as an alluring strategy for finding enduring confirmation of one’s high standing in the eyes of others.

III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES The solutions Rousseau offers to the problems of amour propre fall into two broad categories: those that focus on restructuring social and political institutions and those that concern the formation of individual character. The thought behind this dual approach is that although both factors—a

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society’s basic institutions and how the individuals within them are privately raised—influence which forms the quest for recognition will take in a given society, neither by itself is sufficient to forestall the dangers of amour propre. In other words, making amour propre benign requires not just that the right social and political institutions be in place but also that individuals come to those institutions with the appropriate desires, ends, and self-conceptions. Rousseau’s sociopolitical response to the evils of amour propre is guided by two main goals: countering the socially pernicious inequalities that the process of civilization brings with it and promoting institutions that make stable and benign forms of social recognition available to all. Since the first of these goals cannot be achieved simply by eradicating inequality—this would also abolish the conditions of civilization more generally—Rousseau’s remedy focuses on imposing limits on the extent and kinds of inequality that society can permit. Its guiding principle is to minimize the opportunities available to amour propre for seeking satisfaction through forms of superior standing that tend to impede the society-wide achievement of peace, happiness, virtue, freedom, and unalienated selfhood. Rousseau’s approach to the problem of inequality is best illustrated by two examples, one of which points to a kind of inequality his social philosophy rules out altogether, while the other illustrates limits imposed on a kind of inequality that Rousseau thinks cannot fruitfully be eliminated but only held in check. One type of inequality Rousseau is committed to prohibiting entirely is what Marx would call class inequality. Class, as Marx conceives it, is defined by the relation individuals have to the means of production. In capitalism, for example, one class owns—and, so, controls—the material resources necessary for production, while the other owns no such resources (other than its own labor power). Even though Rousseau lacks Marx’s precisely defined concept of class, the division of society into those who own productive forces, such as land, and those who do not is an important part of the increase in human dependence that the Discourse on Inequality chronicles and laments (DI, 167/OC 3, 171). A class system, unlike the material division of labor, represents for Rousseau (as for Marx) a species of dependence that is both inimical to freedom and avoidable, and for this reason he is committed to its abolition. The principle Rousseau relies on in rejecting class inequality is set out explicitly in the Social Contract and implicitly in the Discourse on Inequality’s account of the origin of human enslavement. In the former Rousseau asserts that “no citizen should be so opulent that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself” (SC, II.11.ii); in the latter he points to private property in land (a productive force) as the true source of the “crimes, wars, . . . miseries and horrors” that plague the human race (DI, 161/OC 3, 164).

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It is important to note that what Rousseau calls for is not so much the elimination of economic dependence as its equalization, for whenever there is a material division of labor of some kind, individuals will rely on the cooperation of others in order to satisfy their needs. In the absence of class divisions, however, mutually dependent laborers encounter one another on essentially equal footing, and the structural basis for relations of domination is dissolved. The example of class, then, illustrates a general principle of Rousseau’s social philosophy: since the dangers of dependence are vastly multiplied when it is conjoined with inequality—one could even say that the former becomes truly dangerous only in the presence of the latter19—the economic dependence necessary for civilization can be both preserved and rendered tolerable by equalizing as much as possible the basic terms of social cooperation. Of course, class inequality is relevant to Rousseau’s treatment of amour propre because it is the source of not just economic benefits but also social esteem: occupying a position in society that empowers one regularly to command and profit from the labor of others is a compelling way of demonstrating the exalted standing one has both for and in comparison with others. The first principle that Rousseau’s social philosophy adopts from his analysis of amour propre, then, is that good institutions must be structured such that the main opportunities they offer for achieving social standing do not depend on the systematic subjugation of others; in a good society the strategies social members standardly pursue for winning recognition must not presuppose fundamental asymmetries in social power that, in effect, enable some to find esteem (and enrichment) at the expense of others’ freedom. The second example of how Rousseau responds to economic inequality involves a type of inequality he thinks ought to be held within certain bounds but not eliminated altogether. The point here is expressed in the following statement: “Do you, then, want to give the state stability? Bring the extremes as close together as possible; tolerate neither opulent people nor beggars. These two conditions, naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good” (SC, II.11.iin). This type of inequality differs from the previous one in that it concerns inequality in wealth rather than class. Even if class differences in Marx’s sense are done away with, significant disparities in wealth are still likely, assuming that such factors as luck, determination, and innate talent are not completely divested of their power to affect individuals’ fortunes. Rousseau’s general recommendation that society’s extremes be brought “as close together as possible”20 is meant to authorize a wide variety of state policies, tailored to specific circumstances, whose aim is to hold in check the “natural” tendency (in the absence of government regulation) for the gap between rich and poor to grow ever wider (SC, II.11.iii). Three policies of this sort that Rousseau explicitly endorses are progressive taxation

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(PE, 30–31/OC 3, 271), taxes on luxury goods (PE, 35/OC 3, 275–76), and restrictions on inheritance (OC 3, 945). The most important reason Rousseau has for regulating material inequality is akin to his reason for outlawing economic classes: great disparities in wealth endanger the freedom of the less advantaged. Such disparities intensify the economic dependence of the poor and, so, increase the likelihood that they will have to submit to the wills of others in order to satisfy their needs (SC 2.11.1). The second major class of Rousseau’s sociopolitical remedies focuses on devising institutions that make a sufficient range of stable and benign forms of recognition available to all. If one of the conditions that inflame amour propre’s malignant potential is a general lack of nondestructive opportunities for acquiring a recognized standing, then it ought to be possible to curb much of the mischief amour propre is capable of unleashing by establishing healthier alternatives to the forms of recognition individuals are led to seek in a society that has not yet been reorganized by reason’s principles. Once the problem is viewed in this light, it is easy to see the Social Contract as playing a central role in Rousseau’s strategy for remedying the evils of amour propre. For one of the main accomplishments of the legitimate state is to guarantee all its members a substantial form of social recognition: the equal legal respect accorded to citizens of a republic. In other words, this part of Rousseau’s solution makes the political community itself a major source of the recognition individuals seek as a consequence of amour propre. In a true republic—in any state ruled by the general will (SC, II.6.ixn)— law is the source of three types of recognition, each of which consists in a mode of treating individuals that proclaims the equal worth of all citizens. The first of these is enshrined in what is usually called equality before the law, or the equality of citizens as subjects (SC, I.6.x). This type of recognition derives from the fact that legitimate laws must be universal in the sense of applying equally to everyone: no individual citizen stands outside their reach. A state that upholds the universality of law in this sense confers a kind of equal standing on its members by insisting, as it were, that no individual is “above” the law. The second type of legal recognition a republic affords its members is the equality they enjoy as the collective sovereign, or author, of the law: legitimate laws not only “apply to all” but also “issue from all” (SC, II.4.v). The most obvious sense in which the laws of a republic come equally from all is that all citizens are accorded the same rights of political participation: equal say in the assembly, equal right to vote, and equal access to political offices. There is, however, a further respect in which legitimate laws come equally from all citizens. The laws of a republic also originate in the wills of its members in the sense that, insofar as those laws are grounded in the general will, they are obliged to protect the fundamental interests of each citizen. Here legitimate laws recognize the equal worth of citizens by proclaiming

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that every individual’s fundamental interests have the same standing as anyone else’s. In the true republic, finding this form of recognition depends not on the arbitrary deeds and dispositions of other individuals but on the impersonal and more reliable guarantee furnished by the rule of law itself. There is yet a third species of recognition provided by the republic: the recognition of an individual as a bearer of rights. The idea here is that citizens of the legitimate state must have a recognized standing beyond those of “equal subject” and “equal sovereign.” In a republic, laws also recognize citizens as free agents (or persons), and the importance of their individual agency is expressed in a system of established rights21 that impose constraints on permissible legislation and assure each person a determinate and equal sphere of “civil freedom” (SC, I.8.ii) in matters where the general will is silent. The rights associated with civil freedom are essentially guarantees that others—both the state and other individuals—will not interfere with one’s own freely chosen actions, including the free disposition of one’s property, provided those actions are consistent with the general will’s defining end (securing the conditions under which the fundamental interests of all citizens can be satisfied). In this third form of legal recognition what is at issue is not that everyone’s interests count the same but rather that a certain fundamental interest of each person—the freedom to author one’s private actions to the extent that such freedom is consistent with the freedom of all—is accorded an essential, nonfungible value, which amounts to a recognition of every individual as having the status of a free and inviolable end in itself. Insofar as Emile forms part of Rousseau’s systematic treatment of amour propre, its aim is to investigate how the right kind of domestic education can prevent unhealthy forms of amour propre from gaining a foothold in the character of a young child. Emile’s education can be divided into three phases. First, in Books I–III, Emile is raised exclusively “for himself” (E, 39/OC 4, 248), or “in his relations with things” (E, 214/OC 4, 493). This means that his education takes place outside society and is devoted to the appropriate formation and expression of amour de soi (and to preserving for as long as possible the dormancy of amour propre), all in accordance with the “natural” ideals of individual integrity and self-sufficiency (or independence). In the second phase—in Book IV—Emile’s education is continued with one crucial difference: the onset of puberty, with its awakening of sexual passion, makes it impossible to prolong amour propre’s dormancy. With the latter stirred, Emile can no longer be content with existing only for himself, and his education—still carried out in isolation from all social relations—must concentrate on forming his amour propre (and pity) so that, once he finally enters the institutions of marriage and the state, he will possess the psychological resources he needs in order to exist “for others” while also preserving, as far as possible, the integrity and self-sufficiency he

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learned as a child. In the final phase, in Book V, the exclusive bond between pupil and tutor is loosened, Emile is instructed in the roles of husband and citizen, and he steps into the social world at last, equipped as well as one ever can be to negotiate the tension between being-for-self and being-forothers that, for Rousseau, defines the human predicament. It is the second phase of this education that is most relevant to Rousseau’s theory of amour propre. Its primary goal is to instill in the adolescent a correct understanding of the “rank” he takes himself to occupy relative to others (E, 243/OC 4, 534). Not surprisingly, the rank that Emile must learn to claim for himself is equality with all other human beings, where the core of this ideal is the idea that no one’s interests deserve more consideration than others’ in determining the laws that obligate us commonly. The two educational principles with which Book IV begins concern, first, the temporal order in which the adolescent’s new passions are allowed to emerge and, second, the principal psychological resource—the pupil’s imagination—that this educational phase will make use of in shaping those passions. Rousseau makes a point of insisting that the emergence and formation of pity precede the stirring of amour propre. His thought is that since after the latter has occurred, the adolescent will necessarily care about securing a favorable place in relation to others, having first acquired a capacity to pity his potential rivals—to empathize with their pains and sorrows—will make it easier for him to mollify and restrict the aims of his drive for relative standing, which in the absence of such empathy can easily assume exaggerated, pernicious forms. In other words, if pity is aroused and fortified before amour propre enters the scene, it is capable of turning the adolescent’s emerging character “towards beneficence and goodness” (E, 221/OC 4, 504) before it can be moved in the opposite direction by a desire to outdo or harm. Part of awakening pity is providing it with an object, and it is here that imagination becomes important. The role of imagination in forming or habituating the passions—making them “second nature”—is to fix their objects, which, in the present case, amounts to determining to whom and on the basis of what Emile’s pity is to be directed. One reason imagination is so important in the formation of pity is that sensitivity to the pains of other creatures depends on a capacity for imaginative identification, on the ability to “transport ourselves outside ourselves and identify with the suffering animal” (E, 223/OC 4, 505–506). Thus, the tutor’s task in forming Emile’s pity is twofold: to stimulate the latter’s hitherto latent imagination so that he is able to experience others’ sufferings as painful, and then progressively to extend the scope of his newly acquired sensitivity so as to encompass all human beings or, as Rousseau puts it, “humanity” itself. The sense of equality that informs Emile’s pity before he is fully affected by amour propre is able to serve as a necessary counterbalance to the imme-

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diate tendency of the latter, once awakened, to seek superiority, even “the first position,” in relation to others (E, 235/OC 4, 523). In the next step of his education, coincident with the emergence of amour propre, Emile is brought face to face with a feature of human life that stands in tension with his newly acquired ideal of moral equality: the basic and, to him, startling fact of social inequality—the existence of “artificial” inequalities in wealth and power, which, though highly variable with time and place, are intrinsic to human society (E, 236/OC 4, 524). Beyond merely acquainting his charge with the ubiquity and variety of social inequality, the tutor’s aim is to get Emile to attach the proper significance to the real disparities in wealth and power he finds around him. In this the main point is to bring Emile to appreciate the superficial and arbitrary character of most actually existing inequality. More precisely, he is to learn that even if the existence of social advantages is (to some extent) unavoidable, those advantages are also for the most part arbitrarily distributed—which is to say: existing disparities in wealth, class, and power rarely correspond to differences in genuine merit (DI, 131/OC 3, 131–32). Superior wealth, class, and power are, in other words, mostly undeserved, and appreciating the distinction between occupying a favored place in society and deserving to be there is crucial to the proper formation of amour propre. A further goal of this part of Emile’s education is to impress on him not only that inequalities in wealth, class, and power are mostly undeserved but also that having them (or having them alone) seldom brings genuine satisfaction. Emile must learn to look beneath the public mask worn by the socially successful in order to “read their hearts” and see that their riches and power are frequently accompanied by insecurity, obsession, jealousy, and pain (E, 237/OC 4, 526). Learning that superior wealth, class, and power often stand in the way of true happiness is to have the effect of arousing in him pity for the well off rather than envy or the desire to emulate them, both of which can easily turn into a drive to compete or injure in order to occupy a favored position for others. Once Emile has learned to judge the true value of the more superficial forms of superiority, the formation of his amour propre still requires one major intervention (E, 244/OC 4, 536). Emile must learn that even those who enjoy superiority with respect to genuine human goods—happiness, wisdom, esteem from oneself and others—do not in any robust sense merit their advantages. This lesson is especially important for Emile, who, having had the good fortune to receive an exemplary education, will most likely occupy a favored position of precisely this sort and, so, be especially vulnerable to the type of vanity that Rousseau is concerned here to prevent. The danger to be averted in this situation is not that Emile might delight in his favored place or even desire it, but rather that he might “attribute his happiness to his own merit” and therefore believe himself worthy of his good

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fortune (E, 245/OC 4, 536–37). To believe oneself worthy of one’s happier position is to be fundamentally mistaken about one’s true “rank” in the human species. Such an overestimation of self represents a serious moral and political danger, for it is incompatible with sincerely and reliably taking up the perspective on others that morality and political justice require, namely, regarding all individuals as equally worthy of happiness (in the sense that each person’s fundamental interests must count for as much as anyone else’s).

IV. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE SOLUTION TO ITS OWN ILLS The most innovative aspect of Rousseau’s theory of recognition is his claim that, despite its many dangers, amour propre provides humans with a substantial part of the subjective resources they need to exercise their reason, to attain moral excellence, and to realize themselves as free. Amour propre is only indirectly the source of reason, virtue, and freedom—and, so, the source of the remedies to all its ills—because there is no direct connection between the ends amour propre impels us to seek and the aspiration to be rational, virtuous, or free; we do not become rational, moral, or selfdetermining because doing so satisfies our desire to have value in the eyes of others. Rousseau’s idea, rather, is that in seeking to satisfy their passion for recognition, beings with amour propre are led to establish relations with others that in effect, and unbeknownst to those beings themselves, endow them with cognitive and affective capacities that open up new possibilities—for reason, morality, and freedom—that would otherwise be unavailable to them. In this final section I shall focus on the claim that rationality—the capacity to adopt, and to be appropriately moved by, the standpoint of reason—depends on amour propre as one of its conditions. (Reason, as I consider it here, coincides with the deliberative stance taken up by the citizen who strives to legislate for his state in accordance with the general will.22) Although Rousseau’s texts provide very few details as to how the intended connection between reason and amour propre is to be spelled out, one hint is contained in the well-known passage of the Social Contract that describes the “remarkable change in man” that must occur if the state of nature, where appetite determines conduct, is to yield to the civil state, where reason and duty regulate action. Rousseau says there: “Only [. . .] when [. . .] right replaces appetite, does man, who until then considered only himself, find himself forced to act on other principles and to consult his reason before heeding his inclinations” (SC, I.8.i; my emphasis). The hint provided here is this: in order for reason to become the regulator of human action, a way must be found for the isolated beings of the state of nature to be drawn out

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of their solipsistic existence—where each “regards himself as the sole spectator observing him” (DI, 222/OC 3, 219)—and to learn to act instead on principles that take into account the perspectives of their fellow beings. It is reasonable to assume that Rousseau considers amour propre, with its explicit concern for how things appear to others, to be the resource provided by human nature that makes the required expansion of perspectives possible. The question is, how does it do so? Let us start with the most natural way of understanding how amour propre might endow humans with the capacity to take on the perspective of others. The thought here is that because amour propre seeks the good opinion of others, its satisfaction depends on an ability to anticipate others’ desires and needs and to tailor one’s own actions in conformity with them. Emile’s desire to be loved by his fellow human beings carries with it, we are told, a desire to please them (E, 337/OC 4, 668), but succeeding at the latter requires an awareness of what is likely to cause pleasure or pain to those whose opinions he cares about. This suggests that by engendering in us a desire for the good opinion of others, amour propre impels us to perfect our capacity to view the world from a standpoint other than our own. There is no doubt some merit to the suggestion that amour propre cultivates rationality by giving individuals an incentive to develop their ability to imagine, and to be moved by, how the world appears to others. Yet this cannot be Rousseau’s main claim about the relation between reason and amour propre. This is because amour propre is not necessary for fostering the capacity to anticipate others’ needs and desires, for amour de soi is also capable of producing this result. Given the thoroughgoing interdependence that even the “nonrelative” needs for food, clothing, and shelter give rise to, humans have a powerful incentive to learn to perceive others’ needs and desires, apart from any wish to win their approval or esteem.23 Since amour de soi itself makes us need the cooperation of others—and since my receiving help from you depends on my ability to offer something of use to you in return—it by itself could suffice to teach us the great benefit of being able to anticipate others’ needs and to shape our social activity accordingly. If it is true that both forms of self-love can stimulate the development of the capacity to anticipate others’ needs, then we have not yet found any distinctive contribution amour propre makes to the cultivation of rational agency. To make progress here, it will be help to focus on the features of amour propre that distinguish it from amour de soi, especially on the two respects in which amour propre is a relative passion: first, the standing amour propre strives for is always relative to the standing of others; second, the good amour propre seeks—social esteem—depends on, or resides in, the opinions of other subjects. To see how the first of these features might serve reason’s ends, it will be useful to consider why another component of human nature—pity—is not a

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sufficient foundation for rational agency. (Pity is the ability to feel the pains of others and to be motivated to alleviate them.) The brief answer is that pity is a sentiment, and sentiments need to be guided by reason if they are to be reliable producers of right actions. This is because pity, unrestrained by reason, can prompt us to distribute our beneficence arbitrarily—to the wrong objects perhaps, or to the right objects but in the wrong amounts. While pity can be useful to morality by motivating us to care about the good of distant and unknown others, unless it is subordinated to ideas that only reason can supply, it remains “a blind preference” (E, 252/OC 4, 548) and only contingently results in precisely the actions justice calls for. So, even though reason relies on pity to inspire in us a concern for the good of others, it also demands that we hold our pity in check—that we “yield to it only to the extent that it accords with justice” (E, 253/OC 4, 548). It is only when pity is ordered by an idea of reason—the idea of the fundamental interests of each—that it can shed its character as blind sentiment and find its way to its proper objects.24 Still, what role can amour propre play in this? What amour propre is able to contribute to reason’s ordering of pity is an idea that originates in its character as a relative passion, namely: the idea of the comparative worth of human individuals. We saw earlier that in directing pity to its proper objects, reason makes use of the idea of the equal moral worth of all individuals. Rousseau’s claim, clearly, is not that a commitment to the equal moral status of humans is a necessary consequence of merely having amour propre; his claim, rather, is that without amour propre the very idea of comparative worth—and so, too, the more specific idea of equal worth—would have no foothold in the dispositions of human beings and hence no power to direct their behavior as reason requires. In short, amour propre makes comparisons and pity does not, and without comparisons (of the appropriate type) there can be no reason.25 Let us turn now to the other sense in which amour propre is relative, namely, that the good it seeks consists in opinions of one’s worth held by other subjects. How might this feature of amour propre serve to cultivate rationality? As I noted earlier, Rousseau alludes to the idea that amour propre compels us to give up our “natural” solipsism and to acquire a perspective that takes into account the subjectivity of others. I also said that if amour propre is to make a distinctive contribution to rational agency, this recognition of the subjectivity of others must involve more than simply anticipating their pleasures and pains. One respect in which amour propre differs from both amour de soi and pity is that it makes one care about the points of view others take, not just on the world in general, but on a specific object, oneself. That is, someone who seeks the good opinion of others is motivated to imagine how certain aspects of himself (his publicly visible actions and qualities) will appear to differently situated subjects and whether what

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they see of his public self will elicit their esteem. This suggests that amour propre might foster rational agency by giving individuals an incentive to view and judge themselves from an external perspective. The importance of such a capacity for rational agency is evident. As we have seen, reason requires an individual to abandon his own particular point of view, where only his interests count, and to regard himself—his intentions and character traits—from an external perspective that considers only the fundamental interests of all. In other words, reason demands that we make ourselves into a kind of object for our own consciousness—that we view our own qualities as we would those of others, and that we do so through the impartial eyes of a generalized other.26 Amour propre, then, with its concern for how one appears to other subjects, seems especially well suited to foster in human beings the capacity for self-objectification that rational self-assessment requires. (Again, Rousseau is not claiming that simply possessing amour propre suffices to enable individuals to take an objective view of their intentions and traits. Clearly, there is plenty of work for education to do if individuals who start off caring only about the opinions of actual others are to be transformed into subjects who judge themselves from an impartial point of view. Rousseau’s claim, rather, is that the ability to make ourselves the object of reason’s gaze has its beginnings in—is a refinement of—the original impulse, derived from amour propre, to step outside of our own subjective vantage point in order to see how we appear to the particular others whose good opinion we crave.) Here again it might be objected that amour de soi itself provides individuals with a sufficient incentive to learn to assess their behavior from a third-person perspective. For individuals who rely on others’ cooperation to satisfy basic needs seem to have no trouble learning to discern and conform to what “the market” desires in deciding what to produce, simply because the consequences of failing to do so are so weighty. Even if this leaves room for amour propre to work in tandem with amour de soi in fostering the capacity to take an objective point of view on oneself, it should lead us to ask whether amour propre has anything distinctive to contribute to this process. In fact, it makes two such contributions. One salient feature of amour propre is that it leads us to care about others’ opinions of our deeds and qualities not for instrumental reasons (because meeting others’ expectations is necessary if my product is to command a price in the marketplace) but because we value those opinions themselves, as indicators of our worth as individuals. Thus, a being with amour propre cares about how he appears to others because his publicly visible actions are taken to reflect something that stands behind those appearances as the ultimate object of his concern, namely, his “self” as a possible object of esteem. Insofar as he is motivated by amour propre, the diligent craftsman desires praise for his work not because a good reputation will increase his power in

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the marketplace but because his work is a reflection of himself, visible to all, and the recognition of its excellence is a public confirmation of his worth (as a craftsman). For this reason a being with amour propre is motivated to consider how his own actions and qualities will appear to the other subjects who count for him as the spectators of his self. Such a being will make the publicly accessible aspects of himself into the object of his own gaze, while asking himself, Are these qualities likely to be judged by my spectators as befitting a person of merit (of whatever sort he aspires to be)? Because it leads one to judge one’s own actions according to noninstrumental standards of personal worth, the self-examination that amour propre impels individuals to undertake is much closer to moral self-assessment than anything amour de soi is capable of engendering. For one of the features of the moral stance is that it judges an intended action with a view to how, in the eyes of an impartial spectator, it would reflect on one’s “inner worth.” In short, amour propre is the affective prototype of the standpoint of reason because it leads individuals to adopt a kind of normative perspective on themselves—that is, it leads them to assess themselves according to noninstrumental standards of excellence that go beyond the self-interestedness of amour de soi, with its exclusive concern for one’s nonrelative good. There is a further feature of the normative perspective implicit in amour propre that points to a second way this passion helps form the capacity to judge oneself “objectively,” from the standpoint of reason. This feature concerns the nature of the authority of the norms that amour propre acknowledges, and not surprisingly, it is bound up with the fact that the good that amour propre seeks resides in the opinions of others. Beyond providing noninstrumental standards of personal merit, the evaluative criteria invoked by amour propre differ from those of amour de soi in that they have their source in something external to the person they apply to, namely, the judgments of other subjects. By locating the measure of my worth in what others think of me, I in effect make their opinions normative for me—that is, I take their judgments to be valid criteria for my worth, and, by remaking myself in conformity with those judgments, I recognize them as “laws” for my will. Thus, by the very nature of the needs it engenders, amour propre compels human beings to submit their wills to the judgments of their fellow beings and, so, teaches them to accord a kind of normative authority to points of view other than their own. One way of expressing this point is to say that amour propre is the affective source of the human impulse to objectivity, or rationality, and that what Rousseau decries throughout his work as the “reign of opinion” is at the same time a precursor to the reign of reason. This is because the desire to make oneself conform to the opinions of others—the urge to measure up to their perceptions of the good—is merely one (admittedly still primitive)

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form of taking oneself to be subject to norms whose validity is independent of one’s own desires or beliefs.27 This is to say that, although the source of many dangers, the pursuit of public esteem is also reason’s training ground, where each human being receives her first lesson in the hard truth that taking something to be good is not sufficient to make it so and that her will is beholden to something beyond her own subjective preferences and beliefs. Beyond this, though, amour propre prefigures the standpoint of reason even more precisely by locating the source of the constraints on an individual’s will not in the world of things but in the judgments of other subjects. Amour propre does more than simply teach human beings to judge themselves from a perspective that transcends their own particular desires; it also makes the opinions of other subjects the authority of that perspective. This can be understood as the passions’ way of anticipating reason’s claim that objectivity in the ethical realm has its source in the agreement of rational agents (subject, of course, to the appropriate constraints)—that, in other words, the standard for what is right resides outside the consciousness of each individual in a kind of (ideal) consensus among rational subjects. The richness of Rousseau’s account of the importance for human affairs of the drive for recognition extends well beyond the points I have been able to sketch in these few pages. My hope is that even this bare outline of his position suffices to show that the roots of much subsequent theorizing on the nature and value of recognition are to be found in Rousseau’s reflections on amour propre and that, even today, we can profit from studying those reflections more seriously than philosophers thus far have done.

NOTES 1. When Rousseau denies in Part I of the Discourse on Inequality that amour propre is part of “original” human nature, he means only that it is an inherently social passion, not a possible feature of human individuals “in themselves” (apart from their relations to others). In this sense, “human nature” refers to the basic capacities and drives that nature bestows on human beings qua individuals, independently of whatever social relations they may have. In ascribing amour de soi, pity, perfectibility, and free will to our original nature (DI, 139–41/OC 3, 140–42), Rousseau means only to claim that they, in contrast to amour propre, are qualities individuals could in principle possess on their own, even were they to exist outside all society (which, for Rousseau, no real human beings ever do). It is only in a more expanded sense of the term, then, that amour propre can be ascribed to “human nature:” it is a fundamental motivating force of human behavior that is active in some form whenever humans exist as social beings (as they always do).

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2. I do this in Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 3. DI refers to Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, in The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 111–222; ‘OC 3’ refers to vol. 3 of Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959–69). Other abbreviations I use are: E, for Emile, or on Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979); LWM, for Letters Written from the Mountain, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, trans. Judith R. Bush and Christopher Kelly (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001), vol. 9, 131–306; PE, for Discourse on Political Economy, in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 3–38; RJJ, for Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, trans. Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, and Roger D. Masters (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001), vol. 1; RSW, for The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2001), vol. 8, 1–90; and SC for The Social Contract, in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 39–152 (with ‘SC, I.4.vi’ referring to book 1, chapter 4, paragraph 6). 4. Despite what Rousseau suggests here, the aims of amour de soi are not restricted to self-preservation. As N. J. H. Dent, Rousseau (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 89–112 points out, the good that amour de soi inclines one to seek varies with one’s self-conception: to the extent that one thinks of oneself as more than a physical being, the good one seeks will extend beyond the mere necessities of life. 5. “As soon as amour propre has developed, the relative I is constantly in play, and the young man never observes others without returning to himself and comparing himself with them” (E, 243/OC 4, 534). 6. Rousseau uses this sense of “relative” at E, 39–40/OC 4, 248–49. It is also implicit at E, 213/OC 4, 493, in the claim that amour propre demands that others confirm one’s comparative judgments regarding oneself. 7. Joshua Cohen, “The Natural Goodness of Humanity,” in Reclaiming the History of Ethics, ed. Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 102–39, at 109–11, 121, emphasizes this feature of amour propre; and Dent, Rousseau, 25, 30 acknowledges it as well. According to Emile, the most important factor in determining whether a person’s amour propre assumes pernicious or benign forms—whether “his character will be humane and gentle or cruel and malignant”—is his self-conception: “what position he [feels] he has among men” (E, 235/OC 4, 523). 8. See also E, 42, 61, 270/OC 4, 253, 279–80, 570–71. 9. Dent, Rousseau, 49. 10. Dent, Rousseau, 50. 11. “Having proved that inequality is barely perceptible in the state of nature . . . , it remains for me to show its origin and progress through the successive developments of the human mind” (DI, 159/OC 3, 162; my emphasis). 12. See also RJJ, 144/OC I, 846. Rousseau’s talk of “true needs” ought not to be construed as referring to a historically fixed or biologically determined set of “true” human needs. Rather, his view is best understood as resting on a moral criterion

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for what constitutes false human needs: a need is false if the attempt to satisfy it stands in conflict either with one’s own happiness or freedom, or with the systematic satisfaction of the fundamental interests of all. In other words, false needs are (perceived) needs we would be better off without, either because they enslave us or result in our frustration and misery. 13. Vice also includes dishonesty, hypocrisy, deceit, and dissimulation. That Rousseau believes them, too, to be engendered by superiority-seeking amour propre is evident at DI, 171/OC 3, 175. 14. For more on the threat that dependence poses to freedom, see Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), chapter 2. 15. This formulation is implicit in Rousseau’s statement of the fundamental problem of political philosophy, which glosses freedom as “obeying only oneself” (SC, I.6.iv). See also RSW, 56/OC 1, 1059, where freedom is said to consist in “never doing what [one] does not want to do.” 16. The best recent treatment of alienation concurs that the concept of alienation is implicit in and central to Rousseau’s thought: Rahel Jaeggi, Entfremdung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus Verlag, 2005), 24–25. 17. Other references to the same phenomenon can be found at DI, 184/OC 3, 189; and E, 215/OC 4, 494. 18. See, for example, DI, 166/OC 3, 170. 19. For Rousseau the converse also holds: inequality without dependence would have no serious consequences for human well-being. The fact that Rousseau places greater emphasis on reducing inequality than on eliminating dependence reflects his view that the latter is more fundamental to civilization than the former. 20. Elsewhere Rousseau offers an even vaguer formulation of this idea: laws regulating economic inequality ought to produce a situation where “all have something and no one has too much” (SC, I.9.viiin). For more concrete suggestions, see PE, 19–38/OC 3, 258–78. 21. As defined by the aim of civil society, which is to “assure the goods, the life, and the freedom of each member through the protection of all” (PE, 9/OC 3, 248). 22. See Frederick Neuhouser, “Rousseau on the Relation between Reason and Self-Love (Amour Propre),” Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus, 2003, 221–39 for a more detailed characterization of the standpoint of reason. 23. Rousseau’s position in the Discourse on Inequality is that amour de soi by itself does not generate enduring relations of dependence, since in the “original” state of nature, where amour de soi is active but amour propre is not, no such dependence arises. Rather, dependence becomes a necessary part of human existence only when amour propre is awakened and has impressed its character on the greatest part of human desires. 24. These points are nicely formulated by Andrew Chitty, “Needs in the Philosophy of History: Rousseau to Marx” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1994), 63–68. 25. The suggestion that comparison is essential to reason, perhaps even its central operation, can be found at DI, 143–44, 148/OC 3, 165–66, 169. 26. The position I attribute to Rousseau overlaps considerably with George Herbert Mead’s account of rationality, Mind, Self, and Society, Part III (Chicago: University

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of Chicago Press, 1934). Moreover, Mead argues that it is precisely the ability to take oneself as an object—to view oneself from the perspective of others—that is the hallmark of selfhood. This suggests one potentially fruitful strategy for making out Rousseau’s claim that amour propre is a necessary condition not just of rationality but of selfhood in general. 27. Another version of this claim can be found at Chitty, “Needs in the Philosophy of History,” 42–43.

3 Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism J. M. Bernstein

RECOGNIZING THE HUMAN In his Foundations of Natural Right, J. G. Fichte offers the first interpretation of rights as modes of recognition. One possesses a right insofar as one is accorded a certain status—that of an individual—through the manner in which one is treated, acted upon, by others. What makes rights forms of recognition is that one has a certain status and standing in the world, for oneself and for others, only through how some of those others or the collective body representing them act toward you. Rights are not possessed; they are given, bestowed, granted by others—albeit for reasons. The giving, bestowing, granting of a status is how one is recognized. Because rights are items bestowed, then they are only concretely had when formalized into laws backed by the coercive powers of a political state. Rights, then, demarcate the series of modes of action and entitlement one must possess in order to have a certain status, and being recognized as having a certain status, for example, as a citizen, is how one acquires access to those modes of action and entitlement. Political right is interpreted in this manner by Fichte because he regards being recognized as a free and rational being by others who one in turn recognizes as free and rational beings as a necessary condition for one becoming a self-determining agent in the world. One achieves the status of being a full-fledged human being only through being recognized, and hence being recognized as a self-conscious agent is at least in part constitutive of what is to be a self-conscious agent. Rights are recognitions because they secure one’s standing as a self-determining subject, where being a self-determining subject is itself a product of being recognized and recognizing in turn. In brief, that is the structure of Fichte’s argument. 47

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Because strong recognitive theories conceive being human to be a status concept whose realization is the consequence of normatively governed modes of interaction, such theories are regarded as paradigmatic versions of idealism. If the being of objects depends, at least in part, upon how they are cognitively taken or practically treated, then those objects as empirical appearances in space and time are, in some sense, mind-dependent. Recognitive versions of idealism have the benefit over traditional Kantian-style transcendental idealism of locating the idealizing element in the social practices of concrete communities rather than in the solitary (transcendental acts of) consciousness of abstract individuals. The enduring appeal of recognitive-type idealism is that it contains ample resources for securing the normative dimensions of human life against the onslaught of disenchantment and skepticism by demonstrating how the very idea of a world of things and persons emerges only through how it appears, and how it appears is constituted in part by how it is taken (cognized, intended, acted upon, interpreted, formed, etc.).1 Conversely, if the price paid for the securing of the normative is tearing human beings out of their natural setting, out of their place as products of evolution, and out of the thick materiality of everyday existence, then that price is too high. One might phrase the complaint against recognitive idealism this way: in claiming that being human is a status which is bestowed by others, one is simultaneously claiming that the paradigmatic form of harming another is not recognizing her. Such a claim is perverse: the paradigmatic form of human harm is harm to the body, the infliction of pain and suffering through the maltreatment of the body, or worse, killing. While brutalizing and injuring another’s body might rightly be said to be a mode or manifestation of not recognizing her, the harm done is the intentional causing of bodily pain and suffering, not simply nonrecognition (being snubbed or cursed or insulted or dishonored). Even if this claim requires more complexity, the general thesis seems unavoidable: human beings are also natural creatures who are capable of suffering terrible physical harm and whose lives may be violently brought to an end. Unless recognitive theory integrates bodily habitation into its account, it will falsify huge stretches of human experience. Fichte’s theory of right aims at an integration of the recognitive and the bodily material. The opening arguments of Foundations forward two central theses: first, a “finite rational being cannot ascribe to itself a free efficacy in the sensible world without also ascribing such efficacy to others, and thus without also presupposing the existence of other finite rational beings outside of itself” (29)2—think of this as the commencement of Fichte’s transcendental solution to the problem of other minds.3 Second is the thesis that a rational being cannot posit himself as an individual—the object of the first thesis—without ascribing to himself a material body, where to so ascribe a body to oneself requires simultaneously positing it as “standing under the influence of a person outside him” (58). The

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first thesis presupposes the second: to posit oneself as one among others presupposes being an embodied being among other embodied beings who can mutually influence one another causally and intentionally. Selfconsciousness is thus just as much interbodily as intersubjectively constituted. While there are curiosities galore to Fichte’s defense of both theses, because in obvious and, I shall argue, unobvious ways he is seeking to materialize idealism, to provide an account of recognition and rights that fully acknowledges the material conditions of everyday life, his project is worth further detailing. Part of the difficulty in interpreting Fichte here is making sense of his claim that the two central theses entail a transcendental deduction of right. Transcendental rights and political rights are different sorts of things altogether; how are they to be connected? If we can gain some clarity about what he intends in providing a transcendental deduction of right, we might thereby understand better his overall method of proceeding. I will therefore begin with an interrogation of his transcendental conception of right before examining each of his two core theses in turn.

RIGHTS, PROTO-RIGHTS, NORMS There is a puzzle concerning what Fichte’s conception of rights is truly about. On the one hand, it relates to the usual run of property rights and the like that are meant to secure the external freedom of citizens of a liberal state in which each limits her freedom as an acknowledgement of the freedom of others. On the other hand, the whole opening sections of the book point to a prepolitical, transcendental setting whose stakes are, apparently, both deeper and more general than securing the shared life of citizens of a rights-respecting state. In a letter to Jacobi in August, 1795 Fichte complains that his critics have consistently conflated his absolute I, the I think that accompanies all our representations, with the finite, empirical subject, what he calls “the individual.” The latter, he concedes, has yet to be transcendentally secured, and it will be the task of his treatment of natural rights to do so. The theory of right is, then, part of the story connecting transcendental subjectivity with the actual self-conscious life of concrete, empirical individuals. The previous day, Fichte had written a letter to Reinhold elaborating on this thought. In order to consider myself a finite subject, I must not only think of myself as determining a sphere of things which cannot themselves initiate anything (they are regulated by mechanical laws of cause and effect), but must also think of myself as determined in a realm of rational beings outside of myself which I can do only if I am an individual and only if I also posit such a sphere and each object

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J. M. Bernstein within that sphere as an individual as well . . . There can be no individual unless there at least two of them. The conditions which make individuality possible are called “rights.” It is absolutely impossible for me to attribute a right to myself without attributing it to a being outside of myself, because it is absolutely impossible for me to posit myself as an individual without positing a being outside of myself as an individual.4

Fichte is here beginning to explore the thought that actual self-consciousness, one’s empirical awareness of oneself as a self-determining subject, is only even possible if one is brought to self-consciousness—one must, in some constitutive sense, be determined by other individuals to become an individual. Persons are made, not born. The role of the other individual here is thus stronger than the resistance that nonego offers to the self-positing ego since the determining power is more than mere resistance, more than limiting; the other is, as we shall see, formative for self-consciousness. If one now considers the notion of individuality as shorthand for a finite, embodied, free and rational being, then while it sounds plausible to state that rights secure individuality, it sounds less plausible to claim that rights are equivalent to the necessary conditions for the possibility of individuality. Yet, as Fichte’s emphasized phrase in the above passage and his “There can be no individual unless there are at least two of them” make evident, it is the transcendental conception of rights in relation to individuality that he has in mind. A natural way of underlining the gap between the political and transcendental concept of rights is to say that being a necessary condition for the possibility of individuality überhaupt cannot be equivalent to the rights bestowed by the liberal state since there have been individuals prior to and outside the confines of the liberal state. If one collapses the two conceptions or provides too close a connection between them, then Fichte could be accused of arguing “that individuals can be conscious of themselves as discrete units of causal efficacy only by inhabiting a political order that protects individual rights [in the liberal, modern sense of the concept].”5 Whatever the obscurity about his prepolitical conception of rights, there is no evidence that Fichte made this error. On the contrary, he carefully distinguishes between “original rights” and “actual rights.” Original right includes the “right to the continued existence of the absolute freedom and inviolability of the body” and the “right to the continued existence of our free influence in the entire sensible world” (108). Following a line of thought from Rousseau in which rights are restricted to the conditions in which they are enforceable, Fichte states that “There is no condition in which original rights exist . . . The human being has actual rights only in community with others . . . An original right, therefore, is a mere fiction” (102). While saving him from one kind of error, calling original right a fiction, the way in which the state of nature is a fiction, does not much clarify Fich-

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te’s usage. Fichte conceives of right as the normative lining of the necessary conditions for individuality; thus the force or authority or source of right is to be tied to those minimum conditions through which human beings become actual, self-conscious beings in a sensible world shared with other like creatures. This presupposes a widening of transcendental inquiry. In accord with one line of Kantian thought, the deduction of a concept involves demonstrating that it, or the cognitive action performing it, is a necessary condition for the possibility of self-consciousness. For Kant, the necessary conditions of self-consciousness must be a priori, knowable independently of experience; and what can be known independently of experience can be so known because it belongs to the furniture of the mind rather than to the world apart from human mindedness. Fichte, however, is seeking to include right as “an original concept of pure reason” on the ground that a rational being cannot posit itself as a self-consciousness “without positing itself as an individual, as one among several rational beings that it assumes to exist outside itself” (9). Embodiment too is argued to be a necessary condition for empirical self-consciousness. Neither possessing a body nor the existence of others belong to the furniture of the mind in the way a cognitive category might, yet they belong to self-consciousness’s necessary conditions of possibility. Because they are necessary grounds for individuality, and individuality necessary for self-consciousness, others and embodiment are considered to belong to the transcendental inventory of subjectivity. Hence, what is utterly outside and external to self-consciousness in its transcendental locution—the immediate, prereflective self-awareness that is necessary for consciousness in general—and is thus not a pure product of the spontaneity of the mind is nonetheless to be considered as an a priori component of subjectivity. It is this extension of the idea of transcendental inquiry that is the cause of the conundrum about the status of right as the normative face of individuality. In the letter to Reinhold, Fichte presents this extension of transcendental inquiry as arising out of what he considers two “gross deficiencies” in Kant’s moral thought. First, even if a maxim fails the test of universalizability, what is the rational force requiring me to adopt only universalizable maxims? Kantian morality presupposes the very thing that requires demonstration, namely, that my life as a free agent is necessarily bound up with and dependent upon the lives of other free agents; others belong internally or intrinsically to my free agency, they are internal to my standing for myself as a free agent, and thereby come to require normative regard. However shaky is Fichte’s inference here, and however it is that rights and moral norms bind and obligate, it seems prima facie plausible to urge that they can do so only in relation to a material a priori of my existence—the conditionality of my individuality on the individuality of others. On its own, we might say, the categorical imperative testing procedures presume an emphatic distance

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from others as the reason underlying morality’s reminder, its second reflection on a proposed maxim of action that operates formally as a mechanism through which the existence of others is recalled. Kantian morality, whose deliberative procedures bring others “back” into consideration, obscures and distances us from those others whose intimacy to our agency is the real ground of their claim upon us. Second, when considering courses of action in relation to others, precisely which others must I take into consideration and on what basis? What is the scope of necessary moral and political concern? Who deserves moral regard and the ascription of rights? All rational beings? And how am I to recognize who is one of them? Is sharing my skin color and language necessary? Being a member of my tribe? Common opinion has certainly licensed those restrictions. Fichte assumes that however the determination of the scope of moral concern is to occur, it must occur through the presentation of features of individuality available to perceptual experience.6 Hence, irrespective of what it is to be a rational being, in order to be counted as a rational being there must be external, sensible evidence available for perceptual inspection, and that evidence sufficient for real universality. Fichte contends that we must acknowledge as a human being anything that appears as a human being, that is, the mark of the human is the human form (upright stature, opposable thumbs, an expressive mouth, etc.), and it is the human body so understood that must be considered “inviolable.”7 In a sense to be elaborated below, Fichte considers the human body as the necessary mode in which freedom and reason appear; but since freedom would be as nothing without appearing, then freedom is conditional on embodiment. Fichte’s thought here is something like: it is through the experience of another’s body as inviolable that I come to consider her an end in herself. Here Kant’s focus on the purity of the will obscures the way in which others ethically appear, and thus the actual inaugural terms of ethical consideration (we must forbear from causing others pain, from injuring or harming them by injuring or harming their bodies). Part of what is motivating these critiques of Kant is the thought that there must be a formation of normativity that is antecedent to and independent of morality because what it is to be a self-conscious agent is in part dependent upon how one is acted upon by others, where the form of such acting is itself already implicitly or explicitly governed by normative considerations. Transcendental right means to connect the necessity of right, the necessity for one to be treated thus and so, with the conditions making self-consciousness possible. Fichte is thus scrambling after the thought that the emergence of self-consciousness and the emergence of norm-governed behavior are two sides of the same process. Because “norm-governed behavior” is thinner and more external than morality in its weighty Kantian sense, Fichte thinks of it as what becomes, when formalized and made explicit,

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political rights, that is, the minimal forms of normative regard necessary for a community of self-determining equals. All of Fichte’s theses here are aspects of a general furthering of Kant’s claim for the primacy of practical over theoretical reasoning, and the expansion of practical reasoning into perceptual experience. Theoretical reason is dependent on, or a mode of, practical reason in part because theoretical reason is also a form of spontaneity and thus agency; in part because theoretical reason must, finally, realize itself in empirical experience (all knowledge is for the sake of action); in part because empirical experience itself essentially involves the categorical differential responding to things and persons. Finally, although he does not say so here, Fichte is appropriating Kant’s late insight that the norms governing practical reason cannot be logically deduced but depend on the “fact of reason.” The notion of the “fact of reason” answers the question of why the moral law binds by urging that it always already has bound us. Fichte thinks our implicit awareness of the bindingness of the moral law is the wrong fact of reason; it is the determining effort of the other, what he calls the “summons” of the other, the other inviting one to respond to an intentional sign with an intentional sign because one has been so invited, that is the real fact of reason. Once something like a fact of reason comes into play, then the logic of transcendental inquiry must shift since in this case “the indeterminate concept of something in general [as in “the concept of an object in general”] is preceded by a determinate concept of a determinate something as actual and the former is conditioned by the latter” (30). And once the particular precedes the universal as its condition of possibility, then the very idea of what is at stake in interrogating the necessary conditions for the possibility of self-consciousness must also shift. In the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte wants to marry transcendental inquiry, whose notion of a priori possibility presumes that possibility precedes actuality and universality precedes particularity, with an anti-Platonic, Aristotelian procedure in which the actual precedes the possible and the particular precedes the universal. The conundrum about the status of right is precisely its status as, apparently, transcendentally necessary yet empirically bound. In truth, Fichte never does work out in any detail how this marriage is supposed to occur. But he is aware that he is methodologically transforming the very idea of transcendental inquiry, and that he must account for the introduction of empirical conditions of possibility. Toward the end of §3 in which he has been discussing the summons of the other—his new fact of reason—in quite abstract and formal terms, he suddenly baldly states that “The summons to engage in free self-activity is what we call up-bringing [Erziehung; education]. All individuals must be brought up to be human beings, otherwise they would not be human beings” (38). Hence, what first appears as an abstract empirical condition of individuality

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is given empirical specificity: the summons, and the connecting of freedom to embodiment, are products of childhood development. It is evident that throughout the early paragraphs of Foundations Fichte has been interpreting the necessary conditions for the possibility of selfconsciousness as involving some form of genetic analysis. That the analysis requires a genetic dimension follows from the role of the summons: an individual can ascribe self-consciousness to itself only by having its individuality recognized—summoned—by other beings whom the recognized subject in turn recognizes to be free. Demonstrating the necessary conditions for free agency thus involves demonstrating what conditions must be realized for free agency to be actual, that is, what conditions must appear, must come to be, in order for free agency to manifest itself. Individuality, as the actuality of self-consciousness, comes to be. The best evidence for this claim is that the human infant is born prematurely and becomes a person. Fichte assumes that evidence in his analysis (76). My suggestion, then, is that we take Fichte at his word, interpreting and reconstructing his argument as sketching out an ideal process of socialization that is targeted on the child acquiring a minimum conception of individuality, a conception that could be understood as indifferent to the actual ideals and values of different societies while nonetheless being sufficient to underwrite the normative structures necessary to preserve the minimum core of individuality in any conceivable society.8 Let us call such norms “proto-rights.” Proto-rights are obviously not political rights or explicit moral norms or actual values, although they may overlap with any of these; rather, they are the normative scaffolding that emerges in developmental sequences terminating in individuals capable of acting in the world and interacting with other individuals in socially standard ways.9 Behind the notion of protorights lies the thought that the structures of right through which individuals are recognized as individuals track the functional imperatives necessary in order for infants to become individuals. In this respect, one might say that transcendental necessity tracks functional necessity. But to say that transcendental necessity tracks the functional imperatives of an ideal process of socialization is not to reduce norms to functional demands. On the contrary, and this is patently Fichte’s quasi-naturalist thought, his way of connecting idealism and realism, norms (actual structures of right, however implicit or explicit) are the way in which functional imperatives become satisfied for free and rational beings whose modes of interaction with the world, with things and other rational beings, are not governed by instinct but by rule-governed, purposive actions. Proto-rights are value-contoured modes of other-regarding attitudes (sufficient for guiding action) that condense the series of conditions necessary for becoming a self-moving, independent being capable of interaction with others and objects in a manner sufficient to meet survival imperatives as a member of a community

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of agents. Proto-rights as the normative grid that must be satisfied by any actual society capable of reproducing itself, that is, capable of reproducing the life of self-determining individuals, can thus be understood as the transcendental outline of the recognitive structures making human life possible. I take it, this is what Fichte intends when he reprises his defense of right thus: “. . . it has been shown that a certain concept [X] . . . is necessary for the rational being as such . . . This X must be operative wherever human beings live together, and it must be expressed and have some designation in their language. It is operative on its own, without any help from the philosopher, who deduces this X with difficulty” (49–50). As this passage makes evident, Fichte intends transcendental right to be something that is uncovered or discovered as necessarily underlying all actual viable social worlds. Hence, its deduction should demonstrate why proto-rights have the role they do, and not why they ought to be adopted or obeyed or valued. If I am right about how Fichte is connecting the transcendental and the genetic, and hence about the way in which transcendental rights function as proto-rights, then the bulk of the objections to Fichte’s deductive strategy are answerable. Of course, in claiming that proto-rights are a transcendental grid representing the minimum necessary conditions for individuality empirically and normatively for any possible society, I am simultaneously claiming that Fichte’s actual way of connecting transcendental right and political right is insufficient—the connection is much looser than he engineers. On my account, his theory of political right would become the demonstration that the rights of the liberal state are the fullest expression and the most adequate means “for the realization and flourishing”10 of the minimum conception of individuality developed in the transcendental portion of his argument. It is doubtful that his concrete conception of the liberal state can stand up to that claim; but that is an argument for another occasion.

INDIVIDUALITY (I): THE SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF FREEDOM The object of §§1–9 of Foundations is the transcendental elaboration of the minimum necessary conditions for individuality—and not moral autonomy or self-realization or self-perfection. Individuality is a more modest concept of the subject compared to these others. Again, Fichte is committed to arguing that there is a minimum conception of subject that captures what any society capable of reproducing itself must ensure, and it is this subject whose so-called “external” or “formal” freedom is guaranteed by societal norms: “the concept of right is the concept of the necessary relation of free beings to one another” (9; emphasis mine), so those relations among

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free beings that provide the minimal set of guarantees necessary to sustain those powers that are constitutive for any actual self-determining subject. Fichte’s suggestion, then, is that what has been considered external freedom as opposed to moral freedom, what is the object of law as opposed to what is the object of moral obligation, is best construed as the difference between the minimum necessary features for being a subject and the various idealizations of (minimal) subjectivity, where the minimum conception of the subject corresponds to the necessary conditions for the possibility of actual self-consciousness. For Fichte, philosophy proceeds either dogmatically or idealistically. By dogmatism he means what we now would call reductive naturalism in which all objects, including human beings, have fixed features as determined by the laws of nature. Idealism, conversely, begins with the idea that rather than being determined (all the way up) we are self-determining or free or self-active (all the way down); it is because an I is its acting that practical reason is primary. In inquiring into the minimum necessary conditions for self-consciousness, Fichte is thus asking after the conditions under which an individual becomes conscious of her freedom. It is the required components of free action that form the core of the concept of an individual or person.11 To be a free agent one, first, must have “the capacity to construct, through absolute spontaneity, concepts of [its] possible efficacy” (9). Two thoughts are enjambed here: (i) acting freely involves acting in relation to the concept of the object (state of affairs) to be realized; and it is because free action is conceptually determined action that actions can be considered as being done for a reason or purpose, for the sake of realizing a concept in mind. (ii) Free agents are the kinds of beings who can determine their own ends rather than having those ends be determined or imposed from without. In some sense, the concepts or ends upon which agents act must themselves be products of spontaneity, otherwise activity would be the mere means or instrument for realizing external ends, ends that could not be truly “mine.”12 Second, not only must one have the “bare capacity” for determining the concepts of a possible efficacy, a rational individual can count herself as free only if something in the world is made to correspond to her concept through her activity. At this level, freedom is not only the possession of the power to construct possible ends of action, one must be able to act on those ends and realize them in the world. Being free in part involves the experience of imprinting one’s ideas on the world, of altering the world so that it accords with those ideas. In this respect, third, to be an individual is to be aware of oneself as individuated through one’s free activities. Fourth, in order to act in the world and realize one’s ends, in order to materially transform the world individuals must be like and a part of what they transform: individuals must be embodied. Fifth, because one can actively individuate

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oneself only in relation to other individuals, then, a rational being cannot posit itself as a self-consciousness without “positing itself as an individual, as one among several rational beings it assumes to exist outside itself” (9). If we are individuals only among other individuals who possess the same power to bring about effects in the world, then individuals share a world in which they are capable of “influencing, mutually disturbing, and impeding one another” (10); but if freedom exists under conditions of mutual influence, then, sixth, we can act freely only if each contains her efficacy within certain limits, that is, acts in ways that essentially acknowledge others’ freedom. This is Fichte’s thin concept of the person or individual; it is what the deductions of §§1–7 aim to establish in relation to its normative correlative, transcendental, or original right, that is, the genetic path through which one becomes aware of oneself as an individual can only occur in tandem with the normative recognitions through which one is granted or given or bestowed that status. Individuality is, indissolubly, something achieved and something normatively constituted. One might say that it is precisely the indissolubility of the two sides of individuality—those features and capacities one must possess, and those norms that secure the continued exercise and possession of those features and capacities—that is the object of Fichte’s presentation. Because individuality emerges only in relation to these normative guarantees, then one can also argue that demonstrating indissolubility of powers and norms involves eliciting the emergence or installation of normativity in general, of how norms begin to emerge in the regulation of human interactions. Let us genetically examine some of the central steps in the becoming of the individual. In order to be a free and rational being one must be a selfdetermining being; hence, the self is defined by its activity. But the self is finite. Finite beings can have only limited or bounded objects that are, by definition, independent of that activity. To be a finite, active being is to inhabit a world which cannot be posited by the rational being as such. All this belongs to pure transcendental enquiry; the empirical question that arises is: under what conditions can this finite being become aware of its free agency? Because the self’s activity must be limited by an independent world, then self-awareness becomes possible only through activity that can transform or alter the world. Activity that can transform the world involves more than physical interaction with the world; it involves having a concept in mind and acting in accordance with that concept, and then perceiving that the world has altered in accordance with the intended action. So it is not a mere matter of the infant kicking and the rattle rattling; rather, at some point, through the experience of kicking then rattling and the growing capacity to control its bodily movements, the infant must become aware that it is its kicking that has brought about the rattling, and that it can intend to bring about such rattling through kicking, and then does so. Self-consciousness of agency is

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thus not perceptual, not a matter of perceiving, from the outside so to speak, regularities or constant conjunctions; it involves, on the contrary, being able to distinguish between things happening, even with regularity, and the forming of an intention and making an event happen. Further, in order to make an event happen, the self must become aware that there is a sensible world outside of itself. Indeed, becoming aware of one’s agency is discovering that actions meet with resistances; resistances are effects. Hence, in order to have the experience of bringing about an event in the world in accordance with a concept, the infant must develop an awareness of the sensible world as a “system of objects” (24) existing outside of and independent of itself; objects must be cognized as having features and powers that are there independent of the infant subject’s agency. Becoming aware of its agency and its accession to the world as a system of objects emerge simultaneously as internal correlatives of one another: the infant learns its powers as it learns how things can and cannot be changed. One immediate corollary of this is that “the practical I is the original I of original self-consciousness; that a rational being perceives itself immediately only in willing, and would not perceive itself and thus would also not perceive the world . . . if it were not a practical being” (21). The practical I is primary because it is only through interaction with objects (and persons) in the world that an infant becomes self-conscious—one becomes self-aware through becoming aware of one’s difference from objects together with one’s (limited) powers to affect them. One is what one does. The practical I here does not exclude or suppress the theoretical I, rather the practical I absorbs theoretical understanding (forming judgments and beliefs about the world) as structured subroutines enabling its practical doing. One can only form an intention to rattle the rattle in the context of having a belief that there is an object in the world with certain dynamic properties which alter in accordance with how they are affected. Practical activity is what installs the human being in the world and generates its minimum self-conception. Which is why Fichte says that the “practical faculty is the inner-most root of the I” (21), and that the I cannot be deduced—these all now transcendental claims that get their final authority from the developmental processes they implicitly represent. Fichte contends that coming to awareness of one’s agency through awareness of one’s ability to bring about changes in the external world, while certainly an awareness of individual powers, is not yet a self-consciousness of free agency, an awareness of oneself as self-determining; in the exchange between efficacious willing and object, “the subject’s free activity is posited as constrained” (31), that is, efficacious willing presumes only knowledge of what one is able to do or not able to do. There is nothing in this account of awareness of the self as powerful agent that might not be ascribed to the learning sequences of higher nonhuman mammals. Fichte supposes that

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no elaboration of agency in the sense already established can bootstrap the individual into full self-consciousness. But from this it follows that selfconsciousness in its full sense is non-derivable: one cannot, in fact, generate a conception of self-consciousness from anything else or by adding together a bundle of lesser materials. In the same way, then, that transcendental self-consciousness is irreducible, concrete empirical self-consciousness is irreducible; human self-consciousness is sui generis.13 Self-consciousness cannot be transcendentally deduced or causally produced; it is transferred from one individual to another. The presumption here is that in order for an individual to be fully self-aware, it must become conscious of itself; in order to become conscious of itself, it must become an object of its own awareness. The reason why bootstrapping through interaction with ordinary material objects is insufficient for this purpose is that it does not supply conditions for observing oneself from a perspective that is not identical with agent identity. Self-consciousness requires a perspective on free, self-determining agency that the individual can possess but which is not reducible to the self-intimating, tacit self-knowledge of agency itself. Fichte presumes that for an agent to be self-aware as object requires that an individual first actually be the object of another’s attention. But it must be the object of another’s attention as self-active subject. That, so to speak, is the puzzle: how can an object of awareness be simultaneously, as object, subject? The scene of this transforming transference in which the “thread of self-consciousness” is passed from one to another is a “summons [Aufforderung].” If the summons is to be the new fact of reason, then it must be that through which the neophyte becomes aware of its freedom. And this is just how Fichte conceives the scene of instruction occurring: the beginner experiences a sensation coming from without: The object is not comprehended, and cannot be other than as a bare summons calling upon the subject to act. Thus as surely as the subject comprehends the object, so too does it possess the concept of its own freedom and self-activity, and indeed as a concept given to it from the outside. It acquires the concept of its own free efficacy, not as something that exists in the present moment . . . but rather as something that ought to exist in the future. (32)

Recall that what is here presented as a single episode is in reality a process, the education of a human to its humanity. As an episode, it condenses the complex set of eventualities that the process of socialization involves. In the first instance, the summons is conceived as a “bare” summons; Fichte strips the summons of complexity in order to focus its status as summons, and not conceivably a determinate object.14 The summons is an act of another. It is an act whose purpose is to elicit an action from the infant. But if the only purpose of the summons was to elicit a response, it would fall short of its task, namely, awakening the child to its own freedom and self-activity.

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So it is insufficient to say, for example, that mother smiles for the sake of having the infant smile in return since that exchange could be conceived as a movement from stimulus to response; and, in fact, mimetic activity, however truly intersubjective, does begin through automatic reflex actions that, we now think, begin in the first week of life. If actions inviting mimetic response are as “bare” as could be, then in thinking of the summons as bare, Fichte must be attempting to elicit a feature or structural aspect of agentother interactions rather than a particular type of action. Indeed, as we shall see, Fichte comes to regard “every human interaction, not only the original one, [as having] the form of a summons, of reciprocal recognitions.”15 To think of the summons as a form belonging to all actual interactions (of a certain type) explains how it could come to displace Kantian morality in installing individuals into a normatively constituted sphere in which their standing as self-determining agents is inscribed. What is missing from the smile begets smile scenario? What needs to be added to it in order for the child to experience its freedom and selfactivity? What is Fichte supposing in calling the new fact of reason a summons or invitation or calling rather than a demand or requirement or obligation? (Which is not to deny that the summons has some of the features of a demand: it invokes a weak “ought.”) The summons, Fichte contends, is essentially something which opens the possibility of refusal, of not acting, of saying “no,” of negation (33). In becoming aware that a summons may be responded to either by acceding to its requirements or by not acting and so demurring, the agent becomes aware that it is free to respond or not respond. But becoming aware of being free to respond or not respond is the beginning of the awareness that for such types of objects, summons-type objects, there is an indefinite number of different ways of responding, and hence there is no necessary way in which the action or nonaction that will come to be must be. Awareness that one can say “yes” or “no” is the condition for awareness of the openness of the future; and the openness of the future is a condition of one’s awareness that what one is to do, and hence how one is to be in relation to the one who summons is all undetermined. In order for an agent to be self-conscious it must find itself as object, but an active object; hence it must find itself determined to self-activity. The external check which determines the subject must nonetheless leave it in full possession of its freedom and elicit that freedom as object of awareness. An agent can be determined to exercise its efficacy only if it finds that efficacy as something it could, possibly, exercise in some future, or not; and further, to suppose one should smile in return is to be aware that there is a difference between what should happen, what mother (authoritatively) wants to happen (where the wants of significant (authoritative) others are the precipitates for “shoulds”) and what will happen, and that what should happen may not happen because one wishes it not to happen. The summons, then,

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must open a field, the minimum structure of which is the yes/no choice of to act or not to act. A summons is a purposive action that determines but does not causally compel a field of action. Summonses must then involve the producing of a nonnatural sign of some kind (linguistic or nonlinguistic), a sign whose fundamental character is that it is intentionally produced in order that another respond intentionally to it, and the one to whom it is addressed respond on the basis of being invited to respond and to do so in a manner that enables the original summoner to understand that the response given is intended as a response to the original summons even when the response is negative (36–37).16 Formally, a summons-and-response sequence satisfies the requirement of treating the other as also an end in herself, but this is not the Kantian precedent that Fichte is here following. Rather, it is the paradigm of the Third Analogy: a summons-and-response sequence is intended as an instance of a noncausal (or not merely causal) episode of mutual interaction and thoroughgoing reciprocity, coexistence in thoroughgoing community, to use Kant’s phrasing. While mother’s smile could simply be the trigger for generating a smile from the infant, in time it will come to be understood as an invitation to smile in return, and the return, be it a smile or (ironic) grimace or stone-faced refusal, becomes an element in the bond connecting mother and child.17 It is because Fichte recognizes the complexity of this exchange that he reframes the scene of instruction into upbringing, the becoming bound to community through the learning of non-natural modes of interaction.

PROTO-RIGHTS: A FIRST APPROACH How complex the material conditions are for noncausal modes of mutual influence we shall come to shortly. What is significant here is that Fichte deduces his concept of right directly from the conditions of mutual interaction, which is to say, again, that right is being proposed as the normative lining of that very process, its flip side, what the sequence is as seen from a normative perspective. In order for mutual interactions to occur, the neophyte must assume that beside objects with causal powers there also exist rational beings, beings who summon it. And hence, for there to be human beings at all, “there must be more than one” (37); all these are direct inferences from the existence of episodes of mutual interaction. In participating in such interactions, the neophyte must have a sense of its difference from the summoner, and further a sense of a space under its control within which it is free to choose—to say “yes” or “no.” Originally, that sphere is that of the body as the material medium through which nonnatural signs (words or gestures) are produced. Ignore the question of embodiment for the moment. The neophyte must come to recognize that in being summoned it is

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being given a “free space” in which to respond, and that to respond in kind it must likewise permit its other a free space. What is meant by the neophyte comprehending the summons as the provision of a free space? It is the comprehension that another, non-summonstype action was possible and not acted upon, and that a summons-type action was deliberately chosen. Instead of smiling or saying “smile,” mother could, with teeth bared and hand raised in a preparation to strike, utter threateningly, “Smile.” This mode of action, while formally intentional and thus formally leaving open the possibility that the infant may not smile, does not presume that it is up to the infant as to whether it smiles or not; it must smile—or else. Even more forcibly, after threatening, mother might take the two corners of the infant’s mouth and roughly lift them—”See, you know how to smile, don’t you?” A summons is not only something affirmative, a call to free activity, it is in part defined by not being the use of (causal) force. In midst of a world in which its body is routinely having things done to it—fed, changed, carried, picked up, put down, etc.—summons-type activities emerge as a distinctive form of activity, ones that interact with the infant in a non-(merely) causal way, aiming to elicit a spontaneous response. So the infant becomes aware that it has different kinds of powers (to change the world or summon an other), and that which action it chooses is up to it. Fichte states this as a double requirement: free actions toward the neophyte must be understood as done in relation to the always existing possibility of transgressing the neophyte’s free space, and thus as a selflimiting of the will by the issuer of the summons (41). Every summons, as the paradigm of free action, is self-limiting in that it involves the treatment of its object as a free, self-determining being, and the forgoing of the use of force (or its intentional equivalents: deceit or threat). Because every summons, as the form of every free human interaction, implies a use of force that has been forgone, that is, implies a choice has been made from within the sphere of one individual’s freedom to take into consideration another’s sphere of freedom by leaving a sphere of choice open to her, then every summons qua self-limiting action is a recognition of the other as a free and rational being. To issue a summons is to accord the other a normative status (to be treated as a rational being and not a thing), and therefore to act in ways consonant with the one summoned being given a status or standing as free, as if she had a right to such standing—”only the moderation of force by means of concepts is the unmistakable and exclusive criterion of reason and freedom” (43; emphasis mine). Fichte is aware how equivocal this notion of right is. After all, from the perspective of the natural attitude it is almost invisible; one could regard the choice between causal/instrumental modes of interaction and summonstype modes to be simply a matter of choosing one of two modes of interac-

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tion depending on which seems most convenient and therefore appropriate. But this scenario is patently unsatisfactory since it suppresses the functional necessity of the summons in the life of the beginner, and consequently belies the way she comes inevitably and necessarily to experience the standing bestowed upon her. Fichte contends that transcendental reflection as the recapitulation of the genetic sequence through which the beginner becomes self-conscious demonstrates that through the emergence of the difference between the two modes of interaction there emerges a structure of normative expectations connected to summons-type interactions (43). What gives this structure of expectations its authority is that being acted upon by and acting on summons-type forms of interaction is the necessary condition for the coming to be of self-determining individuality, one the individual cannot initiate for herself, and one that she is utterly dependent upon her caregivers to provide. However, once summons-type interactions have been realized with respect to any individual, then the transgression of the implicit norms operative in an individual’s standing as free and self-determining comes to be experienced as an injury, as the illicit crossing of a border or boundary, as the piercing of a flesh.18 Roughly, then, Fichte is contending that processes sufficient to produce self-conscious agency must include socialization processes having summonstype structures. These processes by the very way in which they solicit selfdetermination automatically precipitate the emergence of what the neophyte experiences as boundaries or borders or limits concerning what is and what is not under her immediate control. One cannot have an awareness of the power to say “no” as a choice (and not simply as an immediate response) without having an awareness that one is, in some sense, entitled to say “no”. Fichte’s ascription of right to this structure, as proto-rights, is a way of flagging that the development of this structure of expectations is normative whilst not being explicitly moral. And this is why, again, Fichte feels entitled to claim that right, in the sense of a given structure of expectations that is realized by being approached through summons-type modes of action rather than narrowly causal modes of action, “must be operative wherever human beings live together” (59). Morality, when it comes, might be thought to be simply the way in which a society gives authority to these normative expectations; but custom, love, religion, or communal solidarity could also compensate any perceived fragility in authority or motivation. But that is to concede that the normative framework is already in place prior to being rationalized—however necessary rationalization of some kind is to the long-term stability of proto-rights. What matters, then, is not the structure of normative expectations be moralized, but only that language and practice possess sufficient resources to record the conceptual differences in an appropriately authoritative way. The rancorous complaint that protorights fail to achieve the standing of political right or moral right should

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be turned around into an argument against the reification and inflation of the normative. This is the upshot of Fichte’s displacing the moral law by structures of recognition, structures of proto-right as the normative bond through which self and other become bound to one another; a transformation underlined and deepened by his account of the role of the body.

INDIVIDUALITY (II): FREEDOM AS EMBODIMENT If individuality is a “reciprocal concept,” a concept that can be thought and applied only in a relation to another, a concept that thereby determines “community” (45), then, freedom must also be a reciprocal concept for Fichte. In claiming that summons-type actions are self-limiting, Fichte is not claiming, pace Hegel, that such actions are a “limitation of the true freedom of the individual;”19 rather he is stating that relations to the other are normatively constituted, those norms can be transgressed, and that acceding to them involves, beyond habit and passion, deliberation and choice. Freedom is, indeed, “enlarged” by community for Fichte in the obvious sense that self-consciousness of freedom, and hence true freedom, cannot exist outside community. Nonetheless, it might still be complained that Fichte’s image of a sphere of freedom that is possessed and might be overstepped is, as yet, merely metaphorical; and hence, second, with the notion of sphere hazy, so are the ideas of transgressing and trespassing, on the one hand, and, conversely, self-limitation on the other.20 Fichte supposes that these queries can be silenced by the demonstration that individuality, as self-determining efficacy, presupposes the possession of a material body (§5), and that the possession of such a body necessarily involves being influenced by the body of another (§6), making embodiment too a “reciprocal concept.” I understand the depth of Fichte’s philosophical discovery of the body this way: assume for a moment that even for Kant the idea of a fact of reason is the beginning of a fracture in the methodological individualism of modern philosophy in general, and within transcendental philosophy in particular. Within this setting, the postulation of the summons of the other as the fact of reason is equivalent to inverting the Copernican turn: the object, the summons, makes self-consciousness possible. Fichte, at least temporarily, manages to quiet the methodological disruption occurring by conceiving of transcendental reflection as the conceptual (dialectical) recapitulation of a genetic process, or, what is nearly the same, complementing an ascending, progressive argument with a descending, regressive argument. In this setting the body is not a mere residue left over from the effort of transcendentally securing an objective world of objects and persons for a free subject, or a material excess beyond the grasp of reason and perpetually disrupting it, or the natural setting out of which the human spontaneously emerges (al-

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though it is also this for Fichte); rather, the human body is the very medium of subjectivity itself, the actuality of freedom, the exteriority of the self to itself that attaches it to objects and others. In decentering the subject, the summons requires that the subject be placed in the midst of others; but there is no “placing” or “midst of others” without spatializing the subject, spatializing freedom as such; the spacing, determinacy, and individuality of the subject all depend upon embodiment. Fichte, then, means to claim that, even beginning from the high abstraction of transcendental self-consciousness, the subject does not also have a body, but necessarily is its body. Or better, keeping the language appropriately idealist, the human body is the necessary form of appearance of the human soul (freedom, the subject), where an essence that does not come to appearance would be “nothing.” Materializing what Kant thought of as noumenal freedom, making freedom bodily, is Fichte’s most persuasive gesture for collapsing the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. Each of the theorems constituting Fichte’s deduction of the body is a recapitulation of his original arguments for individuality, showing embodiment to be a condition of possibility, the material presupposition, for the efficacy and sociality of freedom. Fichte begins his argument by reminding his reader that he has already shown that a rational being can posit itself as a person only by “exclusively ascribing to itself a sphere of freedom” (53; italics removed); in so doing, she becomes this person; possessing exclusive dominion over a sphere and having a particular identity mutually entail one another. But this, again, is still only an elaborate metaphorical chain: to be free is to have a sphere of choice that is exclusively one’s own; in order to have an exclusive sphere of choosing there must be some way of bounding that sphere; bound spheres must have limits; and what is bound and limited requires the positing of what is outside that sphere; so the particular identity of the free chooser exists only in positing what stands opposed to her. Fichte means this chain to remind the reader of the argument from the Wissenschaftslehre that one can only posit the self through simultaneously positing the not-self. This new argument is the actuality of the earlier argument. Fichte begins in earnest by taking up a Kantian argument from §24 of the B Deduction: “We cannot think a line without drawing it in thought, or a circle without describing it . . . we cannot obtain for ourselves a representation of time, which is not an object of outer intuition, except under the image of a line . . . and . . . for all inner perceptions we must derive the determination of lengths of time or of points of time from changes which are exhibited in outer things” (B 155–56). Kant is here beginning to consider the conditions under which intellectual activity can possess objectivity. Self-activity on its own is a purely temporal affair; because time is, at least, passage, then on its own activity must be indeterminate, a passing away. In

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order to make the self-activity determinate, it must become spatial, that is, the temporal movement of activity becomes objective through the discovery of spatial analogues, extended objects at rest or changing. The drawing of a line is, one might say, the pure transformation of temporal action into spatial figure. For Kant, the issue here is, narrowly, empirical self-knowledge, and hence only a certain application of the categories; for Fichte the transcendental and the empirical are more tightly bound. He claims “the I that intuits itself as active intuits its activity as the act of drawing a line. This is the original schema for activity in general” (55). N.B., Fichte sets up the question to which drawing a line is the empirical answer as patently transcendental: the I intuiting itself as active. However hyperbolic, Fichte means to be urging here that activity, time, and space are originally united in this movement of drawing a line, and that it is only logically later that the different elements become fully differentiated one from another. While from one angle this is Fichte absorbing all objectivity into the activity of self-consciousness, from the opposing angle he can be seen to be conceding that for human activity to have any determinacy whatsoever space must be coeval with time. His thought that transcendentally there can be no space without spatializing activity entails that the body is an “extension that is at rest and made determinate once and for all” (56). Following the Kantian signature that there cannot be unity without unification, Fichte thus deduces the body as a certain elaboration of the activity of drawing a line. Viewing the body as the precipitate or sedimentation of transcendental activity is philosophically preposterous. By borrowing Kant’s thought about the line, Fichte was seeking within the narrow confines of transcendental reflection to segue to the body—a route that Kant too tracked in his notebooks. This constructive analysis, however, fails to adequately track anything remotely genetic. Nonetheless, Fichte’s underlying thought seems not altogether untoward, namely, to demonstrate, generally, that even what might seem most remote from absolute self-consciousness can belong to it intrinsically if it is a condition of the possibility for selfconsciousness becoming actual; and hence, to demonstrate specifically the utter intimacy of self-activity and bodily movement, that is, to ensure that self-activity is always actually an effort of material determination and that the body is, from at least one perspective, nothing but the material expression of free action. And this is just what Fichte does go on to say: “The material body we have derived is posited as the sphere of all the person’s possible free actions, and nothing more. Its essence consists in this alone” (56). Recall that what we are attempting to do here is to take the metaphoricity out of the idea that free action involves positing for oneself an exclusive sphere. The claim now is that the body as transcendentally specified is that sphere.

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When Fichte says the body is “nothing more” than the sphere of a person’s possible free actions he is transcendentally regimenting the meaning of the body to its role of being the pure means through which the will becomes efficacious in the world. Following the Kantian self-activity argument, Fichte immediately returns to the question of how a free will can become efficacious in the world. At the very least this presupposes that there must be something mediating the rational will with an idea in mind about the material world, and the material world. And one way of thinking of the body is as the mediating medium between will and world. But this cannot be right: if the body were only a mediating function between will (selfactivity or the spontaneity of the intellect) and world, then the will would need a further mediator to attach it to the body, and so on. Hence, on pain of an infinite regress, the body cannot be merely an instrument or means through which willing achieves worldly efficacy. The notion of the body is, rather, what directly or immediately is at the behest of the will: “Immediately by means of his will, and without any other means, the person would have to bring forth in this body what he wills; something would have to take place within this body, exactly as the person willed it” (56; emphasis mine). In opting for an immediate realization of the will in a bodily movement, Fichte is meaning to remove from action any idea of there being a mentalistic shadow world of “intendings” or “tryings” or “volitions” that are then realized in bodily actions. One raises one’s arm—and nothing else. Lucy O’Brien, in developing what can be taken as a neo-Fichtean theory of action, begins by reminding us that agents seem to be authoritative over their actions in a way they are not over others’ actions, that our knowledge of our actions appears to be relatively spontaneous, given with the action itself, and that actions could not be what we suppose them to be unless they were relatively self-intimating.21 Reconstructing a theory put forward some years ago by Arthur Danto in order to explain these features of action, O’Brien persuasively argues that there must be basic actions. Basic actions are those actions “that a subject can carry out directly without having to do anything else,” that descriptions of basic actions will be “in terms of bodily movements” over which the subject is directly authoritative—actions like “raising my arm” or “lifting my foot.” Without trying to document which actions are basic, O’Brien contends that we are justified in supposing that an agent “will have a non-conceptual grasp of the possible ways they can act, which are in this way basic.”22 Basic actions have a perfect Fichtean character: when an individual acts consciously, the actions she engages in are something she can control; the directness of her control over the action entails that she knows about the actions, knows what she is doing, through the action, through participation, rather than through observation or reflection. Basic actions are instances of the I intuiting itself as active through or in some bodily movement. Basic actions require a demanding intimacy

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between will and body: the body is, from a transcendental perspective, the immediate expression of the will; hence basic actions provide an outline of the body—or what is the same, a schema of the will—as seen from the perspective of self-activity. Bodily movements that are the concrete descriptions of basic actions give precision to the claim for the body being “nothing other than the sphere of the person’s free actions” (56; emphasis mine). Fichte would need to demure from O’Brien’s account in only one respect: he does not believe there can be a definitive inventory of basic actions. His argument commences from the idea that there are an indefinite number of possible conceptually mediated, nonbasic actions. Consider the complex actions that go along with highly elaborated bodily activities like dancing (doing a pirouette in ballet, or a shuffle hop in tap dancing), playing a musical instrument (the movement of the fingers involved in playing a piano versus playing a saxophone), using a tool (turning a screwdriver), performing surgery, playing a sport, not to speak of more mundane activities like cooking (slicing and dicing), writing, speaking, and singing. Assume, first, that there is no definitive end to the possibility of such complex activities, that new ones (X-game sports, for example) are continually being invented. Second, for each complex action the body performs what is an independent, moving part of the body changes: for some actions one or more fingers move while the arm and shoulder remain steady, in others the whole arm moves while fingers and wrist are firm, while in still others the wrist and fingers move as the arm moves (say, in a jump shot). The relation of the body to its parts is a whole/part relation, but one that continually changes relative to the complex action being performed. Finally, to say that the notion of part must be relativized to the complex action performed entails that while the precise range of basic motions a part performs is not infinite (there are severe physical/structural constraints), it is indefinite—the lifting, bending motion of the arm while flicking the wrist, the fingers waving forward seems unimaginable apart from the activity of shooting a basketball. A body conforming to these three requirements is necessarily “articulated” (58). A human body (Leib), then, is “a closed articulated whole . . . within which we posit ourselves as a cause that acts immediately through our will” (58). Genetically, this is all to say that the infant acquires a consciousness of itself as efficacious in the world not simply by having an idea in mind and then bringing it about, but by having the idea in mind in virtue of having an awareness that it possesses a body that it discovers to be directly under its control, whose capacities are the condition through which its will imprints itself on the world. Making the rattle rattle involves kicking the leg; hence necessary to discovering her will’s freedom is discovering that she has a sphere of influence which she directly controls, and without which she would be utterly disconnected from the world. She becomes herself, in part,

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through discovering the range of movements over which she has direct control and over which no one else has direct control. As basic actions become involved in more conceptually mediated actions, the range of possible movements she can perform becomes the mirror image of the objects existing outside her, their powers, and the nature of her power over them. The world as a system of objects is, in the first instance, the internal correlative of the active body. So being an individual requires positing the articulated body capable of basic actions as what makes free willing actual.

THE INTERSUBJECTIVE BODY The body so understood is not a natural body, a body seen from within nature, but rather, again, the body as understood from the transcendental perspective of making self-consciousness possible. This body is fully active. Hence, Fichte must now proceed to deduce the passive body, the body that is exposed to the influence of others, the body that has been summoned, giving both active and passive powers a transcendental denotation. Notoriously, this stretch of argument involves Fichte in distinguishing “higher” from “lower” organs, and “subtle” from “coarse” matter. What is he supposing in proposing these distinctions? Only this: if a subject is summoned and so influenced by another, then unless we are to believe in telepathy or magic, the influence of one person upon another must be some form of material influence. There is no way in which another can affect my will except through my body; if not every influence upon body is a direct causal restriction upon my powers of willing, that is, a way of either prohibiting or coercing certain bodily movements, then my body must have sensible organs that are not directly subject to the influence of solid matter, and there must be a kind of matter that can influence the body without causally determining it. That, in a nutshell, is the argument. Fichte was the first to admit that the details of his argument were less than adequate (66n), but the underlying thesis looks persuasive. Fichte means to be replacing standard accounts of the interaction of mind and body with an account of two aspects of embodiment. In particular he is attempting to understand how it is possible that my body can be “influenced” without being mechanically determined. Perceptual episodes are of this kind; in them there is a binding of my sensory apparatus that nonetheless leaves my higher sense free in its response: “For example, if a shape in space is to be perceived by sight, then the feel of the object (i.e., the pressure that would have to be exerted in order to produce the shape by sculpting it) would have to be internally imitated . . . ; but the impression in the eye, as the schema of such imitation, would be retained” (66). Here there is a dialectic between the physical impression of the object on the eye and the imaginative taking

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up of that impression in a manner that could, but does not, become the active determination to produce a further like object, hence a process in which a sensory impression becomes an active repetition rather than simply determining the repeating response. On this model, reception or (passive) understanding has the structure of an active repetition. And this should be familiar enough to us; for example, when one is learning to read one repeats the words out loud, saying them, only later learning, first, to inhibit speaking the words aloud, and then learning to inhibit one’s mouth from moving until, finally, one simply reads. Fichte’s thesis is that this represents a deep structure of understanding, with the movement from reception to active repetition to silencing the repetition happening at lightning speed in adults, but nonetheless happening still. Equally, then, learning to hear understandingly (which is a component of learning to speak) initially involves hearing words said to one by saying them back; or grasping music by following the rhythm by moving a part of one’s body in time or the melody by humming along; actions are learned by aping the example of others, etc. Fichte is hence giving to understanding as a learning process a bodily mimetic aspect as the necessary antecedent to purer processes of intellection. And while this passive-reception-becoming-activerepetition model probably works less well for visual perception—although Hogarth and Merleau-Ponty, among others, have argued that drawing an object is the closest approximation to capturing the process of visual understanding, and hence itself an active model for conceptual understanding generally23—what is being thought here is how material influence can incite activity rather than coerced motion or physical inhibition. In the perceptual case, Fichte is supposing that the light waves conveying the physical impression are a subtle matter, and the productive imagination is the higher organ that is influenced but not determined by the movements of this matter. Not surprisingly, Fichte takes the prime example of reciprocal interaction via moveable subtle matter to be speaking with one another (71). What Fichte does here is make mimesis operate both as a feature of the relation between the subject and the world, and as part of the subject’s self-relation, modeling the relation between the higher and lower senses after the mimetic exchanges between subject and subject, and subject and object. While there is obviously more than a mimetic relation between higher and lower organs, inner and outer senses, mimesis is crucial to learning, and hence pivotal in any genetic account of the development of self-consciousness. By allowing there to be a dialectic between inner and outer sense, imaginative activity (as still sensible action) and outer bodily action, Fichte generates two forms through which the body is influenced and influences the world. Once these powers are in place, he can then rewrite the original scene of instruction in which the neophyte is awoken to self-consciousness of her freedom in appropriately material terms.

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If my body is composed of resistant, solid matter and has the power to modify all matter in the sensible world and to shape it in accordance with my concepts, then the body of the person outside me is composed of the same matter and has the same power. Now my body is itself matter, and thus a possible object that the other person can affect through mere physical force; it is a possible object whose movement he can directly restrict. If he regarded me as a mere matter and wanted to exercise an influence on me, he would have exercised an influence on me in the same way that I influence anything I regard as mere matter. He did not influence me in this way, thus his concept of me was not that of mere matter, but that of a rational being, and through this concept he limited his capacity to act; and only now is the conclusion fully justified and necessary: the cause of the influence on me as described above is nothing other than a rational being. With this, the criterion of the reciprocal interaction between rational beings as such has been established. They influence each other necessarily under the condition that the object of their influence possesses sense. (64–65)

For an object to possess sense is for its appearing and movement to have more than merely causal significance. I shall turn to the issue of the appearing body below. What is central here is that in light of this appearing the other adopts an alternative mode of interacting with the beginner; this is as before, only now each moment of the interaction has a corresponding material character. The other will influence the beginner through material signs rather than physical force: smiling as an invitation to smile in return, or saying the physical sounds composing the word “smile.” For Fichte, words as composed of phonemes are a paradigm of sense making. Making such sounds with the mouth give the mouth its spiritual sense; just as directing those sounds to human hearing entails that the ears are material/ spiritual organs. The mutual determination of the material and the meaningful is what Fichte means by an object having Sinn. To complete the thought, what constitutes an individual as an individual is that it be able to affect the sensible world with movements whose medium has a density corresponding to the density of ordinary physical objects (in which case the body is an instrument of the will), and that it also be approached through being an object of sense rather than a mere physical thing. The sheer approach by another is not sufficient: the beginner must be so approached, and come to realize that in so being she could have been physically coerced rather than summoned, hence that she has a capacity for summoning in turn (doing certain types of bodily movements: gesturing or speaking), and that the being that originally summoned and which is to be summoned in response has the same complex dual material character as she. Because reciprocal summons-type interactions deliberately forswear the use of physical force, then willing in this manner is self-limiting, and to act in a self-limiting manner is a fortiori to recognize the other has having

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the status of a rational being, where such recognition is equivalent to the other being accorded a right. The details of Fichte’s speculative psychophysiology need not detain us. What is central is that the account permits him to satisfy both his desiderata: on the one hand, by insisting that the body’s active and passive powers are intertwined (that the body is for itself both “instrument” and “sense [Sinn]”), he can reasonably argue that the human body is not just metaphorically but literally the minimum necessary “sphere” making freedom possible, that is, unless the neophyte is free to move her body through some large subset of the indefinite range of possibilities that its articulated character permits in response to need, desire, intention, and summons with respect to a culturally standard range of objects and persons she could not become self-conscious of herself as an individual. On the other hand, unless there were different aspects of embodiment, corresponding to the difference between solid and subtle matter, I could not be “influenced” by another in a manner that left me free to respond in the ways required by the summons. Hence, the recognition of another as a selfactive subject is the recognition of a particular human body. Because the human body is in part constituted by its being treated as having sense, and has sense, finally, only in so being treated (summoned), then the human body is intersubjectively constituted, or what is the same, the human body is a reciprocal concept. Formally, this sounds very like the beginning of a solution to the problem of other minds, viz., the recognition of an other mind is the recognition of a certain kind of body. But this entails that the way in the human body appears is the original bearer, the foundation of all human interconnectedness—or so Fichte contends.

THE APPEARING BODY To this juncture, Fichte’s transcendental and genetic arguments lack a certain fit. From a transcendental perspective, he argues that “The presence of a body was inferred from the concepts of independence and freedom. But freedom exists only insofar as it is posited; and therefore, since what is grounded cannot extend beyond its ground, the body can exist only for one who posits it” (68). The body cannot have the complex structures entailed by its dual character unless it is posited as having those structures since the normative difference between its higher and lower organs as corresponding to subtle and coarse matter, as well as the activities that transpire through the different types of organs, can exist only through their being appropriately cognitively recognized—posited. Conversely, “I become a rational being—actually, not merely potentially—only by being made into one; if the other rational being’s action did not occur, I would never have become rational. Thus my rationality depends on the free choice, on the good will,

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of another; it depends on chance, as does all rationality” (69). I am a free being only by positing myself as one; I am a free being only by being made into one, which making is a matter of sheer contingency. Fichte’s anxiety here is not that I have been made into a free being (the logic of the summons as the outline for an educative process is meant to answer the paradox of being made to be free), it is that the making itself is so utterly contingent that it undermines the claim for self-positing—each individual becomes merely the “accidental result” (69) of another person’s summons. For Fichte this is a fraught moment. The relation of summoner to summoned is asymmetrical: the one summoned is absolutely dependent on the other for her humanity. Is this relation of asymmetry and dependence without end? Does it help to recognize that in the first instance this is a scene of instruction, of education, and hence part of a process that will be gone beyond? In that case, might the correction to contingency be parental love and communal concern? Even if the former is (in part) hardwired, that would not make the genetic process capable of being appropriated and posited; it would normalize chance, making it less chancy but not more rational. This and related problems lead Hegel to reconstruct the scene of instruction as at first a battle and then an intensified and temporally elaborated sequence of collective historical learning whose internal logic provides the rationality for its eventual overcoming. While that may adequately deal with the summons as a genetic process, it cannot be the whole story because the summons, again, is the model of all human action that solicits a free response from another. In which case, the question arises as to why anyone ever recognizes another. What is the ground of recognitions generally? Who is to be included? What does it mean to say that each human has the right to be treated through summons-type actions? Hegel will urge that only an account of the historical emergence of the liberal state and its elaboration of individuals as citizens will fully answer these questions. Even if adequate in its own terms, for Fichte the story of the emergence of the state occurs dialectically too late, presupposing too much. There could not even be a battle for recognition unless those partaking already recognized one another as beings who could be summoned or physically coerced; that is, the presupposition of the battle is the mutual recognition by each participant that the other possesses a dual material structure like its own. For Fichte the scene of the battle is a scene of recognition and misrecognition. Hegel fails to explain the initial (insufficient) recognition.24 If there is no misrecognition without recognition, however partial, and that recognition is not completely a matter of chance, then there must be a ground for it. And this can be so “only by presupposing that the other was compelled already, in his original influence upon me, compelled as a rational being . . . to treat me as a rational being; and indeed he was compelled to do so by me” (69), which would entail

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that even in the original scene there was at least something approximating reciprocal interaction. This sounds contradictory since Fichte is now proposing that in the very scene in which I am made an individual by another, I am already summoning the other. Well, certainly not summoning her through anything I do, that is, not through engaging in summons-type activities for these as yet are unavailable to me; so, to use Fichte’s own paradoxical formulation, there needs to be the exercise of an efficacy without exercising it (70). Against the background of the previous argument, we know where this is heading: since my independence and efficacy in the world are dependent upon my body, my body as the material inscription of my will making my individuality possible, then the appearing of my body on the scene is the manner in which I might exercise efficacy, “be active, without me exercising my efficacy through it” (70). In providing a deduction of the necessity of embodiment for self-consciousness, the body emerges as a series of active and passive powers, as a material object with moveable parts that is capable of doing and undergoing certain types of actions, which it is claimed has sense, but that does not as yet look like anything in particular, does not, on the basis of its powers, have a distinctive form or appearance. But this is implausible: there cannot be anything that satisfies those requirements that yet lacks sensible form. A living being capable of a certain range of activities must have a distinctive shape, a distinctive relation of whole and parts that enables it to carry out just those activities. From the opposing angle, we have already argued that the inventory of basic actions (that are to be read off from the expanding catalogue of complex actions) provides a schema of the human will—precisely, its look. So we have to imagine a being that can: speak, sing, eat, call, cry, scream, walk, run, jump, balance on one foot, make love (kiss, stroke, fondle), give birth, suckle its young, bow, do a triple Salchow, play the piano, dice onions, shoot an arrow, throw a boomerang, draw, write, knit, make funny faces, etc. The more extended and fine grained the list of actions, and hence basic actions, the more evident it is that the human body must have a specific shape, a particular organization of articulated whole and parts that enables it to perform this diverse range of activities. There may be another shape and organization of whole and parts made from another material that could do all this, but certainly till now nothing like it has ever been imagined. But if this is true, and the range of activities are the expression of the possession of a rational will, then the converse must hold as well: the human body’s appearing just is the appearance of a rational being, that is, “this appearance of my body must be such that it cannot be understood or comprehended at all except under the presupposition that I am a rational being” (71). Above, in saying that the human body is the necessary form of appearance of the human soul (freedom, the subject), I was functionally refashioning

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a dictum of Wittgenstein’s; his original saying is the perfect complement to its derivative: “The human body is the best picture [Bild] of the human soul.”25 Form and function mutually entail one another, or, we might say, the transcendental specification of the material powers of the human body entail an aesthetic, a figuring of the human body. The human body with respect to both function and form is the necessary image of the human soul. For Fichte the broad specification of the capabilities of the human body are thought to belong to the transcendental elaboration of self-consciousness, while the argument demonstrating that the comprehension of the appearance of the human body as necessitating regarding it as a rational being belongs to the (lower) science of philosophical anthropology (72).26 But this way of dividing the problem works against the binding of capability and appearance that the argument presupposes. Fichte’s thesis presumes that what is specific about the human body is that its form of appearance is intimately related to the actualization of its capacities for acting in the world, and hence to what it is as a worldly object. From this perspective, the aesthetics of the human body is not the relegation of the human to mere appearance, but the ever surprising shock that the mere appearing of the human body should demand an acknowledgement of this object in its rational, normative core. What little detail Fichte provides here offers some indication of how his (transcendental) anthropology would work. The orienting premise of the argument is that the human is born prematurely, unlike the animal that is born “clothed,” with the capacity for movement and provided with the instincts necessary for survival. Being born “naked” (76) entails not just the lack of what animals possess, together with helplessness and absolute dependency on caregivers, it requires that the provisions for inhabiting the world that other animals have through their instincts, the human must acquire through processes that continue the detachment of the human from the determination of nature (as what is given and determined by law). Education is the process through which reason and culture compensate for what nature left absent; reason is thus a species-wide accomplishment that supplies the means for species reproduction as well as individual selfrealization. All this I take to be standard fare. The first functional/aesthetic upshot of prematurity is that the human animal does not possess a determinate set of (law-governed) action routines. Consequently, the human body cannot be comprehended “through any determinate concept at all”; while the animal body points to a determinate sphere of movements, the human must be capable of “all conceivable movements ad infinitum . . . The articulation would . . . [have] an infinite determinability . . . the human being is only intimated and projected” (74). While these words certainly have an existentialist sound, they are meant to capture how the human body, when freed from a design dictated by narrow

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survival imperatives, must be open to realizing conceptualized possibilities of acting. But these possibilities are indefinitely open; hence, the body of the human must accommodate, enable, and express the open character of human self-understanding, the human capacity for self-making and selffashioning, for being the vehicle and expression of the fact that human action is conceptually saturated, and thereby indefinitely formable. From here, Fichte’s constructions become increasingly speculative, attempting to give the appearing body its spiritual due. In human beings the sense of touch is spread “throughout the entire skin and exposed directly to the influence of coarser matter” (77); this provides for both an intensification of the possibilities of feeling and, simultaneously, more direct exposure to harm. The upright posture of the body both makes possible and reflects its freedom from animal routines: the ability to scan the whole of an open horizon is at one with the opening of human action to possibility and futurity. Uprightness also leaves the arms and hands free from immediate animal imperatives; the hands are thus free for forming and fashioning external material objects. The freedom of the hands for forming must equally express the ability for indefinite tasks of forming, requiring an indefinite repertoire of skills, and so again an indefinite range of possible bodily movements. What holds for the body in general as the medium of indeterminate possibilities of action holds equally for the human face. Again, the starting point is the unformedness of the prematurely born infant; the whole human face is at first “a soft mass of confluent tissues within which one can detect, at most, what is yet to become of it once one imposes on it an idea of one’s own development” (78). The face takes on individuality—and not mere physical difference—by expressing what has been done (seen, said) and what suffered (seen, heard). More concretely, the eyes and mouth of the cultivated human are expressive of spiritual powers and affective concerns. We see in the human eye its power of self-activity to circumscribe, outline, and reproduce spatial shapes, that is, the power of the eye that enables the imaginative projection of a transformed material world is in turn reflected in the look of the eye, making it less a window to the soul than one of the soul’s forms of appearing. In typical idealist fashion, Fichte regiments the eye to its role of producing and reproducing spatial form, leaving unconsidered its expressive character: sad or grief-stricken eyes; the twinkle of pleasure or being carefree; the intent gaze; the down-looking of shame or modesty; the squint of doubt or threat; the open look of innocence; the wide-eyed look of surprise or fear; the blank stare, etc. Analogously, the mouth which is designed for carrying out the lowest of functions is also capable of expressing the highest of sentiments and ideas. So the mouth that smiles or grimaces, forms operatic sounds, wails or cries out, kisses, coos

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soothingly, speaks lovingly, thoughtfully, poetically, angrily, the mouth open in shock or closed tight in defiance. What organizes and motivates these speculative constructions is the same principle that drove the preceding argument linking form and function: in each case the capacities of the human body to act in accordance with conceptual determinations entails a capacity for formability such that both conceptual content and the openness to re-formation are returned to the body as indelible features of its appearing. Indeed, it is precisely because the parts of the human body are necessarily freed from direct functional imperatives, that the body as an ongoing shifting of relations of whole and parts in relation to conceptually determined activities, that the shape of the body as a whole is completely material while not being determinate like other natural bodies. Isn’t this just to say that, conversely, because in the specified sense it is not natural, not conceptually determinate, the human body must be conceived as the appearing of the human soul? What Fichte wants from his argument is, however partial, the acknowledgement that we cannot coherently describe or analyze the appearance of the human body without acknowledging these macro-aspects of its appearance: the broad range of activities that human beings do and how they do them must be visually manifest, however indefinitely, in the kind of object carrying out those activities.27 Consider the alternatives. Could the human body be simply a neutral or blank shape in which what and how it is affected, and what it does and how it does it, have no internal connection with its form of appearance? Objects can have surprising and hidden powers; but what makes that fact singular is precisely that it is not the rule, and it requires explanation—how could something looking like “that” act like “this”? By focusing on the external, performance, material, world-forming aspects of action (rather than on the purpose, intention, rule, meaning, willing aspects), Fichte closes the gap between inner and outer, making the character of bodily performance itself the necessary and best image, the appearance or look, of what is, from the opposing angle, purposive and meaningful. Fichte, we might say, looks at the relation between action and embodiment from an “engineering” or “design” perspective—but the design for a body whose range of actions are open. By considering action outwardly, he shows the “black box” idea of the human body to be unintelligible. But the classical name for what I am calling the “black box” conception is, of course, just the idea of the body as a (law-governed, causal) machine as opposed to a (meaningful) mind. A body capable of doing all the types of action a human body can, and further capable of doing new types of action requiring new arrangements of part and whole, cannot be a machine, that is, cannot be conceptually determinate in the way in which something must be determinate in order to be a machine.

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In making strong dualist accounts implausible, Fichte simultaneously deflates the skeptical force of weak dualist accounts. Because action is conceptually determined, and the conceptual is context dependent, then Fichte must concede that not all particular human actions are transparent in their meaning. A certain type of skepticism thrives by taking particular failures of transparency as the ground for generalized doubt, turning the body back into a “black box.” Having removed the “black box” idea, Fichte can urge that context dependence and nontransparency should be construed from the opposite direction. Being indeterminate, opaque, enigmatic, or misleading are features of human performances; they are exactly the kinds of indeterminacy and breakage that are possible for the doings of beings whose performances bear sense. Not knowing how a machine works or not knowing the function of a certain set of movements is not the same as not knowing what a performance means. It is the shape of the human body itself, its articulated, part/whole form that entails that its performances are conceptually determined, purposive, and context dependent. Some context-dependent doings are species universals, some not; which actions are species universals and which are not itself belongs to the fit between the human body and the form of life of beings having such a body. The appearance form of the human is thus the source or ground for the kinds of indeterminacies and differences that have been used to deny its universality. Hence Fichte’s claim that the appearance of the human body is the appearing of a self-determining, rational being, that the human body cannot appear without the human appearing. Once this is acknowledged, however, then his normative conclusion follows directly. First, from the argument that the human is “originally nothing at all” (74), but is a perpetual becoming through its formative and self-forming activities, it follows that “it is impossible to superimpose upon a human shape any concept other than that of oneself, [therefore] every human being is inwardly compelled to regard every other human being as his equal” (74). If I understand Fichte aright, he is arguing from indeterminacy to equality. Indeterminacy follows from the human body being the vehicle for indefinite possibilities of action. Equality follows from there being no definite concept which is appropriate for the grasping of such a body; to encounter a human body is to encounter something that perpetually outruns one’s capacity to conceive of it as a fully conceptually determinate vehicle of that being’s doings. If there is nothing determinate the body of the other is, if the other keeps escaping my power of determination, then my comprehension of her can only be connected to her likeness to me as a being who is always “more than” its past and present appearances. In being conceptually indeterminate like me, she is my equal, however much I might want to deny or repress that fact, or violently dominate her in order to undo its threatening actuality. It is thus just this feature of the appearing of the

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human body, its formability and indeterminacy, its readiness for unknown possibilities, which might lead one to engage such a body in a battle for recognition. Without the assumption of equality in the proposed nonmoral sense, the battle could not be one for recognition. The recognition of equality is the ground for subsequent misrecognition; hence, Hegel’s dialectic presupposes the attaching of recognition to embodiment. Second, deepening this thought, Fichte contends that taking into account the whole of his analysis of the appearing body, not considered element by element the way philosophers do, “but rather in their amazing, instantaneously grasped connection—as given to the senses—these are what compel everyone with a human countenance to recognize and respect the human shape everywhere . . . The human shape is necessarily sacred to the human being” (78–79; emphasis mine). Perhaps the word “respect” is more moralized than the argument can support, although it is now clear that Fichte means the appearance of the human body to be the fact of reason. What compels recognition in the first instance is the appearing body; hence the human body in its appearing is what institutes the possibility of individuality and so self-consciousness, that is, through the manner in which the appearance of the human body compels perceptual attention, individuals enter immediately into interaction with others, summoning through appearing the very recognition which will give back to them the standing necessary to be one who (actively) summons. The visual spectacle of the human body inscribes the kind of agency and rationality human beings possess, and therefore on its own initiates the communication between each self and its others whose floundering and flourishing compose the history of the race. Fichte’s claim here cannot be a discovery—it is too universalist in its scope for that. His transcendental anthropology must be functioning as a kind of reminder. The reminder can have the force it does because the argument for it is in reality a step-by-step dispelling of the illusions, repressions, and fantasies that have permitted us to daily forget or deny what is there right before our eyes: the human body is the appearance of the human. Fichte accomplishes this by: closing the gap between (material) mind and body; making the (basic) doings of the body the necessary and direct expressions of the rational mind; while focusing its materiality, he detaches the body from determinate nature; reconfiguring the meaning of whole/part logic so that it is tailored to the diversity of human action; revealing how the various aspects of the body can be bearers of our humanity; making the experience of embodiment a source of dignity and standing in the world rather than something to be despised, overcome, repressed. Is Fichte the first on the scene here? Well, he does not have any obvious modern predecessors; but there have been other forms the reminder has taken. Most evidently, as Fichte’s requirement that we view the body as a whole, in its “amazing, instantaneously grasped connection—as given to the senses” underlines,

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it is the history of sculpture and painting that has sliced through ideology and repression to render unavoidable the claim of embodiment—perhaps nowhere more poignantly and contradictorily than in the endless images of Christ on the cross. The body as the image of the soul, the appearance of the human is patent in every idealization of the body in Greek sculpture, every Michelangelo torso, every inscrutable Raphael face, in the level gaze of every Holbein portrait, in the mere toes of every large Rubens figure, in the eyes of every Rembrandt self-portrait, and on and on. What is shocking, perhaps, is that we should need this reminder at all. But once Platonism, Christianity, and scientific naturalism got their teeth into culture, the obvious became less so—at least for reflection. Nothing is a surer sign of this than the yawning gap that exists between philosophical and artistic accounts of the body. The recurrent and virulent repudiation of art—nothing but “illusion,” merely “aesthetic”—a not very subtle continuation of the repudiation of the body, its insistent appearing, and the willfulness necessary to make nothing of that appearance.

THE APPEARING BODY, GENETIC CONDITIONS, AND PROTO-RIGHTS Fichte’s deduction of the human body as the necessary material/visual condition of individuality is both structurally continuous with his generation of a conception of right as independent of morality, and a fundamental presupposition for that notion of right. Traditionally the account of the human has been premised on the idea that we are essentially: rational or autonomous or knowers or governed by universal principles or pure souls. Beginning with such a premise, the human body is going to appear as something separate from the self, as only an instrument or container, an addendum or excess; and conversely, taking the body as fully constituted by mechanical or biological laws makes it wholly incommensurate with the norms of rationality and freedom. Against the background of such views, when the body begins to philosophically appear it does so as either a condition to be repressed, surpassed, or as a spoiler, nature’s banana skin for making the high low. Because Fichte is so emphatic about the difference between the absolute self and the empirical self, between transcendental self-consciousness and empirical self-consciousness, and thus is clear that the former belongs exclusively to the philosophical exposition of self-consciousness, he is forced to elaborate the actualization of the powers of self-consciousness through bodily performances and expressions that are thoroughly intersubjectively mediated. It is, one might say, the very precision and exorbitance of his conception of transcendental subjectivity that forces Fichte to download,

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route, and elaborate subjectivity in essentially bodily terms. By making intersubjectively mediated bodily performance the essential medium of selfconscious activity, Fichte literally gives to self-determination and normativity a radical materialist twist, fully inserting the self into a world of material objects and embodied others as the natural habitat of human existence. Two final criticisms become pertinent here. First, by so radically figuring the body as a medium for action and interaction, Fichte overidealizes the body, suppressing its natural and animal functions, above all making coercion the paradigm of wrong rather than physical injury. The Fichtean subject might well be finite, but it is not quite a suffering mortal; pain, often thought to be the criterion for sentience, makes no appearance in Fichte’s Foundations anthropology; the Fichtean body is, nearly, a purely sapient body. The second criticism is more complex. As we have already noted, and as nearly all commentators agree, something goes wrong in the transition from original right to political right: the normative authority of original right fails to adequately inform the conception of political right.28 Critics equally agree that this argumentative lapse undermines the architecture of Foundations, ruining the project as a whole. This criticism is just, but altogether too fast. The failure is different and simpler than usually supposed, and hence more remediable. In order to better focus the difficulty, let us briefly track Fichte’s argument. The orienting normative thesis that Fichte deduces from his account of embodiment is, again, that at the basis of all voluntarily chosen reciprocal interaction among free beings there lies an original and necessary reciprocal interaction among them, which is this: the free being, by his mere presence in the sensible world, compels every other free being, without qualification, to recognize him as a person. The one free being provides the particular appearance, the other the particular concept. Both are necessarily united, and freedom does not have the least amount of leeway here . . . Both recognize each other in their inner being, but they are as isolated as before. (79)

What is surprising here is how Fichte moves seamlessly from the necessary unification of subjects through—compulsive—mutual recognition to, in that recognition, each being as isolated as before. It is this isolation that will lead Fichte to construct his state on the basis of a scenario that is logically closer to Locke and Hobbes than Rousseau and Hegel. The crux of Fichte’s isolation argument turns on the fact that while the norms of mutual recognition would be sufficient to compel rightsrespecting behavior if no other options were available, in fact because each person is also a material object composed of coarse matter, then in each interaction between subjects they must choose whether to act on the basis of recognitive norms or through the use of (material) force. Because the

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employment of recognitive norms involves a self-limiting of the will, then while the recognition of another as a person, if followed out consistently, would compel rights-respecting treatment, nothing compels consistency and hence nothing obligates any individual to treat another in a rights-respecting manner. To do so would be a matter of free choice, say the free choice of a social contract. Hence, the situation collapses into one all but indistinguishable from classical individualist constructions of society and the state. All the recognitive connections among subjects that Fichte has worked so fervently to construct dissolve like the morning mist at this juncture. In response to both the naturalist objection and the isolation criticism I want to urge that the logical space that gives these objections purchase occurs because Fichte fails to adequately carry though his genetic analysis of the emergence of self-consciousness—so prominent in his account of the summons—when he introduces the body as the essential medium of human interaction and sociality. And this is a flaw since the whole point of the account of embodiment is to insist that it is the original locus of intersubjective communication, the implicit summons to humanity underlying all explicit summonses. Consider again the fact of prematurity. If the prematurity of the human infant is the indeterminate space that enables the institution of conceptualized rationality in place of mechanical instincts as the source of action, it must equally be the case that the process of socialization through which that occurs is what enables the human to satisfy the minimum conditions of animal life. On Fichte’s own account, to be an animal is to have capacities for motility and action that enable it to satisfy survival needs: procure food, protect itself from harm, etc. The animal body is, he contends, whole and complete because the action routines through which these ends are satisfied are themselves closed and determinate. Hence, the organic wholeness of the animal body represents the functional interconnection of its various parts so that it can satisfy survival needs in a manner sufficient for species reproduction—an hypothesis that perfectly coordinates with the interrogative methods and explanatory models of evolutionary biology. From here one might reasonably argue that the minimum necessary elements that must be present in each socialization process is that the human body become whole in a manner sufficient for its animal needs, whole in a manner that is necessarily analogous to and approximates animal wholeness. The necessity here is obvious: the human is also an animal. It is at just this juncture that Fichte’s account misfires. Roughly, Fichte uses the fact of prematurity as an opening to altogether suppress or sublate to the point of disappearance the animal elements that are interwoven with and a substratum of the socialized body. After recording traditional thoughts about prematurity, he urges: “If the human being is an animal, then he is an utterly incomplete animal, and for that very reason he is not

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an animal. It has often been thought that the free spirit existed for the sake of caring for animal nature. Such is not the case. Animal nature exists for the sake of bearing the free spirit in the sensible world and of binding it with the sensible world” (76). If to be an animal is to have a permanent and determinate structure of body and behavior, then the human is no animal. Reason is not an evolutionary device to compensate for and satisfy survival needs in place of instincts and mechanized routines, but a self-determined world of ideas, values, and norms that employ the body for acquiring sensible presence in the world. One could argue that Fichte’s idealist extremism here is a necessary consequence of his transcendental approach. But that claim is not compelling. Rather, the source of the extremism is Fichte posing the structural issue in sharply dualist terms, as the exclusive alternatives of either reason being for the sake of animal life or animal life for the sake of realizing an autonomous rationality. It is this false either/or that ruins Fichte’s argument. There is an obvious third alternative, namely, that the very character of reason as providing nonmechanical means for satisfying survival imperatives simultaneously enables it to generate ends, norms, values, and ideas that outrun and even supplant on occasion the ends of individual survival and species reproduction; which is why the societal mechanisms that allow for species reproduction also enable the reproduction and expansion of rational culture more generally. Once rational culture is viewed as an extension and development of the reasoned reproduction of species life, and species life hence seen as a permanent ingredient within rational culture, then the genetic conditions for the emergence of individual self-consciousness must simultaneously facilitate the emergence of a being whose bodily powers are sufficient to secure the needs of its animal life. The preservation, continuation, and elaboration of animal life are a component of each human life. Because it is functionally necessary that each human individual acquire the bodily powers that make it a good animal, an animal capable of living, and because the acquisition of these powers is a matter of socializing the body, then there is a wholly nonoptional, functional necessity to recognitive norms. Recognitive norms are first norms sufficient for animal life, and as sufficient for animal life thereby potentially sufficient for the indefinite cultural elaboration of human animal life that is a consequence of reason being the medium of survival. Again, as argued above, it is the genetic location of the empirical and normative conditions of self-consciousness that gives them their prima facie authority. In failing to follow through his genetic approach when tracing out the role of embodiment, Fichte can construct a scenario in which each separate human encounter involves the participants in deciding in a groundless manner whether to treat the other as person or object. But the

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scenario itself is false. Summoning each infant to personhood involves each infant acquiring both the bodily powers for individuality and the norms integral to the possession of those powers, that is, awakening to the powers of self-consciousness is simultaneously to become awakened to their normative character. It is these presumptions that first, in being tied to habitual routines, become expectations which, when frustrated, turn into normative demands. In becoming normative demands what were the mere normative lining to a series of intersubjective acts become consciously and selfconsciously held normative claims. Hence, it is those normative presumptions that lie behind every child’s demand to be allowed to do this or that activity on its own, to be allowed to express her powers of movement and action; it is those presumptions that make all physical injury, not only that which is intentionally caused, to be experienced initially as wrongs that should not have occurred, and hence that construct the interwoven character of active powers and passive boundaries into a normative self-understanding of my body as “mine”—fact and norm. Those presumptions bear within themselves the normative necessity of those expressions for animal life. Inevitably, then, the culture educating a child must already have channeled what the child expresses as normative demands into a set of ethical norms for its treatment, ethical norms that make possible her development of the basic physical skills necessary for survival and social interaction, and that protect her both as an injurable animal and as a “full” member of this family, clan, tribe, society (however full membership is cashed out for that clan or society). Coming to appreciate precisely how powers and norms are interwoven is what the education to self-consciousness involves; hence the child cannot acquire the bodily powers for self-consciousness without acquiring the norms underpinning the ongoing expression of those powers as the prima facie ethical norms governing social interaction generally. These normative expectations seem a fair match for original right, which, recall, are the “right to the continued existence of the absolute freedom and inviolability of the body” and the “right to the continued existence of our free influence in the entire sensible world” (108). Because these rights must be interwoven with the ordinary expression of human powers in a setting sufficient to permit a child to develop into a self-conscious agent, then when facing another human body, a body whose appearance is itself a summons to respond to it in rights-respecting ways, there is not an abstract choice as to whether this being should be respected; there is a prima facie demand that respect be accorded. My claim that norms expressing proto-rights must have prima facie authority is thus bound to their embeddedness in the routines through which newcomers are socialized and become agents. Embeddedness in the structures necessary for societal reproduction at the level of the individual removes even the hint that these norms might be cognized as optional for

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any being to whom they apply. Of course, the way culture comes to express those prima facie demands, as Fichte insists it must, does not deny the patent fact that most cultures are provincial, thriving on forms of repression and fear that lead to collective and individual blindness and prejudice. But that is only to say that the possibility of misrecognition is ever present, all but inevitable. Being ever present is not, however, the same as being legitimate: there is a flagrant irrationality in every denial of universality. Fichte’s account of the transition from proto-right into political right is flawed because it fails to find a natural, empirical locus for the actualization of proto-rights, and hence an empirical set of circumstances in which efforts of mutual recognition that already exist come to evolve into law and political right. The communal setting that enables the development of the infant into a socialized member of the community provides such a locus, a juncture in which the good of the bare life of the individual is taken up into the mechanisms through which the life of the society, and so the species, is transmitted across generations. What Fichte insists upon, as no else, is that all this transpires in and through the human body, making the vision of the human body itself the pulsing insistence of the dignity of human life generally.

NOTES 1. For recognitive idealism, natural science too is a mode of world interpretation. The enemy of normativity is not natural science, but scientism—the false reification of scientific naturalism. 2. J. G. Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, trans. Michael Bauer (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Henceforth, all references to this work will be given in parentheses in the body of the essay. 3. This beginning has been argued, beautifully, by Paul Franks, “The Discovery of the Other: Cavell, Fichte, and Skepticism,” Common Knowledge 5/2 (1996), 72–105. 4. J. G. Fichte, Early Philosophical Writings, trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 409 (emphasis in original except for “determined”). 5. Frederick Neuhouser, in his introduction to J. G. Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre, xvii. 6. Fichte’s widened conception of perceptual experience, that includes making cognitive judgments about both objects and persons, is made possible through a discrete but pervasive adaptation of Kant’s conception of reflective judgment (35-6n). 7. Fichte, Early Philosophical Writings, 408. 8. In Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Allen Wood connects Fichte’s remark about the role of education with contemporary work into developmental psychology, and suggests that the most promising way to interpret Fichte’s theory of recognition is “as an account of an

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ideal socialization process for individuals in a culture in which the values such as individual freedom and autonomy hold an important place” (83). I am certainly adopting Wood’s notion of an ideal socialization, but I will argue that it can have the depth and transcendental quality Fichte aspires to only if it does not presume the values of a liberal society. 9. Paul W. Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005), 321–25 argues that Fichte’s lectures from 1796/1799 suggest a different methodological resolution to the puzzle, namely a transcendental argument complemented by an account of how the transcendental items become actual—say, by becoming political rights. Hence, the thought is that there be an “isomorphism” between the transcendental and the empirical, with the acknowledgement that transcendental right, as opposed to actual political right, has “no normative import whatsoever” (325). This is hermeneutically suggestive, but leaves the normative problem unsolved: what work is isomorphism doing? On the account I am propounding, the necessary conditions for becoming an individual precipitate normativity, demonstrating how the conditions for individuality are realized as normatively structured modes of interaction. This, of course, entails a weaker than Kantian conception of norms—categorical declaratives rather than categorical imperatives—but that seems to me part of Fichte’s revolution. Part of the reason why Fichte adopts the notion of individuality rather than moral autonomy, and further generates a defense of right that does not draw on antecedent moral norms, is that he intends an account that goes below and outside morality, and is thus in a sense more necessary than morality. 10. Frederick Neuhouser, “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Morality,” in Fichte: Historical Contests / Contemporary Controversies, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1994), 176. Neuhouser’s essay is a powerful defense of Fichte’s separation of right from morality. I consider the argument of this paper as a further inflection of his defense of Fichte’s nonmoral conception of right. 11. Neuhouser, “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Morality,” 163– 67, carefully elaborates the elements of Fichte’s conception of the individual. My account here is partially indebted to his. 12. Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chapter 4. 13. For a less generous construal of this transition, see Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, 79. 14. I always imagine the Fichtean summons becoming, also, Laplanche’s “enigmatic message,” which in summoning the infant to what it cannot comprehend becomes the precipitating moment of the unconscious. That the Fichtean summons might be two-sided in this way—the route to both self-consciousness and the unconscious—makes it more rather than less plausible. See Jean Laplanche, Essays on Otherness (London: Routledge, 1999). 15. Paul Franks, “The Discovery of the Other,” 89. 16. Instead of the language of a nonnatural sign, Fichte here uses the language of an exchange of cognitions that must be understood as cognitions and responded to in kind. I am, of course, borrowing that idea of nonnatural sign from Paul Grice

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and P.F. Strawson. For a translation of this material into an account of mutual recognition see J.M. Bernstein, “From Self-Consciousness to Community: Act and Recognition in the Master-Slave Relationship,” in The State and Civil Society, ed. Z.A. Pelczynski (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 14–39. 17. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), chapter 1. 18. Showing how these are not just metaphorical expressions is the effort of the next section. 19. G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. Walter Cerf and H.S. Harris (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1977), 145. 20. These two objections are from Paul Franks, “The Discovery of the Other,” 90. Franks is aware that Fichte regards his notion of body as the centerpiece of an answer to such questions, but is not persuaded. My assumption is that by showing the role of the body in the constitution of both freedom and otherness, license to play the role Fichte intends for it can be granted. 21. Lucy O’Brien, “On Knowing One’s Actions,” in Agency and Self-Awareness: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, ed. Johannes Roessle and Naomi Eilan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 359. 22. O’Brien, “On Knowing One’s Actions,” 363. 23. For a defense of mimesis along these lines see Tom Huhn, Imitation and Society: The Persistence of Mimesis in the Aesthetics of Burke, Hogarth, and Kant (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), chapter 2. 24. Hegel, of course, acknowledges that the combatants must already recognize one another as persons [Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), § 187]; but this is something he simply takes for granted rather than feeling the need to explain it. 25. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 178. 26. The full reason that Fichte assigns the analysis of the appearance of the human body to anthropology is that it necessarily involves regarding it as an organism, and so a natural product, and hence standing in very specific relations of likeness to other natural organisms like plants and animals (72–74). But for Fichte, to provide an explanation of anything distinctly human through referencing the givenness of the natural world is dogmatism—the very opposite of idealism. The term “anthropology” thus covers over a multitude of philosophical sins. 27. For a more sophisticated version of the same argument which possesses a remarkable number of overlaps with Fichte, see Erwin W. Straus, “The Upright Posture,” Phenomenological Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 137–65. 28. For a nice handling of this criticism, see Robert Williams, “The Displacement of Recognition by Coercion in Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts,” New Essays on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 47–64.

4 “The Pure Notion of Recognition”: Reflections on the Grammar of the Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Michael Quante

The Phenomenology of Spirit is not only one of Hegel’s most influential works, it is indisputably one of the most seminal works in the history of philosophy altogether.1 Without doubt, Hegel’s masterpiece has lost nothing of its thought-provoking attractiveness to this day.2 It is certainly not exaggerated to claim that the section Hegel entitled “Selbständigkeit und Unselbständigkeit des Selbstbewusstseins; Herrschaft und Knechtschaft” [in Miller’s translation: “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage”] has attracted interpreters’ attention to a great extent. Whether as the grammar of social conflicts, as the basic structure of self-consciousness or as a discrete principle of practical philosophy, the conception of recognition Hegel develops in this section still enjoys ample interest by philosophers who seek a systematic foundation for their own reflections in Hegel’s work. The spectrum of rather work-immanent interpretations that are rather associatively connected with Hegel’s reflections is just as broad as is the thematic accentuation that is affiliated with this part of Hegel’s argumentation in the Phenomenology of Spirit.3 It would be presumptuous to try to add a new strand to the great traditions of interpreting the dialectic of lordship and bondage. And it would be just as presumptuous to claim to undertake a philosophical assessment of the various approaches to Hegel’s text with the aim of deciding which direction the accurate interpretation should take. Both would not just go far beyond the scope of a single contribution, but it would also exceed my philosophical potential considerably. Therefore, the aim of this contribution is far more modest. Basically, I want to try to obtain clarity about the meaning and scope of some central claims that concern the connection between self-consciousness, spirit, and recognition Hegel conceives. The 89

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procedure I want to follow can be characterized by two omissions and a fundamental conceptual premise. The first omission is that I will not try to thematize Hegel’s theory of recognition in its entire purview.4 It is not just the case that in the only posthumously published “Jenaer Systementwürfe” whose writing had preceded the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel developed a theory of recognition that is more comprehensive and in many respects more attractive than the corresponding passages in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Beyond this it is also the case that Hegel has propounded an alternative to his earlier practical philosophy as the theory of Objective Spirit. There are many kinds of recognitive relations to be found in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, whereas the concept of recognition does not function as an organizing principle. In that work, this role is reserved for the concept of the will. Something similar can be said for the Phenomenology of Spirit: even in sections following the ones chosen here, numerous relations can be understood as recognitive relations although Hegel does not try to correlate these in a close systematic way with the nexus of determination I am going to focus on exclusively in what follows. The second omission is that I will blind out the overall systematic context of the passage I am going to discuss within the Phenomenology of Spirit and I will ignore the argumentative target Hegel aims for with the work as a whole.5 Methodologically this is, of course, not unproblematic. But I think it possible to abstract in such a way, for the claims that interest me in the following are all placed on the same “narrative level” of the Phenomenology of Spirit. As is well known, within this work of Hegel one has to distinguish precisely between the passages in which Hegel portrays the self-experience of the natural consciousness on its way to Absolute Knowing, and those passages in which the philosophical consciousness that already disposes of this standpoint gives a kind of meta stage direction to the reader as to the conceptual development that is performed in the Phenomenology of Spirit. The statements that are subject of my reflections in this contribution all belong to this second sort, so that I can, on the one hand, ignore the complication of the perspective of the natural consciousness. On the other hand, those of Hegel’s claims I am interested in all belong to the same stage of development, so that I do not have to deal with the complicated problems of the conceptual development Hegel unfolds dialectically. This twofold exclusion of the larger nexus and context of Hegel’s reflections has at least the advantage that the focus on one single problem can be pursued in a methodologically proper way. As anybody who tries to understand Hegel’s arguments in detail knows, this is a gain not to be underestimated. How fruitful such a detailed study actually is eventually depends on the chosen section and on the systematic perspective under which one approaches this brick of Hegel’s work. The fundamental conceptual premise that will guide my reflections in the following is this: the “pure Notion

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of recognition” (185) that Hegel develops in the beginning of the section “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage,” contains a central, social ontological insight of Hegel’s: the social constitutedness of individual self-consciousness.6 Thus I will deal neither with the ethical dimension of the principle of recognition, nor with the dialectic of recognition as grammar of social conflicts. I rather want to understand how Hegel conceives of the relation between self-consciousness and spirit, when he presents it to us as “the process of Recognition” (178). Actually, one should expect that this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy has been explicated thoroughly in the literature, since every treatment of his conception of recognition presupposes the clarification of the ontological relations. But this impression beguiles. For there prevails a—to use a Hegelian term—”doubled” fundamental confusion about the status of this relation. Manfred Frank, for instance, charges Hegel for dissolving subjectivity in intersubjectivity in his conception, whereas Jürgen Habermas states in direct opposition to Frank and in view of Hegel’s thought after the Phenomenology of Spirit that the interactive and intersubjectivistic account of the Jena years is reduced to a monological conception of spirit.7 Besides this first discrepancy one finds, first and foremost connected with the names of Karl Popper and Ernst Tugendhat, a second solecism. Here I mean to refer to the conflation of ethical and ontological questions.8 Hegel’s ontological thesis about the dependence of individual self-consciousness is interpreted as an ethical thesis about the normative primacy of the social over individual autonomy, thus as a totalitarianism that threatens the open society or, as Tugendhat has formulated it, as ‘peak of perversion’ [“Gipfel der Perversion”].9 With the following reflections I want to try to clarify the material ambiguities, on which the mutually incompatible interpretations of Frank and Habermas are based, by way of a detailed analysis of Hegel’s claims. In so doing, I will confine myself to the ontological dimension of the problem and blind out the ethical assessment of Hegel’s claim about the nexus between I and We, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of Hegel’s conception of this nexus. I begin with the “Notion of Spirit” (177) that is, according to Hegel, “already [ . . . ] before us” (ibid.) in the complete realization of the three moments of self-consciousness. Second, I will analyze the “notion of self-consciousness” (176), in order to then, in the third step, be able to interpret Hegel’s equation of “the duplicating of self-consciousness in its oneness” with the “Notion of recognition” (185) as a social ontological thesis.

I. THE NOTION OF SPIRIT If one looks for a concise definition of the concept “spirit” at the beginning of the sixth section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, which is dedicated to the

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spirit, then one realizes first of all that Hegel does not try hard to define this concept that is central for his philosophy. But in the sentence that summarizes the first section, we do find something like a succinct definition: “But essence that is in and for itself, and which is at the same time actual as consciousness and aware of itself, this is Spirit” (438). One of the reasons why Hegel does not have to introduce the concept of spirit explicitly anymore, but that he can explain it with this statement—as we shall see—in terms of the structure of self-consciousness, is that the concept of spirit has already been introduced in the context of the selfconsciousness chapter. This expository procedure of Hegel can be justified in view of the overall composition of the Phenomenology of Spirit, for the concept of spirit is introduced on the narrative level of philosophical consciousness. But there remains the question about the systematic reasons that have prompted Hegel to include the concept of spirit in the interplay of the concept of self-consciousness and the pure concept of recognition. In the passages that are relevant for the present purposes, this anticipation to the concept of spirit occurs twice. Both times Hegel refers to his conception of spirit, in order to characterize the intersubjective structure of self-consciousness that manifests itself in the relation of recognition. In this vein, he almost casually refers to the concept of spirit: “The detailed exposition of the Notion of this spiritual unity in its duplication will present us with the process of Recognition” (178). A more exact interpretation of the content of this statement can only be given in the third step of our reflections, when we turn to the “pure Notion of recognition” (185). Hegel’s second reference to his conception of spirit can be found in the context of his explication of the concept of self-consciousness and is more extensive. After having developed, as we shall analyze in detail in our second step, that the structure of self-consciousness can only manifest itself in the interaction of two self-consciousnesses, Hegel writes: “With this, we already have before us the Notion of Spirit. What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is” (177). Hegel here distinguishes precisely, as I want to point out, between the level of conceptual connections, as they are present for the philosophical consciousness, and the experience of (natural) consciousness itself. The first paragraphs of the section “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage” (178–84) also belong to the level of philosophical consciousness. This becomes clear through the fact that Hegel afterwards leads over to the other level, by saying that the “pure Notion of recognition, of the duplicating of self-consciousness in its oneness”, that has been described up to that point, must now be seen as its process “appears to self-consciousness.” (185) Hegel’s description of the nexus between self-consciousness, recognition, and spirit as objects of experience of the natural consciousness is, as said at the beginning, not the subject of this contribution. The following is focused on

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the nexuses Hegel formulates on the standpoint of philosophical consciousness, the nexuses I want to interpret as a social ontological conception. This said, I return to the quote in which Hegel introduces the “Notion of spirit” and defines the spirit as “absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (177). Here Hegel formulates an ontological thesis: the spirit is, analogous to the subsequent remarks in the spirit chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, characterized as absolute substance. This substance is determined as the unity of two self-consciousnesses that differ from one another. Hegel describes this unity with the famous phrase “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” whose fame I think is conversely proportional to the clarity of its material content. It is obvious that the single self-consciousnesses are, as moments, ontologically dependent with respect to the spirit as absolute substance. At the same time these self-consciousnesses are characterized as free and independent from the spirit. Furthermore, Hegel claims that the individual selfconsciousnesses are to be conceived in their freedom and independence as the opposite of spirit. And finally he holds that the spirit is the unity of the independent self-consciousnesses. This ontological constellation can, so I suppose, neither be sufficiently captured according to the part-whole model, nor can it be philosophically elucidated exclusively according to the substance-accidence or the substance-moment model. Hegel’s reference to an ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and to a ‘We’ that is ‘I’ expresses his attempt to make visible this ontological nexus in its specific structure. But what exactly does this phrase mean? The rest of this contribution is dedicated to developing a plausible interpretation of this famous phrase on the basis of Hegel’s analysis of the concept of self-consciousness on the one hand and his explication of the pure concept of recognition on the other. This interpretation is meant to provide the basis of a systematically up-to-date and attractive social ontological position.

II. THE NOTION OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS To bring light into the darkness we must now get clear on the concept of self-consciousness while blinding out two aspects of Hegel’s remarks which he introduces in a complicated way in the first paragraphs of the chapter “The Truth of Self-Certainty.” Neither Hegel’s justification that the concept of self-consciousness must manifest itself as “Life” (168), nor the connection between self-consciousness and “Desire” (174), can be reconstructed in the following.10

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The fact that empirical self-consciousnesses exist as living organisms is therefore accepted without going into the details of Hegel’s attempt to explain this fact philosophically.11 Thus we decouple the concept of “genus” (172), which will be relevant for the analysis of Hegel’s dialectic of recognition and his concept of spirit, from possible connotation in the philosophy of nature and interpret it solely according to the scheme of universal and instantiation.12 In view of the constitution of self-consciousness as desire we accept the following thesis of Hegel as a premise: self-consciousness is primarily a practical phenomenon, that is, it should be analyzed as a volitional attitude.13 Hegel here assents to reflections by Fichte who could show both in the Foundations of Natural Right of 1796 and in The System of Ethics in accordance with the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre published two years later that self-consciousness is possible only on the basis of volitional attitudes. Hegel’s Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes [Jena Philosophy of Spirit], that was written in 1805–1806 but was never published in his lifetime, provides an analysis of the will that in this respect corresponds with his later theory of the will in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right.14 Given the practical orientation of self-consciousness qua will it can be shown that the structure of consciousness remains an integral part of self-consciousness. In other, non-Hegelian words: the conceiving of oneself as a willing subject that realizes its intentions by acting implies the assumption of a reality that is independent from willing.15 This assumption is not just a precondition of the agent’s self-understanding; it also preserves the basic structure of consciousness that is characterized precisely by the presumption of an objective sphere independent of capacities of subjectivity. At the same time, as Hegel holds in line with Fichte, only with the help of such object consciousness is it possible to explicate the basic structure of self-consciousness. I adopt this assumption that is generally characteristic for German Idealism and that can be called the primacy of the practical and its pragmatist root, without justifying it further.16 Hegel interprets self-consciousness according to the subject-object model and is therefore reliant on integrating the assumption of an independent object as an integral element into his model of self-consciousness. He accomplishes this by assuming the volitional constitution of self-consciousness. I will also avail myself of the subject-object model in the following and will move on to the analysis of first-personal propositional attitudes in the third step. Whoever competently and correctly uses the word “I” in English thereby refers firstly direct, that is, without employing identifying designators, to himself.17 Secondly, the speaker knows that by “I” he refers to himself. These two aspects of self-reference in the first person singular can be found in Hegel’s characterization of the I when he writes: “The ‘I’ is the content of the connection and the connecting itself” (166). Since self-consciousness

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is conceived according to the subject-object model, the self-reference must refer to something that, qua referential object, is distinguished from the act of referring. At the same time this referential object is constituted by the self-referring act and the subject that performs this act knows it as an object constituted in such a way. Therefore the referring I excompasses this other (⫽ itself in the role of the content of referring) and knows itself as identical with the object—this is the additional condition guaranteed in the correct usage of “I”. Thus the structural preconditions for self-consciousness are such that there is a difference between the role of referring and the role of being the referential object (hereby the structure of consciousness is retained in self-consciousness). This presupposed difference must, at the same time, be ontologically deflated in the structure of self-consciousness or, as Hegel puts it, it must become a “moment” in the overall structure (cf. 167).18 It is only on this condition or in this form that the subject can knowingly refer to itself as itself. The independence of the object and the sublation of this independence can, and here Hegel follows Fichte, only be brought together when the first-personal self-reference is interpreted as a volitional and not just as an epistemic attitude. And since the I knows itself as the unity of these two tokens in the moment of referring and being the referential object, it is present to itself as a “genus”, that is, as a universal with instantiations.19 In order to see the material reason why the structure of self-consciousness must be socially constituted, we need a further premise that Hegel also takes over from Fichte. The first-personal self-reference and the selfconceptualization of a self-consciousness as an I resulting thereby is interpreted as autonomy, that is, as an act of self-constitution of those determinations that the I attributes to itself qua I.20 Put in Hegel’s terms: an I is “self-contained, and there is nothing in it of which it is not itself the origin” (182). If we now ask of what sort a reference must be for there to arise a structure that can count as an instantiation of this concept of self-consciousness, so one can say with Hegel that a self-consciousness must negate its referential object in its independence. It must conceive of itself as identical with that object for there to be self-consciousness. This sublation of the independence of the referential object must, at the same time, be connected with the overcoming of a resistance in which the objectuality [Gegenständlichkeit] or independence of the object appears. This is the material reason why Hegel treats desire, which is the basic form of all volitional attitudes, as a necessary implication of self-consciousness. This object is, at the same time, supposed to be nothing else than the pure I, and that is, the content of autonomous self-reference. This is why the structure of self-consciousness is instantiated only on the following two conditions: the object to be sublated must, first, be of the same kind, i.e. a self-consciousness (otherwise the assumption

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of identity and the further assumption of identity of genus would not be ensured). And since, as is presupposed, autonomy belongs to the nature of first-personal self-reference, the negation of the independence of the object that is obtained through desire may, secondly, not be an external interference or infringement. For if the I qua willing subject conceived its object as externally determined, it would miss the adequate self-conceptualization of itself as a self-determining being. But this is, as both Fichte and Hegel believe, the essence of first-personal self-reference. Such an autonomous self that negates the presupposed independence of its object in the volitional attitude can establish an adequate self-reference in this sublation only if the referential object is, first, realized and recognized to be a self-consciousness, and if this referential object, second, performs the negation required within this structure autonomously, that is, within itself (cf. 175). On the premises Hegel sets for an instantiation of the concept of self-consciousness, this concept can only be instantiated in the interaction of two self-consciousnesses. In other words: the concept of self-consciousness is adequately instantiated only if a “self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness.” (177) This is the meaning of Hegel’s remark that the self-consciousness “achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.” (175) With this result we are now in a position to understand why the adequate instantiation of self-consciousness in fact already has the structure of spirit, of being with itself in another. What is still open is the question as to how this connects with the entanglement of I and We. This can be elucidated in a third step of analysis in which we shall include the structure of the “process of recognition.”

III. THE PURE NOTION OF RECOGNITION Up to this point, and so we can summarize the reflections undertaken in the first two steps, we get the following situation. The concept of selfconsciousness, or the self-consciousness as a universal, can only be instantiated in a situation in which two empirical self-consciousnesses interact in a certain way. The entanglement of the universal level of self-consciousness and concrete, empirical self-consciousnesses that are each free for themselves and that at the same time interact in a certain way fulfils the characterization Hegel has given of the spirit as absolute substance. With this we can give a first interpretation of the formula of the I that is We and the We that is I. The instantiation of the concept of selfconsciousness requires an overall structure that can only be realized through the interaction of two self-consciousnesses. Understood this way, the concept of self-consciousness, the I, can be instantiated only as a We. But if two self-consciousnesses each instantiate this required structure, then

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they together are an instantiation of the concept of self-consciousness: a We that is I. If one follows the analysis developed up to this point, then Hegel’s reflections show that not every interaction of a self-consciousness with another self-consciousness forms an instantiation of the concept of self-consciousness. This requires a specific kind of interaction. In Hegel’s famous slogan this interaction is represented by or within the We about whose constitution we have so far not got to know much. If one does not want to reduce the talk of We to the thesis that the concept of self-consciousness is instantiated by every kind of interaction between at least two self-consciousnesses, then one must ask, firstly, what kind of interaction Hegel envisages with the talk of “We.” This is where, so my interpretive proposal, Hegel’s analysis of the “process of recognition” comes into play. For—and this is my first thesis—in the fourth double significance of the process of recognition that Hegel identifies in the Phenomenology, we find the specific kind of interaction between two self-consciousnesses that is necessary and sufficient for the instantiation of the concept of selfconsciousness. Hegel thus provides, so we can put this point, an analysis of we-intentions in terms of his theory of recognition, an analysis that is of systematic interest for the contemporary social philosophical debate about we-intentions and collective action. Beyond this there is a problem that has long been an issue of fierce controversy in the debate on Hegel’s practical philosophy. The second question to be answered is how Hegel envisages the dependence relations between individual self-consciousness and spirit. One indisputably finds the talk about the spirit as absolute substance and about the single self-consciousnesses as mere moments of it in his texts. Some have interpreted this as an expression of the ethical devaluation of the individual subject in favor of a—somehow conceived—collective entity or as an expression of totalitarianism.21 I will not discuss the ethical aspects of this question, but rather concentrate on the elucidation of the ontological relations as Hegel describes them in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Because there we find, and this is my second thesis, an explicit statement about the two kinds of relations through which selfconsciousnesses are constituted. (i) Hegel’s Analysis of the We The “many and varied” (178) entanglements of the interaction between the two empirical self-consciousnesses A and B, through which the concept of self-consciousness can only be instantiated, must according to Hegel be depicted as “process of Recognition” (178). In this process the “pure Notion of Recognition” (185) manifests itself, that is, through recognition in the form as it is perspicuous for the philosophical consciousness. The perspective of A

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and B that will later in the text be the subject, for instance, of the dialectic of lord and slave, is not yet relevant to the context of our discussion. Hegel sets off four “ambiguities” in this process of recognition.22 The first three concern the basic dialectical structure of the self-consciousness that is conceived within the subject-object model—first the need of an object as an object, whose independence is secondly negated, and this negation is therewith, thirdly, to be performed autonomously in itself. We have already come across this structure in the analysis of the pure concept of selfconsciousness, so it does not help us here. But the fourth ambiguity Hegel then explicates (182–83) is of a different kind than the first three are. Hegel himself emphasizes this by pointing to the fact that up to that point (with respect to the first three ambiguities) recognition has only been imagined “as the action of one self-consciousness” (182). But since the third constitutive condition for self-consciousness requires that the self-consciousness that is made object performs its negation itself, it is conceptually necessary that this recognition on the part of A “has itself the double significance of being both its own action and the action of the other [—B—] as well” (182). Now Hegel takes up the perspective of A and B on their own doing and the doing of the other, in order to explicate the interdependence of the two recognitive actions of A and B as “parts” of a process of recognition. I will come back to the talk about “parts” at a later stage. At this point I would first like to explicate the grammar of the We that I think can be found in the following statement: “Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same” (182). In order not to make the structure more complicated than it already is factually and in order to be able to articulate the first-personal self-reference explicitly, we describe this process from A’s perspective: (i)

(ii)

I realize that B acts towards me with a certain intention X which contains, first, the insight that I in fact act with the same intention X towards B, and that, second, requires and presupposes that I have a specific attitude Y about B, and that is, third, the motive for B’s action in which his intention X is realized. I treat B factually and intentionally in the X-way and intentionally take on the Y-attitude about him, because B does this and because B requests this specific action from me.

A and B here meet one another with the attitude of conceiving of themselves and their interaction partner as autonomous self-consciousnesses. The interaction thus implies on the one hand the recognition of the free self-determination of the respective other, so that the interaction implies a self-confinement on both sides. On the other hand, because A and B con-

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ceive of themselves as such autonomous agents, this attitude contains the request towards the other to confine himself in order to let room for the other. This structural analysis of the intentions of A and B does thereby not thematize the concrete contents of their intentional attitudes, but presuppositions of their recognitive or their communicative action. Here it makes no difference whether I ask B to open the door by employing reason to appeal to him as a rational subject, or whether B asks me to respect his moral claims. What is important is that A and B conceive of their influence on the respective other and express it in such a way that the addressee realizes that he is granted the room for free self-determination that is necessary for him as an autonomous subject.23 In this structure A and B both conceive of themselves and the respective other as autonomous self-consciousness, so that an entanglement24 of firstpersonal I-Intentions takes place: “They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other” (184). From the viewpoint of the philosophical consciousness, but not from the viewpoint of A and B themselves, the structure of the We and, at the same time, the basic form of the structure of the spirit are thereby instantiated.25 For the success condition for the instantiation of this basic structure is the symmetric entanglement of A’s and B’s actions or, as Hegel puts it: “Action by one side only would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both” (182). This is, as Hegel elaborates at the same place, a specific form of action which “is indivisibly the action of one as well as of the other” (183). Hegel’s description of the way this “process . . . appears to self-consciousness” (185) is not the topic of this contribution. The course of development must—this much results from the structure of the pure concept of recognition—lead to the situation that the We-structure that is already instantiated for the philosophical consciousness also becomes the object for the two relata of this structure, that is, for A and B themselves. In other words: the subsequent course of Hegel’s analysis must show how A and B can proceed from an entanglement of their respective I-intentions to an explicit formulation of a We-intention in which the presuppositional basic structure Hegel has identified becomes thematic for the involved agents themselves. The other problem that is still open is the following. Does Hegel provide an answer to the question about the ontological relations between A’s and B’s actions? This question is the topic of the concluding reflections. (ii) Two Kinds of Recognitive Relation I want to suggest interpreting the first sentence of the section on the “Independence and Dependence of Self-consciousness” as Hegel’s answer to this problem. This opening statement fulfils the same function as the main

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texts of the paragraphs in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopedia; they express Hegel’s core theses and argumentative targets: Das Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem, und dadurch, daß es für ein anderes an und für sich ist; d.h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes (127, 33–35) Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged. (178)

In the passage after the semicolon we find the thesis that self-consciousness is constituted by recognitive relations. Only within a recognitive relation is an entity a self-consciousness. To put it in Fichtean terms: its being consists in its being recognized. Miller’s English translation is, although it does capture the constitutive relation, not quite precise at this point, for it formulates only a necessary condition. It says: “it exists only in being acknowledged” (178). A smaller interpretive challenge lies at the beginning of this statement. We can read the sentence as saying that Hegel is here talking about “an empirical self-consciousness A” which is recognized by another empirical self-consciousness B. Another possible reading would be to look for a recognitive relation between the self-consciousness as a universal and something that is another for the universal. But this reading does not seem to me to make sense in the context at hand, for it refers to a development that is only accomplished in the spirit chapter.26 Let us thus take Hegel’s statement in such a way that it is about the recognitive relation between two empirical self-consciousnesses A and B. Now, the central point for my purposes is that Hegel distinguishes between two recognitive relations in this sentence: the when-relation and the by-relation. This way we get two statements: (RR-1) A self-consciousness exists in and for itself when it so exists for another. (RR-2) A self-consciousness exists in and for itself by the fact that it so exists for another.

It could be held against the thesis that Hegel here distinguishes between two kinds of recognitive relations that this formulation is only a rhetorical intensification or an explicative phrase. This simple interpretation is supported by the fact that the semantic content of the term “when” is a proper part of the semantic content of the term “by”.27 I want to put forward three reactions against this objection. First of all there is, as far as I know, in Hegel’s entire oeuvre no statement to be found where he uses the terms “when” and “by” together. In view of the prominent place of this statement I take this not to be a mere coincidence. Second, the semantics of these two relations is only partial, so that one can rightly

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ask whether Hegel does not exactly activate the semantic difference. And there are, third, good systematic and from Hegel’s point of view suggesting reasons to employ this semantic difference in order to express his specific thesis concerning the intersubjective constitutedness of self-consciousness through recognition. Miller, the translator of the English edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit, saw this similarly and translated the sentence as follows: “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another” (178). Even if one has to say that the English translation rather points to the meaning of the German than reflecting it, regarding the translation of the term “indem” as “when” and “dadurch, dass” as “by the fact that,” Miller has certainly captured something essential. “Indem” indicates a contemporaneity Miller reflects with “when.” This corresponds to the Latin origin interim or interea: the first of these refers to the falling of an event within the stretch of time of an action; the latter refers to the occurrence of an action contemporaneously with another. I suppose that Hegel’s use of “indem” goes back to “interea”, since he envisages a constitutive relation between two contemporaneously occurring actions. The expression “dadurch, dass” can instead, in the meaning that does not coincide with the meaning of “indem,” reflect a temporal succession and it especially stands for a causal relation. Even this is expressed in Miller’s translation, for he uses “by” which—especially when it is distinguished from “when”—indicates a causal relation. This is not contradicted by the fact that Miller, in reflecting the “dadurch, dass” construction of the German original, shifts to the phrase “by the fact.” For in everyday causal explanations we frequently appeal to facts as causes.28 Thus I want to suggest understanding Hegel’s core thesis in such a way that a self-consciousness A is constituted when it is firstly—actually, contemporaneously—recognized by a self-consciousness B. Furthermore, selfconsciousness A needs the recognition of self-consciousness as a trigger, to say it with Fichte: an impulse or a request, in order to be able to constitute itself as self-consciousness. Hegel takes up Fichte’s theory of recognition with the “by” relation. This is grounded in an eventually causal and therefore diachronic relation: an entity B that has already conceived of itself as a self-consciousness activates an entity B that formerly disposed only over a potential or latent self-consciousness, by way of a request (thus self-consciousness B is temporally prior to self-consciousness A). This element of the theory of recognition can be called its individual-genetic aspect. But this aspect of initialization is for Hegel, at least on the level of the analysis of the pure concept of recognition, not in the foreground because this constellation is asymmetric and it presupposes the existence of an actual self-consciousness.

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At the same time we have found in view of Hegel’s analysis of the intentions of A and B that A treats B in a certain way because A identifies B’s intentions and beliefs as the right ones. This can also be conceived as a causal relation, so that in any case we have to integrate causal elements into the movement of recognition.29 Because of the requirement of symmetry we thereby obtain a synchronic structure of mutually conditional elements that instantiate the required structure of recognition as a whole.30 If I am right this causal dimension concerns the motivational side of recognition, that is, the causal interaction of A and B is necessary for A and B to develop the intentions and beliefs necessary for recognition.31 In order to establish his thesis about the social constitutedness of self-consciousness as a holistic conception, Hegel must go beyond this individual genetic and motivational causal relation that is expressed by the “by relation.” This is achieved, so I suppose, through his indication of a “when” relation that through delineation from the “by” relation is first determined in its particularity only ex negative. From our analysis of the We structure we know that we are here dealing with the contemporaneity of two actions that are constitutive for one another in the sense that being moments of an overall structure is part of their identity conditions as individual doings. Jaegwon Kim and Alvin Goldman have shown in contemporary analytical philosophy of action and ontology of events that there are such constitutive, noncausal dependence relations between events.32 When I, for instance, greet a friend by raising my arm I have performed two actions that stand in a constitutive relation to one another. I suppose that Hegel has discovered precisely this kind of ontological dependence relation in his analysis of the relation between self-consciousness and spirit, a relation that presupposes a social space of rules and conventions—an ethical life—in which an action of one kind can only be performed by performing an action of another kind.33 Alvin Goldman has rediscovered and systematically adapted this kind of relation for the philosophy of action and has depicted the dependence relations that are constituted by social contexts as act trees. As far as I see, Hegel does not provide a further analysis of this kind of constitutive relation in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This is only developed in the later theory of the will in Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right. There we also find vertical recognitive relations in which at least one of the two recognizing self-consciousnesses conceives of itself as a We.34 The movement of recognition in the Phenomenology is instead limited to horizontal recognition of entangled I attitudes. But these provide, so I want to conclude, a great social ontological potential which Hegel realized systematically in his later theory of objective spirit.35

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NOTES 1. I wish to thank David Schweikard and Andreas Vieth for their critical reading of earlier drafts of this essay and numerous suggestions. 2. Cf. the contributions to Dean Moyar and Michael Quante, eds., Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’: A Critical Guide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 3. Cf. Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2000). 4. Cf. Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg, Germany: Alber, 1979); Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung (Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta, 1982); and Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1998). 5. Cf. Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes, and Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 6. I quote from the following edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit by giving the section numbers: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press 1977), and from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Part II, translated by A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press 2004) (cited as E). 7. Cf. exemplarily Manfred Frank, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbsterkenntnis (Stuttgart, Germany: P. Reclam, 1991), 31 and 415; and Jürgen Habermas, “Arbeit und Interaktion” in his Technik und Wissenschaft als‚ Ideologie’ (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1968), 9–47. 8. Cf. Michael Quante, “Personal Autonomy and the Structure of the Will,” in Jussi Kotkavirta, ed., Right, Morality, Ethical Life: Studies in G.W.F. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä Press, 1997), 45–74. 9. Cf. Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1979), 349; for a critical answer to this reproach that can rely on a profound knowledge of Hegel’s texts, see Ludwig Siep, “Kehraus mit Hegel?” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 35, (1981): 518–31, and Siep, Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1992), 217–39. 10. Cf. Robert Brandom, “Selbstbewusstsein und Selbst-Konstitution” in Hegels Erbe, ed. C. Halbig et al. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004), 46–77. 11. An examination of Hegel’s argumentation would inevitably have to deal with the question as to whether this connection is conceptually necessary or contingent, which brings up the question about the possibility of “artificial life” and machines that are equipped with self-consciousness. 12. In his later system Hegel interprets the natural philosophical relation between single organisms of the same kind as a preliminary stage to processes of recognition; see E § 367 and § 369. 13. In the overall course of the Phenomenology, self-consciousness is introduced as an epistemological model. But this is compatible with the above statement because according to Hegel the volitional structure has a cognitive dimension; I thank RolfPeter Horstmann for requesting this clarification.

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14. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III: Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes (Hamburg, Germany: Meiner, 1987). 15. Hegel develops this argument in more detail in his later Philosophy of Right; see Michael Quante, Hegel’s Concept of Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter 1. 16. This pragmatist depth dimension of Hegel’s philosophy must be distinguished from the application of pragmatist argumentative figures within the system; see Michael Quante, “Spekulative Philosophie als Therapie?” in Hegels Erbe, ed. C. Halbig et al. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004), 324–50, and Quante, “Hegels pragmatistische Ethikbegründung” in Ethikbegründungen zwischen Universalismus und Relativismus, ed. K. Engelhard and D. H. Heidemann (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 231–50. 17. With this I have formulated a systematic and an interpretive claim I cannot fully defend in this essay. The thesis that “I” refers directly has not been undisputed systematically in contemporary analytical philosophy of language; for an overview see H. N. Castaneda (1987): “Self-consciousness, Demonstrative Reference, and the Self-Ascription View of Believing,” Philosophical Perspectives 1 (1987): 405–454, and—with respect to Hegel’s later theory of the will—Quante, Hegel’s Concept of Action, 61–64. 18. The phrase “ontologically deflated” is to be understood as the thesis that the entities in question are not entirely independent from one another, but stand in an ontological dependence relation. 19. In his analysis of self-consciousness Hegel makes use of the difference between “I” as a general indexical term (type) and a concrete individual token of assertion which he already called on in his critique of sense certainty at the beginning of the Phenomenology of Spirit. The further course of the self-consciousness chapter comes with the challenge to show how this difference can become thematic for single empirical self-consciousnesses. This necessarily requires, Hegel suggests, both the spatiotemporal bodily individuatedness of a self-consciousness A and the material self-demarcation of A against another self-consciousness B. 20. Although the analyses of self-consciousness and the analyses of autonomy of Fichte and Hegel are materially closely intertwined, these do constitute two different philosophical tasks which have to be distinguished but should not be entirely separated from one another in a systematically oriented interpretation. 21. Cf. Michael Quante, “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel—Individuelle Freiheit und sittliche Gemeinschaft,” in Klassiker der Philosophie heute, ed. A. Beckermann and D. Perler (Stuttgart, Germany: P. Reclam, 2004), 419–38; Quante, “Hegels pragmatistische Ethikbegründung”; and Quante and D. Schweikard, “‘Leading a Universal Life’: The Systematic Relevance of Hegel’s Social Philosophy,” History of the Human Sciences 22 (2009), 58–78. 22. The talk of a “process” is here meant in the double meaning of the explication of the concept of recognition through a social interaction of recognizing. 23. Here is a close material connection with Grice’s and Meggle’s analysis of communicative intentions; see G. Meggle, Grundbegriffe der Kommunikation (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983). 24. A’s and B’s I intentions are mutually entangled because the content of B’s I intention is present in the content of A’s I intention (and vice versa).

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25. With this Hegel goes beyond both the individualist analysis of communication and collective actions and Searle’s treatment of the We as a primitive that can not be analyzed further. 26. It does indeed correspond with Hegel’s explication of the concept of spirit (cf. 177) and materially belongs to the context of dealing with the question as to how empirical self-consciousnesses relate to their own social constitutedness. To put in the words of the previous section: how empirical self-consciousnesses move from the entanglement of their I intentions to the explicit formulation of We intentions in which the intersubjective presuppositions are given for themselves. 27. For the following cf. the entries in J. Grimm and W. Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, electronic version prepared by H.W. Barz, Frankfurt am Main: 2004, and for the Latin origins of the expressions of relations: K. E. Georges, Handwörterbuch Lateinisch-deutsch (Berlin: Digitale Bibliothek: 2002), 69. 28. Cf. the analyses in Jonathan Bennett, Events and Their Names (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1988), chapter III. 29. If one assumes that Hegel (as today for instance Jaegwon Kim or Alvin Goldman do) subscribes to a fine-grained ontology of events in which events are conceived as instantiations of generic properties in spatiotemporal locations, then his distinction between the “when”—and the “by”—relation opens the possibility of combining a causal theory of action with noncausal dependence relations between actions to which noncausal explanations of actions can refer; cf. Quante, Hegel’s Concept of Action, 177–85, for the rejection of the thesis that Hegel accepted the logical-connection argument and therefore could not endorse a causal theory of action. 30. This is about a logical-semantical conditional relation (the entanglement of I intentions) and a causal conditional relation between the single moments of the interaction between A and B. For this reason one cannot analyze the causal moments in Hegel’s conception of recognition in the sense of causal generation as proposed by Alvin Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970). Presumably a reconstruction of Hegel’s theory that is oriented towards contemporary ontology of events must, on the premise of a fine-grained criterion of individuation, allow for the possibility that events can be proper parts of events; see Lawrence Lombard, Events: A Metaphysical Study (Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1986). This is why in the previous note I said that such a fine-grained ontology of events opens only the possibility of connecting causal with noncausal dependence relations. 31. This presupposes that there is a causal component inscribed in Hegel’s theory of perception. I do not see a principled obstacle in attributing to Hegel a complex theory about the acquisition of beliefs in which causal and noncausal relations are equally called on. Unfortunately I can here discuss neither Hegel’s ontology of events nor his theory of perception; for the latter see C. Halbig, Objektives Denken (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2002), and Willem de Vries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988). 32. Cf. Kim, “Noncausal Relations,” Nous 8 (1974): 41–52, and Goldman, A Theory of Human Action. 33. Cf. in general Robert Pippin “Taking Responsibility,” in Subjektivität und Anerkennung, ed. B. Merker (Paderborn, Germany: MENTIS, 2004), 67–80, and

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Pippin, “Hegels praktischer Realismus,” in Hegel Erbe ed. C. Halbig et al. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: 2004), 295–23. Hegel’s critique of Observing Reason’s theory of action verifies clearly that he conceives of actions as entities that are constituted within social practices; cf. Michael Quante, “‘Reason (. . .) apprehended irrationally’: Hegel’s critique of Observing Reason,” in Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’: A Critical Guide, ed. D. Moyar and Michael Quante (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 91–111. 34. Cf. Quante and Schweikard, “‘Leading a Universal Life’.” 35. A detailed ontological reconstruction of causal and noncausal dependence relations would have to show which entities stand in temporal succession and in a causal relation, and which entities stand in a simultaneous (or atemporal) and noncausal dependence relation to one another. That will without doubt require distinguishing more clearly between logical-semantical, noncausal, and causal dependence relations than Hegel himself does.

5 Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Contemporary Practical Philosophy Ludwig Siep

Since the philosophy of J. G. Fichte, the German term “recognition” (“Anerkennung”)1 has gained central philosophical significance. Fichte understands recognition as the mutual relation between self-conscious individuals, who limit their own realm of action to grant the possibility of self-determined actions to the other.2 If they do this regularly according to a general law, they are part of a legal relation, which, in Fichte’s view, is the only possible mutual relation between individuals as rational and at the same time sensitive beings. They cannot become aware of their own existence as individuals without an at least occasional incident of mutual recognition or without a free call for self-determined action. In his Jena philosophy of right of 1796–1797 and in his system of ethics following soon after (1798) Fichte elaborated further on this theory. But he confined it basically to legal relations and to relations of mutual moral recognition. At the same university only a few years later, Hegel took up the term recognition and the basic principles of Fichte’s account and developed them further. He established in his Jena writings on the philosophy of spirit a theory of recognition as a “movement,”3 which includes several different stages of the formation of self-consciousness as well as different stages of human cultural history. According to Hegel, this movement is a teleological process, which, if proceeding without interruptions, may lead the individuals to an awareness of their rational subjectivity and their position in a reasonably constituted legal, civil, and cultural community. In his concept of human cultural history, he includes a series of stages of dominion, organization of work, morality, right, state, and culture, which culminate in the legal and social relations of the modern European constitutional state of postrevolutionary times. 107

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Hegel’s best known text concerning recognition is the section A of the chapter on self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. Several passages about recognition in the Jena drafts, especially the writings on the philosophy of spirit from 1805–1806, are more differentiated phenomenologically speaking and clearer in method.4 However, in the following I will deal with the Phenomenology as a whole. In the first part of this text I will elaborate on the term, theory, and function of recognition. I am, however, not concerned with an accurate text interpretation, rather with a brief overview. In the second part I will concentrate on modern attempts of developing this theory of recognition further.

RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT As is widely known, the Phenomenology of Spirit fulfils a twofold function in Hegel’s system: on the one hand it is an introduction and on the other a negative demonstration—by refuting every alternative—of the truth of what Hegel calls the viewpoint of speculation. This position is a sort of “spirit monism” and it implies that all reality of nature as well as culture and thought is a process of “coming to itself,” that is to say, a process of unfolding and reflecting on a reasonable structure. This structure can be presented in its pure form as a holistic system of meanings in the Science of Logic. Unlike the former drafts, in which logic itself as criticism of the dualism of the categories of mind and being functions as the introduction, the Science of Logic, according to the Phenomenology of 1807, should follow as a second part of the system. In as far as the Phenomenology is already able to make the pure terms of logic transparent in the culturalhistoric process of ascendency to speculative knowledge, it is simultaneously a kind of overall view of the system. This is because it includes the most important phenomena and points of view of nature and the spirit in a systematic representation. This representation is, however, structured according to the aforementioned ascendency to the true stance—in Hegel’s terms, the “experience of consciousness”—and not according to purely innate aspects of the system.5 Moreover, with regard to recognition, in the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel distinguishes between the term and concrete figures of self-consciousness and the spirit, which belong to the movement of recognition. At the beginning of the chapter on self-consciousness, recognition is being exposed in its conceptual structure. But the complete movement is a teleological process. In the Phenomenology, it leads through various stages of failure and the resulting dialectical experience to the realized recognition of the spirit and eventually to absolute knowledge. However, Hegel only uses the term recognition in a few crucial points of the chapters on self-consciousness

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and spirit, especially paragraph B (subsection A) of the chapter about selfconsciousness and paragraph C of the chapter on spirit (subsection C, the conscience). At the beginning of the final section on absolute knowledge he explicitly goes back to these previous stages. For the general structure of the concept of recognition in the Phenomenology I consider the following points as crucial. 1 Hegel enlarges Fichte’s structure of mutual recognition between self-conscious individuals by adding a superior form of recognition between individuals and forms of community or social systems and institutions. This relation of recognition develops between “I” and “We.” On the one hand it is a necessary precondition for the interindividual relation—without integration into a primary group such as a family, individual self-consciousness could not be adequately developed. On the other hand, without recognition between individuals certain forms of communities and the development of a “we consciousness” would not be possible. Such a mutual presupposition is according to Hegel’s Logic of Essence no logical circle but a structure of self-organizing and explicating relations. 2 Hegel understands the relations of recognition on both levels as dialectical, in the sense that every party at the same time postulates and negates the other (constituting itself through the negation). This contradictory structure must be overcome by an increasing differentiation of the relation, in which terms and relations are being transformed into more complex ones, which are also simultaneously inclusive and exclusive relations. With regard to interpersonal relations, Hegel calls this a double significance (“Doppelsinn”). This means that in a certain way, every self-conscious being has its identity in another self-conscious being. It attributes features of consciousness to this other being, which confirms its own feature of consciousness. But the first one has to “negate” this otherness of self by reverting to itself and at the same time setting the other free. This is not possible simply through its own action; rather the other has to undergo the same process for itself or “through itself.” This is what Hegel calls the double sense of action, “being both its own action and the action of the other as well” (112).6 And this, again, in a twofold manner: the action must be an action against oneself and the other, as well as an action of oneself and the other. Self-consciousness demands to recognize oneself in the other by differentiating oneself from the other and this through mutual (cognitive and emotional) affirmation and liberation.

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3 This structure not only applies for the “I-other” but also for the “I-we” relation. However, in the Phenomenology it is not being demonstrated systematically according to the different forms of spirit but according to the process of experiencing the history of conscience. This process consists of the fact that the understanding of the world and of the self—in religion and art, morality and science—includes one-sided theses about true reality and human knowledge corresponding with it. They form both a historical and—sometimes in a reverse order—a systematical sequence. Belonging to these one-sided figures of conscience are a variety of social relationships, which try to realize recognition, but get trapped in practical contradictions. Hegel only deals with few of these under the explicit term recognition. But in many other forms the structure of the attempted and failed recognition could also be exposed. At his point I will only refer briefly to the well-known stages of the struggle of recognition and the master-slave relationship.7 Its function in the Phenomenology is to test the ontological thesis of self-consciousness claiming that true reality is not on the side of objects but within selfconsciousness or being-for-itself. This test has two components: on the one hand the self-conscious individual is obliged to confirm the significance of this pure being-for-itself in its “inner” relation to itself. This means that it has to show that this self-consciousness means everything, whereas—in a case of conflict—all other sides of its existence are without importance. Secondly, one has to demonstrate this to someone else, who is merely there to confirm the first individual’s freedom. Now Hegel follows the procedure of the Phenomenology in presenting the failure of this attempt at confirmation and its reversal (“Verkehrung”) into the opposite of the intended. He demonstrates this first by those, who, in battle, have actually put their self-consciousness above their life and have therefore become masters; then, Hegel demonstrates this from the point of view of those, who, having lost the fight, due to fear for their own life, have become slaves. The failure of the ontological position of the master-slave relationship holds true on both sides. The master’s attempt to govern the “otherness” by his self-consciousness ends in the impasse of neither being independent from objects (to be “prepared” by the servant) nor being able to bring free recognition about by force. The servant, on his part, reaches a first form of confirmation of the self’s freedom in the opposing other: in the object transformed by his labor and the master’s “spiritual” superiority. But working on nature only contains the precondition, not the certainty of experiencing freedom. As Hegel mentions at the beginning of the following section (cf. 119–20), the servant (“the serving consciousness”) still separates the objectivity of his independent actions in the things being worked on and the conscience of freedom, which he observes in the master.

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The actual step to the “consciousness in a new shape” (120) is being introduced only by the analyzing philosopher who recognizes that the union of the two components of free self-consciousness and his dominion of the things lies in a self-consciousness, for whom the actual reality of things manifests itself their conceptual form (119–20). In the spirit’s development this ontological thesis corresponds with classical philosophical positions such as stoicism and skepticism. In the writings of the Jena philosophy of spirit, the struggle for recognition was followed by the legal relationship. In historic perspective, this also applies to the Phenomenology, because for Hegel stoicism is the foundation of Roman law. However, in the Phenomenology this topic is dealt with at a much later level: in “Status of Law” (Rechtszustand), the last paragraph of the first part of the chapter on spirit. But here also the interpersonal legal relationship is just one aspect. In this chapter Hegel illustrates above all that the concept of the legal person as content of a system of state and society (for Hegel as manifested in the Roman Empire) is not sufficient and that its one-sided implementation must result in the opposite, that is to say absolute despotic rule. But also in this case the lacking interpersonal recognition, which is especially embodied in the structure of ownership in Roman family law (the pater familias as the owner of the members of his house), is only one aspect of the insufficient recognition of individuality in the system of the state. In the Phenomenology of 1807, after the chapter on the master-slave relation, Hegel does not develop the concept of mutual recognition between self-conscious individuals further under the heading of mutual recognition. He does not mention recognition until the chapter dealing with moral spirit and here he focuses especially on the relationship between conscience and the moral community, that is to say “I” and “we.” This does not mean, however, that the relation of recognition does not play a role in other chapters. But it is subordinated to the principal topic of the Phenomenology, which is the overcoming of the ontological and epistemological dualism between consciousness and object as well as between individual and general self-consciousness, or rather spirit. Pursuing this aim, Hegel focuses on two kinds of processes: first, on the increasing “subjectivation” of reality in terms of reason and the objective conceptual order, “coming to itself” in the knowing and acting subject (chapter “Reason” section A: “Observing reason”). Secondly, on the elevation of the principle of self-conscious individuality and personality to the standard of social order (self-examination of the forms of practical reason in section B). In the last chapters of the Phenomenology on Spirit, Religion and Absolute Knowledge, the two processes of subjectivation and self-realization converge in the content of what is considered to be final, absolute truth.

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From the perspective of the “movement of recognition”, even these final stages may be understood as levels of recognition between “I” and “we” and vice versa. “Practical” recognition of individual self-consciousness by other individuals, but also by social order and activity in the community, is not sufficient. The character of self-consciousness is to be recognized also by a subject independent of coincidental individuals. This corresponds with the religious term of an absolute spiritual being, which recognizes, or rather loves, individuals. But the movement of recognition exceeds the adoration of a “completely different” self beyond. The individual consciousness strives to unite itself with this god. Christendom teaches a process of separation and unification between God and mankind. In its postreformatory development it suspends God’s being beyond and reconciles him with the people of a religious and moral community.8 This community’s final legal and state institutional form is not systematically elaborated on in the Phenomenology—contrary to the earlier and later philosophy of mind—but it is already apparent in the critical form of treatment of classical ethical life and the alienated spirit of early modernity. At the end of this treatise, in the chapters on Reason and Spirit, there is again a practical form of recognition to be found—the relation between conscience and moral community. The recognition gained through this for Hegel already constitutes the nature of the absolute spirit: “the objectively existent Spirit, which beholds the pure knowledge of itself qua universal essence, in its opposite, in the pure knowledge of itself qua absolutely self-contained and exclusive individuality—a reciprocal recognition which is absolute Spirit” (408). The absolute spirit is in its highest form of the Christian religion in fact the spirit of the community, which is essentially one of moral education and reconciliation. At the end of the Phenomenology, in “Absolute Knowing” this knowledge about the unity of God and mankind overcomes the last opposition between self-awareness and object, that is to say the individual and conceptual reality. Because the recognition of conscience and of the moral community is presented as the completion of the practical side of recognition by Hegel, I will briefly comment on this passage. Hegel includes again the topics which already occupied him in his Frankfurt writings: the detachment and reconciliation of the “divergent” individual from the morally and legally integrated community. This dispute is represented in the Phenomenology by the discussions about the “genial” moral of the individual in the writings of the “Storm and Stress” and Romantic period.9 If morality lies in the autonomy of conscience, it may at any time come into conflict with generally accepted moral standards. The various constellations of this conflict in the section about morality lead to a “reconciliation” in the form of a mutual renunciation. The individual who insists on his conscience must admit the bias and the possible error in his decision. On the other hand the general moral awareness must

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acknowledge the decision of conscience, even in its nonconformity and “malice,” as a necessary moment of the spirit. Conscience and general lawfulness are acknowledged as two moments of a spirit which substantiates and develops in the individual decision. Hegel has not developed the practical and social forms of this reconciliation any further in the Phenomenology. If morality is founded in the autonomy of conscience, it may collide with general moral standards at any time. The different constellation of this conflict, which Hegel discusses in the section on morality, lead, however, to a reconciliation by mutual renunciation. The individual, which firmly relies on its conscience, needs to admit to the one-sidedness and possible error of its decisions. The general moral consciousness, on the other hand, needs to acknowledge the conscience’s decision, even in its nonconformity and “evilness,” as a necessary element of the common spirit. When the spirit of this community “beholds” itself in its “opposite,” “the absolutely self-contained individuality,” it constitutes a “reciprocal recognition, which is the absolute Spirit” (408). In Christianity as the most elevated form of religion this is the Holy Spirit within the religious community, which is above all one of mutual moral education and reconciliation. The statement in the final chapter (481–82) concerning the correspondence between this form of morality and the final form of Christian religion (purified by the Reformation and the Enlightenment) suggests that Hegel considers recognition as a form of moral spirit to be realized mostly in forms of enlightened religious morality. The congregation would then be the primary medium of mutual correction for public morality and private conscience. Rational religiousness is, however, only possible in a constitutional and welfare state with different estates. This is manifest in Hegel’s works on the philosophy of spirit from 1805 onwards. One could, however, doubt whether the recognition of “I” and “we” in these writings corresponds with the symmetrical structure inherent within the concept as discussed above.10

RECOGNITION IN CONTEMPORARY PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY During the past decades, the term recognition has been the subject of lively philosophical debate.11 Not only do interpretations of German Idealism focus on this subject, but also further systematic developments such as Charles Taylor’s, Axel Honneth’s or recently Paul Ricoeur’s. In the following I will distinguish between three different thematic complexes: 1. Recognition as mutual respect between autonomous persons, according to Kant’s and Fichte’s moral philosophy and philosophy of right. This subject of the conditions and boundaries of the relationship

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between autonomous persons, especially in the context of interdependency and asymmetrical distribution of competence, is also of major concern in modern applied ethics. 2. Recognition in the context of social psychology and philosophical research concerning the development of identity or authenticity. In his studies concerning psychological and social conditions of personal identity Jürgen Habermas combined this subject with the term recognition and the idealist tradition. Axel Honneth developed this thought further. 3. Recognition between groups of different worldviews and cultures in a multicultural community. This concerns not only legal toleration but also the integration of groups as well as individual members of the groups into one common identity. Hegel’s demanding term of recognition can be applied here to speak of the recognition of “I” in “we” as some sort of reconciliation. This is the direction in which especially the works of Charles Taylor are leading. Finally, I would like to return to my own attempt at conceiving recognition as a principle of practical philosophy and present, from my contemporary viewpoint, the limitations of this attempt. 1 Many modern theories of mutual respect between persons, which is often expressed with the term “recognition,” sort of trace back the way from Hegel to Fichte. Hegel regarded the concrete relationships of love, battle, mastership or in communities such as family, profession, or state as a process of gradual fulfillment of recognition. In many modern theories, however, the basic recognition of the other as the origin of a right to respect (self-originating claims, second-personal authority, etc.),12 which cannot be declined, forms the standard for all other social relations. The norms and activities of love and care, both in the family and in the state may lead, according to this view, to paternalistic patronizing, claiming objective values and institutions as pretexts in order to ignore the supposedly “irrational” wishes of the other. Today, such considerations have a particular significance in the discussions of applied ethics, especially medical ethics. In the medical context there has been a change of paradigms: from the asymmetrical relation of a paternalistic physician to the incompetent patient to the symmetrical relationship between autonomous partners. Crucial for this change was the principle of informed consent of the patient concerning therapeutic methods or medical research. However, there has been a similar development in the realms of education and professional relations.

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The theory of moral and legal recognition states that the attitude of respect for other people’s autonomy must generally be separate from the emotional relations and evaluations of their wishes and reasons. For instance, the declaration which has to be signed by participants in clinical trials contains a clause that they are allowed to withdraw at any time without having to give any reason and without having to fear reprisals, although in doing so they may harm the examining doctor and the research or therapy project.13 The “incomprehensibility” of the reasons for an action of the person affected is no reason for denying this person respect. In medical treatment, as another example, one might have to respect the renunciation of life-saving measures by members of a certain religion, even if this makes the obligation of appropriate medical therapy impossible.14 Or in the realm of education: if young people at the age of consent refuse religious education or a healthy diet, parents might have to accept decisions which in their view endanger the physical or spiritual future well-being of the adolescent. The fact that respect for persons takes its form in legal relations, which are directed at the legitimate interests and viewpoints of the persons in question, is certainly not contrary to Hegel’s concept. However, the question remains whether recognition in different social relations and institutions must and can always be judged by the same standards of rational relations between persons, or whether such an abstract criterion must be broadened by another which is more complex and grasps all forms of human life. The above-mentioned examples from medical treatment and education support the latter position: it is not possible to acknowledge the other as an autonomous patient without the physician’s benevolence, helpfulness, and care. Of course, such care must not turn into disregard or manipulation of the patient’s wish—including the wish to die. But respect must itself be coupled with an emotional regard for the other and adapted to the patient’s history and the distinctive features of an institution or group—such as hospitals or nursing homes. Finally one must, in memory of Hegel, be aware of the fact that humans are not independent monads, but the mutual relationship, the actions of the one or the other, changes its actors constantly and in dependency on each other. The same is true for the educational environment of people, such as family, living community, or educational institutions. The fact that in the professional realm, nondiscrimination cannot simply be reduced to a general legal and moral respect, but depends on a variety of other conditions—from the design of the local surroundings to emotional regard and enrichment through cultural diversity—has been the subject of many debates concerning the politics of antidiscrimination. In the concrete analysis of these problems, one has to find out whether mutual recognition between persons or rational beings as such is more than a negative criterion or a line of prohibition. But even if one favors a more concrete and differentiated theory such as Hegel’s, it is not definite

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that recognition has a teleological structure permitting the definition of the necessary levels and fulfilled form of recognition in smaller and larger communities. 2 The second stream of appropriation of the theory of recognition to be discussed here focuses, since the time of Hegel, with growing significance, on an aspect of interpersonal relations, namely the conditions of selfrealization in the sense of becoming a unique and irreplaceable character. Since Herder and Romanticism—consider for instance Friedrich Schlegel or Kleist—the question of individual self-discovery and self-expression has gained a meaning which surpasses the old ideals of fulfilling social duties or gaining everlasting peace of mind through the succession of Christ. The romantic translation of artistic creativity into morality, the antibourgeois ideals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the existential-philosophical rejection of “somebody” (Heidegger’s “man”) in favor of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) and the contemporary popularity of terms such as selfchoice and self-realization continue a tradition which has been interpreted in depth by Charles Taylor (on a partially critical note), Jürgen Habermas, and Richard Rorty.15 Since Fichte and Hegel also understand recognition as a condition for the consciousness of one’s own individuality, recognition has been repeatedly understood as a condition for the development of a particular, irreplaceable, authentic state. As far as Fichte is concerned, this is only partly true. Although he ascribes a special significance to conscience in realizing one’s own moral destination, this remains in the realm of an ethics containing a canon of general duties. The same is true for Hegel, who is even more skeptical about conscience and the translation of the concept of genius to morality. In the Phenomenology, however, he has shown that recognizing the particularity of conscience, even in its possible deviation from social rules, belongs to the spirit of the community. Such a deviation, however, does not grant any rights and does not suspend any laws. And in the social life of professions and institutions, individuals have the more “reality,” the more they take up, integrate into their behavior, and consciously act out, the spirit of these institutions and the character of a people (“Volksgeist”) which these institutions are founded on. However, this can include an actualization of the rules and a kind of creative interpretation.16 The dissolution of the traditional corporative society, the pluralization of value systems, and the doubt concerning an overall linear progress of reason in history have made the ideal of the individual’s education into a fully legitimate member of class and state look pale. In modern theories of

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socialization the influence of social patterns of behavior and valuation is emphasized, but at the same time the actual goal of developing a personality, is seen to be the relation to one’s own destination, strong personal valuations (Taylor), or the decision for something, which is important for individuals to “care about” (H. Frankfurt).17 This is also true for the ideal of individual self-creation as in Richard Rorty.18 If individual self-consciousness depends upon the recognition of others, then the latter is also the condition for self-discovery and self-realization. But it is without a doubt impossible for the subject, which persists on its autonomy and the dignity and equality of people, to tolerate every personal “self-design” or even support it by positive affirmation. The freedom of finding one’s own destiny must be liable to general restrictions. But there can be social rules and institutions which leave more room for such a search than others. Hegel’s prerequisite for the development of one’s own abilities and for the search for a place in the social structure, for instance, is the civil society with free choice of profession and freedom of trade, only dependent upon proof of qualification and competence. The quarrel about whether or not the market and its economic laws belong to the good conditions for recognizing individual particularity has been politically virulent up to today. Some people point out the great possibilities of the pursuit of happiness in this system and the increasing possibilities to satisfy individual wishes with, for instance, on-demand production. Others, however, emphasize rigid economic laws, the uniformization of ways of life in the globalized economy, and the strain of information and communication structures on those ways of life. The choice of one’s own life plan does not only depend on the renunciation of the state to patronize its citizens in their self-realization, but also on the questions of what sorts of ways of life are at all possible in such an efficient, highly technicalized society. First and foremost, however, this efficiency of structures leads to a strict competition in achievements and to a selection concerning abilities and willingness to achieve something, which reduces recognition to respect and rewards for only such kinds of success which are measurable by criteria of economics. One must only think of the criteria for achievement, selection, and recognition in modern enterprises and also educational institutions to see that the elements of domestic morality (Hegel’s ethical life within the family), that is, support, emotional care, and respect independent of obligation and achievement, are threatened to disappear from market societies. Acknowledgment of individual authenticity and integrity, even with people who, measured by contemporary criteria of achievement, seem to be failures, still depends on ways of behavior and group identities, which are, in Hegel’s view, possible in the family and the corporation, contrary to the criteria of recognition prevalent in civil market society.

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Axel Honneth tried to systematize these criteria according to Hegel’s and according to modern social psychology. The three patterns of intersubjective recognition he developed are “love,” “right,” and “solidarity,” The term love can be traced back to Hegel, but includes all kinds of “friendship” and family relations, in as much as they “are constituted by strong emotional attachments among a small number of people” (95).19 They fulfill the need for help and support just like in Hegel’s family, but possibly also in other sorts of partner- or friendship, without any preconditions and with “affective approval or encouragement” (95). With regard to modern law, Honneth considers public recognition of the individual as a person with particular abilities of moral autonomy, elementary education, and the claim to social demands to be included. Especially if one accepts the theory of different generations of human rights (defensive rights protecting individual freedom, rights to political participation, and rights to social welfare20 [cf. 116–17]), then there is a “chance of developing self-respect” (119) by the publicly acknowledged ability of the demanding of rights and the “participation in discursive will-formation” (120) included in the status of the legal subject, independent of particular social appreciation. This status is in modern societies the object of the “struggle for recognition” of social groups.21 While love and rights are supposed to give individuals self-confidence and self-respect, solidarity is concerned with self-appreciation through the social appreciation of others. It means “to view one another in light of values that allow the abilities and traits of the other to appear significant for shared praxis” (129). Although this appreciation is directed at the individual in its particularity, it is usually connected with “a feeling of group-pride” (128), which is based on being a member of a group whose achievements are worthy contributions for the entire society and are appreciated as such. This sort of recognition must also be gained by the group and with the group. Honneth’s three criteria for the social recognition of individuals and their particular individuality or identity are derived from Hegel’s forms of ethical life but should be secured by the contemporary empirical results of the social sciences. This leaves open the reason, why, independent of Hegel’s system, just such a threefold system should contain all the necessary or at least decisive conditions of recognition. Furthermore, it leaves open the question, which conditions enable a society to identify and acknowledge the necessary or at least enriching contributions of individuals and groups to the “common practice” of a community. One would have at least to follow the communitarian account, which states that social life is the action and work of all members whose burdens and achievements can be identified according to common criteria. As the discussion about the theories of justice of Rawls or Walzer have shown, this is in no way undisputed.22

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But even under a communitarian foundation it still is not clear what exactly the contributions to this common work are. An agreement on the spheres of justice in Michael Walzer’s sense or on the kind of necessary or generally desirable public and communal goods would be required.23 In a modern society, in which the “system of needs” develops faster and faster, this becomes a problem difficult to solve. Especially since it is no more generally accepted that there is still one comprehensive system such as the “state” or “society,” which includes all of the particular systems.24 Once the significance of these comprehensive systems decreases, the significance of social groups themselves for the identity and self-respect of their members increases. Thus there is not only recognition between individuals as well as between “I” and “we,” but also between groups, in a common political culture or in an open multicultural society. This form of recognition is the focus of a third stream in the modern theory of recognition, which I intend to examine briefly in the following. 3 According to Charles Taylor, there is a tension between the two themes mentioned above: recognition of universal equality of moral subjects and legal persons on the one hand (1) and recognition of their “unique identity” (38), which derives from the “dialogue and struggle with significant others” (37) on the other hand (2).25 Above all, when both are being dealt with in politics. The first form is made possible by the politics of “universalism” or “equality”; the second requires the “politics of difference” (38). Minorities, whose group identity is determined by ethnic, religious, historical, or linguistic belonging, or members of traditionally discriminated sexes must be the subject of a “differential treatment” (39) in pluralistic, tolerant, and democratic legal states. This practice can be built on allowing for collective rights (e.g., collective lawsuit from associations or citizen’s initiative, provision of financial means, compensative (“reverse”) discriminating rights of access) or on obliging the individual to fulfill certain duties (such as sending their children to certain schools or having them learn a certain language). Through this the principle of the equal treatment of all citizens as well as the principle of autonomous individual rights, for example, parental rights, is restricted to some degree. This tension can, according to Taylor, only be resolved by weighing up the “importance of certain forms of uniform treatment” (56), on the one hand especially the warrant of individual defensive rights, and the “importance of cultural survival” (61). For this reason suitable institutions have been created in the modern legal state, alternatively in “cultures of judicial review” (61). However, a prerequisite for this is that the existence of the variety of cultures in a community is considered to be a value and a right.

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It cannot simply be grounded on individual rights, such as the right to free execution of religion. Rather, a certain tradition of liberal democracy is necessary, which consists of understanding the interaction, or at least the fair side-by-side of different cultures to be an intrinsic value. Taylor refers to Herder’s notion of a many-voiced choir, which he views as enrooted in the Christian tradition (72).26 There is reason to doubt whether this is historically tenable in the light of the history of Christianity as the first universal religion with an exclusive claim to truth. It rather seems to be a result of the experience of confessional conflicts in the early European modern times. There are further prerequisites, which belong to this form of recognition of a positive cultural pluralism, such as determining the concept, size, and endurance of a culture with a claim to social recognition. According to Taylor, “cultural milieux within a society, as well as short stages of a major culture” (66) do not belong to these types of cultures. But which stages are relevant and how many people must be interested in the revival of a culture to grant it the status of a publicly recognizable and in a way positively discriminating group? Here, one presumably has to refer to Honneth’s “Struggle for Recognition” again: the members of a smaller cultural group must fight for their political status, which allows them public benefits and legal measures for their protection and preservation. The question is, however, whether or not this is a teleological process, which comes to a conclusive end, such as the process of experience, which is reconstructed in the Phenomenology. Instead, there might be achievements of collective experience for whose revision we cannot think of any good reasons. However, even irreversible experiences of this kind, for instance the development of the governmental monopoly of power or the modern legal state, do not allow us to view history as a process which is necessary in itself and in which things happen which must happen. Thus one cannot reconcile oneself with history in the way a stoic, a committed Christian, or a Hegelian philosopher could. There are other important approaches apart from the three aspects of contemporary theories of recognition in present-day philosophy already mentioned, such as the work of Paul Ricoeur, which, however, goes far beyond the boundaries of practical philosophy.27 Instead of discussing further positions in the theory of recognition, I will conclude with some remarks concerning my own evaluation of its tasks and limitations. In my book on Hegel’s theory of recognition,28 I posed the question of the systematic fruitfulness of the principle of recognition for practical philosophy also with regard to the aspect of criteria for justified and necessary social institutions. In contrast, Axel Honneth argued in his writing “Struggle for Recognition” that it is not possible to infer a normative criterion for the evaluation of institutions from the concept of

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recognition, because “we cannot, in principle, ever know what institutional form the lending of specific, necessary recognition is to take” (189). I partly agree with this statement. However, my purpose was the application of the “principle of recognition” to historically developed institutions in a way which resembles Rawls’s “reflective equilibrium.”29 This means that this criterion must be sufficient as a reason why we need institutions such as “family-like” solidarity communities, legal orders securing basic human rights, certain forms of social welfare states, etc. to fulfill the conditions for recognition—and moreover an extrapolation of those items which contemporary institutions still lack for this task. Honneth has tried to develop a similar theory, except that he does not talk about the normative estimation of institutions, rather of the “necessary conditions for human socialization” (189).30 This makes for a reading which is neutral in value and norm in transcendental philosophical terms, but Honneth evaluates processes of collectivization and differentiates between successful and “pathological” ones. Thus, at the same time he presupposes a norm of evaluation of society. In order to justify it, one should be able to prove the completeness of the conditions of a nonpathological human collectivization.31 To attain solidarity in the sense that Honneth has in mind, it must be justified further that, and why, a society claims to be a communal work with “objectively” valuable duties and aims, for which the contributions of groups and individuals earn value. Both of these are, without a doubt, problems which are difficult to solve. Nowadays, it seems to me to be the case that practical philosophy faces problems which might not be solved simply by applying the principle of recognition. Three of those I would like to point out here: 1 If the claim to completeness of the conditions of identity formation or human socialization is no longer plausible, one needs, especially with regard to applied ethics, “framework ideas” instead of principles: ideas which can be specified to certain forms of autonomy and recognition in different social contexts—especially concerning the levels of emotional, cognitive, and voluntary relationships. At the same time one has to be open to the experience of new forms and enrichments of recognition. But such forms must be compatible with the framework and its concretization in established relationships of social recognition, even if certain forms of them might be outdated.32 Applying this method one can to some degree lean on the weaker, nonteleological holism in Hegelian tradition—but also on other nondeductive procedures such as Rawls’s reflective equilibrium mentioned above.

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2 An analogous but further-reaching frame idea is necessary for a pluralistic society. The recognition of cultural-historical forms of life and the legal and political means of stabilizing them require a justification of the value of pluralism and diversity, which cannot simply be deduced from individual rights and relations of recognition. According to which standards, for instance, should active freedom of religion be limited nowadays—considering the number and size of religious buildings, the sounds of church bells or prayers, the ritual ways of daily actions such as slaughtering animals or wearing specific clothes, and so on? Prerequisites for this are tolerance in the sense of mutual endurance, recognition of equal claims, and mutual appreciation. But it is also the idea of a social cosmos, in which traduced multifariousness of ways of life, just distribution of opportunities of self-realization, and the flourishing of individuals in their individual and cultural identity are being supported. Which restrictions in their publicly perceptible way of life can be placed on groups of which size? How important are certain religious rites of groups in relation to common public goods such as periods and places of silence, common daily or weekly routines, common education, public symbols and monuments etc.? How is the history of a certain group related to state history or—in case of confederacies—the common history of a group of states?33 Here we are, in my view, in need of the concept of a well-ordered society, which exceeds Rawls’s principles of justice as well as the relations of recognition between individuals and groups (“I” and “we”).34 One could think of a holistic constellation of cultural spheres in the sense of the Hegelian philosophy of spirit—but without its strong systematic prerequisites. The focus is on a public understanding concerning the weight of values, which extends as far as the question of reconciling different ideas of human life—consider the quarrel about the beginning and the permissible ways of ending human life (modern embryology research and euthanasia). Philosophers cannot make these political debates redundant simply by a priori decisions. But they may develop ideas and criteria of a well-ordered pluralistic society and of a possible or rather bearable size of agreement and disagreement. This includes suggestions concerning the weighing of public goods such as health, education, security, entertainment, art etc., without unnecessarily restricting the freedom of private and group preferences, against basic rights.35 The question remains as to whether the concept of recognition will turn out to be sufficient. 3 Practical philosophy needs such framework ideas of a well-ordered whole with the possibility of concretization in science and society even for

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the human relation to nature, since we are today faced with basic options concerning the human body as well as concerning nonhuman nature. The focus is on the attitude towards naturalness in general and towards our natural heritage in natural but also in cultural history. Genetic engineering, cloning, and human-machine-interface technology (electronic implants in micro size etc.) bring human beings considerably closer to a biotechnological “re-invention” of mankind and a profound change of nature.36 In order to develop normative criteria for these options, interpersonal rights and criteria of recognition are not sufficient—not even in their discursive ethical transformation (J. Habermas) or neopragmatism (R. Brandom).37 The relationship to nature cannot be a symmetrical one. Neither can it, as in Hegel,38 be determined alone by the appropriation of the unconscious nature through the conscious spirit manifesting its rational domination of nature. Even if one replaces the “spirit” with the general speech community or the concrete communication community, as in some forms of modern Hegel perception, one still remains in interpersonal relationships and reduces, at the same time, the relationship to internal and external nature to a question of social convention. Contemporary debates about the use of genetic engineering and cloning in the breeding of plants and animals as well as in technology concerning human reproduction and enhancement cannot simply be resolved according to the standards of interpersonal obligations and rights or according to the needs of recognition. But we can already observe the development of intercultural agreements about principles concerning the treatment of nonhuman nature—such as sustainability, preservation of biodiversity, ideas of adequate keeping of animals, etc.—which are influenced by a view of those parts of natural heritage which are valuable and worth keeping. In practical philosophy they would have to be conceptually reconstructed and examined concerning their consistence, their consequences, and their justification. Even with regard to the biotechnological treatment of human beings, there are partly intercultural agreements, especially concerning the rejection of genetic changes or reproductive cloning in the interest of private or even public “breeders.” On the other hand, there are unresolved conflicts concerning “liberal eugenics,” which refer to the interests of future children or the reproductive freedom of parents.39 This applies even more to the possibilities for somatic self-modification as far as the choice of sex or the enhancement of cognitive and physical abilities. In order to establish limitations and standards in this context, one can indeed lean on the concept of recognition, for example, to answer questions such as: How about the equality of opportunity in an increasingly divergent society with regard to human abilities, especially when access to such improvements depends on private financial means? How about the conditions of communication

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and the predictability of behavior, when the emotions and achievements of such an “improved” human being and their verbal and physical expressions become harder to understand and grasp? But even in these cases, I believe that there must be a common conception of the valuable qualities of human and nonhuman nature in addition to the concept of recognition. In order to create a specifiable framework one has to overcome the restrictions of modern ethics40 concerning interpersonal relations and develop the idea of a possible “well-ordered world” as the standard of human action. Such an idea, however, can neither be directed at a necessary (“eternal”) cosmos, nor at a timeless “mundus intelligibilis.”41 It must be a regulative idea for a possible “cosmos” (in the Greek “evaluative” sense) as a task for mankind. It is not, however, an ideal postulate, but capable of being concretized “descriptively” by valuable qualities of nature developed within evolution (including that of the human body). General outlines of this idea can be derived from the semantics of moral language and the hermeneutics of evaluative conceptions of the world (cosmos, creation, etc.). The basic structures include multifariousness and just distribution of opportunities of development for forms, species, and groups, as well as the flourishing and well-being of individuals on different scales of the “scala naturae.” Further concretization can rely on the process of cultural-historical experience with world views, norms, and institutions. At this point one can develop the concept of a history of experience of consciousness in the succession of Hegel but without his teleological premises. Aspects of natural heritage (including the human body), which are worth keeping and aspects which may be modified for the purpose of the prevention of suffering, must be taken from natural- and cultural-historical experiences and be concretized and agreed upon in public discourses. This heritage must not be denied by a concept which, on the one hand, reduces reality to only those aspects comprehensible to the natural sciences and, on the other hand, understands values merely as projections of private wishes on nature conceived as completely neutral to valuations. For this could be followed by the suspension of a natural heritage, which is constitutive for many values of our self-understanding and our social orders, through a biotechnology radically adapted to private wishes or through medical sciences “improving” mankind without limitations. I have attempted to develop such a conception of practical philosophy as an ethics of reflexive specification (“Konkrete Ethik”) in the last few years. In this concept the theory of recognition still remains an important criterion for social relations. But if it is the case that the relationship between man and nature is the focus of contemporary practical philosophy, it seems to me doubtful whether “recognition” can be a sufficient and comprehensive principle.

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NOTES 1. The French term reconnaissance seems to grasp a wider concept of recognition than the German term “Anerkennung,” as Ricoeur’s thoughts have shown. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. by David Pellauer (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005). Identify and recognize („wiedererkennen”) are hardly implied in the German term. See my review of Ricoeur’s book: Ludwig Siep, „Der lange Weg der Anerkennung,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, issue 6, (2007): 981–86. 2. Concerning recognition in Fichte see E. Düsing, Intersubjektivität und Selbstbewusstsein, (Cologne: 1986), as well as Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes (Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 1979), chapter I. 3. In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel speaks of a “movement of recognizing”: G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller, foreword by J. N. Findlay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 4. For further information see my analysis mentioned in note 2. 5. For further details about these methodic and systematic aspects of the Phenomenology see as well Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein einführender Kommentar zur „Differenzschrift” und „Phänomenologie des Geistes” (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2001), chapter 5. 6. Page numbers without further details in the following refer to the edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit cited in fn. 3. 7. For more details see Ludwig Siep, “Die Bewegung des Anerkennens in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes”, in G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. D. Köhler and O. Pöggeler (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006), 107–127. 8. See G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit, Part Three of The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 3rd ed. (1830), trans. W. Wallace and A. V. Miller, foreword by J. N. Findlay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), §552. 9. See Otto Pöggeler, Hegels Kritik der Romantik (Bonn 1956), also Ludwig Siep, “Individuality in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” in The Modern Subject. Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and D. Sturma (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 131–48. 10. For such immanent Hegel criticism see my analysis mentioned in note 2, chapter v, 2. 11. See Ch. Halbig, „Anerkennung,” in Handbuch Ethik, ed. M. Düwell, Ch. Hübenthaler, and M. Werner (Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler, 2006), 303–307. 12. See T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); S. Darwall, “The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will,” in Ethics 116 (January 2006): 263–84. 13. However, according to modern trial guidelines the data collected so far remain at the disposal of the researcher. 14. For the debate about autonomy and informed consent in modern medical ethics see R. R. Faden and T. L. Beauchamp (eds. in collaboration with N. M. P. King), A History and Theory of Informed Consent (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), and M. Quante, Personales Leben und menschlicher Tod (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2002), chapter 5.

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15. J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1985); C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), and C. Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1991); Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For romantic sources and cultural-historical forms of the modern term of individuality see J. Früchtl, Das unverschämte Ich. Eine Heldengeschichte der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004). 16. See Hegel, Philosophy of Right, § 207 and Ludwig Siep, „Was heißt Aufhebung der Moralität in Sittlichkeit?” in Siep, Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1992), 217–39. 17. See C. Taylor “What is Human Agency?” in Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15–44; H. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 18. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. 19. A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge, Mass: Polity Press, 1996). 20. Cf. T. H. Marshall, Sociology at the Crossroads (London: Heinemann, 1963). 21. In contrast, N. Fraser argues critically that concentrating on the question of the recognition of identities runs the risk of the marginalization of tangible distribution problems and the “reification” of group identity (to the detriment of the members of community). N. Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition” New Left Review (May–June 2000): 107–120. Cf. also N. Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, Participation,” in N. Fraser and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition (New York: Verso, 2003), 7–109. 22. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice. A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 23. See M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice; J. Waldron, “Can Communal Goods be Human Rights?” in Waldron, Liberal Rights—Collected Papers 1981–1991 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 339–69; L. Siep, Private und öffentliche Aufgaben (Münster: 2005). 24. See N. Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1997). 25. C. Taylor, Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”: An Essay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). All page references to this edition. 26. See also C. Taylor, “Democratic Exclusion (and its Remedies?)” in Multiculturalism, Liberalism, and Democracy, ed. R. Bhargava, A. Kumar Bagchi, R. Sudarshan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 157. 27. P. Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition. See also L. Siep, „Der lange Weg der Anerkennung”. 28. L. Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. 29. See J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 20ff., 48–51, and J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 28; 95–97. See also S. Hahn, Überlegungsgleichgewicht(e), (Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 2000). 30. For a discussion of Honneth’s perception of Hegel see also W. Mesch, „Sittlichkeit und Anerkennung in Hegels Rechtphilosophie. Kritische Überlegungen zu Theunissen und Honneth,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 53 (2005): 349–64.

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31. See A. Honneth, „Eine soziale Pathologie der Vernunft. Zur intellektuellen Erbschaft der kritischen Theorie,” in Axel Honneth: Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante (Münster, Germany: LIT, 2004), 9–31. 32. Just as for Hegel already the fight for honor or nowadays old-fashioned forms of professional recognition. 33. An important condition of reconciliation, for instance between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, or maybe even between the Basques and the other ethnic groups in Spain, is the self-critical confrontation with historical memories and “cultures of memory,” which are shaped by the opposition between groups and their image of themselves. 34. Concerning the idea of a “well-ordered society” see J. Rawls, Political Liberalism, 35–40. The idea suggested here must also include the “distributive dimension” N. Fraser insists on (see above note 21). 35. See note 22. 36. See L. Siep, „Die biotechnische Neuerfindung des Menschen” in No body is perfect. Baumaßnahmen am menschlichen Körper—Bioethische und ästhetische Aufrisse, ed. J. S. Ach and A. Pollmann (Bielefeld, Germany: transcript, 2006), 21–42. 37. For Brandom’s reception of Hegel’s theory of recognition see R. B. Brandom, „Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstkonstitution,” in Hegels Erbe, ed. C. Halbig, M. Quante, and L. Siep (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004), 46–77. 38. In any event after the „Schellingianizing” period of his natural philosophy 1801–1803. 39. See A. Buchanan, D. W. Brock, N. Daniels and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 2001). 40. Not in the sense of a postmodern overcoming of subjectivity, however. Rather, the modern idea of subjectivity as the basis of the rights of freedom and relations of recognition in the Hegelian sense must be preserved (“aufgehoben”) and integrated into a comprehensive view of the “position of man in the cosmos.” See L. Siep, „Die Aufhebung der Subjektivität in der Konkreten Ethik,” in Ethikbegründungen zwischen Universalismus und Relativismus, ed. K. Engelhard and D. H. Heidemann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005), 253–74. 41. For the following see L. Siep, Konkrete Ethik (Frankfurt, am Main Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004).

6 Recognition, the Right, and the Good Terry Pinkard

Since Hegel’s time, the concept of recognition became a familiar topic in European philosophy. There are of course disputes about how integral it is to Hegel’s philosophy—is it only the principle of his practical philosophy or is it the master concept behind all of his thought?1—and Fichte’s adherents never tire of pointing out that it was not Hegel but Fichte who first brought the concept of recognition to prominence.2 There is one obvious worry about making the principle of recognition central to philosophy, even to practical philosophy, and that is the suspicion that it does away with any meaningful conception of truth. Or, to put it more generally, it might seem that in making recognition central to any account, one would be traveling down the now well-worn path that replaces objectivity with intersubjectivity, and in doing so, one would run up against the equally well-known difficulties in making “truth” equivalent to “agreement,” no matter how subtly one specifies what one means by “agreement.”3 In particular, making recognition fundamental seems to make all the various goods in life dependent on their being recognized as goods, maybe even so much so that “being recognized” would even be constitutive of their being goods. Such a view seems implausible, or, to some, even silly, as if one mere agreement on something trivial could, by virtue of being recognized or agreed upon, become an important or overarching good of any sort.4 Thus, it might seem more plausible to argue that recognition itself is not the condition of things being good for us, nor is it constitutive of various goods, but it is instead itself one of many goods, perhaps even one of the most important of them, and thus the denial of recognition would be an injury to the agent or to the collective of agents who are denied it.5 If so, the question to ask would be about whether recognition should be a good 129

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that should be distributed more equitably or whether it is better thought of as a condition of something like individual self-realization so that it may serve as the “master concept” of social theory.6 There is, however, more to the role that recognition plays with respect to agency than being that of intersubjective agreement or that of a good which may be granted or denied to people or which is a basic condition of some other need, such as self-realization. In particular, a more dialectical conception of agency that understands it in terms both of its agency-constituting character and its world-disclosing character helps us to understand some of what is at stake in various disputes about what role it should play in thinking about issues of agency as it relates to conceptions of knowledge and practice. It also raises again an issue which, although it had only recently played a large role in moral and political philosophy, has since receded and diminished in importance: Is there anything to be gained by talking about the relation between the “right” and the “good”? The distinction itself arose out the generalization of Kant’s conception of the good will (as an unconditional good) into a conception of the (unconditional) right as distinct from the good, and this conception has been given a well-known treatment in recent political philosophy by both Rawls and Habermas. Notably, both Rawls and Habermas nonetheless rejected the orthodox Kantian claim that pure practical reason alone will give us everything we need in an ethical theory based on the structure of some “master principle” and its consequences; they both agree that pure practical reason must be supplemented with various empirical premises if it is to give us any material guidance for action or policy. Moreover, both Rawls and Habermas hold that the very thinness of any conception of the “right” which is utterly divorced from the “good” itself means that any account which places the “right” at the forefront of an account of political and social reality is doomed to hopeless abstraction unless it unites itself with some fairly well-established empirical theses in sociology, history, or psychology. This is perhaps obvious in the writings by Rawls, and in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms and his subsequent essays. Habermas in particular argues that the principles of the “right” are rooted in the way in which agents who are already committed to justifying their “validity claims” vis-à-vis each other are also thereby committed to some fairly abstract commitments governing the rules of such justification, and he gives a controversial account of how this itself requires an intersubjective rather than transcendental account of agency.7 Habermas’s own postKantian account is intended to preserve the Kantian gulf between the right (as principles of law and rights) and the good (as “ethical” life) while at the same time bringing them together in a unified account of, for example, a lively “public sphere”; such an account is intended to provide the basis for the legitimating force for the modern secular state as a constitutionalist

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legal order which both incorporates basic rights within itself and integrates into a cohesive whole the dynamics of a free market, administrative bureaucratic power, and the moral demands of the “right.” The “right” is thus supposed to retain its nonempirical, normative force as that which makes various contingent conceptions of the good acceptable or unacceptable.8 As was noted, the idea of bringing in recognition to explain this would seem to drag the Rawlsian/Habermasian view back in the direction of something like Hegel’s own philosophy of “right.” Like Kant, Hegel takes the most basic, ground level conception of what is to be chosen for its own sake to be that of relating the free will to itself as an end in itself, or, in his words, to be “the free will which wills the free will.”9 If we take Hegel at his word, then the “free will” and the conditions under which the will can be free is thus what counts as right, that is, as the condition that takes priority over all other considerations about other goods or how to balance those goods. But, as I hope to show, once recognition is brought into the ground level conception that unites the right and the good, we also get a much different conception of what moral and political theory should be doing, and we get a better picture of how “critical theory” fits into a more or less Hegelian picture of recognition. Both Hegelians and Kantians share the basic commitment to freedom as the principle of “the right,” the normative condition under which all other goods must be comprehended. Although Kant toys with the idea of reducing what might look a plurality of goods—having to do with, say, health, happiness, success, friendship, and the like—to one basic set, namely, those which satisfy what he generically calls our inclinations, it would not be hard to imagine how even the most rigidly orthodox Kantian could validly entertain a more complex picture of human psychology than the one Kant actually had and could make that list more plural than perhaps Kant himself would have allowed.10 For both Hegelians and Kantians, the “right” has to do with the conditions for the realization of freedom, and thus whatever constitutes the right also constitutes the conditions under which something can count as a legitimate good; thus, there could be possibly be many different “goods” that fit under the rubric of the “right.”11 Once one has the issue framed in these terms, then the real bone of contention among Kantians and Hegelians can be more easily put on the table: How are we to conceive of the “realization” of freedom? One model is obviously individualistic: freedom would be a capacity an individual has to bind himself to some principle, some reason, and act in light of that principle, and freedom is thus realized when an individual agent is able to form intentions and act on them in light of his or her responsiveness to the reasons for that action (with its accompanying worry about whether that would require something like a Kantian doctrine of self-causality). On that view, although the need for recognition may be a

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psychological good associated with freedom, it is not a condition of it. It may be simply something that we need “in addition” to our ability to respond to reasons if we are to flourish. Another, more specifically Hegelian, model is more clearly social. It sees the capacity to be responsive to reasons as socially informed, not merely in the trivial sense that we do not emerge at birth as such rational beings and must therefore be educated into becoming such creatures, but in the sense that what counts as responding to a reason is not itself something that the individual can articulate for himself alone outside of the social practices of adhering to reasons and of learning the usually nonarticulated ways about how this kind and not that kind of behavior can be said to count as legitimately adhering to the reason or as following the rule. In its more robust, Hegelian form, it sees the status of agency itself as both occupying a position in a kind of normative social space and as involving various skills in orienting oneself and moving about in that normative space.12 What is at stake here? I shall lay out three theses and attempt to provide an explication of them so that we can see at least in outline what a more Hegelian model of recognition might contribute to a contemporary form of critical theory. The first thesis: Dialectic has to do with the relations between subjects and objects, that is, with the status of subjectivity in a natural world; this is Hegel’s metaphysics of agency. Although the issue of recognition in philosophy first arises in Fichte’s thought, when it comes to the forefront in Hegel’s thought, it appears as a component of his dialectical approach to the issue, and it arises in a section that involves, as is well known, a “struggle” for recognition which issues in Hegel’s famous dialectic of mastery and servitude.13 Since probably nothing is more disputed than what Hegel understood or should have understood “dialectic” to be, it is important to state up front just what this “dialectical” approach is (or rather, to state one’s own approach to understanding what Hegel’s approach is, however compacted such a statement must be in this context). In many instances, Hegel attributes his own understanding of “dialectic” to Kant’s employment of the concept, where it arises when “the understanding” (the intellect, der Verstand) attempts to provide an account of “the unconditioned,” with the result that it necessarily discovers that it finds itself enmeshed in antinomies, that is, mutually contradictory claims which follow with necessity from premises that “the understanding” generates independently of experience. The lesson Hegel takes from Kant’s dialectic is not that the antinomies therefore show that “the understanding” cannot know things in themselves; it is that any attempt to provide a unified account for the way in which beings possessing “subjectivity” in a natural world that does not come to grips with the role of subjectivity in that natu-

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ral world will generate a self-contradictory appearance. Or, as we might put it, the “dialectic” arises when we try to get a grip on what an unconditional account of the natural world together with our truthful grasp of that world would look like; the dialectic is thus an attempt to grasp the absolute: the unconditional account of the world that includes within itself an account of how it is that the agents giving the account can truthfully grasp that world, themselves, and the act of giving the account itself. (It is in that context that Hegel thinks, very roughly, that a fully naturalist account of the world would founder on explaining why it would be that the agents giving that account could make the normative claim that it is true.) Dialectic results from all attempts at an unconditional account of the natural world—particularly, that is best explained by the means of the natural sciences—has within it subjects who offer those accounts and make claims to their truthfulness. This kind of subjectivity as involving creatures who are not merely part of the world but also have a point of view on that world has to do with the kinds of self-knowledge such creatures have. Subjects, on Hegel’s account, not only have perspectives on the world; they also have a kind of self-relation as self-knowledge vis-à-vis themselves that mark them out as distinct kinds of beings from all other natural beings. They are, to use Charles Taylor’s phrase, “self-interpreting animals,” beings for whom it is always an issue as to what it means to be that kind of being. Dialectic thus emerges as the contradictions that become established as some limited grasp of the world is instead taken to be a fully unconditioned—”absolute”—account such that its own limitations lead it to such apparently contradictory results. The fundamental basis of the dialectic is thus that of there being subjects (or “subjectivity”) in an otherwise natural world of objects and how such subjects institute and sustain normative relations—paradigmatically, cognitive relations—with the natural world and with themselves. As Hegel treats it in the Phenomenology of Spirit, such a dialectic at first emerges on its own in all such accounts that attempt to show that our claims to knowledge can be satisfactorily given by appealing to items such as singular entities that make our statements about them (or our singular awareness of them) true, or by appeal to perceptual objects that supposedly make our judgments of perception true. (For example, within such limited perceptual accounts that take themselves to be absolute, that is, unconditional, the perceptual object appears both as a singular, propertyless “one” and therefore not really an object of perception at all and as a bundle of properties and therefore not really as a singular object at all.) When judged from the standpoint of posing as self-contained accounts of “the unconditioned,” the internal failure of such accounts drives one to the view that our consciousness of such things is already laden with claims within it—laden with claims in that they embody various kinds of commitments that bring in their wake responsibilities of various sorts. As

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embodying certain commitments within itself—as having them an sich, in Hegel’s terms—consciousness is thus self-consciousness, a determinate taking of experience and not a mere reception of it. Dialectic is thus an expression of the way in which, to use the Kantian terms so subtly appropriated by John McDowell, the spontaneity of our conceptual capacities includes within itself the receptivity of our experience—the idea that to be a concept user is to be able to attend to the deliverances of sensibility as evidence of the way things are. The very “infinity” (to use Hegel’s term) of the concept—what McDowell renders as the “unboundedness of the conceptual”—means that the normative authority of the conceptual internally requires it to confer authority on something it distinguishes from itself as having the authority to demand certain claims from the conceptual. (In slightly more prosaic terms, it means that we turn over to, say, objects of perception the authority to make certain perceptual claims true.) That kind of dialectical understanding of the relation between spontaneity as including receptivity within itself—the pure concept relating to itself through its own otherness—has implications for our understanding of recognition. If our spontaneity includes our receptivity, then our ordinary perceptual experience will be informed by our conceptual capacities without their necessarily being exercises of those capacities. For example, our capacities to perceptually identify and reidentify things such as roses and butterflies depends on our having acquired the relevant conceptual capacities, even though in making such identifications, we are not engaging in any explicit exercise of those capacities; we can see butterflies, recognize them as butterflies, but nonetheless be making no explicit judgments about them (nor need be making any such explicit judgments).14 Just as there is a dialectical unity of spontaneity and receptivity in experience, there is also a similar unity in practical life. (Once again, only the outlines of the Hegelian picture of this can be sketched out here.) Our practical spontaneity generates, as it were, norms for action; we look to see what is rational for us to do in a variety of different cases, and in the most general senses, that in turn requires that we give a rational form to some end we wish to achieve or bring about.15 If one accepts (following Hegel and disagreeing with Kant) that pure practical reason, or spontaneity abstracted out of its full context, simply cannot generate any such ends for itself without engaging with something else—what is surely a controversial matter but which will be left aside here—then one needs also to accept that practical spontaneity must also include its “other” in itself, namely, in the form of a practical sensibility that is informed by our conceptual capacities without, however, necessarily always involving their exercise (in a manner analogous to that of theoretical spontaneity and sensibility). Just as our theoretical receptivity presents us with objects (in a world) for judgment,

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our practical receptivity presents us with various goods for action. Such goods can spur one to action directly in that one simply sees what needs to be done: the faucet with running water must be turned off, the person who has slipped and fallen must be helped up, and so forth. (This kind of direct knowledge, as Hegel says, “consists in having the particular knowledge or kind of activities immediately to mind in any case that occurs, even, we may say, immediate in our very limbs, in an activity directed outwards,” at the level of activity that is, as we noted, informed by but does not involve the exercise of conceptual capacities.16) Or the goods put on view by our practical sensibilities can become the first premises of further deliberation; they present the individual agent with a sense of, say, what is both best for humans in general and in particular what is best for the kind of individual they are. This conception of dialectic underlies Hegel’s most widely used diagnostic tool for evaluating the status of certain types of problems widely acknowledged as “philosophical,” namely, the distinction between “the understanding” and “reason.” “The understanding” is that of ordinary rational thought and is perfectly appropriate for almost all cases of matters that range from natural scientific investigation to practical deliberation. As a shorthand, we might say that “the understanding” classifies and seeks causal explanations of objects (paradigmatically, natural objects). Reason, on the other hand, is pushed to consider the “whole” of both subjectivity and objectivity since it deals inferentially with the conditions for the assertion of the claims of “the understanding.” The “understanding” falters when it attempts to give an account of such subjective matters in the terms appropriate for objects; left to its own, it construes everything as an object of some sort and is thus pushed by its own success in understanding the objective natural world to construe subjectivity as either consisting in a special set of objects (as, for example, “inner,” “mental” objects) or as a deep-seated illusion of some sort. Seen in that light, the very ordinary arena of human action itself displays the necessity for a more dialectical conception of the world since human action is, in effect, subjectivity making itself effective in the natural world. The tendency of “the understanding”—that is, of our most ordinary reflective involvement with the world and ourselves—leads us to think of the relation between matters such as intention and action along the lines of the way we think of everything else, namely, as a relation of some sort between two things (say, between an “inner” thing, such as an intention, and an “outer” thing, the action itself), and in a more explanatory mode, to construe that relation as a causal one (thus mirroring the most rational way to construe relations between things in the natural world). If one takes that standpoint and tries to construe action in terms of two “things” (inner intentions, outer behavior), one quickly finds the very idea of a free act to be more or less unintelligible. The natural result of such very ordinary reflection leads one to a very familiar result: one is pushed, so it must seem, to see one “thing” (an

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inner intention) as somehow wholly different from all other such “things” so that it cannot itself be a causal result of other “things” (something which prompted Kant to think that freedom could only be salvaged by making its causality different from that of natural causality and using the critical philosophy’s distinction between appearances and unknowable things-inthemselves to underwrite that). Instead, Hegel proposes to understand intentions and actions are separate constituents (or “moments”) of a whole; an intention is thus an action in its “inner” aspect (an action on the way to being realized), and an action is the intention in its “outer” aspect (the realized intention). Intentions can, of course, fail to be realized—one can be prevented, change one’s mind, etc.—and they can become altered as they are being realized (in the sense that one often alters one’s intentions in light of the way the action is taking shape). (There is also the distinction between the action and the deed, but that is another story.17) There is thus a philosophical issue involving the dialectic between intentions and actions that is separate from more ordinary moral and legal issues about imputing responsibility to people; it is a striking feature of Hegel’s account that the latter issues do not in themselves necessarily raise any dialectical issues on their own. One might, as American law currently does, hold people responsible for the consequences of their actions independently of their intentions (as in findings of strict liability in tort law); such matters are entirely independent of the dialectical issues about how subjectivity makes itself effective in the natural world. Second thesis: Social goods are social facts instituted and sustained in patterns of mutual recognition; the most basic social facts provide individual agents with orientations over a life. If anything, the social, dialectical account of agency rejects the more orthodox Kantian idea that anything like pure practical reason on its own could provide the right content or the right kind of motivational efficacy for action. With the more dialectical conception of agency, we are required to understand the “objective ends” of free action as instead having to do with the factual makeup of human agents; or, to put it another way, if there are any objective ends for agents, these ends must provide agents with goods that are attractive, that is, which form “incentives” for the agent to act and which thus form part of each agent’s own subjective motivational set which gives them, as individuals, reasons to act, even sometimes in opposition to their own more immediate desires.18 On that view, how could there be any unconditional ends? There are obviously natural facts that play a role in the makeup of such goods. Humans are born, they age, they die; they require food and water and sleep, and some kinds of affection and bonding with others is required for them to form stable psyches. (One could extend the list.) However, not all such human goods are such natural ensembles of basic, animal needs

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and desires. Some are to be found in various positions in social space that form the social facts of an individual’s world. Nonetheless, social facts are just that—facts. On Hegel’s account, for such social facts to provide any set of normative ends for modern agents, those facts must be able to function as realizations of freedom, and they can do so only if they provide agents with goods, incentives for action (and for appreciation, devotion and the like) that can also be grasped as giving them good overall reasons for acting and which can be grasped as fitting into the conditions under which freedom is realized; and to be initiated into a form of life is to acquire a practical sensibility for “seeing” such goods and for understanding the various types of social moves required by them, appropriate to them and so forth. The “Idea” of a world and social order in which the key social facts about that world would be such that they harmonize with each other (keeping in mind that harmony almost always includes some dissonance within itself) would be the “Idea” of a reconciled normative and factual order, that is, one in which the various ways in which some kinds of commitments (such as those commitments bound up with family life, with careers, with one’s standing in society and in one’s more local communities, with the demands of citizenship, and with the more general demands of being a good, or a moral, person on one’s own) would in fact harmonize with each other even though holding fast to some or all of them most likely involve losses of very different types—desires and dreams forestalled, career aims put off for reasons of family, personal advancement forestalled by the claims of citizenship, and the like.19 Nonetheless, for them to be genuine goods in the modern sense would be for them to constitute the conditions under which those agents can lead meaningful lives, and reciprocal recognition would be the condition under which such goods can come into view for our practical sensibilities. One is, for example, a citizen by virtue of being recognized as a citizen; one is a spouse by virtue of being recognized as a spouse. One cannot be an agent for whom the right is prior to the good without also being motivated by such social and historically shaped goods, and a full explication of such goods would have to take into account what I have elsewhere called Hegel’s “disenchanted Aristotelian naturalism,” the way in which the goods that are natural to our being organisms are themselves both the basis for and are transformed by our historically thick practices.20 Such goods play a role in the way a life is lived out over time; they function in different ways as integral components—Hegel would say, “moments”—in having one’s life projects achieve satisfaction for individuals and thus the ways in which such individuals and communities can flourish. They provide us not with “roles” as, say, some of modern sociology understands it—that would be too theatrical—but, to take up a Kantian phrase, it provides us with orientations.21

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Moreover, these goods will be plural—there can be no single metric to compare the goodness of, say, family life to that of a successful career—and the unity of the goods is to be found not in ordering them under some kind of architectonic or master set of principles (as Kant attempts to do in the Metaphysics of Morals, a model which has been taken up in many contemporary formalistic Anglophone conceptions of political philosophy). Rather, it lies in understanding their functional role in a form of life for which freedom is the condition under which such putative goods can be seen to be genuine goods. As such, these goods do not, as it were, automatically cohere with each other; there is nothing in their being goods that does rule out that they might impose, for example, double binds on the participants in the form of life in which they are disclosed as goods. Instead, the unity among these goods is to be found in an examination of the institutional and practical conditions under which such goods, as realizations of freedom, can themselves be genuinely at work in life and in seeing how these different institutions and practices actually work together, even if some of the goods (such as those to be found perhaps in the “moral life”) are inconsistent with each other or inconsistent with other goods to be found in some other sphere of social facts (perhaps, say, civil society). In turn, this would then require us to examine how it is that in historical time, the “right” necessarily detached itself from the “good” and how it has come to be that in our time, as “grasped in thought,” the right must be prior to the good, that is, that the good of being a citizen provided one with sufficient orientation to matter deeply to such individuals. To cite only one example of a social fact that is, for moderns, a good: the status of having a “career” is recent enough that the word itself only enters the English language in 1803 (as imported from an almost equally recent use in French). Social facts such as “careers” offer possibilities for structuring a life, setting goals, knowing what counts as achieving those goals, and they emerge and acquire a determinate shape only within a form of life, and, more determinately, within the institutions and practices which both make up that form of life and function to reproduce it. It can never be a brutely given matter as to whether these goods—as they come into view through our participation in these structures of mutual recognition (that is, through participation in a form of life)—themselves are consistent with each other or whether they are internally consistent, that is, whether a particular status, such as that of “citizen,” does not include within itself sets of mutually incompatible demands placed on agents or demands that put too heavy a motivational burden on them, or whether being a “citizen” conflicts with having a “career.”22 Third thesis: Recognition without the appropriate goods instituted and sustained by recognition is experienced as alienation.

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To summarize the theses laid out thus far: Hegel has a general metaphysics of agency that is encapsulated in his dialectical understanding of agency (a position which he summarizes, among other places, in the “Introduction” to the Philosophy of Right). However, on his own dialectical terms, such a general metaphysics of agency is necessarily abstract and incomplete; it requires its realization in a social theory of the right and the good. The outline of the moves he makes is thus: (1) We must have first principles from which to reason practically, but these cannot themselves be deduced from “the understanding,” nor can they be the result of “pure practical reason”; (2) Such principles ultimately are realized and knowable in the form of social facts (that is, there is an element of “positivity” to them); (3) These social facts are collectively instituted by agents from within a form of life through structures of mutual recognition, but as social facts, they stand in an independent relation to each individual agent and to his or her own acts of deliberation. Hegel holds that such a view generates within its own terms an at least abstract view of what a reconciled social order would look like. It would be that of “true spirit” (der wahre Geist) in which (a) the social facts offer orientations to individual agents who take those orientations to provide them with unconditional obligations; (b) the results of individuals following out the demands of their station—realizing their unconditional obligations—are themselves always harmonious; (c) each individual station in such a life is itself satisfying, that is, providing the agents with valuable ends that can actually be achieved. In such an order, individuals can thus be fully involved or absorbed in the daily activities of their lives while at the same time maintaining a sufficiently self-conscious distance from their own activities; such a state of affairs would be a full realization of the freedom that is part of the dialectical conception of agency: self-conscious critical reflection coexistent with a full absorption in the activities of a good life.23 In the 1807 Phenomenology, Hegel offered his own somewhat idiosyncratic account of how the modern reliance on reason when construed as a capacity solely exercised on the part of individual agents itself provoked a deeper conception of the sociality of reason—of Geist itself—from out of the constellation of problems in which early nineteenth-century European society had landed itself. It is the conception of a form of life as realized freedom—of “realized Geist”—that draws out of itself its conception of what “true spirit” would look like as the union of self-consciousness and full absorption. In one of his more provocative moves in that work, Hegel empirically identified “true spirit” with the Polis of ancient Greece (at least in its idealized form); such an ancient form of “true spirit” is characterized as a kind of quasi-Leibnizian harmony in which each agent mirrors the whole in himself; what secures the harmony of the whole is, however,

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not something external to the system (such as God in Leibniz’s own view of the matter); rather, the actions of the individuals in that form of life in following out the necessity of acting in terms of their stations inevitably but spontaneously produce a kind of harmony of the social order (which therefore embodies a kind of Kantian beauty within itself).24 What disturbs that harmony is the way that on its own terms it provokes the development of a form of individuality which at the same time it must suppress. Hegel famously takes this to be paradigmatically exemplified in the tragic dilemma facing Antigone in Sophocles’s play: Antigone must obey Creon, which means denying her brother his proper burial rites, and she must give the burial rites to her brother, which means disobeying Creon, and, most importantly, she herself must not make an autonomous choice between these two conflicting duties. Given that the duties to obey Creon and perform the burial rites for her brother are both absolute and mutually exclusive, and given that she is forbidden from exercising an autonomous choice between them but in fact must do so, whatever she does is wrong. That conception of “true spirit” and its own self-incurred ruin sets the stage for Hegel to take up what he saw as the two central challenges of European life after the self-incurred ruin of the ancient Polis. The first had to do with the self-consciousness of inevitable conflicts that pervade social life. In any form of life where there are conflicting duties—and where the duties specify a form of rational compulsion, what one must do—there will be a dialectical pressure for individuals to step back from them and evaluate them by some other measure, although what that other measure might be must remain rather abstract and, to the extent that it itself is necessary, inevitably be involved in the kinds of contradictions that emerge when a form of life tries to give a comprehensive, unconditioned account of itself. The second challenge for early modern European life concerned how, in its pre-1789 phases, it was to deal with the “thinning” out of its form of life such that the set of authoritative goods shared within it had been progressively emptied out into being a rather abstract and slender set of goods having to do with the social facts surrounding ideas of honor, nobility, baseness, and the related ways in which power and economic influence were understood to be appropriately distributed in early modern European life. Within the medieval and postmedieval understanding of society as ideally divided ultimately into three estates which corresponded to the three vital functions of social life—I fight for you (the aristocracy), I pray for you (the priests and other ecclesiastical figures), I work for you (all commoners)—only nobles (and some ecclesiastical figures), so it was argued, could possibly be suited for the exercise of state power. Only the aristocracy was, so it was assumed, capable of the kind of self-distancing and capacity for self-sacrifice that were essential to the exercise of state power; wealthy bourgeois were too self-interested and thus too base to

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be able to make a similar claim. Yet in the growth of the market society in early modern Europe, as the distinction between noble and commoner (especially wealthy bourgeois) began to fade, a kind of logic impelled monarchs all over the leading states of Europe to begin ennobling wealthy bourgeois who simply could not be kept out of the realm of the select any more. Once that new social fact was at work in life, it gradually became clear to virtually any reflective agent that the old order was not based on any kind of natural set of functions in social life but merely on recognition and power itself. The continuing hold of the aristocracy over the levers of power began to seen for what it was; it was simply a way in which those in power engaged in a ritualized score-keeping with each other and with those below them. The claims of the nobility to have in their own “nature” the basis for identifying their interests with the real interests of the state lost its authority, and what thus became more evident was the mere division of points of view between commoner and aristocrat, not an intrinsically normative difference. The result which went hand in hand with the division between aristocrats and commoners was therefore a deep-seated alienation of each from the other, from himself and from the “spirit,” or form of life in which they lived. In fact, in such a thinned out spiritual world there is nothing for such “individuals” to do but engage in something like score-keeping, in which each individual starts with a set of established propositions and then reciprocally judges the claims made by others in terms of whether they match up or contradict one’s own list of approved claims.25 Where such recognition consists only in negotiation over such norms without there being any thicker substantiality to the form of life, it can only result in a thinned out alienation of agents from each other and the form of life in which they interact since whatever social facts serve as orienting goods can only be the result of power or class, not of truth. The mark of authority becomes that of who wins the game, but the winners in that game always have to appeal to something else besides their own success at structuring the rules to legitimate their claim to be setting the standards. Now, to be sure, Hegel had his own separate and quite obviously controversial historical thesis about how such an individualist model of practical reality as score-keeping—as the form of alienation experienced by both noble and bourgeois—led to the breakdown of that way of life both in its exposing of the very thinness of the social order itself as providing orienting goods for life and in the way that its score-keeping practice of mutual recognition itself exposed the very instituted nature of such social goods. Once particular agents were recognized as free-standing individuals—once the status of being the final authority in such practical matters was seen as falling upon individuals and the resources those individuals could muster on their own—then within the logic of such thinned out individualism,

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the structure of mutual recognition could have amounted to no more than alienated score-keeping. Such alienation leads to a withdrawal of any kind of genuine norms for such a form of life. To phrase it in Habermasian terms, it amounts to substituting the “system” (as a normless matter of social coordination) for the “lifeworld” (as the arena in which there are genuinely orienting goods). In the Phenomenology, Hegel describes this standpoint in his discussion of the failures of the ancien régime as the standpoint in which the logic of that kind of reflective inward turn provoked a reflection on the “vanity of all things,” including itself—that is, a reflection on its essential lack of norms, its collapse into a system of mutual coordination, into Rousseauian amour propre rather than into any kind of genuinely normed interaction.26 The alienation experienced in any such order which relies solely on the resolution of individual “score-keeping,” that is, on the nonnormative resolution of mutual coordination problems, is that of an experienced contradiction, an allegiance to something to which one also has no rational allegiance.27 Hegel thus used the picture of the prerevolutionary court life of the ancien régime to provide a more general picture of what a form of life would look like which was structured through relations of mutual recognition that dispensed with any richer conception of orienting goods to that form of life (or whose only mode of orientation was that of reflected goods, matters to which one commits oneself because others have so committed themselves). What is lacking in such a state of alienation is any sense of the truth of the social facts, any way in which such a structure of mutual recognition that functions without any orienting goods instituted and sustained by such recognition must find itself without any genuine normative support. There is no normative sense of “the best” life for any agent, merely an ongoing constant readjustment in light of mutual score-keeping. In modern life, alienation is thus the condition of modern freedom experienced without any sense of that freedom being realized except in the most abstract way. For freedom to be concretely realized, there must be a structure of recognition that sustains social practices and institutions within which individuals can develop and pursue their own conception of worthwhile lives and make those conceptions real, effective—wirklich, in Hegel’s term of art. It almost goes without saying that Hegel’s own mature reflections on how modern life could escape such debilitating alienation was both far too optimistic and far too out of step with what turned out to be the basic dynamic of emerging European life. To be sure, Hegel saw that the emerging “civil society” of nineteenth-century Europe was one based on social coordination in terms of the market, in which, as he put it, “all aptitudes, and all accidents of birth and fortune are liberated, and where the waves of all passions surge forth, governed only by the reason which shines through

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them,” and in which the truly normative, the “ethical,” is “lost in its extremes.”28 However, he thought that the basic coordinating mechanisms that are internally generated in civil society (laws, the “police,” etc.) would be enough to temper it and make it suitable for a kind of full identification with the “people” or the “nation” that fleshes out the contours of a political state. The opportunities for a career in civil society and for participation in a variety of associations—his own examples were those of the rapidly expiring postmedieval “corporation” and the estates—itself, so he thought, expressed a set of concrete orienting goods that were compatible with the political unity of the whole.29 On his view, since such freedom amounted to a reflective identification with a political state in which one was given full sway to pursue one’s own life in the terms best suited to one’s temperament and abilities, there was no need for any kind of democratic participation in such a state; if it were run well by well-trained civil servants, mere acknowledgment of its rationality would, so he argued, suffice. There is no need here to go into any detail about why that conception of the administrative state turned out to be both dangerous and to be incapable of actualizing the aims that Hegel himself laid out as the touchstone of his own theory, namely, that of how an agent could in such a form of life be at one with himself, bei sich selbst, particularly in being “at one with himself in an other.” Most importantly, it failed to sustain what Hegel regarded as the most basic normative status of modernity, that of being an individual with what he called a “right of subjective freedom.” On the Hegelian view of agency, the liberal individual—outfitted with the traditional liberal rights of life, liberty, and property and the other great modern right to freedom of conscience—could not be such an individual outside of the conditions under which others could be such individuals. The rights enshrined in the constitutional state (the embodiment of the right) could only be sustained in the patterns of mutual recognition if individuals could find the goods in that overall form of life satisfactory and not alienating. It is not difficult to see where, for example, an Adorno-style criticism of Hegel would be telling. (This is independent of Adorno’s actual criticisms of Hegel.) Hegel thought that the goods offered by the package of modern life were ultimately compatible with each other; Hegel never denied the tensions that existed among them but instead argued that unlike the case in ancient Greek life or prerevolutionary France, the tensions were not such as to bring the whole down with them. The Adorno-style of criticism takes Hegel and stands it on its head: the kind of alienation engendered in a consumerist society is simply a new version of the alienation experienced under the ancien régime. The whole exhibits a form of rational compulsion at odds with itself. How a Hegelian might reply to this would be the topic of another paper.

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NOTES 1. Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1979), argues for it as the principle of his practical philosophy; James Kreines rightfully asks why Siep does not extend the principle of recognition to all of Hegel’s philosophy instead of restricting it only to practical philosophy. See James Kreines, “Finding Our Way in the Phenomenology of Spirit,” review of Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein einführender Kommentar zu Hegels “Differenzschrift” und Phänomenologie des Geistes” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), published in Internationales Jahrbuch des deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism. vol. 2, 2004, 366–373. 2. To some extent, Alexandre Kojève and his followers have argued that recognition, under different names, was in fact the central concept of political thought in the West. See Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. by James H. Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969). This is also the contention behind Francis Fukuyama’s best selling and rather conservative version of Kojève’s views, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 3. Jürgen Habermas lodges this complaint against all such “purely intersubjectivist” ways of reading Hegel in Truth and Justification, trans. Barbara Fultner (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003). An example of just how vehement the debate can be can be seen in the myriad of (to my mind, largely unfair) criticisms of Richard Rorty’s work as obliterating this distinction. Many commentators have taken Rorty to be arguing that all there is to truth is agreement (and, to be fair, Rorty has in looser moments given them plenty of ammunition for this charge). Rorty’s point on truth is more that of the Humean skeptic than it is a denial of the value of truth; just as Hume asked what extra we possibly thought we got by adding the word “causality” to the constant conjunction of events (or even their subjunctive conjunction), Rorty wonders what extra conceptual help we think we are getting when we add the word “true” to a proposition that has been verified, cross-checked, subjected to criticism, and the like, except for the fallibilist reminder that “we might after all be wrong.” 4. This point has been a consistent theme in Charles Taylor’s writing. See Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). See also Donald Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics, 112 (2002), pp. 267–91. 5. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Charles Taylor, et al., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 6. This is the position debated between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in their joint book, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, Christiane Wilke (London: Verso, 2003). 7. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). 8. It is, of course, an entirely separate question as to whether it can do this in a way that is neutral towards all determinate conceptions of the good. Another version of this can be found in Christine Korsgaard’s idea of “practical identities” as

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supplying the missing content for the otherwise formal principle of the “right,” the categorical imperative. See Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 9. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1991). §27. 10. That Kant already had a more complex picture of human psychology at work in his writings is defended by Nancy Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 11. One should add the qualifier, “legitimate,” if only to sidestep the misleading issue of whether it would make sense to say that something might be “good” for an individual if it were abstracted from out of the conditions of the right, that is, if it conflicted with the right; and the answer is: Of course. Abstracted away from all conditions of the right, lots of things may be good in various senses for agents. 12. The case for this as at least an interpretation of Hegel is made more in fully in Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert Pippin in his The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2005) discusses the idea of agency as a norm as the ongoing question of modern philosophy, not just as a matter of interpreting Hegel. 13. That Hegel’s own conception of dialectic is itself a development (and naming of) key Fichtean ideas is not in dispute here. This feature of the relation between Hegel’s and Fichte’s approaches has been noted often enough in the literature so that references to it are hardly worth noting. 14. When we begin to make such explicit judgments and then reflect on them to the point that we note the contradictions at work, for example, in the concept of the perceptual object, we are pushed to construct an unconditional account of such matters; this is where the dialectic of perception starts. On its own, perceptual experience is not problematic in that way; it becomes so only under the pressure of reflection. One possible reaction to this is a Wittgensteinian “quietist” approach, that is, the idea that if we simply refrained from putting that kind of reflective pressure on our ordinary perceptual experience, everything would be in order. Self-interpreting animals cannot do that; the dynamic created by any kind of reflection pushes itself onward to such unconditional accounts. 15. One obvious way is to construe such deliberation is as some form of means/ ends reasoning (where the rationality of the norm is associated with its efficiency). However, that is not the only way practical reasoning can proceed; it also be a matter not of seeking the most efficient means to achieve an end but that of seeking to specify the ends in question. See Henry Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Democratic Autonomy: Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 16. Hegel, Enzyklopädie, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), vol. 8, §66 (emphasis mine). As with all such direct knowledge, it rests on a background mediacy, a way in which certain mediated concepts can be learned and then employed in immediate ways. In the passage cited, Hegel goes on to add, “In all these cases, immediacy of knowledge not only does not exclude mediation, but the two are so bound together that immediate knowledge is even the product and result of mediated knowledge.”

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[“Die Geläufigkeit, zu der wir es in irgendeiner Art von Wissen, auch Kunst, technischer Geschicklichkeit gebracht haben, besteht eben darin, solche Kenntnisse, Arten der Tätigkeit im vorkommenden Falle unmittelbar in seinem Bewußtsein, ja selbst in einer nach außen gehenden Tätigkeit und in seinen Gliedern zu haben. - In allen diesen Fällen schließt die Unmittelbarkeit des Wissens nicht nur die Vermittlung desselben nicht aus, sondern sie sind so verknüpft, daß das unmittelbare Wissen sogar Produkt und Resultat des vermittelten Wissens ist.”] 17. The most succinct discussion of this is in §118 of the Philosophy of Right, where Hegel distinguishes (as he does in several places) between actions and deeds, that is, between the consequences of the action that are an internal part of its shape, that is, part of what one intends to do (scare somebody, write an article, turn on the light, etc.), and the consequences that fall outside of the intention/action complex but which are causally related to it (such as the athlete who wins a competition on which somebody, Mr. X, has bet a large amount and makes Mr. X a wealthier man, even thought Mr. X’s becoming wealthy was never part of the athlete’s intention). There is thus a distinction between the action as the “intention/action complex” and “what one ends up doing” (the “deed”), which can be more extensive than the intention/action complex itself. Hegel realizes that this raises difficult issues for assigning responsibility, but those issues need not be deeply philosophical; they have to do with the legal, social, and political ramifications of holding people responsible for more than what they intend and involve evaluations of what a reasonable person should have foreseen. 18. There is another issue at stake in this, namely, as to whether this is a condition on all agents or only for agents who for very determinate historical reasons have come to think of the structure of their thought and willing as, in Hegel’s words, “infinite,” that is, as normative “all the way down” and not as intrinsically tied to any particular facts or givens. For such historically determinate modern agents, the “right” and the “good” pull apart. That must be qualified. Whereas it would indeed be odd to think that considerations of “the good” could be indifferent to biological facts about birth, death, the nature and length of human maturation, health and illness, the reproduction of the species as depending sexual reproduction, and to other social, cultural, and economic facts, what nonetheless counts as right depends on how these various facts are appropriated into a conception of what would be the right and best way to lead one’s life and how that appropriation then enters into one’s conduct and emotional life. The point about the basis of such evaluation being found in the purposive structures of “life” is also a generally neo-Aristotelian point that has found recent expression in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Thompson. See in particular Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago and LaSalle: Open Court, 1999), and in particular chapter 6, “Reasons for Action,” where MacIntyre argues that the idea of becoming an independent practical reasoner only makes sense by virtue of our starting out life already oriented to some goods; on p. 56, he notes, “The first step in this transition takes place when a child becomes able to consider the suggestion that the good to the achievement of which it is presently directed by its animal nature is inferior to some other alternative good and that this latter good provides a better reason for action . . . this is possible only if there is indeed some good at which the child has been aiming.” See also Michael Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” in Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and

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Moral Theory, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 19. This is, I take it, part of the point behind Hegel’s otherwise puzzling statements about the nature of truth. Any fair explication of Hegel’s conception of truth would require much more space, but in summary form it can put as the following. Since nature is external to mindedness—nature is the other of Geist—making true statements in the context of natural facts means molding our ideas, at least in the sense of Vorstellungen, to nature’s contours, and that is only possible if they are also ruled by concepts (scientific theories of nature). In the realm of social facts, however, some facts may be said to be false because, although they are real and exist, they are not in accordance with what the practical demands of agency require; a true social fact is one that, at least for moderns, is a realization of freedom. Thus, as Hegel continually notes, whereas the criterion of correspondence of idea to fact is crucial where natural facts are at issue, in the cases where social facts are at issue, what is at stake is the correspondence of the fact to the adequately worked out concept. 20. See Terry Pinkard, “Liberal Rights and Liberal Individualism Without Liberalism: Agency and Recognition,” in German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Espen Hammer (London: Routledge, 2007), 206–224. 21. The temptation to speak of these social facts as social roles is real enough, and I myself have succumbed to it in the past. This is, however, potentially very misleading, since it might well suggest an overly theatrical version of the view of modern life, as if we were all self-enclosed monadic agents who, as it were, conduct ourselves by putting on masks and pretending to be various characters to each other. Instead of seeing these orientations as “roles,” it would be better to describe in terms of something more like an overall set of orientations. As Robert Pippin has noted, particularly within forms of life that are anchored in modern individualistic conceptions, it is all too tempting therefore to construe sociality on an “I-We” model (as, for example, in game theory), which in turn provides an incentive to “theatricalize,” if not compromise, with the “We” (to play the game well while at the same time not identifying with it). What looks like the opposite temptation, namely, to revolt against the “We,” is simply the other side of that coin. See Robert Pippin, “Authenticity in Painting: Remarks on Michael Fried’s Art History,” Critical Inquiry 31 (Spring 2005). 22. One important caveat should be attached to this. Although these kinds of statuses are social proprieties, their normative content need not be “up to me” any more than the meanings of linguistic terms are “up to me.” Indeed, as Hegel remarks, to the extent that such a social propriety is only “my own,” it counts for me as deficient. (See Philosophy of Right, §8.) Although it belongs to another story, it is worth noting that part of the emphasis on subjectivity and individuality in modern life creates a kind of natural dynamic that suggests we view all these proprieties as somehow matters of individual choice, and that in turn is part of what pushes the dynamic to a conception of social life in terms of theatricality, of “role-playing,” as if these proprieties were forced on us and we at best only learned to manage them, not to live in them. This is a major thrust of the section in the 1807 Phenomenology titled, “Individuality, which in its own eyes is real in and for itself” where Hegel tries to show that without a robust conception of the “what is at stake,” or “what really matters” (die Sache selbst) as social proprieties, there can only be a form of bad faith

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theatricality in social life. See Terry Pinkard, “Shapes of Active Reason: The Law of the Heart, Retrieved Virtue, and What Really Matters,” in The Blackwell’s Guide to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Kenneth Westphal (London: Blackwell’s, 2008). 23. See Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hans Friedrich Wessels and Heinrich Clairmont (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988), 236. Hegel says there of such “wahre Geist”: “Aus diesem Glücke aber, seine Bestimmung erreicht zu haben, und in ihr zu leben, ist das Selbstbewußtsein, welches zunächst nur unmittelbar und dem Begriffe nach Geist ist, herausgetreten, oder auch - es hat es noch nicht erreicht; denn beides kann auf gleiche Weise gesagt werden.” 24. This is, strikingly, Hegel’s way of reformulating the Kantian idea of freedom as rational compulsion and situating it socially and historically. For Kant, a free action is one where the maxim necessarily produces the action; of course, such necessity is possible, so Kant argues, only if reason itself is the noumenal and not phenomenal cause of the action, and the agent can acknowledge the reason as a reason (make it causally effective). (On maxims necessarily producing the action, see Jens Timmermann, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Hegel interprets the social statuses of ancient Greek life as giving the respective agents something like “maxims” which necessarily produce the actions they undertake. That the result is supposed to be harmonious shows the conceptual affinity of Greek life with what Kant would call the “kingdom of ends,” where each agent mirrors the authority of the whole within him- or herself. What Greek life shows is that in those cases where the structure of social rationality is itself at odds with itself, then there can be no spontaneous harmony (as there would be in the “kingdom of ends”); the whole cannot sustain itself in its self-contradiction. 25. The term “score-keeping” is used by Robert Brandom to explain how conceptual contents can both perspectival and shared and to generate a conception of objectivity. On Brandom’s account, objectivity itself is a structural feature of discursive intersubjectivity, which he characterizes as a coordinated set of “I-thou” relations (those relations between commitments undertaken by a scorekeeper in interpreting others and commitments attributed by that scorekeeper to those others). See Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 599. He contrasts these with what he calls “I-we accounts” which mistakenly postulate a privileged perspective, that of the community; in an “I-thou” relation, each perspective is at most locally privileged: see Making It Explicit, 600. On Brandom’s account, “deontic statuses” (such as “knowing”) amount to counters in terms of which discursive score is kept, and the “deontic attitudes” amount to the activity of score-keeping as instituting these statuses: see Making It Explicit, 593. The individualist stance of score-keeping would amount to the alienated stance Hegel describes in those sections of the Phenomenology. To be sure, Brandom disavows the idea that score-keeping is only a matter of coordination; to see it as such a matter would make it a form of the “regularism” which he criticizes in the first part of Making It Explicit; but it is hard to see how the later account of score-keeping in the same book (at the end of his exposition) does not fall into exactly the position he has criticized in the first part. 26. “In jener Seite der Rückkehr in das Selbst ist die Eitelkeit aller Dinge seine eigene Eitelkeit, oder es ist eitel. Es ist das fürsichseiende Selbst, das alles nicht nur

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zu beurteilen und zu beschwatzen, sondern geistreich die festen Wesen der Wirklichkeit wie die festen Bestimmungen, die das Urteil setzt, in ihrem Widerspruche zu sagen weiß, und dieser Widerspruch ist ihre Wahrheit.” Phänomenologie des Geistes, 347. 27. The phenomenon of alienation as Hegel describes it has the same kind of initially puzzling shape to it as do the phenomena of weakness of the will and of self-deception; it is very difficult to state just exactly how any of them are even possible. 28. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §182: “. . . ist das Ganze [der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft] der Boden der Vermittlung, wo alle Einzelheiten, alle Anlagen, alle Zufälligkeiten der Geburt und des Glücks sich frei machen, wo die Wellen aller Leidenschaften ausströmen, die nur durch die hineinscheinende Vernunft regiert werden. Die Besonderheit, beschränkt durch die Allgemeinheit, ist allein das Maß, wodurch jede Besonderheit ihr Wohl befördert.” See also Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §184: “Das Sittliche ist hier in seine Extreme verloren.” 29. There is another crucial element of the story which must be treated all too cursorily here. This has to do with Hegel’s own reworking of Kant’s insistence on the dignity of humanity. Hegel clearly accepts large parts of Kant’s conception of dignity as “beyond price,” that is, (in Hegel’s language) “infinite.” For example, in his lectures on the philosophy of world history, Hegel notes, “Die Religiosität die Sittlichkeit eines beschränkten Lebens—eines Hirten, eines Bauern—in ihrer konzentrierten Innigkeit und ihrer Beschränktheit auf wenige und ganz einfache Verhältnisse des Lebens hat unendlichen Wert und denselben Wert als die Religiosität und Sittlichkeit einer ausgebildeten Erkenntnis und eines an Umfang der Beziehungen und Handlungen reichen Daseins. Dieser innere Mittelpunkt, diese einfache Region des Rechts der subjektiven Freiheit . . . bleibt unangetastet und ist dem lautern Lärm der Weltgeschichte . . . [entnommen].” [Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte: Band I: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1994), 109.] What Hegel criticized in Kant’s theory was his move from that of an agent’s having an unconditional value for himself to that of recognizing other agents as also having such unconditional value. What Kant failed to see was it was possible to acknowledge that other agents do indeed have unconditional value in their own eyes without, as a matter of pure practical reason, having to acknowledge that they have unconditional value for oneself also; that is, that they have the same essential properties as oneself (freedom, rationality, the ability to regard themselves as ends in themselves) does not require as a matter of pure practical reason that one is thus rationally compelled to acknowledge that those properties be respected. Hegel’s point is that for such genuine reciprocal recognition to be actual, the mutual recognition of each other as creatures with dignity must itself be mediated by a complex historical process involving the Christian conception of all of humanity being equal in the eyes of God, such that in the institutions and practices of a post-Christian form of life, this becomes something nonoptional, a required good for such agents.

7 Producing for Others Daniel Brudney1

In general, it may be affirm’d, that there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself. —David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature2 Usefulness is agreeable, and engages our approbation. This is a matter of fact, confirmed by daily observation. But, useful? For what? For some body’s interest, surely. Whose interest then? Not our own only: For our approbation frequently extends farther. It must, therefore, be the interest of those, who are served by the character or action approved of; and these we may conclude, however remote, are not totally indifferent to us. —David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals3

In this paper I detail the structure and workings of what I call the socialrecognition activity of true communist society (TCS), the society sketched briefly by the 1844 Marx, that is, the Marx of the “Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique” and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.4 I then argue that this activity provides the social basis for communists’ sense of their own worth. Since the publication of A Theory of Justice the existence of such a social basis has been seen as a desideratum of an acceptable society. It is worth showing that the young Marx can satisfy it. Rawls remarks that a central concern of political philosophy is the construction and comparison of well-ordered societies: the construction and comparison of complex wholes composed of ideals of the person, of basic institutional arrangements, and of citizen-citizen relations.5 This chapter is a first step toward constructing a well-ordered society for the young Marx. 151

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The chapter presents a picture of TCS social relations. It is thus a form of ideal theory. In the chapter’s final section I make a few remarks about a distinction between types of ideal theory, a distinction that is relevant for comparing Marxian ideal society to an ideal market society that highlights citizens’ equal legal rights.

1 For the 1844 Marx, agents in TCS see one another as beings whose selfrealization consists in transforming nature as a way (i) to realize one’s personal aims (e.g., to be a hunter, fisher, etc.), (ii) to provide the objects needed for the species’ continued survival and development, and (iii) to provide the objects that others need to pursue their personal aims. Central to Marxian self-realization is to have one’s activities under (ii) and especially (iii) confirmed by others, that is, others acknowledge and endorse one’s engagement in the activity so described. In fact, one can realize one’s nature only if others do acknowledge and endorse one’s production activities. Thus not only must producers produce with particular intentions (to make something for others); consumers must consume with a particular set of beliefs (about the intentions of producers); and producers must have particular beliefs about consumers’ beliefs (about their, the producers’, intentions). Only then, Marx says, “would [I] become recognized and felt by you, yourself, as a completion [Ergänzung] of your own nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love.”6 In the production/consumption process communists must continually recognize each other as certain sorts of beings engaged in a certain kind of activity. “Recognition” here is demanding. It is not enough for B to register that A is producing something that B will use. That could obtain under capitalism. It is also not enough for B to register that A is producing something that he intends B to use where B’s use is instrumental to some other goal A has, for example, A intends B to use his product because then not just B but C and D will buy A’s product, making A rich. It is not even enough for B to register that, for A, B’s use of A’s product is the endpoint of A’s goal in producing. For B might not care about this fact. B must both register this fact and, as Marx puts it, “affirm” it.7 Moreover, both A and B must see the production/consumption process as, itself, fundamental. They must see production for others not as some trivial activity but as the basic way in which human beings realize their natures: under proper conditions, it is the good life. Thus A and B must have certain normative beliefs and know this about one another. Only if B both registers A’s activity and affirms it for the

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right reason can her consumption count as “completing” that activity, and so as contributing to A’s realization of his nature. Let’s take two things from this. First, communist self-realization is a form of self-realization-through-others. It is not merely that my activity is done with others (for example, with my coproducers) and for others. In addition, others’ responsiveness to my activity is a condition of the activity’s success. Purely qua individual, I might find my work intrinsically satisfying, and in that sense my self-realization might not go through others. However, qua human being, for Marx my self-realization is dependent on others, on their appropriate responsiveness. The structure instantiated here can be found elsewhere. (For instance, it obtains in the well-ordered society of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, where citizens give each other not products but justice.)8 Moreover, and not surprisingly, it is a means to social bonds. Marx puts this point by saying that each of us would become “the mediator” for the others with “the species” and that through producing for one another each of us would realize his “communal nature.”9 The second thing to note is that in TCS the production/consumption process is what I will call a social-recognition activity.10 Most societies have ways by which social recognition—positive or negative—is conveyed. Joel Feinberg notes that the criminal law has an expressive function. It articulates the community’s moral condemnation of the criminal and his act.11 If a person has been convicted of a crime, it is expected that other citizens will recognize (both register and affirm) society’s moral judgment. This negative judgment will be conveyed in large and small ways, most obviously within the correctional system but also as part of ordinary citizens’ response to the fact of the agent’s criminality. Indeed, if citizens don’t tend to respond this way, there is probably a shortfall in their belief in the legitimacy of the society’s criminal justice system. In a more positive vein, the public understanding that all citizens are equal before the law has been thought to express affirmation of all citizens’ fundamental equality. For instance, suppose I attempt to register to vote and, on presentation of the proper credentials, I am treated as of course entitled to vote. This counts as recognition of my equal status in the community. Alternatively, if this kind of context is fraught with the possibility of rejection—if due to race, religion, gender, etc., a citizen justifiably fears that she won’t receive an of course response—then here, too, there is a worry about institutional legitimacy. It is obvious enough that equality under the law expresses social affirmation of citizens’ equality. However, one could imagine a Calvinist-egalitariantotalitarian regime, in which no one enjoys individual rights and this is understood and accepted as flowing from the utter but equal worthlessness

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of all human beings.12 In most liberal societies, however, at least in their ideal form, equality under the law also expresses social affirmation of the fundamental and great worth of each citizen: it is because each citizen has such worth that the law must treat her not just equally but well. And this is surely an element in the of course response to, say, my request to register to vote. Thus in various ways the law conveys social messages, and citizens’ lives within the framework of the law involve giving and receiving these messages. It is not that such beliefs are often brought to consciousness or explicit articulation. Rather, they are embedded in certain forms of social activity, and proper engagement in such activity involves a tacit understanding and affirmation of them. Moreover, the process of social recognition is in fact an ongoing process, not a single event. In much narrative literature, recognition is nodal: at the key moment, the poor boy is recognized as the prince, the girl as someone’s long-lost daughter. The character’s life pivots around such a moment, creating a “before” and an “after.” (In Pride and Prejudice, upon reading Darcy’s letter, Elizabeth says, “I never knew myself until this moment.”) By contrast, social recognition is a process of countless small events, most of which hardly register on the agent. It is usually when social recognition malfunctions that individual moments stick out.13

2 Marx seems to take for granted that communists would care about one another’s well-being. After all, they would produce objects for one another and see one another’s needs as a reason to do so. These are surely markers of mutual caring. Interestingly, Marx is explicit that communists would feel with and for one another. He says that in TCS, “[n]eed or enjoyment” will have “lost their egoistic nature.”14 My satisfactions will give others pleasure, and reciprocally. “[T]he senses and enjoyment [Genuß] of other human beings have become my own appropriation [Aneignung]”;15 and “[i]nsofar as the human being, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation [Bejahung] of the object by another is likewise his own enjoyment [Genuß].”16 In TCS I would not envy another’s delight in using this or that object; on the contrary, I would share her delight.17 It has gone unnoticed that Marx thus overlaps a bit with the British sentimentalist tradition. Of course, Marx is not concerned with the source of moral judgments, and the actual line of influence here is through Feuerbach. Nevertheless, like the sentimentalists, the 1844 Marx puts weight on our capacity to feel with and for others. Moreover, he is on the optimistic

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side of a basic divide about the possibilities of fellow-feeling. Some philosophers, for example, Butler and Schopenhauer, hold that although we can feel for others’ miseries, their happiness leaves us cold (at best).18 Others are more optimistic. Hume imagines meeting with a comfortable, middle-class family. “[T]he freedom, ease, confidence, and calm enjoyment, diffused over their countenances, sufficiently express their happiness. I have a pleasing sympathy in the prospect of so much joy, and can never consider the course of it, without the most agreeable emotions.”19 And J. S. Mill claims that the capacity for positive sympathy is a part of our nature.20 Oddly, the writer closest to Marx here is Oscar Wilde. In “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Wilde first praises what he calls “Individualism,” and expounds on it as follows: Under Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish. . . . When man has realized Individualism, he will also realize sympathy and exercise it freely and spontaneously. . . . Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist—to sympathize with a friend’s success. . . . [Under socialism] the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man will have joy in the contemplation of the joyous lives of others.21

The most obvious reason I might not share another’s enjoyment is envy. This is the emotion that both the 1844 Marx and Wilde, that incorrigible cynic, believe a new society will tamp down, allowing our natural pleasure in others’ well-being to come to the fore. It is a commonplace that others’ accomplishments cast me down. One measure of optimism about humanity is how far one thinks this trait is not ingrained in our nature.22 Now, I don’t want to put too much stress on Marx’s statements about feelings. Apart from the infrequency of such remarks, feelings, more particularly, occurrent feelings, are merely one element of a specific kind of social relation; the important thing is to characterize that relation. I return to this point shortly.

3 It is time to complicate matters. In TCS, the following are claimed to obtain: (i) (ii)

Each agent engages in some sort of nature-transforming activity as her form of individual self-realization. Each agent engages in some sort of nature-transforming activity as part of the species’ joint transformation of nature to survive and to live at an increasingly high level.

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(iii) Each agent engages in some sort of nature-transforming activity as part of providing other agents with the means for their individual self-realization. (iv) Agents have a particular belief about the content of the human selfrealization activity. (v) Agents believe that others have the same belief. (vi) Agents care about others’ well-being. (vii) Agents believe that others care about their well-being. These features of TCS reinforce one another. In engaging in the joint transformation of nature I am producing for others and believe that they are producing for me. I also believe that my activity realizes my nature and that others’ activities realize theirs. So I believe that I am helping others to realize their nature and that they are helping me to realize mine. And I believe that others care about my well-being. All this is likely further to cement my commitment to others. On the given premises, the arrangements seem likely to be stable and self-sustaining. Note, incidentally, that although the focus here is on the realization of one’s nature qua human being, Marx never doubts that this is compatible with the realization of one’s nature qua individual. Indeed, there is a direct and basic connection. A provides B with those objects with which B attempts to realize her nature qua individual: that is the point of A’s production for B. And the relationship is supposed to be reciprocal.23 Now to the complication. Marx thinks that communists would relate to one another under new descriptions. As partners in a particular large scale social enterprise, we would be fellow transformers of nature for one another; more importantly, we would be fellow completers of one another’s essence. Unfortunately, this talk of A completing B is potentially misleading. Despite Marx’s critique of the division of labor, modern industry needs at least some (and probably a good deal) of it.24 And as Locke long ago noted in his “Catalogue of things” that go into the production of “every Loaf of Bread,”25 any product owes its existence to the materials from which it is made and to the implements that work on that material, and these require many types of labor, often extending a long way into the past. In reality, in TCS the product that any B uses is not made by a single A but by many people. And the immediate consumer of the typical A’s output is almost certainly not B but A*, the next person in the long production and distribution process. A* might appreciate A’s work, might, in fact should, see it as contributing to her own, and this, too, could be a form of A’s completion. The point, though, is that, qua producer, A is related not merely, and not immediately, to the ultimate consumer, B, but to A*, A**, and so on in a long chain. In TCS, then, agents complete one another (their work is acknowledged and endorsed by others) in a way that is partly real but also heavily no-

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tional. It is real in that producers do intend to make something for others’ use, where “others” includes both the subsequent links in the production chain and the ultimate consumer. But the further along the chain we go, and especially with respect to the ultimate consumer, it becomes increasingly notional to say that some specific person’s consumption or use of the product completes some specific person’s production of it. Marx’s model works nicely with individual craft labor. A makes a desk, then sells or gives it to B, who uses it with the understanding that A made it for B to use (or, at any rate, for someone to use). The problem is to extend the model to mass production. Given that some division of labor obtains, for any object that B consumes, A’s labor will be only a small part of what goes into the object. (In what sense could the ultimate consumer “use” my contribution to the creation of a particular automobile?) And in a world of mass production, producers and consumers are entirely unknown to one another. To see her labor as realizing her nature, A must have a particular understanding of her connection (i) to others’ labor, and (ii) to consumers as a whole. Though I make but a tiny part of an automobile, I must see the whole thing as “my” product. Perhaps this will not be difficult with any given automobile: one could say that, really, my intention in working on the drive shaft is not to make a drive shaft but to make (help to make) an automobile. So seeing this particular object—this entire automobile—as mine might be unproblematic.26 However, for Marx, my completion will be disappointingly sporadic, merely fleeting, if I am completed only by those who use the relatively few automobiles I actually work on. Would it be enough, then, if I see myself as completed by all those who use the model of car I have helped to make? To some degree, workers under capitalism might feel this, might take pride in the model that rolls off their production line even if they didn’t work on that specific car. Marx envisions the psychic expansion here as much greater. At the limit, I would see all productive output as “my own” and so all consumption of such output as “my” completion. After all, Marx claims that via labor we mediate for one another with the species. That suggests that communists would have a strong sense of identification with the species, and presumably this would involve identifying with the species’ output.27 In TCS, then, I would relate to other producers’ output and to consumers’ use of that output under a certain description (as “my” output). That description is not reducible to an externally observable set of phenomena, that is, to the way that bodies and machines function in a factory or to the way that goods are acquired and consumed. It tends not to be noticed that, from the point of view of someone who sees only producers, machines and consumers, TCS might look very much like capitalism. Further technological advance is not a precondition of communist relationships. What is supposed to change, as a result of or, really, in tune with social change are

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both the real nature of our relationships and our understanding of those relationships, that is, the descriptions under which we relate to others and to the objects we produce and consume. That in TCS producers have a broad and deep identification with one another is vital. Nevertheless, it handles only one issue. It handles the claim that B’s use of the product confirms A’s activity: through broad and deep identification, A sees as “his own” the product that (some notional) B consumes. However, a further fundamental feature of communist production is that A wants to provide for B’s needs—that is an essential feature of A’s productive activity. And this, too, needs to be understood in the context of mass, indeed global, production and consumption. What, precisely, is the stance that A is supposed to have toward B? Does A have affection for B? Is that the central feature of the producer/consumer relation in TCS? Marx does talk of being confirmed in “your love.”28 So would all producers in TCS have feelings of affection for all consumers—including unknown and distant consumers? Isn’t this highly implausible? I want to approach this issue through a brief look at J. S. Mill. The aspiration to a broad and deep identification with others was no rarity in the mid-nineteenth century. Most notably, J. S. Mill’s utilitarian agent would be motivated by identification with the pleasures and pains of other human beings. Such an agent, Mill says, would “identify his feelings more and more with their good.”29 Mill stresses our impulse to identify with others: the “natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality,” he says, is “the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.”30 And he thinks that under proper social conditions this desire could be satisfied. “This noble capability [to identify with others] implies indeed a certain cultivation, but not superior to that which might be, and certainly will be if human improvement continues, the lot of all.”31 Mill even declares himself in favor of (and believes in the possibility of) a “Religion of Humanity.”32 For its devotees, Mill says, “the sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good, may be cultivated into a sentiment and a principle capable of fulfilling every important function of religion and itself justly entitled to the name.”33 He goes so far as to claim that identification with humanity can substitute for personal immortality.34 Feuerbach, Comte, George Eliot, and a host of minor Victorians make similar professions.35 Note that here identification is with the beneficiaries of utilitarian conduct. Our motivation to benefit others is supposed to be our feelings for and with them. In effect, we are said to be capable of caring strongly about the well-being of all of humanity. This mid-century movement evoked mid-century resistance. There are three standard complaints. First, there is the widespread charge that purported love for humanity tends to mask indifference to actual, nearby indi-

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viduals. “Thy love afar is spite at home,” declares Emerson, and Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House is a telling caricature of such a person.36 Here, I will ignore this charge. If feelings for and with unknown, distant others are possible, then we can worry about how such an ideal might be abused. The second worry has already been mentioned. In the eighteenth century, Butler held that we throb readily to others’ miseries but not to their joys, remarking that we have many words for the first feeling (“pity, compassion”) but “scarce any single one, by which the [other feeling] is distinctly expressed.”37 In the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer makes a similar claim.38 The worry here is about the content of our feelings. This is in fact an interesting issue that deserves attention; however, as the next issue is more pressing, this one will have to wait for another day. The third and fundamental worry is, of course, about the scope of our feelings. Can they really extend to humanity as a whole? Mill, Comte, et. al. think that they can, but perhaps this is nineteenth-century naivety. More recent writers have been chastened by the awful twentieth century. Stuart Hampshire remarks that Mill’s optimism “has been lost, not so much because of philosophical arguments but perhaps rather because of the hideous face of political events.”39 Anyway, just as there are limits to our physical possibilities, no matter how ideal the social arrangements, aren’t there limits to our emotional possibilities? Can we really care for billions of unknown, distant others? Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide an answer to this last and basic worry. What I will attempt to do is to determine what the nature of the worry actually is.

4 I am trying to characterize the producer/consumer relation in TCS. It involves two ways of identifying with others. Each producer identifies with other producers (sees their output as his own); each also identifies with the consumer’s satisfaction in using the product (sees her enjoyment of the product as his own). In this section the focus is on the second form of identification. It is in virtue of the producer’s stance toward the consumer that the producer both shares the consumer’s enjoyments and is motivated to produce for the consumer. The question is how to characterize this stance toward the consumer. The Millian picture puts the stress on feelings of love and sympathy. This, I think, is problematic. Mill’s inveterate critic, James Fitzjames Stephen, considers it problematic largely because he thinks affection for all of humanity is beyond our emotional ken: Mill is asking too much from us.40 I will press a different reason to reject a focus on these feelings. I think that they simply cannot have unknown others as their object. I think that this

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is true of both love and sympathy; however, I suspect that it is more clearly true of the former, and as that is the feeling that Marx himself invokes, my argument will be directed only to it. I will argue that love simply cannot be central to the kind of stance that Marx has in mind. However, something else—what I will call concern—can. And this will make more plausible the thought that, pace Fitzjames Stephen, we can have the desired stance toward all human beings. The issue is my relation to strangers—to unknown, distant others. Now, one way to imagine my relation to such people is that I extend to them the affection that I have for those known and near. I care for beings other than myself: for my family, my friends, and so forth. So I just expand the circle of my affection—in principle, to all human beings. If this is our model, there is a worry. After all, it is not merely that I am personally unacquainted with these distant human beings. It is rather that I don’t know anything about them: what they look like, whether they are male or female, old or young, anything. For me, they are altogether unindividuated. I might be disposed to have contentful feelings for them were I to know something of them, but the nineteenth-century claim is that I can love others who are in fact utterly unknown and distant. On the model of the extension of my affection for my family, friends, etc., this seems not so much unlikely as without content. A Saul Bellow character refers to “potato love”—an easy, empty affection, something vague and essentially meaningless: “[a]morphous, hungry, swelling, indiscriminate.”41 Love for unknown, distant others seems to be of this kind. Suppose I sit at my desk and call to mind, deliberately focus on, my spouse and children. I might find myself strongly moved. Similarly, I might be moved by the thought of distant friends, their sad condition, and so forth. So now I extend my thoughts and become moved by the plight of unknown, distant others, say, the victims of a disaster somewhere. The worry is that this last step involves a category mistake, that real affection is targeted. When it becomes insufficiently so, it becomes vapid—mere potato love. In Middlemarch, George Eliot insists that we need “the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.”42 Yet how can I have a feeling for unknown, distant others that is “direct” and “individual”? That seems impossible. When Marx talks of “shared enjoyments,” he probably has in mind, at least in the first place, a fellow-feeling that is in fact direct and individual: in TCS, I would share Joe’s enjoyments. To some extent, as it were, locally, TCS would likely satisfy Eliot’s desideratum. Locally, communists would have something like affection for one another. Still, we shouldn’t let Marx off the hook. For the most part, in any image of a modern TCS communists will produce primarily for unknown, distant others. We need a grasp of communists’ fundamental stance toward these others.

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Now, some feelings can do without any object. I can be melancholy without being melancholy about anything. By contrast, I cannot simply feel compassion. My compassion requires an object. Moreover, and crucially, this object must be individuated.43 I don’t think I can have compassion for “disaster victims”—for beings described in such a vague and general way. My claim about love is that it, too, requires an individuated object. With it, too, the object, “disaster victims” won’t do. I can surely love my neighbor. But if the focus is my relation to billions of unknown, distant others, love seems the wrong category. The issue is not whether one can really love more than, say, ten or twenty people. That is the Fitzjames Stephen worry, and he might be mistaken. In any event, it is a question about the empirical limits of the human psyche. My question is about the structure of a particular emotional category. Love needs to latch onto something individuated;44 otherwise, we have mere potato love. (Many issues arise here; sadly, space to address them is lacking. The most obvious is that terms that designate a supraindividual entity, for example, “Chicago Bulls” or “Canada,” are different from terms that designate a diffuse collection of individuals, for example, “disaster victims.” The former have their own kind of individuation. I suspect that someone could, in fact, love such things.) I don’t at all want to deny that some forms of feeling are possible even with an object that is largely unindividuated. On the contrary, I want to affirm this possibility. Indeed, I have something in mind: being concerned for others. As with affection, being concerned for others will motivate actions to benefit those others. No doubt, it will sometimes prompt occurrent feelings (possibly strong ones) for the objects of concern. Moreover, concern will surely prompt specific emotional responses in specific circumstances; for example, I will be indignant at those who block relief supplies to the disaster victims and delighted when I learn that the supplies have finally gotten through. Perhaps on the whole, concern tends to involve less in the way of occurrent feelings than love but that is not the central issue. My claim is that love fits within a class of feelings that require individuated objects while concern is in a class that also can take unindividuated objects. To be concerned for the well-being of “disaster victims” makes sense. The distinction between these classes of feelings is worth exploring in greater depth but I invoke it here solely to respond to the worry that Marx assumes that producers in TCS love billions of consumers. This worry is generated by Marx’s use of the terminology of affection, part of his Feuerbachian heritage. But if there is a disaster halfway around the world, it sounds odd—empty—to claim that I feel for the destitute though, to me, utterly unknown victims: what feelings can I have specifically for them? I think it much less odd to say that I am concerned for them and their well-being.

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The best way to reconstruct Marx’s view here is in terms of concern rather than love.45 A word of caution about my talk of “feeling.” This is the usual nineteenthcentury term. However, these days the talk would be of “emotion,” and it would be stressed that to have emotion E need not involve any occurrent feeling. In addition, there would be discussion about whether, how far, and in what sense emotions are cognitive. As this is too vast an area to deal with here, I am sticking to the nineteenth-century talk of feelings, but the reader should keep in mind that this is, in effect, a strategy of avoidance, a way to restrict the range of issues to be addressed. And I want to stress that my claims about love and concern are limited. I think that neither love nor (especially) concern needs constantly or even frequently occurrent feelings; and each requires an object. Where I claim they differ is with respect to the individuation of their objects. I see no need to discuss other issues here.46 Actually, I want to go one step further. In the end, for the issues at stake, the terminology of neither feeling nor emotion is optimal. I think the better category here is practical attitude, a category that includes such things as trust in or confidence in. I take concern for others to be a particular practical attitude toward them. It involves a disposition to act in certain ways toward others (and to do so for their sake), to have beliefs (e.g., about the value of these others), and surely at times to have feelings with regard to others, but, as with trust, the issue of what I feel is not crucial.47 If I trust Peter, I live my life with regard to Peter in a certain way. Positive feelings for Peter might obtain but are not the central feature of a life in which I trust him. In the same way, when we think of communists as being concerned for one another’s well-being, the issue is less how they feel toward one another than how they live with one another. This is not to say that concern reduces to actions. I can act as if I trust Peter without actually trusting him, and I can act as if I am concerned for Paul without being so. A practical attitude is a real feature of our psychology, not a mere summary of our conduct. The point is that my practical attitude is not to be reduced to my feelings for the object of that attitude. Clearly, much more should be said about these matters. Here, all there is space to do is to recast the claims that I have been pressing. They are first, that love (whether or not it is seen as a practical attitude) requires an individuated object; and second, that for Marx’s purposes, concern should be seen as a practical attitude, and that as such an attitude it does not require such an object.48 It may be useful to introduce the concept of “someone” as a substitute for George Elliot’s “individual.” In TCS, I would produce with the intention that “someone” use what I produce, and the consumer would know that “someone” produced the object with that intention. In TCS, I would care for—be concerned for—this “someone” who would, in the end, use what I have produced, but this need not involve any fluttering of my feelings.

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We see, then, a fundamental limit to the idea of sharing enjoyments. In TCS, there would be local sharing of enjoyments; however, I cannot literally share an unknown, distant person’s enjoyment. I cannot register its specific content. Here, Eliot’s desired “individual” fellow-feeling is simply not possible. No doubt, I could imagine a person and throb to her enjoyment. Yet it would be bizarre to make the genuineness of my concern for others dependent on my sharing an imagined enjoyment with an imagined person. The upshot of all this is that the limitations on our capacity to love need not be the limitations on our capacity to be concerned. I give no argument here for the thesis that we can actually have concern for billions of unknown, distant others. The fact that many people respond to tsunami-like disasters with some degree of monetary assistance and apparent concern, even when misery is not concretized via pictures of particular victims, does suggest that our limits here might not be depressingly narrow. However, my only claim is that if stress is to be put on caring for unknown, distant others, it is best construed in a way that does not assume that we can each have feelings of love or sympathy for these unknown billions. I take this to be a general claim that is relevant to several issues in current political philosophy, for example, to the possibility of a credible cosmopolitanism. For the purposes of this essay, the specific claim is that, for the 1844 Marx, the more plausible category—the more plausible practical attitude to attribute to agents in TCS—is concern rather than love.49 No doubt, Marx would be optimistic about the possibilities for extensive concern.50

5 Mill commentators sometimes stress that in a well-functioning utilitarian society there would be joint activities that extend agents’ sympathies (for example, “workers’ cooperatives, companionate marriages, and democracy”).51 Marx surely thinks that communists would have an extension of concern, but he holds that change would go much further. Our stance toward one another and toward nature, to some degree even our perceptions, would change. Extensive concern for others would be only one (though a central) part of a larger package. In a basic way, a communist would be a new man. According to Marx, a communist would interpret the world under a new description and so, in a sense, live in a new world. For instance, a communist would not see the products of human labor as independent things, “out there,” but rather as human products made for human use. And his understanding of this fact would go beyond propositional assent, extending to the way the world seems in daily life: “the essential reality of human beings and nature . . . has become evident in practice, sensuously perceptible.”52 As

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an analogy, Marx compares the perceptions of the Greek and the fetishworshipper. “The sensuous consciousness of the fetish-worshipper is different from that of the Greek, because his sensuous existence is different.”53 In seeing a certain piece of wood, the fetish worshipper sees an object with occult powers, registers the object under that description, sees it as that sort of thing; the Greek merely sees a piece of wood. In TCS, the communist would have a new and quite different “sensuous existence” and so also a new and quite different “sensuous consciousness.” She would see produced objects as having certain properties, namely, that they are the embodiment of essential human powers and produced by human beings for human use. Moreover, she would see them as manifestations of our concern for one another. That we would see things under a new description is Marx’s point when he says that in TCS, “[t]he senses have . . . become theorists directly in their practice.”54 What appears to the senses is different from under capitalism. It should be acknowledged that there are echoes here of the Christian tradition that understands the person of faith as living in a transformed world. (Feuerbach gives an atheistic spin to the idea of transformation: the atheist’s world is filled with meaning but it is human rather than divine meaning.55 Here, too, the 1844 Marx is Feuerbachian.) And Marx could also be placed within a different tradition. Utopian thought tends to present human beings whose responses differ radically from ours. In More’s Utopia, gold and gems are used as toys for children and as fetters for slaves. When distinguished visitors come to Utopia decked in finery, the Utopians take it as a mark of disgrace. [The Utopians] therefore bowed to the humblest servants as lords, and took the ambassadors, because of their golden chains, to be slaves, passing them by without any reverence at all. You might have seen children, who had themselves thrown away their pearls and gems, nudge their mothers when they saw the ambassadors’ jeweled caps, and say, “Look at that big lout, mother, who’s still wearing pearls and jewels as if he were a little kid!” But the mother, in all seriousness, would answer, “Quiet, son, I think he is one of the ambassadors’ fools.”56

Now, it is hard to think ourselves into these new perceptions, as Aristotle shows in his caustic remark about Plato’s ideal society that it is much better “to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato’s fashion.”57 If our psychology were the same in the Kallipolis as it is in our current world, that is, if what it is to be a cousin and a son were the same, Aristotle would be right—but that premise is precisely what Plato denies. In interpreting the 1844 Marx, the challenge is to provide more detail to the thought that there would be a transformation of ordinary life. We should return to the idea of a social-recognition activity, of an activity that functions as a publicly understood form of social expression. In TCS, the production/consumption process plays this role. And because hu-

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man beings live within a produced world, within a material world that is substantially the result of the production/consumption process, daily life, almost in its entirety, would be filled with a particular set of social expressions. Agents would interpret the objects of daily life as having been produced with particular beliefs and intentions and, most importantly, with a particular practical attitude. They would move within what they take to be the physical expression of their fellow workers’ concern. Daily life would thus have a certain resonance. One’s concern for others and one’s recognition of their concern would permeate one’s life without necessarily being at the forefront of consciousness. A’s concern for unknown, distant B would be an of course relationship, something that both take for granted. Mill puts great weight on the way that Rome and its needs were omnipresent to the patriotic Roman. He claims that there can be a similar commitment to humanity.58 However, the Roman expressed, sustained, and made manifest his patriotic commitment via a range of activities, from serving in the legions to participating in civic festivals. Mill, in contrast to Comte, does not push for humanist rituals. But this leaves Millian commitment to others purely personal and internal. For Marx, the recognition activity of production/consumption as communists understand it—that is, as carried on with particular beliefs, intention and attitude—picks up the slack. It is what expresses, sustains, and makes manifest one’s ordinary, daily concern for others. We can push the thought that life in TCS would be different by looking at two metaphors Marx uses. Each is supposed to extend our sense of the proper form of the production/consumption relationship and so of the contrast to the current form. The first metaphor is that of a language. Here, Marx seems to be making two related points. First, in TCS our exchange relations, the reciprocal provision of needed objects, would be a kind of conversation.59 Our exchange of objects would have the structure of offer and uptake. Second, this conversation with one another would involve shared beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the activity, as well as shared commitments to the activity so understood. Such beliefs and commitments would be part of what would be constantly communicated and reinforced. Under capitalism, exchange also has the structure of offer and uptake but the beliefs about its meaning and purpose are different. The resonance is not of reciprocal concern but rather of reciprocal indifference. The understandings that permeate the exchange relationship are altogether different. This is how Marx characterizes the distorted present. The only intelligible language in which we converse with one another consists of our objects in their relation to each other. We would not [under capitalism]

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understand a human language and it would remain without effect. By one side it would be recognized and felt as a request, an entreaty, and therefore a humiliation, and consequently uttered with a feeling of shame, of degradation. By the other side it would be regarded as impudence or lunacy and rejected as such. We are to such an extent estranged from man’s essential nature that the direct language of this essential nature seems to us a violation of human dignity, whereas the estranged language of material values seems to be the well-justified assertion of human dignity that is self-confident and conscious of itself.60

In principle, for Marx, the exchange of objects is how unknown, distant others communicate with each other and express their mutual concern. But not under capitalism. “Since men engaged in exchange [under capitalism] do not relate to each other as men, things lose the significance of human, personal property.”61 That is, things do not seem to have the characteristic of being human products made out of concern for other human beings to use in their individual (their “personal”) projects—because in fact they are not. Thus our exchange relations do not express what is essential about the object, namely, that it is the manifestation of essential human powers and could express A’s concern to satisfy B’s need. Under capitalism, exchange is not filled with the meaning that we are helping one another. If exchange could be done without recognition that my exchange-partner is a human being with needs, there would be no loss. By contrast, in TCS, exchange relations would be based not on money but on need. Under capitalism, Marx says, to ask for an object rather than to offer money for it is to court shame. One is admitting that one is not entitled to the object, that one is seeking charity. And to the object’s possessor, the request would seem absurd except as a plea for charity (as the staking of a claim it would seem to be “impudence or lunacy”). For Marx, “the direct language of [our] essential nature” involves engaging in exchange in order to aid one another. However, our current estranged life assumes an absence of concern and instead a standing upon one’s legal rights. Currently, exchange requires that you have something that I want, most obviously, the purchase price of the object I possess. Otherwise, “your demand is an unsatisfied aspiration on your part and an idea that does not exist for me. As a human being, therefore, you stand in no relationship to my object.”62 My own relation to my object is that of possessor, not of someone who relates to the object as the product of human labor for human use and who either uses the object to pursue a substantive goal or gives it to someone else to do so (thus “I myself have no human relationship to it”).63 The mere fact that you need my object is irrelevant. In TCS, where we would have “carried out production as human beings,” things would be different. For instance, “In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified human

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nature [Wesen], and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another human being [Wesen].” More generally, “Our products would be so many mirrors reflecting our nature.”64 This is Marx’s second metaphor. It is an old one, used most famously by Aristotle in the Magna Moralia where he says that friends are mirrors to one another, thus reciprocally facilitating self-knowledge.65 I take Marx’s claims to be that products would mirror not the particulars of each agent (not self-knowledge qua Brudney) but our shared essential nature (selfknowledge qua human being), and that this would facilitate expanded “friendship.” Suppose my friend and I exchange gifts, say, articles of apparel. When he wears what I have given him or I wear what he has given me, this triggers a recognition of our relationship. If much time has elapsed so we are used to seeing the other wearing these items, such recognition might barely be conscious yet it would still be there. In a similar way, in TCS, objects generally would resonate for people generally, providing a constant, even if barely conscious, recognition of agents’ production/consumption relationship.66 The Marxian solution to the potato love problem, then, is (a) that the focus is mutual concern rather than love, and (b) that such concern is a fundamental constituent of the production/consumption process and so of the form of life of TCS. Agents (1) have certain beliefs (about the human essence and the human good), (2) act with a particular intention and a particular practical attitude, and (3) believe that others have the same beliefs, intention, and attitude. This instantiates what I have elsewhere called a “structural” friendship.67 It is quite compatible with the extension of agents’ feelings as far as human psychology will let them go, but it does not require such feelings.68 What it is to be concerned for others is to live a certain way.69 I have said little about “community.” I have claimed that the central social-recognition activity in TCS would generate and sustain social bonds but I have not characterized those bonds in organic terms or in terms of shared membership in a community with a distinct communal goal. In fact, communists’ communal relationships would not proceed through joint membership in an entity that provides them with any shared goal, the way, say, being a Spartan might tie people together through joint commitment to the good of Sparta (to take an example from Rousseau). Communists’ relationships would be one-to-one—perhaps merely notionally so but still not via any larger whole.70 To be sure, communists belong to the human species and this fact would connect them to one another but, for Marx, the human species has no goal distinct from the well-being of individual human beings. This is the point of thinking in terms of George Eliot’s insistence on concern for individuals, or, as I have recast it, a concern to benefit “someone.” In TCS, I would not produce for humanity; I would produce for someone.

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And the consumer would believe that someone has produced for her, not for humanity. Marx clearly believes that this can generate something that could be called social bonds. Still, the nature of such bonds would be importantly different from those of the patriotic citizens of Sparta.71

6 In this section I examine how, on this Marxian picture, institutional arrangements help to sustain agents’ sense of self-worth. Here, I stick to the most ideal version of TCS. In the paper’s final section, however, I weaken the idealization and briefly discuss how that might affect this theme. First, I should make a few remarks about self-worth. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls says that “self-respect” is the most important “social primary good,” and that the parties in the original position would “wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect.”72 He writes that, “[w]ithout it, nothing may seem worth doing, or if some things have value for us, we lack the will to strive for them. All desire and activity becomes empty and vain, and we sink into apathy and cynicism.”73 Rawls’s account has often been criticized for failing to distinguish between self-respect and self-esteem. On a common way to gloss this distinction, self-respect concerns some valuable identity that I possess (for instance, “human being”) and/or some ideal of conduct to which I subscribe. My self-respect is revealed in my willingness to assert the rights associated with that valuable identity (“As a human being, I have a right not to be treated this way”) and/or to constrain my conduct by reference to the ideal in question (“I am the sort of person who could never stoop to such a thing”).74 Self-esteem has to do with ability and achievement. I esteem myself for having accomplished this or that or for having the capacity to do so. Recognizing that I possess a particular status or adhering to a particular ideal of conduct bolsters my self-respect; recognizing my abilities and accomplishments (to throw the javelin or do arcane mathematics) bolsters my self-esteem.75 This way of understanding the distinction is probably disputable but for our purposes it will do. That is because I think that the distinction, though genuine, diverts us from the psychological condition with which I take Rawls to be concerned. Early in Theory, Rawls writes, “A very important primary good is a sense of one’s own worth.”76 Later, he writes that “[a] sense of their own worth is necessary if [agents] are to pursue their conception of the good with zest and to delight in its fulfillment.”77 Now, I will take having a sense of one’s own worth (a sense of self-worth) to involve an indeterminate combination of one’s sense of oneself (and of what one is entitled to from others) merely as a function of one’s status and one’s ideal of conduct (self-

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respect) along with one’s sense of oneself (and of what one is entitled to from others) in virtue of one’s capacities and what one has accomplished (self-esteem). For almost everyone, a healthy psyche involves having some combination of both self-respect and self-esteem. No matter how great one’s accomplishments, I doubt that one could have much of a sense of self-worth if one didn’t believe that one’s fundamental social identity and life ideals were worthy and generally believed to be so; and at least in the modern age most people, regardless of their social identity, need to believe that they have valuable capacities and have done or are doing something of value with their lives. When Rawls talks of an agent sinking into apathy and cynicism, what is missing in the agent is not, I think, self-respect rather than self-esteem or vice-versa but a sense of self-worth.78 I want to look now at the mechanism in TCS that is supposed to sustain self-worth. I will do so through comparison to the way that self-worth is supposed to be sustained, at least in significant part, in a society that emphasizes rights. As an example of this latter view we can use Joel Feinberg’s imaginary town, Nowheresville. In Nowheresville, Feinberg says, agents are benevolently motivated, highly so. As in TCS, they care about one another’s wellbeing. No doubt, they also believe that there are things that they ought to do for others and that others ought to do for them—and, as it happens, out of benevolence, they want to do these things. However, what, the inhabitants of Nowheresville do not believe is that they have a right that others do these things for them or that others have a right against them that these things be done. In Nowheresville, the concept of a right is missing. Feinberg’s claim is that in the absence of that concept something of great importance is missing in Nowheresville, namely, the ability to engage in a particular kind of self-assertion. “Having rights enables us to ‘stand up like men,’” he says, “to look others in the eye, and to feel in some fundamental way the equal of anyone.”79 As we have seen, Marx is explicit that a certain kind of appeal to rights that obtains under capitalism—one that sounds much like Feinberg’s— would be missing in TCS. We are to such an extent estranged from humanity’s essential nature [dem menschlichen Wesen entfremdet] that the direct language of this essential nature seems to us a violation of human dignity [Würde], whereas the estranged language of material values seems to be the well-justified assertion of human dignity that is self-confident and conscious of itself.80

Under current conditions, for someone to demand an object from me would seem to be a violation of my dignity as a property owner, as the holder of certain rights. It is because I have such rights that I can reject

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others’ demands, that is, I can stand on my rights in a “self-confident” way. As property owners, we can “‘stand up like men,’ [and] look others in the eye.” Marx’s claim is that this is a thoroughly estranged form of life, a way of relating to others that would be absent in TCS. Does that mean that communists would not be able to “look others in the eye, and . . . feel in some fundamental way the equal of anyone”? Here we should note different ways to look others in the eye, different goals one might have in doing so. (i) (ii)

X looks Y in the eye in order to assert herself as Y’s equal. X looks Y in the eye in order to gain validation (under some description) from Y. (iii) X looks Y in the eye in order to intimidate Y. We can ignore (iii). Neither Marx nor Feinberg sees that relation as desirable. As for (i) and (ii), they involve different goals for X and call for different responses from Y. With (i), when X looks Y in the eye, her assertion is that she is equal to Y, not an inferior. Now, I take this to be not just, indeed not primarily, the assertion of a mere abstract equality of value. I take it to be an assertion of a basic functional equality, the assertion that X is not dependent on Y, does not need Y in any fundamental way. And while it would be fine for Y to acknowledge such facts, the point is precisely that X does not need acknowledgment from Y. Looking others in the eye in this sense seems to be what Feinberg hopes that having legal rights will enable us to do. It also seems to be the attitude that Philip Pettit associates with not having to “truckle” or “pull the forelock.”81 With (ii), the goal is different. Here, the focus is on my claim to value and on the thought that I need others to validate this claim or, as Marx would say, to confirm it (I will use “validation” and “confirmation” interchangeably).82 With looking others in the eye in sense (ii), X is asking Y for validation. Here, X is psychologically dependent on Y: Y’s validation helps sustain X’s self-worth. There is an obvious model of how these two ways of looking the other in the eye might fit together, namely, social arrangements might instantiate (ii) in such a way that the agent does in fact receive the needed validation and can now look others in the eye in sense (i). Assume, for instance, that some social-recognition activity provides affirmation of the agent’s value. (As noted earlier, this is often seen as part of the expressive role of equality before the law.83 Equality of legal rights expresses the social belief in my equal value; normally implicit is the social belief that each of us has great value. Moreover, and crucially, this validation comes via many different interactions with many different people, and so does not involve X’s dependence on any particular Y.)84 If the social-recognition activity is well-

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functioning, X will have received the validation she seeks and can now feel herself the equal of anyone. A society with effectively enforced legal rights satisfies one condition for looking others in the eye in sense (i) (that is, in Feinberg’s sense), namely, that one is physically protected when one does so. However, successfully looking others in the eye in sense (ii), say, via a well-functioning social-recognition activity that sustains one’s self-worth, is, as a matter of human psychology, a second condition for looking others in the eye in sense (i). Note that, on the model that I have sketched, the point of the socialrecognition activity, qua social-recognition activity, is to facilitate looking others in the eye in sense (i). On this model, that is the social relationship we are trying to reach. Here, sustaining self-worth is in service of nondependence. In this context, note some key differences between TCS and a rights society. First, TCS assumes away a pair of standard reasons for needing rights. (1) Communism would be beyond material scarcity. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” is a description of what communists would do and obtain, not a moral standard for production and distribution.85 (In this respect, TCS is even more ideal than Nowheresville.) And (2) in TCS, mutual concern would forestall most conflict (as it would in Nowheresville). In effect, two sources of subordination—differential ability to bring financial or physical force to bear—would be either missing or not a potential source of subordination.86 Two reasons not to feel one can look others in the eye in sense (i) would be absent. Second, in TCS, the point of looking others in the eye would be sense (ii). In TCS, agents would in fact see themselves as others’ equals, though this would not be something requiring self-assertion. (The conditions that would make asserting one’s rights a sensible thing to do would be absent.) In TCS, the point of looking others in the eye would be validation—and this would not be seen as instrumental to anything else. The relationship involved in sense (ii) looking others in the eye would be valued for its own sake. That relationship would be the goal. This contrast needs to be stressed. In many images of a rights society (say, Feinberg’s), self-worth is about individuals standing on their own. Validation from others is purely instrumental. If we could tinker with our brain chemistry so as to obviate the need for others’ validation, nothing would be lost. By contrast, in TCS, such changes would destroy the point of validation, namely, the instantiation of the right kind of relationship of mutual dependence. In TCS, I would have a belief in my own value qua human being, that is, qua having a certain status. In that sense, I could be said to have self-respect. However, there would be no need to express it by looking others in the eye in sense (i). Consider Marx’s reference to “human dignity.” This phrase is

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usually understood to refer to something I have in virtue of being human, and Marx does not challenge that thought. He challenges what counts as the expression of human dignity. In capitalism, he claims, my dignity is expressed by my standing on my ownership rights. (As Ronald Reagan said about the Panama Canal, “We bought it. We built it. We paid for it.”) In TCS, it would be expressed by my assertion of my need, that is, my assertion of one aspect of our mutual dependence. In TCS, such an assertion would not in the least derogate from my self-respect. In capitalism, I show my selfrespect by asserting my nondependence on others; in TCS, by asserting my specific kind of dependence. A standard left-wing critique of capitalism is that it prizes the John Wayne character, the isolated individual without ties to others. My point is a variation on that theme but it is crucial to get clear on the variation. As with any modern society, both Feinberg’s rights society and Marx’s TCS involve agents’ mutual material dependence—that is inevitable. Both societies also involve mutual psychological dependence—that, too, is inevitable. And both successfully avoid dependence on specific other agents—both instantiate an absence of personal dependence. Thus in each society, one can look others in the eye, and so forth. Where they differ is in what one conceives of oneself as doing by looking others in the eye. In the rights society, one is asserting an absence of personal dependence; in TCS, one is asserting the presence, the importance, of reciprocal (though nonpersonal) dependence.87 My claim is that, contrary to a long western tradition, Marx thinks that vulnerability, dependence, can be good. Of course, not just any mutual dependence is good. It must involve what Marx considers the right beliefs (about the human essence and the essential human activity) and the performance of the right activities (producing and consuming), and these must be done with the right practical attitude (concern), and involve the right forms of mutual understanding (that others are producing for me; that others are confirming that I have produced for them). However, if these features are adequately instantiated, we have what Marx considers the good life. In TCS, equality before the law would play at most a minor role. What, then, would be the social basis of communists’ sense of their own value? How would looking others in the eye in sense (ii) be instantiated? Since Hegel, it has often been asserted that my sense of my worth needs to be buttressed in the spheres of family, work and politics.88 I need validation in my role as spouse, parent, and so on, in my role as working in this or that capacity, and in my role as an equal citizen. Now, in a world in which the state has withered away and political rule is, in Engels’ phrase, reduced to the “administration of things,” it is unclear what role citizenship would play.89 Part of the uncertainty concerns how complicated economic decision making in TCS would actually be (and would we all be competent to participate?); in addition, it is unclear how far such decision making would be

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distinct from one’s ordinary activities as a producer. What can, I think, be said is that, for Marx, decision making that is distinct from one’s workplace activities would have a much reduced role. Most importantly, TCS would not highlight the classical ideal of the citizen who, outside the workplace and with a brief that goes well beyond the administration of things, rules over others and is ruled in turn. As for the family, Marx says little about it, though he clearly thinks that its capitalist form is hierarchical and degraded and its communist form would be an improvement. For Marx, what would do the psychological heavy lifting would be the production/consumption process. Note that, in principle, even under capitalism the workplace could be a site of validation. Marx would of course be skeptical. He would press such claims as that under capitalism workplace validation depends on accomplishment and that such validation is contingent: there are losers as well as winners, and today’s winner might be tomorrow’s loser. It is not a sphere for stable social assessments of value. It is not a sphere for of course validation. Maybe these claims about capitalism are inaccurate or accurate only in part. In any event, in TCS validation (of course validation) would obtain within the workplace. It is there that agents would complete and confirm one another. (“[I] would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love.”)90 Agents would not only express and receive messages of concern; through their work, they would show themselves worthy of concern, and be confirmed as such. And as consumption is not limited to specific times and places, participation in the key social-recognition activity (the production/ consumption process)—and so agents’ sense of validation within it—would be a more or less constant subtext of daily life. Note the following about work in TCS: 1) Agents in TCS believe that transforming nature to provide others with products is the essential human activity, that is, I believe this, and others’ similar beliefs support mine; moreover, others validate my actual engagement in this activity. That I believe that I am engaged in the preeminently valuable human activity and that others support this belief ought to help sustain my self-worth. Put differently, I not only have the highly valued status, “human being”; I have the highly valued status, “producer.” So far as self-worth concerns status, I am in good shape. 2) I believe that I am successfully engaged in the essential human activity. What is confirmed in TCS are intention and practical attitude as much as accomplishment. Suppose I have tried to make (to contribute to making) something—widgets, say—that others will use, but suppose there is too much widget production and some go

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unused. Or suppose I am less than deft at making widgets. To the extent that what is validated are my intention and attitude, neither supposition matters. Marx surely hopes that if I gravitate to tasks commensurate with my abilities, I will do them well, but validation can tolerate properly motivated but less than stellar performance. My validation is tied to the fact that I participate in the production/ consumption process with the right beliefs, intention and attitude. As far as self-worth concerns achievement, that is sufficient. Let’s go back to Marx’s claim that language under capitalism is distorted. (The descent here is from Feuerbach’s assertion that there is need for “human understanding and human speech” but that “[t]o think, speak, and act in a pure and true human fashion will, however, be granted only to future generations.”)91 In the “Comments,” we have seen that Marx focuses specifically on “dignity” as currently having a distorted meaning. Under capitalism, it involves asserting that one is a being with rights. This self-description makes one “self-confident.”92 In TCS, dignity would come from the fact that one is (properly) engaged in the essential, and essentially reciprocal, human activity, and that one is constantly validated as someone so engaged. In TCS, “the well-justified assertion of human dignity that is self-confident and conscious of itself” would be expressed via a relationship of mutual dependence that is also a relationship of mutual support.93

7 I have sketched the 1844 Marx’s picture of the production/consumption process as a social-recognition activity by which agents would, in principle, (a) realize their natures through one another, and (b) have their self-worth sustained. In this section I note several drawbacks to this picture. The most obvious drawback comes if we drop the premise that all communists will be able-bodied. Marx’s account is a “dignity of labor” account, but can such dignity accrue to those physically incapable of labor? Assume that TCS would be maximally beneficial to the physically disabled in three senses: it would provide adequate material benefits to all (“To each according to his needs”), it would facilitate productive labor by any who are capable of it in any way, and it would make no invidious distinctions among types of labor contribution (“From each according to his ability”). Assume further that “labor” would be broadened to include parenting, child care, housework, and so forth. Still, there will be some who, through serious physical disability or merely advanced age, will not be capable of productive labor. How will they partake in the business of social completion and validation? Through identification with those who

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produce? Maybe—but maybe not. After all, actually engaging in productive activity is very useful for coming to identify with productive activity in general. The point is simple. On the usual picture, physical capacities are not a condition of citizenship. As long as one has cognitive capacities, one can count as a fully functional citizen. One can obey the law, vote, have opinions about the issues of the day, debate with others, and so forth. Thus a view, say, civic humanism, that gives pride of place to the identity, “citizen,” might be able to handle problems of physical disability and age better than a view that gives pride of place to the identity, “producer.”94 A further problem appears if we drop the premise that most labor is necessary labor.95 Assume that social productivity has reached the point that necessary labor takes only a small part of the day. Much work time is now devoted to producing things that hardly count as “for” others. Perhaps these things are for others in the sense that works of art, especially of the quality most of us would produce, might be for others. They would be made as things to be seen, read, etc.—but others might be better off without them. And a good deal of what I would do in TCS might be purely a matter of self-development. Learning ancient Persian or practicing the hammer throw might be respectable ways to develop my talents but would have nothing to do with others’ well-being. A widespread reduction in necessary labor would make it difficult to see what completing another would mean. Even if I were to see all necessary social output as mine, much of my actual output would not be for others (and much of others’ output would not be for me). Much of my output would require a different, and surely more uncertain, form of validation, for example, my artistic production might require others to validate its quality. More important, necessary labor either is or is not the essential human activity. If it is, why would I engage in any nonnecessary labor? Yet suppose productivity improves. If we then engage only in necessary labor, we would produce more and more goods for one another. So our conception of the necessary would have to change, that is, our consumption desires would have to grow. But this is both intrinsically problematic and at odds with Marx’s condemnation of the false and distorted needs that capitalism induces.96 On the other hand, if necessary labor is not the essential human activity, why would I see others’ use of the products of such labor as my completion, the route to my self-realization? The sensible response here would be to invoke a sensible middle way: necessary labor is important but not all there is to a good human life. This might be sensible, but it would limit the scope of Marx’s self-realizationthrough-others model, and so also, presumably, the facilitation of strong social bonds. Ironically, a significant increase in productivity is likely to undermine Marx’s desired social relationships.

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The most interesting issue appears if we weaken the idealization with regard to agents’ beliefs and practical attitudes. To function well, any social-recognition activity requires that certain beliefs and practical attitudes be widespread, have something like an of course status. In comparing two such activities, one basis for comparison would be the plausibility of the relevant beliefs and the likelihood of the relevant attitudes. In this way, it can be instructive to compare two completely ideal societies, say, TCS and a well-functioning market society that highlights rights possession and equality under the law. A standard Marxian, but not only Marxian, question about the latter might be whether injuries to self-worth inflicted in the sphere of market relationships are likely to be made good via the social affirmation of equal rights and citizenship.97 On the other side, there might be skepticism either about the truth of the claim that the transformation of nature to provide products for others is the essential human activity or about the realism of the premise that human beings can have significant mutual concern. This comparison would be instructive. Yet perhaps more instructive would be a different one, a comparison between not completely but only more or less ideal societies. The distinction is not that between a society of beings who are angelic, that is, fundamentally better than human beings, and a society inhabited by beings who are recognizably of our species.98 Completely ideal TCS would be inhabited by human beings but involve institutional and material conditions that, although they would not make us angelic, would reliably and pervasively bring out the better angels of our nature. The difference between this and a more or less ideal society is that, in the latter, agents would be importantly but far from completely shaped in this way. I think of a more or less ideal society as what Rawls calls “a realistic utopia.”99 Clearly, a variety of social arrangements could be of this kind. What they would have in common is a shortfall in how pervasively institutions form agents in the desired way. And to the extent that institutions fail to do so, there might be a tipping point at which crucial features of the ideal society would be endangered. And this means that the comparison of ideal societies might come out differently depending on whether we compare completely or merely more or less ideal societies. Different ideal societies highlight different positive features. Mutual respect, mutual concern—these are both good things but different ideal arrangements give pride of place to one rather than the other. Now, the presence of each of these goods depends on widespread beliefs (for example, about individual rights or about the essential human activity) and each good might be undermined if its connected beliefs become insufficiently widespread. But what counts as insufficiently widespread is likely to differ across beliefs and goods. Moreover, among the key beliefs will be citizens’ beliefs about other citizens’ practical attitudes toward them, for example,

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that these are in fact attitudes of respect or concern. A basic way in which such beliefs become less widespread is that other citizens’ conduct comes to seem at odds with the relevant practical attitude. But here, too, there are likely to be differences across ideal societies. The amount of conduct C needed to sap my belief B (about other citizens’ attitudes toward me) might differ from the amount of conduct C* needed to sap my belief B*. The point in more or less ideal Alpha at which conduct and beliefs become such as to undermine the presence of highlighted good G is likely to differ from the point in more or less ideal Beta at which conduct and beliefs become such as to undermine the presence of highlighted good G*. Thus the likelihood of successfully attaining G in more or less ideal Alpha might differ from that of successfully attaining G* in more or less ideal Beta. The consequence is that the comparison of completely ideal Alpha and Beta and of more or less ideal Alpha and Beta might give different answers as to whether Alpha or Beta is the society we ought to aim for. It is important to imagine a completely ideal society. It is worth knowing the conceivable best. But it is also important—probably more important— to imagine the second best society in order to see the pitfalls along the way to serious social progress. The issue is not the dramatic danger of the first steps, that is, the worry that these might concentrate political power in the hands of profoundly fallible individuals or groups. That danger is real and worrisome but the issue here is something else. It is the drawbacks of a society that is, along many axes, much better than ours and yet not completely ideal—and so not obviously superior to some other more or less ideal society. To illustrate the issue, I consider, very briefly, some differences between mutual respect and mutual concern in more or less ideal societies. In more or less ideal TCS the norms would be norms of mutual concern, and my confidence that I am embedded in a web of mutual concern would help sustain my sense of self-worth. In a more or less ideal rights society, the web would be one of mutual respect. In both, the web could be fragile—it could break, leading to a shortfall of self-worth. Might one such web be more fragile than the other? Here, I make two (very) speculative claims about differences between respect and concern. First, I think that respect is the more belief sensitive attitude. If Jack genuinely believes that Joe has respect-warranting property P, then Jack will almost certainly respect Joe. The respect might be grudging, but respect seems so tightly tied to belief that if Jack manifestly doesn’t respect Joe we are entitled to conclude that Jack doesn’t really believe that Joe has property P (or else doesn’t believe that this is a respect-warranting property). Concern doesn’t seem to be like that. It is a commonplace that there are no properties such that, if Ann has them, they will inevitably elicit affection from Beth. I suspect the same is true with concern. Ann may have the properties that Beth concedes are concern-warranting but Beth might

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still be unmoved, find she has no concern for Ann. Though different in other ways, concern is like affection in not being something to be mustered at will or to be automatically triggered by beliefs. (To be acknowledged to be lovable does not entail being loved.) Keep in mind that we are imagining more or less ideal societies in which citizens have certain positive beliefs about one another. Respect seems more likely than concern to be generated by such beliefs. And so, to the extent that agents’ self-worth is dependent on other agents’ practical attitudes, a society stressing mutual respect might seem to offer more stable backing for self-worth than one stressing mutual concern. Second, when I want someone to respect me, I want more than that she behaves as if she respects me. And when I want someone to be concerned for me, I want more than that she behaves as if she is concerned for me. In both cases, I want not just particular conduct but a particular attitude. However, there seems to be this difference. Suppose I know that Gwen doesn’t respect me but that she will reliably conduct herself exactly as she would if she did respect me; and suppose I know that Sarah has no concern for me but that she will reliably conduct herself exactly as she would if she did have such concern. Offhand, Gwen seems less undermining of my self-worth than Sarah. The importance of conduct seems larger in the case of respect, the importance of attitude larger in the case of concern. I think that most of us take a lack of concern more personally. It might be objected that in more or less TCS the issue is strangers’ lack of concern for me, and few of us take that seriously. But this is to forget that in TCS it is precisely strangers’ concern for me that is supposed to sustain my self-worth. In TCS, such concern, or its absence, would be taken very seriously. Consider one further possible difference. Hume remarks that “[w]hen any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person, who feels his heart devoid of that motive, may hate himself upon that account.”100 Imagine Bob in more or less TCS. He knows he does not have concern for unknown, distant others—he knows he does not have a fundamental, widespread, and socially approved motive. (He is a bit like a mother who finds she doesn’t love her child; for the mother, too, this is terrible.) Rawls remarks of those without a sense of justice that “their nature is their misfortune.”101 But the likelihood that citizens’ natures are their misfortune might be an axis along which to compare ideal societies. If it is more likely that Bob in TCS will fail to have a fundamental, widespread, and socially approved motive (concern for others) than will Bill in a more or less ideal rights society (respect for others)—well, that might be a mark in favor of the rights society. In both more or less TCS and a more or less ideal rights society, there would be social-recognition activities tied to beliefs and attitudes that vali-

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date agents’ value. When things go well, an individual’s self-worth would be buttressed by such validation. But there would also be some validation shortfall. In which more or less ideal society would the shortfall be greater? It is hard to say. If a web of mutual concern is in fact more fragile than one of mutual respect, then the less ideal that TCS is, the more a deficit in mutual concern might undermine self-worth compared to a similar deficit in mutual respect in the rights society. On the other hand, if the rights society relies on an economy that fosters a highly competitive ethos—and so for many people a kind of baseline self-worth deficit—then the shared status, “equal citizen,” might not carry adequate weight in sustaining self-worth. Clearly, these remarks are thoroughly speculative. They merely point to an area for further work. I have presented the 1844 Marx’s view of labor as a social-recognition activity and of the production/consumption process as a form of self-realizationthrough-others. I have tried to show how in Marx’s work, on its most plausible reconstruction, the concept of mutual concern has pride of place and can be seen as helping to sustain agents’ sense of their own worth. What I have not done is to assess Marx’s account for overall plausibility. What remains to be explored in particular, I think, is whether the importance that Marx should be seen as according to mutual concern merely instantiates an optimism about human nature that has long vanished or whether to at least some extent—optimistically—it could be a useful model for the future.

NOTES 1. I am very grateful to Christopher Zurn and Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 2. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), book III, part ii, section 1, 481. 3. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983), 42. 4. Marx citations are given by the English title of the work and then the volume and page number, first in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels Werke (MEW), Berlin: Dietz Verlag, first volume published 1956 (“E, i” stands for Ergänzungsband, volume one), and then in Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW), New York: International Publishers, first volume published 1975. The translation is sometimes amended. All emphases are in the original. For a place where Marx distinguishes his picture of communism from a different, “crude” picture, see the discussion in Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844 in MEW, E, I, 533–38/Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, MECW, iii, 294–98; hereafter Manuscripts. 5. John Rawls, “The Independence of Moral Theory” (1975): “[W]e investigate the substantive moral conceptions that people hold, or would hold, under suitably defined conditions . . . one seeks the conception, or plurality of conceptions,

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that would survive the rational consideration of all feasible conceptions and all reasonable arguments for them. . . . [T]he various moral theories incorporate different conceptions and ideals of the person . . . the feasibility of moral conceptions is settled largely by psychological and social theory, and by the theory of the corresponding well-ordered societies. The reasonableness of these conceptions, given that they are feasible, is then settled by their content: that is, by the kind of society their principles direct us to strive for, and by the kind of person they encourage us to be.” See Rawls, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 288, 289, 296. 6. Marx, “Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228; hereafter “Comments.” For further discussion of this theme in the 1844 Marx, see my “Justifying a Conception of the Good Life: The Problem of the 1844 Marx,” Political Theory, vol. 29, no. 3 (June 2001), §2, and my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), chapter 5. 7. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 227. 8. On this topic, see my “Community and Completion,” in Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, Christine M. Korsgaard eds., Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 388–415. 9. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228. 10. Given the rich and ramifying role of the production/consumption process in TCS, it is tempting to think of it as not a mere activity but a “practice.” Unfortunately, this concept has become sufficiently protean that to use it here would require so much discussion that the cost in space and complication would, I think, outweigh the benefit in deeper analysis of the phenomena. 11. See, for instance, Joel Feinberg, “The Expressive Function of Punishment,” in Feinberg, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 95–118. For a general account of law as expression, see Elizabeth S. Anderson and Richard H. Pildes, “Expressive Theories of Law: A General Restatement,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 148, no. 5 (2000): 1503–1575. 12. Michael Gill presents a Calvinist catechism from seventeenth-century England. See Michael Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 8: ‘What doest thou believe concerning man and concerning thine own self?’ And to this the child must answer, ‘All men are wholly corrupted with sin through Adam’s fall and so are become slaves of Satan and guilty of eternal damnation.’ . . . Corruption and sin, the child must continue, is in ‘every part of both body and soul, like as a leprosy that runneth from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot.’

In principle, such a view of human worth is compatible with equal treatment under the law. 13. In current societies the demand for recognition sometimes has a structure analogous to the literary demand because a group has long been misrecognized, not seen accurately. The group’s demand for recognition is thus the demand to be seen, at last, for what it is. 14. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 540/MECW, iii, 300.

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15. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 540/MECW, iii, 300. 16. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 540/MECW, iii, 322. 17. Another point about the shared enjoyments remarks is that they probably involve a reference to the section of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic in which he says that the slave “only works” on the thing while for “the lord, on the other hand, the immediate relation becomes through this mediation the sheer negation of the thing, or the enjoyment [Genuß] of it.” See G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke in zwanzig Bänden (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1970), iii, 151; Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller trans. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 116, all emphasis in original. Marx’s rejoinder would be twofold. In TCS, there is no split into those who work and those who enjoy. In The German Ideology, Marx is explicit that, for communists, “this whole opposition between work and enjoyment disappears.” See The German Ideology, MEW, iii, 199/MECW, v, 218. All work and all enjoy. And the relation to the object is not negation but affirmation. 18. Joseph Butler, Sermon V, Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), vol. ii, 94–97: “Of these two, delight in the prosperity of others, and compassion for their distresses, the last is felt much more generally than the former. Though men do not universally rejoice with all whom they see rejoice, yet . . . they naturally compassionate all, in some degree, whom they see in distress: so far as they have any real perception or sense of that distress: insomuch that words expressing this latter, pity, compassion, frequently occur; whereas we have scarce any single one, by which the former is distinctly expressed.” 19. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 44. 20. Mill citations are given by the title of the work and then the volume and page number in John Stuart Mill, Collected Works (CW) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–1991). See Mill, “Sedgwick’s Discourse,” CW, x, 60: “The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful; the idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable.” 21. Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” (1891), in Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism & Selected Critical Prose (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 133, 157. 22. Gore Vidal famously remarked, “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” It is precisely this feature of current friendship that Wilde and Marx think a new society will overcome. 23. Of course, one might doubt that agents’ preferences re this or that specific work activity can ever really distribute themselves so perfectly that it will be possible (i) for every agent to do precisely that work activity that she believes realizes her nature qua individual, and also (ii) to produce the specific set of objects that agents in general need to survive and to pursue their range of individual projects. 24. In several places Marx explicitly objects to excessive division of labor (see, for instance, The German Ideology, MEW, iii, 32–33, 245–46, 378–79/MECW, v, 47, 262, 394). And perhaps in TCS there will be less of it. Nevertheless, a good deal of division of labor is inevitable, and any plausible construal of Marx’s view must deal with that fact. 25. See John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), §43, 298. 26. I thank Henry Pickford for calling this point to my attention.

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27. Here, Marx is ringing a change on a theme from Bruno Bauer, who insists that, via proper identification with “universal self-consciousness,” I could see myself in its outputs, that is, in everything, including the products of “geniuses.” Bauer claims that I come to “know myself as universal, but then to know even geniuses and their creations as my own determinations, as determinations of my universal self-consciousness.” See Bruno Bauer, “Leiden und Freuden des theologischen Bewußtseins” (1843), in Hans-Martin Sass ed., Feldzüge der reinen Kritik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), 173. 28. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228. 29. Mill, Utilitarianism, CW, x, 231, emphasis in original. 30. Mill, Utilitarianism, CW, x, 231. 31. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 420–21. 32. See Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 422. Mill also endorses a religion of humanity in Auguste Comte and Positivism; see CW, x, 333. See also the passage toward the end of Utilitarianism, chapter 3, where Mill says of Auguste Comte’s Traité de politique positive that “it has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the psychical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold of human life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a manner of which the greatest ascendancy ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste.” See Mill, Utilitarianism, CW, x, 232. 33. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 422. 34. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 426: “[I]f the Religion of Humanity were as sedulously cultivated as the supernatural religions are . . . all who had received the customary amount of moral cultivation would up to the hour of death live ideally in the life of those who are to follow them.” 35. On this topic, see my “Grand Ideals: Mill’s Two Perfectionisms,” History of Political Thought, vol. 29, no. 3 (Autumn 2008). 36. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841), in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), vol. ii, 30. 37. Butler, Sermon V, Works, ii, 94–97. 38. See Arthur Schopenhauer, “Über die Grundlage der Moral,” Sämtliche Werke (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1986), iii, 771; On the Basis of Morality, E. F. J. Payne trans. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), 174: “[T]he expressions of that pure, disinterested, objective participation in the lot and condition of another, which are the effect of loving-kindness [Menschenliebe], are reserved for him who in any way suffers. For the lucky man as such we feel no sympathy.” 39. Stuart Hampshire, “Morality and Pessimism: The Leslie Stephen Lecture,” 1972, reprinted in Hampshire, Morality and Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 84. 40. See James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Three Brief Essays (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 241. 41. See Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York: Viking Press, 1964), 91. 42. George Eliot, Middlemarch, chapter 61. I thank Uri Pasovsky for calling this passage to my attention.

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43. This is perhaps Eliot’s point about “fellow-feeling”—it must be individual. 44. I think that at least some of the nineteenth-century mockery of busy-body philanthropists came from the sense that they paraded themselves as loving humanity and yet both (a) didn’t seem to love those known and near, and (b) knew nothing individuated about those whom they claimed to love—and so, in effect, love couldn’t be what was at stake. Perhaps Fitzjames Stephen is gesturing at this worry when he claims that we cannot love the human race because, among other things, it is “so little known.” See Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 91. 45. I am very grateful to John Deigh for a conversation on these issues. 46. For instance, I see no need to discuss here the differences in the content of the beliefs that love and concern involve about their objects. For good anthologies re current debates about emotion, see Amelie Rorty ed., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), and Robert C. Solomon ed., Thinking about Feeling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 47. A point of clarification. I take the practical attitude of concern for others to involve the disposition to act with particular intentions, namely, to help the objects of concern. However, this need not involve the intentions that are specific to agents in TCS, namely, to produce objects for others’ use. Of course, these different intentions are not in the least bit incompatible. The point is that one could have the practical attitude of concern for others without being a communist, and so without a communist’s specific intentions. 48. A full discussion here would go into much more detail about the nature of a practical attitude (and about how far love is such a thing). A full discussion would also distinguish concern from both agape and benevolence. Agape is usually a Christian theological concept, with God as usually the being whose love as agape is in question. However, as God can individuate every object of His affection, agape in this sense would be, for our discussion, beside the point. It would be worth determining how far concern overlaps with agape insofar as human beings are capable of the latter. Benevolence does seem the sort of attitude that might be similar to concern for others. In particular, it seems an attitude that does not require an individuated object. One question about benevolence would be whether it is tied to forms of responsiveness in the way that I take concern to be. Would benevolence prompt not only acts of assistance to disaster victims but indignation at those who block the distribution of supplies? Intuitions may differ here, but I think that although benevolence would prompt further acts to overcome a blockage of supplies it would not necessarily prompt indignation—that is, a failure to be indignant would not necessarily show a deficiency in benevolence, though it would show a deficiency in concern. Benevolence seems tied to an array of actions but, in contrast to concern, not also to an array of reactions. Still, intuitions about this may differ. Another point is that concern can easily be egalitarian and reciprocal (that is certainly how it works with the 1844 Marx). In principle, benevolence could be of this kind; still, it generally has the connotation of an agent in good circumstances helping an agent in worse circumstances, that is, in circumstances that preclude reciprocity.

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Of course, these remarks are merely preliminary. The relation between concern and benevolence needs a good deal of investigation. 49. My stress on mutual concern raises the question of how such concern relates to recent work in the ethics of care. See, among others, Eva Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependence (New York: Routledge, 1999), Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993), and Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The relationship between concern and what these writers mean by “care” certainly needs study. There is, however, a basic difference in the two areas. As I have been at pains to stress, communists are concerned for the well-being of people about whom they know little or nothing. The literature on care-giving tends to focus on intimate relationships, for example, parent to child, the relatively able-bodied caregiver to the relatively disabled person being cared for. Political philosophy is largely about relations among strangers, most of whom will not even know of one another’s existence. How far this structural difference ramifies is what needs investigation. For an interesting discussion of the philosophical implications of human dependency, see Alasdair MacIntrye, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999). For a fine discussion of political friendship among strangers, see Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). 50. The substitution of concern for love has implications for the issue of our stance toward others’ happiness rather than their misery. We tend to talk of concern in the context of others’ misery. It is not clear what phrase to use to talk of one’s stance toward unknown others’ happiness. Perhaps “happy for” is the positive version of “concerned for.” 51. Elizabeth Anderson, “John Stuart Mill: Democracy as Sentimental Education,” in Philosophers on Education, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (New York: Routledge, 1998). See also Maria H. Morales, Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill on Well-Constituted Communities (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), chapter 3, and Wendy Donner, “John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy,” in J. S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, ed. Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 52. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 546/MECW, iii, 305. 53. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 552/MECW, iii, 312. 54. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 540/MECW, iii, 300. Hence, for Marx, the proper justification of claims about the human essence occurs in practice, that is, through living a certain kind of life: “the solution to theoretical riddles is the task of practice and effected through practice.” See Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 552/MECW, iii, 312. For more detailed discussion of these issues, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 6, and “Justifying the Good Life.” 55. For a discussion of Feuerbach in these terms, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapters 1 and 2. 56. Thomas More, Utopia, Robert Adams trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 64. 57. Aristotle, Politics, 1262a. 58. See Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 421.

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59. In his own way, Marx is thus making a point I made earlier, namely, that participation in a social-recognition activity involves the giving and receiving of messages. See above, p. 154. 60. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227. 61. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 447/MECW, iii, 213. 62. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 226. 63. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 226. 64. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 463/MECW, iii, 228. 65. See Aristotle, Magna Moralia 1213a, 13–26. 66. In TCS, mutual concern would be an of course feature of agents’ understanding of their relations to others. TCS would thus satisfy Aristotle’s condition that friends be aware of one another’s good will. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1155b–1156a. 67. See my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 5. 68. In his fascinating book, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? G. A. Cohen urges that a just society fosters an “ethos” of justice: “a structure of response lodged in the motivations that inform everyday life.” See G. A. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 128. We could say that, in TCS, what is pervasive is an ethos of mutual concern. I take Cohen’s focus on justice rather than concern to be, at least in part, a concession to the common thought that, human nature being what it is, justice is probably easier to come by than concern. That thought seems to me precisely what needs further investigation. 69. In a recent paper on Aristotle’s politics, John Cooper says of citizens in a proper Aristotelian polity “that as they go about their daily lives they will, and will need to bear in mind the basic understanding they have acquired of the polis as an overarching koinonia . . . they will even need to bear in mind their basic understanding of their own polis as one with citizens equal in status. . . . In these as well as in more detailed ways their practical understanding of political matters itself functions in, and is needed for full and proper functioning of their moral lives, when those are conceived as ones they live as an enterprise undertaken in common with their fellow-citizens.” See John M. Cooper, “Political Community and the Highest Good,” (available at www.princeton.edu/~johncoop/), 46–47. The similanties to TCS are: i. As in TCS, Aristotle’s citizens are engaged in a joint enterprise. ii. As in TCS, there is a more or less constant mindfulness of the meaning of the joint enterprise. The differences from TCS are: i. There is no specific social-recognition activity whose proper functioning requires agents to have (and know others have) certain beliefs, intention and attitude within that activity. ii. It does not appear that agents’ self-realization requires any kind of endorsement or uptake from others. Thus Cooper’s picture does not appear to instantiate the model of self-realization-through-others. For an important piece on Aristotle and civic friendship that is relevant to the issue of mutual concern, see Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, “On Civic Friendship,” Ethics, vol. 107, no. 1 (1996): 97–128.

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70. On conceptions of community that do not involve commitment to the good of some larger whole, see my “Community and Completion.” 71. I have talked of concern as the producer’s attitude toward the consumer. But in TCS what would be the consumer’s attitude toward the producer? It would be, I think, a kind of gratitude, though a gratitude that would not involve any sense of abasement, of owing another. Here, again, the idea of a structural friendship is useful. As the recipient of what has been produced, I would not be grateful to any specific individual (a point that is made in §4) but to “someone.” Mine would be, I think, a kind of general attitude of gratitude. 72. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971; revised edition, 1999), 440/386. The first page numbers refer to the original 1971 edition, the second to the revised 1999 edition. 73. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 440/386. 74. See Thomas Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect,” The Monist, vol. 57, no 1 (1973): 87–104. 75. For discussions of the self-respect/self-esteem distinction, see David Sachs, “How to Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4 (1981): 346–60, and Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books: 1983). 76. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 92/79. 77. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 178/155. The sentence from p. 178 is slightly changed in the revised edition. There it reads: “A sense of their own worth is necessary if they are to pursue their conception of the good with satisfaction and to take pleasure in its fulfillment.” Rawls often uses “self-respect,” “self-esteem” and “selfworth” as if they are interchangeable. For instance, the larger passage here reads (quoting from the 1971 edition): “It is clearly rational for men to secure their selfrespect. A sense of their own worth is necessary if they are to pursue their conception of the good with zest and to delight in its fulfillment. Self-respect is not so much a part of any rational plan of life as the sense that one’s plan is worth carrying out.” 78. Different writers have discussed in different ways what I am calling a lack of a sense of self-worth. For instance, Axel Honneth ties it to the psychic deformations investigated by self-psychology. See Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). For the claim that Rousseau’s focus is on self-worth, see Joshua Cohen, ed. Reath, Herman, and Korsgaard, “The Natural Goodness of Humanity,” in Reclaiming the History of Ethics, 102–139. 79. See Joel Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, vol. 4, no. 4 (1970): 243, 244, 252. 80. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227. 81. See Philip Pettit, Republicanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 82. Rawls writes that “our self-respect normally depends on the respect of others.” See A Theory of Justice, 178/155. 83. Frederick Neuhouser presses the expressive role of legal equality in his discussion of Rousseau. See Frederick Neuhouser, “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 102, no. 93 (1993): 363–95. On this theme, see also Joshua Cohen, “The Natural Goodness of Humanity.” 84. Neuhouser argues that, for Rousseau, dependence is acceptable if it is impersonal. See Neuhouser, “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will.”

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85. See my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 5. G. A. Cohen also makes this point. See G. A. Cohen, “Marxism and Contemporary Political Philosophy, or: Why Nozick Exercises Some Marxists More than He does any Egalitarian Liberals,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume (1990): 381–82. 86. In effect, TCS is stipulated to be beyond the circumstances of justice. For classic discussions of the circumstances in which justice is necessary, see David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part ii, section 2, and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, section III, as well as Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §22. 87. I should also be clear that rights could obtain in TCS. Suppose that respect for others is conceptually tied to the concept of a right, and suppose that to accord respect is simply to recognize a right. Suppose further that one has a particular right as a bulwark to protect something of great value. On these premises, communists could have rights and show respect for one another. After all, for the 1844 Marx the status “human being” is of great value, and in TCS that great value would be universally affirmed. Communists might even be said to have some sort of rights against one another in virtue of the thought that certain things ought not to be done to someone with great value. Presumably, communists would respect one another’s “rights,” so understood. Of course, to stress this would be wildly misleading. In TCS, the appeal to rights would be rare—in principle, entirely absent. 88. For a recent variation along these lines, see Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. 89. See Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, MEW, xx, 262; MECW, xxv, 268. 90. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228. 91. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosopie der Zukunft (1843), in Gesammelte Werke, ed. Werner Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1967), vol. 9, 264; Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, translated by Manfred Vogel (New York: BobbsMerrill, 1966) 3, emphasis in original. 92. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227. 93. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227. 94. I have mentioned only physical and not cognitive disability. Marx’s account seems to me incapable of finding an acceptable place for the cognitively disabled, at least for those who are severely cognitively disabled. On the other hand, I think no political philosophy has adequately addressed this issue. In general, this remains an important but utterly unresolved problem. 95. Marx’s texts are unclear as to whether the central locus of self-realization is in fact in necessary labor. In the work of 1844, Marx tilts strongly in this direction, though not without some qualification. By the time of Capital, the tilt goes the other way. On this topic, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 4. 96. See Marx, Manuscripts MEW, E, i, 546–52/MECW, iii, 306–312. 97. This worry goes back to Marx’s essay, “On the Jewish Question.” See Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (1843), MEW, I, 347–77/MECW, iii, 146–74. Thomas Nagel makes a related point when he notes the “tension between [our society’s] public impersonal egalitarianism and its encouragement of the private pursuit of individual aims.” See Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 58–59. 98. This distinction is stressed by many writers. It is nicely discussed by Ben Laurence in “The Thesis of Moderate Scarcity,” unpublished manuscript.

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99. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7. It is unclear whether the well-ordered society of A Theory of Justice is a completely or merely a more or less ideal society. Rawls does stipulate “strict compliance,” but (a) Rawls does not presume the absence of all criminal law (in effect, “strict compliance” need not mean “exceptionless compliance”) and (b) his concern for arrangements that minimize envy suggests a limit to institutions’ capacity to form citizens’ psychologies in the desired way. 100. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part ii, section 1, 479. 101. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 576/504.

8 “Recognition” in Psychoanalysis Andreas Wildt

The concept of “recognition” does not belong to psychoanalytic terminology.1 It is absent even from newer lexica of psychoanalytic concepts and from the indices of analytic literature. The same applies for closely related terms such as “affirmation [Bejahung],” “approval [Annehmen],” “acceptance [Akzeptieren],” and “acknowledgment [Bestätigung].” The case is somewhat different with “respect [Achtung].” In the last few decades, however, the concept of “recognition” has appeared with increasing frequency in literature particularly where it is of a Kleinian bent, and in some more recent, intersubjectivistic approaches the term has become a central concept, most notably in the work of Jessica Benjamin and Martin Altmeyer.2 The latter case is no doubt an expression of the influence of certain philosophical tendencies on psychoanalysis, namely that of the more recent reception of early Hegel following Alexandre Kojève’s legendary lectures in Paris in the 1930s, which so greatly influenced Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Lacan.3 In Germany, Hegel’s theory of recognition has been studied and revived mainly by Habermas and Idealism scholars belonging to the subsequent generation.4 Axel Honneth’s social philosophy of the struggle for recognition picks up from there. In turn, such discourses in recent critical theory have made their impression on younger psychoanalysts. This revaluation of the term “recognition” also applies to internal developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this context, the increasingly secular significance of the theme of “Narcissus” is decisive. In the classical theory of narcissism, the term “recognition” hardly makes an appearance. Yet there are grounds for supposing that inadequate recognition by the primary person to whom the child may relate [Bezugsperson] plays an important role in the genesis of narcissistic disorders. And it is just 189

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as natural for depth psychology to comprehend narcissistic symptoms as manners of “struggling for recognition” precisely when they demonstrate independence.5 Such an understanding of narcissism is hardly compatible with Freud’s notion of a subject that primarily rejects the world. This has already been revised in the framework of object relations theory and self-psychology [Selbstpsychologie] within psychoanalysis.6 But here, too, the term “recognition” was of little importance at first in describing intersubjective relations, for which the concept of “respect” [Achtung and Respekt] was of greater consequence. Only in more recent attempts to develop a fundamentally intersubjective understanding of the soul and the unconscious has “recognition” been of major significance. Pioneering these attempts have been Stephen Mitchell in the U.S. and Martin Dornes in Germany.7 The reception of empirical research on infants has also played an important role here. But following some remarks in late Freud and by several Freudians, the concept of “recognition” has also gained importance in a more orthodox strain of psychoanalysis, namely in Melanie Klein’s school of thought. However, here “recognition” denotes not an intersubjective relation, but rather the affirmation of reality in spite of efforts that conflict or reject it. “Recognition” is, in this sense, the counterconcept to “defense [Abwehr],” “repression [Verdrängung],” and especially “disavowal [Verleugnung].” In today’s understanding, disavowal is a defense mechanism that stands in contrast to that of repression, which is characteristic of neuroses; along with splitting and projection, it is fundamental for forms of psychopathology that are more severe and genetically determined at an earlier stage. Thus, with the focus trained on the relation between “recognition” and “disavowal” as an opposition, analytic interest has been shifted towards early childhood disorders [Frühstörungen] in an even more basic manner than by recent theories of narcissism. In the broader sense, narcissistic disorders also belong to this class of early childhood disorders [Frühstörungen], but above all psychosomatic and borderline personality disorders, and the inorganic psychoses [nicht-organischen Psychosen] that Freud once described as “narcissistic neuroses.” From these terminological findings there arises the question of whether there is an actual connection between the intersubjective and the orthodox usages of the concept of recognition. In the following, I would like to provide critical, yet mainly positive considerations of this question, though these will have to remain theses rather than answers. My presentation is structured as follows. In the first section, I propose theses on the importance of the term “recognition” in Freud, briefly demonstrate the significance of the term in several Kleinians, and attempt to argue that it is a term already overloaded in these texts. In the second section, I define the orthodox usage of the concept of recognition as “propositional” recognition,

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distinguish this from “personal” recognition, work out the commonality between these two forms, and investigate the actual connections between them. In contrast to the others, this section is mainly oriented towards the philosophical concept.8 In the third section, I discuss the two forms of recognition and their intermingling in the conceptions set forth by Winnicott and Benjamin. Finally, I talk in the fourth section about the usage of the concept of recognition in intersubjectivistic conceptions of narcissism and in a more comprehensive psychoanalytic anthropology, by way of which I also arrive at positive hypotheses.

RECOGNITION IN FREUD AND IN KLEINIAN THEORY The word “recognition” often appears in its colloquial form in Freud’s texts, that is to say, in such a way that no idea specific to psychoanalysis is expounded as yet. In such passages, “recognition” only seldom denotes an attitude or behavior towards another person (as with “praise”). For the most part, the word refers more generally to facts of all kinds, though of course especially to facts whose recognition is characteristic for psychoanalysis, for instance that of infantile sexuality and aggression. Here already it is clear that the word “recognition” appears in Freud where affirmation and acceptance are at stake, which must first be asserted against reluctance, anxiety, shame, pain, and so forth. Freud’s use of the term accentuates a trait that is already characteristic of its usual employment. One could put it this way: mere cognition [Erkennen] is not enough to arrive at recognition [Anerkennen]—also required are voluntative [voluntativ] approval or affirmation, which must first assert themselves against the countertendency to negate and reject. The way we say that we “must” or “should” recognize something betrays this fact. The act of recognizing is thus often “resistant [widerstrebend],”9 ambivalent or ambitendent [ambitendent]. In Freud, this also corresponds to the affinity of “recognizing” with “tolerating [Ertragen],” “enduring [Aushalten],” “adapting oneself [Sich-Anpassen],” “resigning oneself [Sich-Abfinden]” and “renunciation [Verzicht].” The distinctive feature of the word “recognition,” namely that it expresses an ambitendency [Ambitendenz] in affirmation, makes it seem particularly suited to being a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis. Indeed, it gains more and more importance in late Freud and obtains semiterminological status as the counterconcept to “disavowal.” In the reception of Freud, however, the phrase “recognition of reality,” as opposed to the “disavowal of reality,” is practically the only usage that has survived. According to Freud, the “recognition of reality” is what the “realityprinciple” achieves.10 As to its function, Freud only closely examined

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“reality-testing [Realitätsprüfung].” By this he primarily meant the testing of perceptions, memories, and beliefs for distortion by wishes, fantasies, and interpretations. In principle, however, it still remains open after such a test whether the result is accepted in spite of one’s reluctance and is made into the basis for action, or is defended against under pressure from the “pleasure principle.” This is, of course, chiefly a conceptual difference; in reality the “reality-testing [Realitätsprüfung]” is most often hindered by the defense [Abwehr]. Freud sometimes calls the total acceptance of reality “recognition.”11 In this sense, “recognition” is in general the alternative to “defense [Abwehr],” and particularly to its voluntative [voluntativ] (as opposed to cognitive) or attitudinal aspect. From this, one might draw the conclusion that for Freud, the “recognition of reality”—unlike “defense”—always denotes a conscious and intentional act and therefore should not belong to analytical terminology per se. Such a conclusion would be rash, however. For instance, Freud sees in “negation [Verneinung],” which is a form of defense (for example, “This is not my mother!”), the “recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego.”12 This is clearly not a conscious recognition, for it is only a partial revocation of defense, and specifically of “repression [Verdrängung].”13 Starting with the essay on Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes [Einige psychische Folgen des anatomischen Geschlectsunterschieds], however, Freud treats the concept of “recognition” as the counterconcept to “disavowal [Verleugnung].”14 With regards to content, this opposition between recognition and disavowal is related to the girl’s lack of a penis. From the work on “fetishism” onwards, “recognition” then describes not so much the alternative to (total) disavowal, but rather an affirmative addition to a simultaneous—and thereby already partial—disavowal. Freud finds a simultaneous recognition and disavowal of reality already in the fetish as such, but also in particular forms of fetishism and even in obsessional neurosis [Zwangsneurose]. In unpublished fragments Freud refers to these and similar constellations as “the splitting of the ego [Ichspaltung].” Unfortunately, I lack the space here to discuss Freud’s ideas in more detail. Instead, I will only insist that the later Freud increasingly tries to describe and differentiate psychic processes and disorders in such a manner and to such an extent that they result not only in defense and particularly disavowal, but also the recognition of external and internal reality. To my knowledge, these ideas have hardly been received or discussed, even by Freudians. The same holds for other branches of psychoanalysis, though Kleinians have thematized important aspects of the recognition of reality that were paid little attention in Freud. Contemporary Kleinians sometimes portray the concept of “recognition” as having played an important role already in the work of Melanie Klein.15

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I have been unable to confirm this in my reading of those texts by Klein that are cited in support of this view.16 Nonetheless this opinion is highly relevant for many Kleinians following the work of the (later) Hanna Segal. According to this position, Hanna Segal’s 1957 essay Notes on Symbol Formation “makes clear with her concept of symbolic representation that the recognition of the independence of the object is necessary when there is a decrease in the infant’s omnipotent identifications.”17 In this text, Segal does in fact employ the term “recognition,” but only in reference to the specific attitude taken towards symbols, and not towards “objects” in a psychoanalytic sense.18 In her 1964 introduction to Klein’s work, however, and specifically in the chapter on “Reparation,” Segal emphasizes the importance of “recognizing” the internal realities of aggression, guilt, and mourning and the external realities of the mother’s independence, loss, and assistance in reparation.19 In her later book Dream, Phantasy and Art Segal then talks about the “acceptance of the triangular situation [Anerkennung der triangulären Situation]”20 in reference to Bion: “It is an important aspect of the depressive position that the recognition of mother as a separate person includes the recognition of father as her partner rather than as a partobject seen as her possession or as an object confused with her, as in the fantasy of the combined parents.”21 The Kleinian text that puts the greatest weight on the concept of recognition is, to my knowledge, Money-Kyrle’s short essay The Aim of Psychoanalysis from 1971. Money-Kyrle defines the goal of analysis as “help[ing] the patient understand, and so overcome, emotional impediments to his discovering what he innately already knows.”22 To this end the author particularly draws on Bion’s adoption of instinctive “preconceptions” and Plato’s theory of knowledge as anamnesis [Wiedererinnerung]. In this context, the concept of “recognition” denotes as its primary sense the cognition on the base of a former cognition of the same thing or reidentification. MoneyKyrle already attempts to capture this sense of “re-cognition” in an earlier essay on Cognitive Development by recasting it as “re-recognition.”23 Here it is clear that recognition is related to the “essential facts of life”24 that are at first “intolerable.”25 “Recognition” thus carries the further connotation of “resistant acceptance [widerstrebendem Akzeptieren],” which was already decisive in Freud’s use of the term. In the later paper, Money-Kyrle identifies three central forms of recognition: “The recognition of the breast as a supremely good object, the recognition of the parents’ intercourse as a supremely creative act, and the recognition of the inevitability of time and ultimately death.”26 By the third form of recognition, which to my knowledge does not appear as such in Klein, Money-Kyrle means the recognition of the fact “that no good (or bad) experience can ever last for ever.”27 He then examines the various forms in which these forms of recognition may be obstructed, disturbed, or restricted. To

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this end it is important for him that the recognition of the breast as the highest good—together with the mourning [Trauer] over the transience of its presence—enables or at the very least facilitates the recognition of the parents’ sexual intercourse as the highest creative act.28 All these forms of recognition are decisive for enabling psychological growth. One can observe a peculiar inflection in Money-Kyrle’s use of the term recognition. Up till then, “recognition” related primarily to facts that were counter to the desires of the recognizing subject; in psychoanalytic discourse after Money-Kyrle, these facts present positive values and direct themselves precisely at the recognizing subject’s desires. Certainly, it is already difficult for the small child in Kleinian theory to accept the exceptional goodness of the breast and extraordinary creativity of the parents’ sexual intercourse, because it has such impulses as archaic envy [Neid] and jealousy [Eifersucht] standing in the way. Yet these aggressive impulses first acquire their overwhelming power through the experience that the good breast is often not present. As for the parents’ sexual intercourse, the difficulty primarily lies not in the recognition of its creativity, but in the fact that the child is excluded from this relation. For Money-Kyrle, the ambivalent character of recognition, which till then was fundamental in psychoanalytic usage, is secondary to this. Because Money-Kyrle’s work is concerned not with the problems of early childhood development, but with the aim of analysis, one could ask whether his third form of recognition—that of mortality—is decisive. The bitter fact here arises not from having to die at some point or at all, however, but rather from having to die in a short or foreseeable time—that is, “soon.”29 My having to die soon confronts me—in a different manner from mortality in general—with the omissions and transgressions in my life and the narrow limits of my power to change anything about this anymore. This consciousness of the absence of meaning, of guilt, and of impotence triggers a specifically human anxiety, whereas the consciousness of transience produces pain and mourning. What seems most difficult, however, is the acceptance of facts that are threatening. Thus recognition as such is less present in the acceptance of mortality in general than in the acceptance of having to die soon. I have found Kleinian and Freudian usages of the term “recognition” in the work of Altmeyer, Bacal/Newman, Bollas, Bolognini, Britton, Eagle, Gattig, Küchenhoff, Loewald, Reiche, Rosenfeld, Scharff, Schneider, Steiner and Weiß. Finally, “recognition” has also gained programmatic importance in nonanalytic forms of therapy, in particular in the systemic method, which Bert Hellinger developed under the name “Familienaufstellungen”.30 Here in particular, but also in Money-Kyrle, I find the concept of recognition therapeutically overworked and thereby inadequate. Already in the work of Money-Kyrle, the term is used to denote the goal of therapy. In

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my view, however, one can only speak of having reached this goal when the hard and bitter facts of (one’s own) life are not only (ambivalently) recognized, but also so completely accepted that there is no opposing tendency remaining. As such, these facts are not transformed into something positive, but remain negative, sorrowful, and painful. Despite the lingering pain, however, they comprise the facts on which one may stand without being swayed or torn apart. On the other hand, it would be a problematic idealization to view the recognition of the reality of the bitter facts of life as a fixed end state of psychic maturation. Since Bion in particular, it has been emphasized in Kleinian theory that the depressive never ultimately overcomes the paranoid schizoid position, but that it is characteristic of creativity for there to be a flexible exchange of the fundamental positions [Grundpositionen] of psychic functioning. To my knowledge, Bion never employs the term “recognition” per se. But the movement between the Kleinian positions is, at bottom, a swinging between the recognition and nonrecognition (that is, disavowal) of reality. The “to and fro between disavowal and acknowledgment” that, for Freud, characterizes a number of psychic disorders,31 thus becomes a characteristic of maturation. Out of this arises the question of what this movement facilitates. For this, we will see that “recognition” is decisive in another, essentially personal sense.

“PROPOSITIONAL” AND “PERSONAL” RECOGNITION In Freudian and Kleinian schools of thought, “recognition” is almost always understood in the sense of the reluctant acceptance of facts, which given certain circumstances often apply, of course, to persons. One paradigm for this usage of “recognition” would be the once familiar phrase, “recognition of the GDR.” Here “recognition” meant accepting the fact that the German Democratic Republic, though incompatible with the values of the West, was not merely a phantom of propaganda and not just a “phenomenon,” as one often heard back then, but rather a reality with which one must reckon and which had consequences for action. In what follows, I will call “propositional recognition” the recognition of any type of fact. My use of this term is not affected by the fact that a “proposition” not only refers to “facts,” that is, real content, but also unreal content. I also leave aside here the logical sense of “proposition” as a “statement [Satz].” The term “propositional” is not meant to determine recognition solely on the basis of its cognitive side. Rather, “propositional recognition” is always a voluntative [voluntativ] and thus at the very least an affective act when linked to ambivalence. When such propositional recognition refers to facts that hold value, it has in spite of its ambivalent character the character of approval. It is in

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this sense that Money-Kyrle speaks of the “recognition of the breast as a supremely good object” or of the parents’ sexual intercourse as “a supremely creative act.” Often it is in the sense of “approval” that recognition refers to the moral-legal character and value of facts. Of course, the recognition of facts as morally-legally binding always also implies the recognition of the rights of persons and thus also the recognition of these persons themselves, though the accent lies on the recognition of factuality in this usage. Besides this, there is a usage in which “recognition” pertains primarily to persons. The model for this is praise or appreciation. Praise refers to actions that involve effort or performance, and appreciation refers particularly to contributions. Both are expressions of the estimation of a person. Because abilities are manifest in performance, one also speaks of the recognition and estimation of abilities. The recognition of persons often has a particular, more complex sense, that of the recognition of their rights. This sense of “recognition” is meant mostly when one speaks of the “respect [Achtung]” of a person. Of course, the “recognition of persons” may also mean the recognition or estimation of his or her performance and abilities, but for the most part it refers to the normative status of the person. It must be admitted that the recognition of persons always implies the recognition of certain facts in relation to these persons. When one person is recognized in his or her performance, abilities, and rights, it is recognized that he or she possesses these performance, abilities, and rights. Yet the recognition of persons cannot be reduced to the recognition of such facts. Rather, it is the person him- or herself who is recognized and positively evaluated when we recognize that these facts are applicable to him or her. A positive affect can be based on this estimation. This type of recognition is, in this sense, intentionally, evaluatively, and in certain cases affectively related to the person, and cannot be reduced to propositionality. We say, for instance, not only “I recognize that P is such and such,” but also “I recognize P” or even “I am filled with appreciation [voll Anerkennung] for P.” In what follows, I would like to flesh out this distinction by drawing out the differences between “personal” and “propositional” recognition.32 Please note that these terms are terminological abbreviations. To be precise, one should differentiate between a form of recognition that refers not only propositionally to persons, from a form which, if it refers to persons at all, refers to them exclusively in a propositional manner. As such, one could use the designations “only propositional” and “not only propositional” recognition, but I find them too pedantic and unwieldy. One could also ask whether the two forms of recognizing persons, as incidentally differentiated as they are, ultimately describe one unified phenomenon, and thus whether rights may be understood as a special case of ability or performance. In my work on “recognition” in contemporary practical

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philosophy,33 I have answered in the negative, though here the question could be left open. In any case, one should distinguish between the recognition of abilities from the recognition of the right to acquire, maintain, and realize these abilities. The important question is, however, whether there is a correspondence between “personal” and “propositional” recognition that goes beyond the fact that in both cases something is affirmed and accepted. In my view, the two forms of recognition correspond in their both implicitly referring to opposing tendencies, even if they do not do so in the same way. While in “propositional recognition” it seems to belong to the concept that opposing interests are at work, one could not say the same with certainty for the recognition of performance, abilities and rights. Nonetheless, (subjective) rights are conceived in view of these opposing tendencies, since the meaning of subjective rights consists in protecting the interests of one subject from other subjects. In these cases another’s interests can only be accepted with reluctance. Furthermore, psychoanalysis has shown how deeply rooted the motives for competition and jealousy are. These motives make it difficult to recognize another’s performance and abilities without ambivalence, though this seems not necessarily the case. Counter to my thesis that the two basic forms of recognition are both linked to the overcoming of an oppositional or ambitendent [gegenläufig] impulse, Axel Honneth has suggested in correspondence that while this may still be the case in the recognition of rights, it is “completely counterintuitive” in the estimation of a person’s performance, since “recognition or admiration are unavoidable in normal cases.” It appears to me that this observation is applicable to the phenomenon of admiration, but that it would be inappropriate to describe forms of admiration—and enthusiasm—as manners of “recognition.” Admiration and enthusiasm involve an element of active dedication and self-renunciation, which do not fit into the experience of the limits of the proper that is accepted in forms of recognition. In contrast to admiration, praise may be seen as recognition, but it implies too much superiority to be able to authentically express admiration. “Estimation,” the term Honneth uses most often to describe personal recognition (not pertaining to rights), seems neutral in this light; it can pertain to either recognition or admiration, but not both at the same time. The affirmation of a limit, which distinguishes recognition from admiration and enthusiasm, is shared by recognition and phenomena of respect [Achtung]. In “respect [Achtung]” I turn to an object in a positive manner, but unlike in admiration, I simultaneously take a step back (compare this with the German cry “Achtung! [Watch out!]” and the definition of the first syllable of “respect”).34 Even when it is not ambivalent, respect is thus also oppositional [gegenstrebig] and “ambitendent [ambitendent]” in and of itself. This applies to the respect for persons as well as to the respect and observance

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[Beachtung] of facts. The same is true of recognition. While it is true that unlike in (personal) respect, recognition is a voluntative [voluntativ] rather than an emotional phenomenon, reluctance or opposition [Gegenstrebigkeit] concerns the voluntative rather than the emotional structure of respect as well. The ambitendency [Ambitendenz] in personal recognition reveals that it is a form of motivation that is complex in itself, but not a form of motivation that is also ambivalent, secondary, and quasi-imposed, as is the case for propositional recognition. Like personal respect, personal recognition can be spontaneous. The personal sense of “recognition” also plays an important role in psychoanalytic technique today, as is evidenced by the practice manual Textbook of Psychoanalytic Therapy by Thomä and Kächele,35 but above all in the intersubjectivistic theory and in the most recent debates on narcissism. To my knowledge, however, this type of recognition is never distinguished from propositional recognition. This has led to some confusion. As a result, it has been difficult to investigate the importance of the two forms of recognition, and particularly the relation between the two. A central teaching of classical psychoanalysis is that the painful (propositional) recognition of reality is a condition for psychic growth and health. This is certainly not disputed even in the newer directions that the study of psychic disorders has taken, but it has been relativized by the acceptance of a primarily positive reference [Bezug] to reality.36 Analogously, the significance of personal recognition and the interdependence of the two forms of recognition have also been thematized. It seems important, however, that we first investigate the internal structures of the two. We can pose two questions: the first directed towards the direct, intentional connections of both forms of recognition, and the second directed towards the indirect, causal connections. The first concerns whether the recognition of the fact that a healthy self-relation depends on personal recognition is also central to the (propositional) recognition of reality, and whether, conversely, the recognition of a person’s ability to accept the hard facts of life is central to personal recognition. The second concerns whether there are conditioning connections [Bedingungszusammenhänge] between the two forms of recognition in the sense that, on the one hand, the ability to recognize the hard facts of life presupposes that the person be recognized, and on the other hand, the personal act of recognizing [personales Anerkennen] presupposes recognizing the hard facts of life. In the last section, I will formulate a positive thesis regarding the first half of the first question, and a partially negative thesis regarding the first half of the second question. However, what follows mostly concerns the lack of distinction and confusion of the two forms of recognition, and the internal structure of personal recognition.

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PERSONAL AND PROPOSITIONAL RECOGNITION IN WINNICOTT AND BENJAMIN Winnicott’s 1969 essay on “The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications” is a theoreticohistorical point of reference for the more recent psychoanalytic debate on personal recognition. In actual fact, however, the essay concerns not a specifically personal, but rather the propositional form of recognition. Winnicott describes the manner in which the infant, in the course of its aggressive conflict with the motherly object, arrives at the “recognition of [the object] as an entity in its own right.”37 I am unable to discuss the Kleinian background of this image of the infant here. What matters for me is that this image concerns propositional rather than personal recognition and that “right [Recht]” can only have a metaphorical sense here. In the context of the present discussion, it does not matter that Winnicott believes the infant first learns to distinguish between the outer world and his/her inner world in this manner. What is decisive is that the result is not only a cognitive step forward, but also an emotional achievement insofar as he/she recognizes the fact that the mother has a life independent of his/her own.38 This is deeply threatening to the infant in that the infant begins to realize he/she is fundamentally dependent on the mother. And it makes it impossible for him/her to fantasize that he/she is omnipotent, as Winnicott had assumed along with Freud and Klein. The recognition that the infant has to achieve here is thus neither the recognition of a right nor an assessment of an ability, but also not a merely cognitive affirmation. Rather, it is the emotional affirmation of a fact that is threatening because it is bound to a profound inability in oneself, that is to say one’s own impotence and helplessness. For Winnicott as for Bion, this recognition always remains partial and ambivalent, because “the task of reality-acceptance is never completed.”39 The overcoming of this ambivalence is thus a function of culture, which essentially perpetuates the child’s conflict with his or her transitional objects [Übergangsobjekten]. In her book The Bonds of Love, Jessica Benjamin has attempted to integrate Winnicott’s (overinterpreted) approach into a more comprehensive theory of intersubjectivity as mutual recognition. To this end she takes as her starting point German Idealism’s philosophical theories of recognition, which hold that (personal) recognition presupposes reciprocity. This assumption is fundamental to these theories, however, because interpersonal recognition serves to establish right [Recht].40 In the recognition of rights [Rechten], reciprocity is already given in the fact that I can only recognize the demands of others as rights if and only if I accord myself rights, the same rights under the same conditions. It is also

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genetically clear that we can only learn to recognize the rights of others if we ourselves have or have had the experience of being recognized in our rights. Accordingly, one could understand Winnicott as saying that the infant’s recognition of the mother as an “entity in its own right” presupposes a corresponding recognition of the infant in its rights by the mother. An analogous reciprocity applies to the recognition of abilities. The recognition of one’s ability by another comes into its full value only if one knows and recognizes that the other possesses the same ability. This reciprocity is presupposed by Hegel’s dialectic of the struggle for recognition, which Benjamin takes as a model for the reconstruction of ontogenesis.41 For Hegel, however, self-consciousness not only wants to be recognized in its fundamental, person-specific abilities, that is to say as an “autonomous being-for-itself [selbstständiges Fürsichsein]” or “will,” but also as “absolute” and therefore must seek out a “struggle for life and death [Kampf auf Leben und Tod]” with the self-consciousness of another.42 In this Benjamin sees a parallel to Freud and Winnicott, insofar as their acceptance of the consciousness of omnipotence as a primary state precludes a spontaneous and voluntary recognition of the other. In Hegel, however, the struggle is also a program that generates dialectics, because the absoluteness asserted by self-consciousness and will necessarily collides with the striving for recognition. For Benjamin, Hegel’s dialectic of the struggle for recognition is, on the contrary, not a universal anthropological model. Rather, she wants to show that Hegel’s “paradox of recognition” leads to a type of master-slave dialectic—that is, to a sadistic assertion of omnipotence or masochistic submission and to a sadomasochistic symbiosis—only in the case of a pathological striving for absolute independence. Nonetheless she speaks of a “necessary tension” between recognition and independence. In the case of healthy development, however, this tension could be preserved in the mutual recognition of relative autonomy [Selbständigkeit], independence [Eigenständigkeit] and individuality. The recognition of individuality would then be necessarily reciprocal and thus often conflictual, but not “paradoxical.” Here Benjamin draws once again on Winnicott for his model of the small child’s conflictual recognition of the mother’s autonomy. In my opinion, this is misleading for two reasons. First, the autonomy that the small child must recognize in the mother is not concerned with the loaded form of “autonomy” that is meant when speaking of the autonomy and individuality of a person. Rather, it primarily concerns the fundamental fact that the mother goes away or turns her attention to others. What is to be recognized here is not only the independence of the mother and of her interests, but also the full dependence of the small child on this independent person. Second, such recognition is not reciprocal. Since the mother does not take “revenge,” but rather understands and

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accepts the child’s attacks as necessary reactions and developmental steps, it is not of central importance that she see in it achievements (of delimitation [Abgrenzung] and independence [Verselbständigung]), or even the claim to rights. What is important is simply the understanding and acceptance of the child’s needs and affects. The term “recognition” (in the personal sense) is thus inappropriate here. One can certainly say that the first step towards accepting the child consists in accepting his or her right to life, care, and love. One must also say that the child not only has a right to being cared for and loved, but specifically by his parents. This care and love implies the recognition of the neediness of the child, but this is not a personal recognition of the child. Rather, it involves the propositional recognition of the fact that the child is needy. As such, this propositional recognition also does not yet imply the active acceptance and satisfaction of his or her needs. And even this is not yet a form of “personal recognition” in the definitive sense, namely a recognition of abilities, performance, or rights. Axel Honneth has attempted to make the talk of a personal recognition of needs or neediness convincing by arguing that their value is recognized. To me, this unnecessarily complicates the phenomenon of the altruistic affirmation and satisfaction of others’ needs. Yet even if speaking of “values” were appropriate here, the term “recognition” is not. If I experience and affirm the beauty of a baby (or of another object), this may be described as “recognition” of an aesthetic value only if and only insofar as the affirmation of this value is ambivalent. In our case, however, this is not given, insofar as there is successful binding [gelungene Bindung] involved. This foundation of motherly love, which in other cases may be ambivalent, is the affirmation of the existence and presence of the baby, which the mother may express with the sentence, “I am happy that you are there.” In my view, this cannot be adequately described as “recognition,” let alone “personal recognition.” Here one might object that the term “recognition” does not matter. Much more at stake is the fundamental connection between the relation to others [Fremdbeziehung] and self-relation [Selbstbeziehung], according to which a positive connectedness to another is a necessary condition for a positive self-relation. However, the insight into this anthropologically fundamental connection does not justify the use of the term “recognition,” nor does it substantiate the thesis that a reciprocity is necessary that could refer to a structural conflictedness. More relevant in this context would be Erich Fromm’s concept of “love” and especially Heinz Kohut’s term “self-object [Selbstobjekt].” Against this view, Benjamin describes the first interactions between mother and baby after its birth already as “the beginning of recognition.”43 This description is convincing by dint of the fact that not only knowing

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and affirming are involved, but also a type of re-cognition [Wiedererkennen], that is, the cognition of something based on a former cognition of it. Recognition, in the sense of affirming abilities, performance or rights, is at most a marginal feature on the mother’s side, and does not feature at all on the infant’s part.44 Benjamin does not want to explicitly state the latter case. For her, and in contrast to Freud, the newborn already seeks the mother actively and spontaneously and joyfully explores her. But “recognition” is not suitable as a description of this process, since the term expresses the oppositional or ambitendent character contained in affirmation. Similarly for Martin Dornes’ programmatic thesis: “Man is (perhaps) the only living being that does not only strive towards the satisfaction of his needs, but also the recognition thereof.”45 Just as in Benjamin, “recognition” can only generally denote affirmation and acknowledgment in the context of “primary intersubjectivity” from which this quote is taken. This does not subtract at all from the importance of the thesis that humans appear to be the only living beings in need of fundamentally intersubjective acknowledgment, because they possess a structure of intentionality and self that can only develop and stabilize itself by means of intersubjective acknowledgment.46 In spite of all this, the theses for the anthropogenic importance of striving for recognition, its necessary reciprocity, conflictedness, and the struggle for recognition remain convincing in my view, especially for the later stages of development. Benjamin already tries to show this for the crisis of “rapprochement [Wiederannäherung]” following Margaret Mahler, and for the pre-Oedipal relation to the father.47 This involves, among other things, not only accepting the child in his or her existence, and understanding, paying attention to, acknowledging, and attending to his or her needs, affects, and intentions, but also in his or her performance of a stubborn and resistant will, desire, and action. The model for the latter is above all the idealized father. He is therefore the object of a love that is fundamental for identification.48 This identification is based on the wish to be like the father, and thus on an admiration of his abilities. For the child, reciprocity is constitutive here: the child’s being recognized in his abilities by his parents comes into effect precisely where it corresponds to a passionate admiration on the part of the child. As I have argued above, however, it seems inappropriate to me to describe such admiration as “recognition.” Benjamin obscures the parents’ recognition in that she subsumes both the mother’s mood towards the child as well as the father’s acknowledgement of desire, will, and action under the same general term “recognition.” Even if it is inappropriate to describe the love between parents and the small child as recognition, it might be fitting for love between adults. Of course, the positive relation to the interests of the other in mature love also implies the recognition of moral obligations towards this other and above

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all the recognition of his or her personal rights. Yet this type of recognition is clearly not restricted to love. The same applies for the following attempt at a definition: “Love is the recognition of the otherness of the other.”49 The recognition of the otherness of the other is also characteristic for personal respect, and is in no way restricted to love (and friendship). Here, interest and readiness are specifically directed towards discovering the other in his or her otherness as well, and then to recognize this other even if he or she contradicts one’s own wishes. There is thus a dimension of recognition that is specific to mature love (and friendship). But for the same reason, love does not allow itself to be defined as recognition. What is more decisive here is the interest in the individuality of the other, and that in itself is not a form of recognition.

NARCISSISM, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, AND RECOGNITION The thematics of propositional recognition in Kleinianism has a constitutive connection with that of narcissism understood in the sense of immature or pathological egomania [Selbstbezogenheit]. Within this theoretical framework, narcissistic object relations are characteristic for the “paranoidschizoid” position, while the “depressive” position is attained through the recognition of the independence of the object, one’s own dependence, and one’s own aggressions. Essentially, narcissism thus denotes a lack of propositional recognition of the fundamental facts of life. At its core, recognizing the fundamental facts of life means overcoming narcissism. Evidently, there is a connection between the lack of personal recognition and narcissism even in everyday understanding. Persons with disturbed self-love are driven by an obsessive hunger for recognition by others, even if this is masked as self-sufficiency or arrogance. It is with this sense in mind that Altmeyer writes: “The widely different symptoms of the narcissistic disorder can thus be deciphered in my opinion as the manifold variations of a struggle for recognition, which is carried out in concealment and in more or less masterly performances.”50 The struggle for recognition is thus particularly ubiquitous today: “Many, if not most neurotic disorders that exist today supposedly stem not from frustrated drives [Triebwünsche], but from frustrated needs for recognition. Balint, Winnicott and Kohut have recognized this.”51 Yet despite the persuasiveness of this argument, the use of the term “recognition” here is misleading. The needs that are frustrated in this context are, besides the need for recognition, those for love, attention, acknowledgment, and exchange. Of course, skill is important already for the self-consciousness of the small child. The child wishes to be paid attention and acknowledged in his or her performance as well, but his or her need for acknowledgment and attention

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is linked in a still more elementary way to his or her passive conditions and experiences. There are later phases of development in which the wish for the recognition of performance becomes central. But when the more basic needs for attention and acknowledgment in particular are frustrated, there develops, among other symptoms, the neurotic obsession with the recognition of abilities and performance and thus an eternal “struggle for recognition.” Altmeyer has formulated his intersubjectivistic reconstruction of narcissism as a theory of “recognition.”52 Yet while his rejection of understanding narcissism as mere egomania [Selbstbezogenheit] and of Freud’s theses of a “primary” narcissism is common to all branches of object relations theory, the term “recognition” is still too narrow as used in this context. Moreover, Altmeyer refers to Freud’s scattered remarks on narcissism as the wish for and feeling of “being loved [Geliebtwerden].”53 To sum up, he writes: “Narcissism can no longer be conceived as objectless egomania [Selbstbezogenheit]. It has something to do with the wish for and feeling of being cared for, seen, loved and recognized.”54 All in all, however, Altmeyer tends towards privileging the term “recognition.” In this way, he unintentionally places an emphasis on the acknowledgment of performance, which is more characteristic of neurotic developments. One might suspect again that I have based my critique on nothing more than a battle of words. “Recognition” (in the personal sense) could simply be a generic term for all forms of positive relation, intersubjective affirmation, and acknowledgment. Were this the case, however, it would be impossible to formulate a necessary connection between personal and propositional recognition without robbing the concept of propositional recognition of the element of ambitendent [ambitendent] affirmation specific to it. The approach that has been critically examined here essentially depends on the thesis that recognition by the primary persons to whom the child may relate [Bezugspersonen] is a necessary condition for the ability of the child to recognize the fundamental facts of life.55 Reimut Reiche formulates it in this way: “In any case, what is striking about the three forms of recognition Money-Kyrle proposes is that they are aligned on one side and, as it were, upwards. In mother, parents and finitude (the difference to infinity, that is to God), the ability to tolerate dependence and exclusion (triangularity) is elevated to the status of a moral criterion. Meanwhile, this conceals a fourth fact of life, namely that one can only recognize as someone who is recognized.”56 Here Reiche employs the term “recognition” equivocally. In my terminology, his thesis would have to state: one can only recognize the “facts of life” propositionally if one is recognized personally. If being personally recognized is defined in its original sense as a person’s being recognized in his or her

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abilities and performance (or rights), then this thesis is misleading in the case of the small child and formulated too narrowly in any case. The thesis is generally convincing at most in the unspecified sense of being accepted in one’s needs and feelings. There is a further confusion to clear up. In the thesis “propositional recognition requires personal recognition,” the former has an active sense, while the latter has a passive sense. Not only should one ask how propositional recognition relates to personal recognition in the passive sense of being recognized, but one should also ask how this relates to the active sense of one’s (own) recognizing. Furthermore, the question extends to whether this act of recognition expresses a spontaneous need or whether it is quasi-compelled as the condition for being recognized or for other psychic necessities. With its research in infancy, intersubjectivistic psychoanalysis tends towards a positive answer, which manifests an optimistic conception of the human.57 A spontaneous tendency to discover, explore, and affirm the other cannot convincingly be called “recognition,” however, because the term expresses precisely the ambitendency [Ambitendenz] of affirmation. “Recognition” results from the spontaneous exploration and affirmation of the other only when it experiences the other as the limit of the self. Finally, the propositional recognition that has been developed is not only connected conditionally to personal recognition, but also directly and intentionally. It is of central importance for a healthy self-understanding to recognize the fact that one is dependent on personal recognition. In this context, “recognition” has both a passive and an active sense. We must not only recognize the fact that we are reliant upon being recognized by others, but also that being recognized is only valuable to us if we recognize ourselves. This form of self-recognition involves a renunciation of the merely passive, quasi-obsessive form of recognition by others. The recognition of reality, which is of central concern in Freud’s theory of psychic healthy and maturity, is in essence the recognition of personal responsibility [Selbstverantwortlichkeit] in recognition. Recognizing personal responsibility in all of one’s own actions, even the unconscious ones, is the elementary precondition for any far-reaching therapy. The recognition of personal responsibility even in being recognized by others belongs, especially in narcissistic disorders, to the goal of therapy.

NOTES 1. This text was given in abbreviated form as a talk at the conference Anerkennung. Vom “Leben” eines hegelschen Begriffs [Recognition. On the “Life” of a Hegelian Concept] in October 2004 in Basel. It elaborates on remarks that I made in the essay “‘Anerkennung’ in der praktischen Philosophie der Gegenwart” [“‘Recognition’ in the Practical

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Philosophy of the Present”], which appeared in the collection entitled Selbstachtung oder Anerkennung? [Self-respect or Recognition?], ed. Henning Hahn (Weimar, Germany: Bauhaus Universität, 2005). There I mainly discuss Axel Honneth’s theses on the moral and social philosophy of recognition, which already refers extensively to psychoanalytic texts, in particular those of Winnicott and Benjamin. My own efforts owe much to Honneth’s work. The German version was translated into English by Julia Ng (Northwestern University). 2. Cf. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (New York: Pantheon, 1988). [German translation: (1990) Die Fesseln der Liebe. Psychoanalyse, Feminismus und das Problem der Macht (Basel, Switzerland: Nexus, 1990).]; Martin Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” Psyche 54, no. 2 (2000): 143–71; Altmeyer, Narzissmus und Objekt. Ein intersubjektives Verständnis der Selbstbezogenheit (Gießen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000); Altmeyer, M. (2003) Im Spiegel des Anderen. Anwendungen einer relationalen Psychoanalyse (Gießen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). 3. I will not be elaborating on Lacan and his school here, although the topoi of the “struggle for recognition” and the “recognition of desire” play a role in that discussion. 4. Cf. my own essays: Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung. Hegels Moralitätskritik im Lichte seiner Fichterezeption (Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta, 1982); Wildt, “Recht und Selbstachtung, im Anschluss an die Anerkennungslehren von Fichte und Hegel,” in Fichtes Lehre vom Rechtsverhältnis, ed. M. Kahlo. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1992); Wildt, “‘Anerkennung’.” 5. Cf. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 161. 6. Cf. Morris Eagle, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1984); Howard Bacal and Kenneth Newman, Theories of Object Relations: Bridges to Self Psychology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 7. Stephen Mitchell, Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity (Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press, 2000); Martin Dornes, Die frühe Kindheit. Entwicklungspsychologie der ersten Lebensjahre (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1997). 8. As my cited works show, I am an academic philosopher. In the last fourteen years I have further trained in primal therapy, body-psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, but I am not a psychoanalyst. 9. References to Sigmund Freud’s works will be made to the following editions: Gesammelte Werke, chronologisch geordnet (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer, 1999) (cited as GW); Studienausgabe (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer, 1982) (cited as Stu); The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1966) (cited as Standard Edition). See Freud’s Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, XXVII “Die Übertragung”: Stu, I, 425  GW, XI, 459 [Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, XXVII “Transference”: Standard Edition, XVI, 431–47; 441]; and Das Unbewusste: Stu, III, 128  GW, X, 268 [The Unconscious: Standard Edition, XIV, 159–215; 169]. 10. Freud, „Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens”: Stu, III, 18, Anm. 3  GW, VIII, 231, Anm. 1 [„Formulations of the Two Principles of Mental Functioning”: Standard Edition, XII, 213–26; 219 n. 3].

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11. Cf. for instance the letter to Romain Rolland dated January 1936 (“Eine Erinnerungstäuschung auf der Akropolis”): Stu, IV, 291  GW, XVI, 255 [“A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis”: Standard Edition, XXII, 237–48; 246]. 12. Freud, „Die Verneinung”: Stu, III, 377  GW, XIV, 15 [„Negation”: Standard Edition, XIX, 233–40; 239] 13. Freud, „Die Verneinung”: Stu, III, 373  12 [Standard Edition, XIX, 233–40; 236] 14. Cf. Stu, V, 261  GW, XIV, 24f. [Standard Edition, XIX, 241–58: 253] 15. For example, V. Albertini, “Glauben als Dimension der Zuversicht?” in KarlAbraham-Institut, Semester-Journal (Sommersemester 2004). 16. In the longer treatise Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant [Theoretische Betrachtungen über das Gefühlsleben des Säuglings] (1952) Klein speaks twice of the ability “to acknowledge the increasingly poignant [schmerzhaft] psychic reality” [“die zunehmend als schmerzhaft empfundene psychische Realität in höherem Maße anzuerkennen”] (English  The Writings of Melanie Klein, Volume III (London, 1975), 73 [German  Klein 2000, 126]). In the essay On the Development of Mental Functioning [Zur Entwicklung des psychischen Funktionierens] (1958), she writes: “This makes it possible for the ego to integrate and accept the super-ego to a greater or less extent.” [“Dies ermöglicht es dem Ich, das Über-Ich in größerem oder geringerem Umfang zu integrieren und zu akzeptieren.”] (English  The Writings of Melanie Klein, III, 241). While some German editions translate “accept” with akzeptieren [“to accept”], others use anerkennen [“to recognize”]. 17. Albertini, “Glauben als Dimension der Zuversicht?” 79: [“mit ihrem Konzept der symbolischen Repräsentation die Notwendigkeit der Anerkennung der Eigenständigkeit des Objekts deutlich gemacht, nämlich dann, wenn es zu einer Verminderung der omnipotenten Identifizierungen des Säuglings kommt”]. 18. Hanna Segal, “Notes on Symbol Formation,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 38 (1957): 391–97; 391, 394 [German  211, 213]. 19. German  Hanna Segal, (1964), 127, 133ff. [English  Hanna Segal, Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein (1964) (London: Karnac Books, 1973), 95, 101f.]. 20. German  Hanna Segal, (1991), 134. [English  Hanna Segal, Dream, Phantasy and Art (London: Routledge, 1991): 2.] Here, as in some other places, the German translation renders “acceptance” as “Anerkennung.” 21. German  Segal (1991), 68; cf. also 82, 129. [English  Segal, Dream, Phantasy and Art 46, cf. also 58]. 22. Roger Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 52 (1971), 103a; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle, ed. Donald Meltzer and Edna O’Shaughnessy (Perthshire, Scotland: Clunie, 1978), 442. 23. Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” in Collected Papers, 421. 24. Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” 420. 25. “The infant or some part of the infant, fails to recognize what is intolerable to him” (Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” 421). In this statement MoneyKyrle reiterates a thought from Freud’s 1911 essay Formulations of the Two Principles of Mental Functioning [Formulierungen über zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens]

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(GW, VIII, 229–38  Stu, III, 17–24 [Standard Edition, XII, 213–26]). The concept of “recognition” only appears in a footnote in Freud’s text, however (see footnote 9). E. Krejci proceeds in a fashion similar to Money-Kyrle’s: see E. Krejci, “Zur Wahrnehmung und Transformation von projektiven Identifizierungen in der Übertragung,” in Was ist aus dem Über-Ich geworden? Depressive Position/Ödipales Gesetz und jenseits davon. Arbeitstagung der Deutschen Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung in Freiburg vom 15.–18. März 2001, ed. W. Kubisch (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: 2001), 353–64, 354. 26. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 103b  Collected Papers, 443. 27. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 104a  444. 28. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 105a  446. 29. Cf. Ernst Tugendthat, Egozentrizität und Mystik. Eine anthropologische Studie (München: Beck, 2003), chapter 5. 30. Cf. Bert Hellinger and Gabriele ten Hövel, Anerkennen, was ist. Gespräche über Verstrickung und Lösung (München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1997), 40, 59, 115. 31. Freud, Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense [Die Ichspaltung im Abwehrvorgang] (Stu, III, 394  GW, XVII, 62 [Standard Edition, XXIII, 271–78; 278]). 32. The distinction that I draw between “personal” and “propositional” recognition is related to the semantic difference between “recognition” and “acknowledgment” in English. But while “acknowledgment” coincides for the most part with “propositional recognition,” “recognition” encompasses both personal and propositional recognition. 33. See footnote 13. 34. On the analysis of “respect [Achtung],” cf. Wildt “Recht und Selbstachtung,” Part II. 35. Helmut Thomä and Horst Kächele, Lehrbuch der psychoanalytischen Therapie, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (Berlin: Praxis, 1997). 36. Cf. F. Frommer and W. Tress, “Primär traumatisierende Welterfahrung oder primäre Liebe? Zwei latente Anthropologien in der Psychoanalyse” Forum der Psychoanalyse, 14 (1998): 139–50. 37. D. W. Winnicott, “The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications,” in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, (London: Routledge, 2005 (1971)), 120. 38. Cf. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 163; Narzissmus und Objekt, 144. 39. Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” in: Winnicott Playing and Reality, 18. 40. On the theories of recognition in Fichte and Hegel, cf. Wildt Autonomie und Anerkennung, Wildt, “Recht und Selbstachtung,” Wildt, “‘Anerkennung’.” 41. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, 31ff. [Die Fesseln der Liebe, 34ff.]. Like Benjamin, T. Ogden, “The Dialectically Constituted/Decentered Subject of Psychoanalysis. II. The Contribution of Klein and Winnicott,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 73 (1992), makes reference to the theory of recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. For Ogden, however, the main issue is not the struggle for recognition, but rather the interdependent constitution of self-consciousness. For this reason, he also refers to Martin Buber’s concept of dialogism. Cf. Arnold H. Modell, The Private Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), chapter 4.

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42. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes [1807], ed. J. Hoffmeister (1970), Werke, Bd. 3 (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1970), 145ff.; Hegel, Jenaer Realphilosophie [1805/6], ed. J. Hoffmeister (Berlin: 1967), 211. 43. Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, 13. 44. The German translation elides the difference by rendering “the beginning of recognition” as “erstes (An)erkennen”. Cf. Benjamin, Die Fesseln der Liebe, 16. 45. Dornes, Die frühe Kindheit, 139. 46. Similarly, Tzvetan Todorov departs from man’s fundamental need for “recognition,” “acknowledgment,” “consideration” or “attention” in his Life in Common: An Essay in General Anthropology. He finds this thesis for the first time in Rousseau and Adam Smith, and sees in Hegel’s theory of recognition, which he reads through the lenses of Kojève, a restriction to the recognition of particular abilities. Cf. Tzvetan Todorov, Life in Common: An Essay in General Anthropology, trans. Katherine Golsan and Lucy Golsan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 9ff. [German translation 1998, 26ff.]. 47. Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, 100ff. [Die Fesseln der Liebe, 99ff.]. 48. Benjamin speaks here of “identificatory love.” Cf. Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, 106 [104]. 49. J. Küchenhoff, “Verlorenes Objekt, Trennung und Anerkennung,” Forum der Psychoanalyse, 15 (1999): 189–203; 202. 50. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 161; Narzissmus und Objekt, 157, 230. 51. Dornes, Die frühe Kindheit, 141. 52. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 161ff.; Narzissmus und Objekt, 192ff. 53. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 149ff.; Narzissmus und Objekt, 42ff., 188ff. 54. Altmeyer, Narzissmus und Objekt, 228. 55. Cf. Dornes, Die frühe Kindheit, 153; Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 163; R. Reiche, “Subjekt, Patient, Außenwelt,” Psyche, 53 (1999), 591. 56. Reiche “Subjekt, Patient, Außenwelt,” 590f. 57. On the competition between pessimistic and optimistic conceptions of the human in psychoanalysis, cf. Frommer and Tress, “Primär traumatisierende Welterfahrung.”

9 Rethinking Recognition Nancy Fraser

In the seventies and eighties, struggles for the “recognition of difference” seemed charged with emancipatory promise.1 Many who rallied to the banners of sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and ‘race’ aspired not only to assert hitherto denied identities but to bring a richer, lateral dimension to battles over the redistribution of wealth and power as well. With the turn of the century, issues of recognition and identity have become even more central, yet many now bear a different charge: from Rwanda to the Balkans, questions of “identity” have fuelled campaigns for ethnic cleansing and even genocide—as well as movements that have mobilized to resist them. It is not just the character but the scale of these struggles that has changed. Claims for the recognition of difference now drive many of the world’s social conflicts, from campaigns for national sovereignty and subnational autonomy, to battles around multiculturalism, to the newly energized movements for international human rights, which seek to promote both universal respect for shared humanity and esteem for cultural distinctiveness. They have also become predominant within social movements such as feminism, which had previously foregrounded the redistribution of resources. To be sure, such struggles cover a wide range of aspirations, from the patently emancipatory to the downright reprehensible (with most probably falling somewhere in between). Nevertheless, the recourse to a common grammar is worth considering. Why today, after the demise of Soviet-style communism and the acceleration of globalization, do so many conflicts take this form? Why do so many movements couch their claims in the idiom of recognition? To pose this question is also to note the relative decline in claims for egalitarian redistribution. Once the hegemonic grammar of political contestation, 211

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the language of distribution is less salient today. The movements that not long ago boldly demanded an equitable share of resources and wealth have not, to be sure, wholly disappeared. But thanks to the sustained neoliberal rhetorical assault on egalitarianism, to the absence of any credible model of “feasible socialism” and to widespread doubts about the viability of stateKeynesian social democracy in the face of globalization, their role has been greatly reduced. We are facing, then, a new constellation in the grammar of political claims making—and one that is disturbing on two counts. First, this move from redistribution to recognition is occurring despite—or because of—an acceleration of economic globalization, at a time when an aggressively expanding capitalism is radically exacerbating economic inequality. In this context, questions of recognition are serving less to supplement, complicate, and enrich redistributive struggles than to marginalize, eclipse, and displace them. I shall call this the problem of displacement. Second, today’s recognition struggles are occurring at a moment of hugely increasing transcultural interaction and communication, when accelerated migration and global media flows are hybridizing and pluralizing cultural forms. Yet the routes such struggles take often serve not to promote respectful interaction within increasingly multicultural contexts, but to drastically simplify and reify group identities. They tend, rather, to encourage separatism, intolerance and chauvinism, patriarchalism and authoritarianism. I shall call this the problem of reification. Both problems—displacement and reification—are extremely serious: insofar as the politics of recognition displaces the politics of redistribution, it may actually promote economic inequality; insofar as it reifies group identities, it risks sanctioning violations of human rights and freezing the very antagonisms it purports to mediate. No wonder, then, that many have simply washed their hands of “identity politics”—or proposed jettisoning cultural struggles altogether. For some, this may mean reprioritizing class over gender, sexuality, “race,” and ethnicity. For others, it means resurrecting economism. For others still, it may mean rejecting all “minoritarian” claims out of hand and insisting upon assimilation to majority norms—in the name of secularism, universalism, or republicanism. Such reactions are understandable: they are also deeply misguided. Not all forms of recognition politics are equally pernicious: some represent genuinely emancipatory responses to serious injustices that cannot be remedied by redistribution alone. Culture, moreover, is a legitimate, even necessary, terrain of struggle, a site of injustice in its own right and deeply imbricated with economic inequality. Properly conceived, struggles for recognition can aid the redistribution of power and wealth and can promote interaction and cooperation across gulfs of difference.

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Everything depends on how recognition is approached. I want to argue here that we need a way of rethinking the politics of recognition in a way that can help to solve, or at least mitigate, the problems of displacement and reification. This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities, instead of one that promotes reification and separatism. Here, I propose such a rethinking of recognition.

MISRECOGNITION AS IDENTITY DISTORTION? The usual approach to the politics of recognition—what I shall call the “identity model”—starts from the Hegelian idea that identity is constructed dialogically, through a process of mutual recognition. According to Hegel, recognition designates an ideal reciprocal relation between subjects, in which each sees the other both as its equal and also as separate from it. This relation is constitutive for subjectivity: one becomes an individual subject only by virtue of recognizing, and being recognized by, another subject. Recognition from others is thus essential to the development of a sense of self. To be denied recognition—or to be “misrecognized”—is to suffer both a distortion of one’s relation to one’s self and an injury to one’s identity. Proponents of the identity model transpose the Hegelian recognition schema onto the cultural and political terrain. They contend that to belong to a group that is devalued by the dominant culture is to be misrecognized, to suffer a distortion in one’s relation to one’s self. As a result of repeated encounters with the stigmatizing gaze of a culturally dominant other, the members of disesteemed groups internalize negative self-images and are prevented from developing a healthy cultural identity of their own. In this perspective, the politics of recognition aims to repair internal self-dislocation by contesting the dominant culture’s demeaning picture of the group. It proposes that members of misrecognized groups reject such images in favor of new self-representations of their own making, jettisoning internalized, negative identities and joining collectively to produce a self-affirming culture of their own—which, publicly asserted, will gain the respect and esteem of society at large. The result, when successful, is “recognition”: an undistorted relation to oneself. Without doubt, this identity model contains some genuine insights into the psychological effects of racism, sexism, colonization, and cultural imperialism. Yet it is theoretically and politically problematic. By equating the politics of recognition with identity politics, it encourages both the reification of group identities and the displacement of redistribution.

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DISPLACING REDISTRIBUTION Let us consider first the ways in which identity politics tend to displace struggles for redistribution. Largely silent on the subject of economic inequality, the identity model treats misrecognition as a free-standing cultural harm: many of its proponents simply ignore distributive injustice altogether and focus exclusively on efforts to change culture; others, in contrast, appreciate the seriousness of maldistribution and genuinely wish to redress it. Yet both currents end by displacing redistributive claims. The first current casts misrecognition as a problem of cultural depreciation. The roots of injustice are located in demeaning representations, but these are not seen as socially grounded. For this current, the nub of the problem is free-floating discourses, not institutionalized significations and norms. Hypostatizing culture, they both abstract misrecognition from its institutional matrix and obscure its entwinement with distributive injustice. They may miss, for example, the links (institutionalized in labor markets) between androcentric norms that devalue activities coded as “feminine,” on the one hand, and the low wages of female workers on the other. Likewise, they overlook the links institutionalized within social-welfare systems between heterosexist norms which delegitimate homosexuality, on the one hand, and the denial of resources and benefits to gays and lesbians on the other. Obfuscating such connections, they strip misrecognition of its social-structural underpinnings and equate it with distorted identity. With the politics of recognition thus reduced to identity politics, the politics of redistribution is displaced. A second current of identity politics does not simply ignore maldistribution in this way. It appreciates that cultural injustices are often linked to economic ones, but misunderstands the character of the links. Subscribing effectively to a “culturalist” theory of contemporary society, proponents of this perspective suppose that maldistribution is merely a secondary effect of misrecognition. For them, economic inequalities are simple expressions of cultural hierarchies—thus, class oppression is a superstructural effect of the cultural devaluation of proletarian identity (or, as one says in the United States, of “classism”). It follows from this view that all maldistribution can be remedied indirectly, by a politics of recognition: to revalue unjustly devalued identities is simultaneously to attack the deep sources of economic inequality; no explicit politics of redistribution is needed. In this way, culturalist proponents of identity politics simply reverse the claims of an earlier form of vulgar Marxist economism: they allow the politics of recognition to displace the politics of redistribution, just as vulgar Marxism once allowed the politics of redistribution to displace the politics of recognition. In fact, vulgar culturalism is no more adequate for understanding contemporary society than vulgar economism was.

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Granted, culturalism might make sense if one lived in a society in which there were no relatively autonomous markets, one in which cultural value patterns regulated not only the relations of recognition but those of distribution as well. In such a society, economic inequality and cultural hierarchy would be seamlessly fused; identity depreciation would translate perfectly and immediately into economic injustice, and misrecognition would directly entail maldistribution. Consequently, both forms of injustice could be remedied at a single stroke, and a politics of recognition that successfully redressed misrecognition would counter maldistribution as well. But the idea of a purely “cultural” society with no economic relations—fascinating to generations of anthropologists—is far removed from the current reality, in which marketization has pervaded all societies to some degree, at least partially decoupling economic mechanisms of distribution from cultural patterns of value and prestige. Partially independent of such patterns, markets follow a logic of their own, neither wholly constrained by culture nor subordinated to it; as a result they generate economic inequalities that are not mere expressions of identity hierarchies. Under these conditions, the idea that one could remedy all maldistribution by means of a politics of recognition is deeply deluded: its net result can only be to displace struggles for economic justice.

REIFYING OF IDENTITY Displacement, however, is not the only problem: the identity politics model of recognition tends also to reify identity. Stressing the need to elaborate and display an authentic, self-affirming and self-generated collective identity, it puts moral pressure on individual members to conform to a given group culture. Cultural dissidence and experimentation are accordingly discouraged, when they are not simply equated with disloyalty. So, too, is cultural criticism, including efforts to explore intragroup divisions, such as those of gender, sexuality, and class. Thus, far from welcoming scrutiny of, for example, the patriarchal strands within a subordinated culture, the tendency of the identity model is to brand such critique as “inauthentic.” The overall effect is to impose a single, drastically simplified group identity which denies the complexity of people’s lives, the multiplicity of their identifications, and the crosspulls of their various affiliations. Ironically, then, the identity model serves as a vehicle for misrecognition: in reifying group identity, it ends by obscuring the politics of cultural identification, the struggles within the group for the authority—and the power—to represent it. By shielding such struggles from view, this approach masks the power of dominant fractions and reinforces intragroup domination. The identity model thus lends itself all too

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easily to repressive forms of communitarianism, promoting conformism, intolerance, and patriarchalism. Paradoxically, moreover, the identity model tends to deny its own Hegelian premises. Having begun by assuming that identity is dialogical, constructed via interaction with another subject, it ends by valorizing monologism— supposing that misrecognized people can and should construct their identity on their own. It supposes, further, that a group has the right to be understood solely in its own terms—that no one is ever justified in viewing another subject from an external perspective or in dissenting from another’s self-interpretation. But again, this runs counter to the dialogical view, making cultural identity an autogenerated autodescription, which one presents to others as an obiter dictum. Seeking to exempt “authentic” collective selfrepresentations from all possible challenges in the public sphere, this sort of identity politics scarcely fosters social interaction across differences: on the contrary, it encourages separatism and group enclaves. The identity model of recognition, then, is deeply flawed. Both theoretically deficient and politically problematic, it equates the politics of recognition with identity politics and, in doing so, encourages both the reification of group identities and the displacement of the politics of redistribution.

MISRECOGNITION AS STATUS SUBORDINATION I shall consequently propose an alternative approach: that of treating recognition as a question of social status. From this perspective, what requires recognition is not group-specific identity but the status of individual group members as full partners in social interaction. Misrecognition, accordingly, does not mean the depreciation and deformation of group identity, but social subordination—in the sense of being prevented from participating as a peer in social life. To redress this injustice still requires a politics of recognition, but in the “status model” this is no longer reduced to a question of identity: rather, it means a politics aimed at overcoming subordination by establishing the misrecognized party as a full member of society, capable of participating on a par with the rest. Let me explain. To view recognition as a matter of status means examining institutionalized patterns of cultural value for their effects on the relative standing of social actors. If and when such patterns constitute actors as peers, capable of participating on a par with one another in social life, then we can speak of reciprocal recognition and status equality. When, in contrast, they constitute some actors as inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible—in other words, as less than full partners in social interaction—then we can speak of misrecognition and status subordination. From this perspective, misrecognition is neither a psychic deformation nor

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a free-standing cultural harm but an institutionalized relation of social subordination. To be misrecognized, accordingly, is not simply to be thought ill of, looked down upon, or devalued in others’ attitudes, beliefs, or representations. It is rather to be denied the status of a full partner in social interaction, as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute one as comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem. On the status model, moreover, misrecognition is not relayed through freefloating cultural representations or discourses. It is perpetrated, as we have seen, through institutionalized patterns of cultural value—in other words, through the workings of social institutions that regulate interaction according to parity-impeding cultural norms. Examples include marriage laws that exclude same-sex partnerships as illegitimate and perverse; social welfare policies that stigmatize single mothers as sexually irresponsible scroungers; and policing practices, such as “racial profiling,” that associate racialized persons with criminality. In each of these cases, interaction is regulated by an institutionalized pattern of cultural value that constitutes some categories of social actors as normative and others as deficient or inferior: “straight” is normal, “gay” is perverse; “male-headed households” are proper, “female-headed households” are not; “whites” are law-abiding, “blacks” are dangerous. In each case, the result is to deny some members of society the status of full partners in interaction, capable of participating on a par with the rest. As these examples suggest, misrecognition can assume a variety of forms. In today’s complex, differentiated societies, parity-impeding values are institutionalized at a plurality of institutional sites, and in qualitatively different modes. In some cases, misrecognition is juridified, expressly codified in formal law; in other cases, it is institutionalized via government policies, administrative codes, or professional practice. It can also be institutionalized informally—in associational patterns, long-standing customs, or sedimented social practices of civil society. But whatever the differences in form, the core of the injustice remains the same: in each case, an institutionalized pattern of cultural value constitutes some social actors as less than full members of society and prevents them from participating as peers. On the status model, then, misrecognition constitutes a form of institutionalized subordination, and thus a serious violation of justice. Wherever and however it occurs, a claim for recognition is in order. But note precisely what this means: aimed not at valorizing group identity but rather at overcoming subordination, in this approach claims for recognition seek to establish the subordinated party as a full partner in social life, able to interact with others as a peer. They aim, in other words, to deinstitutionalize patterns of cultural value that impede parity of participation and to replace them with patterns that foster it. Redressing misrecognition now means changing social institutions—or, more specifically, changing the interaction-regulating values that impede parity

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of participation at all relevant institutional sites. Exactly how this should be done depends in each case on the mode in which misrecognition is institutionalized. Juridified forms require legal change, policy-entrenched forms require policy change, associational forms require associational change, and so on: the mode and agency of redress vary, as does the institutional site. But in every case, the goal is the same: redressing misrecognition means replacing institutionalized value patterns that impede parity of participation with ones that enable or foster it. Consider again the case of marriage laws that deny participatory parity to gays and lesbians. As we saw, the root of the injustice is the institutionalization in law of a heterosexist pattern of cultural value that constitutes heterosexuals as normal and homosexuals as perverse. Redressing the injustice requires deinstitutionalizing that value pattern and replacing it with an alternative that promotes parity. This, however, might be done in various ways: one way would be to grant the same recognition to gay and lesbian unions as heterosexual unions currently enjoy, by legalizing samesex marriage; another would be to deinstitutionalize heterosexual marriage, decoupling entitlements such as health insurance from marital status and assigning them on some other basis, such as citizenship. Although there may be good reasons for preferring one of these approaches to the other, in principle both of them would promote sexual parity and redress this instance of misrecognition. In general, then, the status model is not committed a priori to any one type of remedy for misrecognition; rather, it allows for a range of possibilities, depending on what precisely the subordinated parties need in order to be able to participate as peers in social life. In some cases, they may need to be unburdened of excessive ascribed or constructed distinctiveness; in others, to have hitherto underacknowledged distinctiveness taken into account. In still other cases, they may need to shift the focus onto dominant or advantaged groups, outing the latter’s distinctiveness, which has been falsely parading as universal; alternatively, they may need to deconstruct the very terms in which attributed differences are currently elaborated. In every case, the status model tailors the remedy to the concrete arrangements that impede parity. Thus, unlike the identity model, it does not accord an a priori privilege to approaches that valorize group specificity. Rather, it allows in principle for what we might call universalist recognition, and deconstructive recognition, as well as for the affirmative recognition of difference. The crucial point, once again, is that on the status model the politics of recognition does not stop at identity but seeks institutional remedies for institutionalized harms. Focused on culture in its socially grounded (as opposed to free-floating) forms, this politics seeks to overcome status subordination by changing the values that regulate interaction, entrenching new value patterns that will promote parity of participation in social life.

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CONTRA DISPLACEMENT AND REIFICATION There is a further important difference between the status and identity models. For the status model, institutionalized patterns of cultural value are not the only obstacles to participatory parity. On the contrary, equal participation is also impeded when some actors lack the necessary resources to interact with others as peers. In such cases, maldistribution constitutes an impediment to parity of participation in social life, and thus a form of social subordination and injustice. Unlike the identity model, then, the status model understands social justice as encompassing two analytically distinct dimensions: a dimension of recognition, which concerns the effects of institutionalized meanings and norms on the relative standing of social actors; and a dimension of distribution, which involves the allocation of disposable resources to social actors.2 Thus, each dimension is associated with an analytically distinct aspect of social order. The recognition dimension corresponds to the status order of society, hence to the constitution, by socially entrenched patterns of cultural value, of culturally defined categories of social actors—status groups—each distinguished by the relative honor, prestige, and esteem it enjoys vis-à-vis the others. The distributive dimension, in contrast, corresponds to the economic structure of society, hence to the constitution, by property regimes and labor markets, of economically defined categories of actors, or classes, distinguished by their differential endowments of resources.3 Each dimension, moreover, is associated with an analytically distinct form of injustice. For the recognition dimension, as we saw, the associated injustice is misrecognition. For the distributive dimension, in contrast, the corresponding injustice is maldistribution, in which economic structures, property regimes, or labor markets deprive actors of the resources needed for full participation. Each dimension, finally, corresponds to an analytically distinct form of subordination: the recognition dimension corresponds, as we saw, to status subordination, rooted in institutionalized patterns of cultural value; the distributive dimension, in contrast, corresponds to economic subordination, rooted in structural features of the economic system. In general, then, the status model situates the problem of recognition within a larger social frame. From this perspective, societies appear as complex fields that encompass not only cultural forms of social ordering but economic forms of ordering as well. In all societies, these two forms of ordering are interimbricated. Under capitalist conditions, however, neither is wholly reducible to the other. On the contrary, the economic dimension becomes relatively decoupled from the cultural dimension, as marketized arenas, in which strategic action predominates, are differentiated from nonmarketized arenas, in which value-regulated interaction predominates.

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The result is a partial uncoupling of economic distribution from structures of prestige. In capitalist societies, therefore, cultural value patterns do not strictly dictate economic allocations (contra the culturalist theory of society), nor do economic class inequalities simply reflect status hierarchies; rather, maldistribution becomes partially uncoupled from misrecognition. For the status model, therefore, not all distributive injustice can be overcome by recognition alone. A politics of redistribution is also necessary.4 Nevertheless, distribution and recognition are not neatly separated from each other in capitalist societies. For the status model, the two dimensions are interimbricated and interact causally with each other. Economic issues such as income distribution have recognition subtexts: value patterns institutionalized in labor markets may privilege activities coded “masculine,” “white” and so on over those coded “feminine” and “black.” Conversely, recognition issues—judgments of aesthetic value, for instance—have distributive subtexts: diminished access to economic resources may impede equal participation in the making of art.5 The result can be a vicious circle of subordination, as the status order and the economic structure interpenetrate and reinforce each other. Unlike the identity model, then, the status model views misrecognition in the context of a broader understanding of contemporary society. From this perspective, status subordination cannot be understood in isolation from economic arrangements, nor can recognition be abstracted from distribution. On the contrary, only by considering both dimensions together can one determine what is impeding participatory parity in any particular instance; only by teasing out the complex imbrications of status with economic class can one determine how best to redress the injustice. The status model thus works against tendencies to displace struggles for redistribution. Rejecting the view that misrecognition is a free-standing cultural harm, it understands that status subordination is often linked to distributive injustice. Unlike the culturalist theory of society, however, it avoids short-circuiting the complexity of these links: appreciating that not all economic injustice can be overcome by recognition alone, it advocates an approach that expressly integrates claims for recognition with claims for redistribution, and thus mitigates the problem of displacement. The status model also avoids reifying group identities: as we saw, what requires recognition in this account is not group-specific identity but the status of individuals as full partners in social interaction. This orientation offers several advantages. By focusing on the effects of institutionalized norms on capacities for interaction, the model avoids hypostatizing culture and substituting identity engineering for social change. Likewise, by refusing to privilege remedies for misrecognition that valorize existing group identities, it avoids essentializing current configurations and foreclosing historical change. Finally, by establishing participatory parity as a normative

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standard, the status model submits claims for recognition to democratic processes of public justification, thus avoiding the authoritarian monologism of the politics of authenticity and valorizing transcultural interaction, as opposed to separatism and group enclaves. Far from encouraging repressive communitarianism, then, the status model militates against it. To sum up: today’s struggles for recognition often assume the guise of identity politics. Aimed at countering demeaning cultural representations of subordinated groups, they abstract misrecognition from its institutional matrix and sever its links with political economy and, insofar as they propound “authentic” collective identities, serve less to foster interaction across differences than to enforce separatism, conformism, and intolerance. The results tend to be doubly unfortunate: in many cases, struggles for recognition simultaneously displace struggles for economic justice and promote repressive forms of communitarianism. The solution, however, is not to reject the politics of recognition tout court. That would be to condemn millions of people to suffer grave injustices that can only be redressed through recognition of some kind. What is needed, rather, is an alternative politics of recognition, a nonidentitarian politics that can remedy misrecognition without encouraging displacement and reification. The status model, I have argued, provides the basis for this. By understanding recognition as a question of status, and by examining its relation to economic class, one can take steps to mitigate, if not fully solve, the displacement of struggles for redistribution; and by avoiding the identity model, one can begin to diminish, if not fully dispel, the dangerous tendency to reify collective identities.

NOTES 1. This paper was originally published in New Left Review 3 May/June 2000. 2. Author’s note added in 2009: Subsequent to writing this essay, I have conceptualized a third, “political” dimension of justice. This dimension harbors yet another class of obstacles to participatory parity, rooted in the political constitution of society, as opposed to the political economy or status order. These political injustices, which I name “misrepresentation,” include decision rules that systematically marginalize some people even in the absence of maldistribution and misrecognition, for example, single-district winner-take-all electoral rules that deny the voice to quasi-permanent minorities; as well as the gerrymandering of political space to exclude claims for justice that cut across borders. The existence of such political obstacles to participatory parity brings out the extent of my debt to Max Weber, especially to his “Class, Status, Party,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford University Press, 1958). In the present essay, I align a version of Weber’s distinction between class and status with the distinction between distribution and recognition. Yet Weber’s own distinction was tripartite,

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not bipartite: “class, status, and party.” Thus, he effectively prepared a place for theorizing injustices of “misrepresentation.” For a detailed account of the political dimension of justice, see Nancy Fraser, “Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World,” New Left Review 36 (November–December 2005), pp. 69–88; reprinted in Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Columbia University Press and Polity Press, 2008). Here, however, I confine myself to maldistribution and misrecognition. 3. In this essay, I deliberately use a Weberian conception of class, not a Marxian one. Thus, I understand an actor’s class position in terms of her or his relation to the market, not in terms of her or his relation to the means of production. This Weberian conception of class as an economic category suits my interest in distribution as a normative dimension of justice better than the Marxian conception of class as a social category. Nevertheless, I do not mean to reject the Marxian idea of the “capitalist mode of production” as a social totality. On the contrary, I find that idea useful as an overarching frame within which one can situate Weberian understandings of both status and class. Thus, I reject the standard view of Marx and Weber as antithetical and irreconcilable thinkers. For the Weberian definition of class, see Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party.” 4. For fuller discussions of the mutual irreducibility of maldistribution and misrecognition, class, and status in contemporary capitalist societies, see Nancy Fraser, “Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler,” New Left Review 1/228 (March–April 1998): 140–49; and “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition and Participation,” in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophy Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke (London: Verso, 2003), 7–109. 5. For a comprehensive, if somewhat reductive, account of this issue, see Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Critique of Pure Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).

10 Work and Recognition: A Redefinition Axel Honneth

Never in the last two hundred years have there been so few efforts to defend an emancipatory and humane notion of work as there are today. Developments in the organization of work in the industry and service sectors appear to have pulled the rug out from under any attempts to improve the quality of work. A growing portion of the population is struggling just to gain access to job opportunities that can secure a livelihood; others work under radically deregulated conditions that hardly enjoy any legal protection anymore; still others are currently seeing their previously secure careers become deprofessionalized and moved outside the workplace. So hardly anybody will dispute Robert Castel’s diagnosis that we are now faced with the end of that brief historical phase in which the welfare state accorded wage labor a secure status.1 This development in the organization of work, this tendency of a return to unprotected temporary, part-time, and home work is strangely mirrored in a shift that has occurred in the intellectual focus and interests of social science. Disappointed intellectuals, who forty years ago still placed their hopes in the humanization or emancipation of work, have turned their backs on the world of work in order to focus on other topics far from the realm of production. In the face of these new circumstances, the critical theory of society appears to have occupied itself with issues of political integration and citizens’ rights, without dwelling even for a moment on the threats to what has been achieved in the sphere of production. Even sociology, the scientific stepchild of capitalist industrialization, has largely abandoned its erstwhile bailiwick and is focusing increasingly on processes of cultural transformation. However, these tendencies of intellectual retreat from the world of work in no way correspond to the sentiments of the population. Despite the 223

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many prognoses of an “end of the work society,” work has not lost its relevance in the social lifeworld. The majority of the population continues to attach their own social identity primarily to their role in the organized labor process—and this majority has in all likelihood even greatly increased since the labor market has been opened to women as never before. Not only has work not lost its significance in the lifeworld, but it continues to retain its normative significance as well. Unemployment remains a social stigma and is still regarded as a personal fault; precarious employment is still felt to be incriminating, and the flexibilization of the labor market has met with reservations and general unease in broad circles of the population.2 The longing for a job that provides not only a livelihood, but also personal satisfaction, has in no way disappeared; it’s just that this longing no longer dictates public discourse or the arena of political debate. However, it would be empirically false and almost cynical to take this oppressive silence as a sign that demands for a reorganization of work are a thing of the past. The gap between the experiences of the social lifeworld and the topics of social-scientific study has probably never been as wide as it is today. Whereas societal labor has almost entirely lost its significance in the social sciences, the hardships, fears, and hopes of those immediately affected by societal working conditions revolve around this notion more than ever. Yet, social theory’s renunciation of the issue of work is due to more than merely opportunistic reasons. It would be exceedingly short-sighted to suspect the silence of intellectuals and sociologists to be an expression of a lack of desire to deal any further with the real hardships of the population. Rather, the disappearance of the realm of work from the focus of social theory is an expression of the realization that the currently existing relations of production immediately reveal any proposals for a thoroughgoing improvement of the organization of work to be mere wishes [Sollensforderungen]. The gulf between social reality and utopian expectations has become so deep, the distance between real conditions of work and efforts at emancipation so large, that social theory has been forced to concede the current futility of all its theoretical endeavors.3 It is not in the spirit of opportunism or triumphalism that the intellectual representatives of social movements have turned their backs on the sphere of societal labor, but only grudgingly and embittered. Because the idea of emancipating work from heteronomy and alienation has proven to be unrealistic, from now on the organization of work is to be left to the globalizing forces of the capitalist labor market. The path thus demarcated, and most clearly so in Habermas’ notion of a “norm-free” self-regulation of the economic system,4 has paved the way for the sobering situation with which we are now confronted: the hardships of all those who not only fear losing their jobs, but also the quality of their jobs, no longer resonate in the vocabulary of a critical theory of society.

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In what follows, I want to determine whether this development can still be theoretically reversed. How must we incorporate the category of societal labor into the framework of social theory so that the prospects for qualitative improvement can be more than merely utopian? In order to get at this complex problem, I first want to propose that we apply the distinction between external and immanent criticism to a critique of currently existing relations of work. We can only speak of immanent criticism, in which normative demands no longer merely have the character of mere wishes, if the idea of meaningful and secure work already constitutes a rational claim embedded in the structures of social reproduction themselves (I). Second, I aim to show that societal labor can only take on this role of an immanent norm if it is linked to the conditions of recognition prevailing in the modern exchange of services [Leistungsaustausch]. Every instance of work that transcends the threshold of merely private, autonomous activity must be organized and structured in a certain specific way if it is to be worthy of societal recognition (II). Finally, I would like to develop the immanent demands connected to this structural linkage between work and recognition with reference to the organization of the modern world of work. This should make clear that the idea—which ultimately goes back to Durkheim—of a just organization of the division of labor has more normative impact than might appear at first sight (III).

I Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there has been no shortage of utopian visions for a reorganization of societal labor. The form of what then became capitalistically valorized employment organized in factories and shops exerted such a formative power—one which penetrated all spheres of life—that the normative expectations of the zeitgeist were initially and primarily attached to the sphere of production. These emancipatory ideas initially received their impetus from the perception of the still visible modes of activity embodied by the craftsman. Whereas the craftsman himself performed all the work and could creatively shape the entire working process in familiarity with his materials, and then find the objectification of his own skills mirrored in the finished product, workers in the factory were utterly excluded from such a holistic work experience, for their activity was determined by others, fragmented and independent of their own initiative. Depending on the perspective, the craftsman’s activity was taken as a model of free and self-determined cooperation or of individual self-objectification. In the first case the new, capitalist form of gainful employment was condemned for abrogating the interaction of working subjects; in the second case it was damned for dismantling the organic

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process in which the worker’s skills are objectified in a finished product, and for dividing up this process into individual segments having no meaning in themselves. This critique of the capitalist organization of work was additionally fueled by the incorporation of aesthetic models of production into the vision of a nonalienated, self-initiated activity. Particularly among the socialist heirs of early German Romanticism, the idea spread that all human labor should possess the self-purposeful creativity exemplified by the production of works of art.5 As vivid and enthralling as all these ideas about the emancipation of work were, they ultimately failed to have any effect on the history of the organization of societal labor. Although the romanticized model of the craftsman and the aesthetic ideal of artistic production had sufficient impact to alter permanently our conception of a good and well-lived life, they exerted no real influence on the struggles of workers movements, nor on socialist efforts to improve working conditions and give the producers control over these conditions. The ambivalent effect emanating from these nineteenth-century workers utopias is due to the fact that they were too weakly linked to the demands of economically organized labor. The modes of activity they honored and elevated to paradigmatic models were too extravagant, so to speak, to be able to serve as a model for organizing all the activities required for the reproduction of society. This drastic downside of the classic workers utopias, however, was compensated by the fact that they evoked the structures of a mode of activity whose transparency as a process of objectification soon made them into a core element of the vision of the good life. Because we as human beings require the experience of trying out our acquired skills in the use of materials and “objectifying” them in a product, this activity continues to enjoy recognition as an element of a well-lived life.6 Yet, the fact that the work of the craftsman or the artist has become an integral part of the good life still doesn’t tell us which normative standards socially organized work must be able to fulfill. After all, in the economic sphere, individually performed activities are subject to demands that arise from the necessity of their being involved in the societal exchange of services. For this reason, I would like to label all attempts to criticize the given, capitalist work relations in the light of models of organic, solely selfdetermined production as forms of external criticism. By pointing to performance structures that cannot be equally constitutive of all instances of work required in the economic sphere, they all make normative appeals to modes of activity that remain external to the object they criticize. The work experiences that might be necessary for the good life of the individual cannot simultaneously supply the standard for judging the socially organized sphere of production. The constraints and conditions that prevail here require the performance of activities that starkly diverge from craftsmanship or art. Certainly, the nineteenth-century workers utopias gave flight to our social imagination and opened up whole new spaces of thinking. It is to

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them that we owe our conception of individual fulfillment and successful cooperation, without which the archive of our dreams of a better life would be significantly poorer. In these utopias of craftsmanship or artistic work, ethical thought found an impetus for expanding the traditional notion of “the good” to include activities of work. Since then, we can hardly imagine a well-lived life without an element of objectifying activity. But none of these accomplishments has been able to change the fact that a critique of the capitalist organization of labor in the name of the ideal of craftsmanship has the fault of being a merely external standpoint.7 Social struggles to improve working conditions in the economic sphere are forced to appeal to norms that greatly differ from the utopian conception of holistic activity. The threshold to an immanent critique of the existing organization of societal labor is only crossed when moral norms are drawn upon which already constitute rational claims within the social exchange of services. After all, the institutionalized notion of understanding one’s own work as a contribution to a social division of labor is linked to normative claims that reach all the way to the organization of the workplace.8 Before I go into the conditions of such a critique, I want to examine briefly one attempt to foist an immanent critical substance onto holistic, craftsmanlike activity. We saw that the weakness of a critique in the name of the craftsman’s ideal lay in the fact that it singles out a form of activity that in no way embodies a guaranteed claim within the structures of societal reproduction. Even if certain segments of socially necessary instances of work approach this ideal, this would still not be an argument why all required activities would have to take on the same shape. Of course, it might appear that this fact could change if it could be shown that every performance of socially necessary labor itself possessed a certain tendency to organic holism, to autonomous self-control, and thus to quasi-craftsmanlike organization. Thus regardless of what kind of activity is at issue, its individual purposefulness alone would require that it remains under the sway of the performing subject as much as possible. I myself once sought to develop such an argument on the basis of industrial-sociological investigations in order to demonstrate that workers’ daily resistance practices revealed the desire for autonomous control over their activity. I was convinced that the mere fact that employees constantly undertook subversive efforts to gain control over their work provided enough evidence to justify demands for self-control in the workplace.9 Here, however, my aim was to apply the ideal of the craftsman not as an external, but as an internal standard for judging the capitalist organization of labor. If, on the basis of the structure of their work, employees have the desire to possess control over their work, then this is a moral demand immanently contained in the historically given relations of work, and doesn’t necessarily have to be externally opposed to these relations. Only a short time later, Jürgen Habermas pointed out that I was guilty of drawing a “genetically false conclusion,” because I had taken the mere

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existence of certain desires and demands as grounds for their moral justifiability. He countered that only practical discourses, and not presumed moral demands, could morally justify decisions about which norms should be valid in a given organization of labor.10 It took many years for me to realize that this objection also held the key to a far better solution to this problem if it could be incorporated into an appropriate critique. There is no doubt that the purpose of immanent criticism cannot consist in merely asserting claims and demands raised by certain groups at a certain time in the light of their social situation or work situation. Although the fact that these complaints are advanced from within society against existing rules gives them a truly immanent character, they still lack any element of provable reason that could make them into justified standards of immanent criticism. At the time, I had sought to provide this rational amendment by showing that employees’ subversive demands correspond to the autonomous structures “anthropologically” embedded in the performance of all work. But regardless of whether such practices of resistance can in fact be verified in each case, it now seems to me far-fetched to impute a craftsmanlike substance to purposive activity as such. With regard to most of the activities performed in the modern service sector, for instance, we wouldn’t even know what it would mean to say that these activities demand an autonomous, purely objective, and objectifying execution. In this sector, no product is constructed in which acquired skills could be mirrored, rather the worker merely reacts with as much as initiative as possible to the personal or anonymous demands of those in whose service the respective task is performed. In other words, it is a fallacy to claim that all socially necessary activities are naturally constituted along the lines of an organic and holistic form such as craftsmanship. If we, like Habermas, let our view be steered away from the structure of work activity toward the norms of the organization of work, we are faced with a different issue. It isn’t surprising, after all, that the author of The Theory of Communicative Action suddenly speaks here of “norms” that should pervade the organization of societal labor, while otherwise only speaking of a “norm-free system” for the economic sphere. What makes Habermas’s formulation so significant is that this shift in perspective raises the question as to whether the modern capitalist organization of work is based on moral norms that are just as indispensable for its functioning as the norms of mutual understanding are for the modern lifeworld. This is not to say that this is the perspective from which Habermas brings such norms into play. He doesn’t doubt for a moment that these norms are relatively arbitrary and subordinated to the results of the conflict between capital and labor. According to Habermas, the difference between “system” and “lifeworld” consists in the fact that the coordination of action in the former only occurs through the mediation of purposive strategic stances, while in the latter

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it presupposes moral attitudes. That is why Habermas cannot ascribe any moral infrastructure to the capitalist economic sphere, even if he occasionally concedes that the modern organization of work is marked by certain norms.11 These relations would be much different, however, if it could be shown that the functioning of the capitalist labor market also presupposes the existence of a whole series of moral norms. In this case, not only would the categorial opposition between “system” and “lifeworld” collapse, but it would also become possible to take up a perspective of immanent criticism vis-à-vis actual relations of work. Unlike external criticism, an immanent form of criticism presupposes that we can find a standard which constitutes a justified, rational claim within the criticized relations themselves. The alternatives I have examined with the hope of finding such a criterion for the current state of the world of work have proven to be unfit in one or the other way. The silent protests of employees who oppose the determination of their work activity by others lack that element of demonstrable universalization required to make them into justified standards of immanent criticism. And given the multiplicity of socially necessary work activities, it seems impossible and absurd to claim that their autochthonic, internal structures demand that they be organized in a specific way. If these theoretical paths are obstructed due to their inability to justify simultaneously necessary and rational claims, then in my view we are left with the alternative of searching for the roots of such a rational claim within the existing organization of work. This line of argumentation, however, requires that we regard the capitalist labor market not only from the functionalist perspective of economic efficiency. If we were to restrict ourselves to this perspective, the structures of the modern organization of work would only display the thin layer of strategic rules that Habermas addressed in his system-theoretical constructions. If, on the other hand, we view the capitalist labor market as also having the function of social integration, then the picture changes completely. We are then faced with a series of moral norms that underlie the modern world of work, just as the norms of action oriented towards achieving mutual understanding underlie the social lifeworld. In what follows, I want to dig up a mostly forgotten tradition in order to uncover the normative basis of the modern organization of work. In this way I hope to revive the possibility of immanently criticizing the currently prevailing relations of work.

II In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel sought to uncover the elements of a new form of societal integration in the structures of the capitalist economy developing before his eyes. He was certain from the very beginning that

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the achievements of the new market-mediated system of satisfying needs could not be measured merely in terms of economic efficiency. Although he was also aware that this new market institution significantly increased the productivity of economic activity, he insisted that its function mustn’t be restricted to this one physical achievement. Otherwise, this institution would lack any ethical anchoring in society and would thus remain without the necessary moral legitimacy. Therefore, Hegel sought to demonstrate that the entire system of the market-mediated exchange of labor for the means of satisfying needs could only find approval if it fulfilled certain normative conditions. For Hegel, the primary integrative function of this new economic form consisted in transforming the individual’s “subjective self-seeking” into a willingness to work for “the satisfaction of the needs of everyone else.”12 Once the population’s economic needs are to be fulfilled by means of transactions on an anonymous market, every (male) member of society must be willing to abandon his personal affinity for idleness and contribute to the common good with his own work. For Hegel, this universal obligation to work requires that each individual must develop his skills and talents in such a way as to increase the “universal permanent capital.”13 However, the willingness to contribute to the common good in this way now presupposed a corresponding service in return. Every participant in the market-mediated exchange of services has “the right to work for his bread,”14 that is, to nourish himself and his family at a given living standard. In Hegel’s eyes, therefore, the second normative achievement of the new economic form consists in the fact that it creates a system of mutual dependence that secures the economic subsistence of all its members. As we might say nowadays, the expectation that each person must work is linked to the condition that each receive a minimum wage that provides the financial means required to ensure economic independence.15 In order to emphasize the moral significance of these internal preconditions, Hegel coined the term “recognition”: in the system of market-mediated exchange, subjects mutually recognize each other as private autonomous beings that act for each other and thereby sustain their livelihood through the contribution of their labor to society.16 Of course, Hegel was clear-sighted enough to see that the development of the capitalist market economy would threaten to place it in conflict with its own normative recognitional conditions. As long as the profit-oriented production of goods “is in a state of unimpeded activity,” it will eventually give rise to the problem that “profits” will be concentrated in the hands of the few, while “the subdivision and restriction of particular jobs” will intensify for “a large mass of people,” which will in turn lead to “dependence and distress.”17 “The rabble,” a not insignificant portion of the population, will lack any chance to gain market-mediated recognition for their work, and will thus suffer from a lack of “self-respect.” Due to his understanding

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of the normative conditions of this new economic form, Hegel did not subscribe to the idea of maintaining the impoverished classes “at their ordinary standard of living” through charitable contributions by the rich. He was convinced that as a result of such redistribution, “the needy would receive subsistence directly, not by means of their work, and this would violate the principle of civil society and the feeling of individual independence and self-respect.”18 Instead, Hegel proposed supplementing the capitalist market economy with two organizations whose task it would be to ensure the normative conditions of existence for mutual recognition and “self-respect.” While the “police” would have the function of intervening in the economic process in order to ensure a balanced relation of supply and demand, the “corporations”—on the model of trade associations—would have the task of aiding their members to maintain their skills and abilities, and of ensuring their basic economic subsistence. But these particular institutional solutions are not what is of particular interest in Hegel’s description of the capitalist organization of work. Both the so-called “police” and “corporations” constitute organizational structures whose formation and function are far too specific to the early phase of capitalist industrialization to be very relevant for us today. For my purpose here, what is more significant is that Hegel does not derive the directions and design of these corrective institutions from some external perspective, but from the normative principles of the very economic system he seeks to correct. Hegel was convinced that the moral presuppositions of the capitalist organization of work required that the individual’s work not only be remunerated with an income that secured a livelihood, but also retain a form in which it remained recognizable as a contribution to the common good on the basis of the skills it entails. The whole idea behind the reciprocal exchange of services demands that each individual societal activity embody a sufficiently complex and visible display of skills to prove worthy of the universal recognition linked to “self-respect.” Therefore, Hegel insisted that in cases where as a result of economic developments a certain work activity had sunk below a certain required level of skills and independence, the “corporations” had a task that the capitalist market economy should in fact fulfill on its own. These trade associations were to ensure that the skills of their members receive enough care and public attention to enjoy universal esteem in the future. Thus Hegel has the corporations fulfill a task that constituted a normative claim anchored within the conditions of existence of this new organizational form of societal labor. With such a normative conception of the capitalist organization of work, however, Hegel stands in opposition to a conception that sees the opposite process at work in this new economic form. According to this alternative interpretation, the development of the capitalist economy leads not to a transformation of moral relations, but to the dissolution of social ethics

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[lebensweltliche Sittlichkeit]. Even in Hegel’s time, there were many theorists who advocated such a position, but it would be over a hundred years before Karl Polanyi would pinpoint this notion by grasping the capitalist market economy as a process in which the sphere of economic activity is “disembedded” by being divorced from all traditional customs and moral regulations.19 Contrary to Hegel, Polanyi was convinced that the establishment of an all-encompassing market for labor and goods is accompanied by the creation of a “self-regulating mechanism” that tolerates no form of moral restriction. In his view, it is only the law of supply and demand that holds sway, such that societal labor is organized solely for the purpose of the profitable sale of goods, and is only remunerated to the degree required for just this purpose. We needn’t think too long or hard to realize that if this thesis is indeed correct, then my strategy so far falls apart. If it is true, as Polanyi claims, that the formation of the capitalist economy completely subordinates the organization of work to the laws of the market, then we could no longer speak of any kind of normativity in this new socially integrative mode of work at all. This would of course also rob us of the chance to anchor a criticism of existing relations of work in the moral principles residing in the capitalist organization of work. Polanyi’s thesis, however, which was initially accepted as being selfevident, has once again come in for criticism—one that is based on the observation that the market’s coordination of societal action is confronted with a series of problems that ultimately can only be solved through institutional and normative rules. If market actors didn’t make certain concessions as to the value of certain goods, the rules of fair exchange and the reliability of expectations, they wouldn’t have any clue as to the parameters they are to respect in their supposedly purely purposive considerations.20 The “social order” of the market, as it is termed nowadays, thus encompasses not only positive legal regulations and principles that fix the conditions for the freedom to contract and engage in economic exchange, but also a series of unwritten, inexplicit norms and rules that implicitly determine—before any market-mediated transaction takes place—how the value of certain goods is to be estimated and what should be legitimately respected in the exchange. It is probably best to grasp these reciprocal imputations as normative certainties of action that move agents to engage in such transactions in the first place. These expectations needn’t always be actually fulfilled, nor will they prove impervious to disappointment in the course of the transaction; nevertheless, they constitute the cultural and normative interpretive framework in which market occurrences are necessarily embedded. In the light of this thesis, which is all but diametrically opposed to that of Polanyi,21 Hegel’s definition of the capitalist organization of work can be reformulated in a more precise, sociological form. The structures of a capitalist labor market could only develop under the highly demanding ethical precondition that

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all classes are able to entertain the expectation both of receiving a wage that secures their livelihood and of having work that is worthy of recognition. Hegel sought to prove that the new market system can only lay claim to normative approval on two conditions: first, it must provide a minimum wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be a contribution to the common good. The greatest difficulty in understanding the status of these normative presuppositions consists in the fact that on the one hand, they exert but minimal influence on actual economic developments, while on the other hand aspiring to universal validity. What does it mean to say that the capitalist organization of work is embedded in a horizon of moral norms that ensure legitimacy if Hegel takes these norms to be incapable of preventing the autonomization of purely profit-oriented production? The only way to solve this contradiction is to understand these norms as a counterfactual basis for the validity of the capitalist organization of work. The claim that social actors can only grasp the meaning of this new economic form and view it as being in the “common interest” if they presuppose the norms Hegel reveals implies that the market-mediated organization of work rests on normative conditions that remain valid even if they are invalidated in practice. To speak of “embedding” in this context thus entails making the functioning of the capitalist labor market dependent on normative conditions that it itself cannot necessarily fulfill. The events on the mostly opaque market where labor is exchanged take place on a foundation of moral norms that remain valid even if they are violated by actual developments. At the same time, these normative certainties form the moral resource that social actors can draw upon when questioning the existing rules of the capitalist organization of work. Thus what is needed is not an appeal to a realm of higher values or universal principles, but the mobilization of those implicit norms that constitute conditions of understanding and acceptance entrenched in the modern labor market. All those social movements that have fought against unreasonable wages or the dequalification of their professions would in principle only need to make use of the moral vocabulary already found in Hegel’s analysis. This would encompass goals such as the defense of sufficiently complex and not wholly externally determined work, or the fight for a living wage, all of which constitute thoroughly normative claims summarized by Hegel in the term “self-respect.” However, his determinations are certainly insufficient for the purpose of normatively explaining all the deficiencies of the capitalist labor market that have ever been challenged by workers. Although he focuses his attention on the new forms of recognition that the capitalist market offers all male adults, the resort to the compensatory device of the “corporation” causes him to lose sight of the fact that the central experience of the majority of the employed would soon consist in the emptying of their work of all qualitative content.

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It would be eighty years before Emile Durkheim became the first to make an earnest effort to interpret demands for qualitatively meaningful labor as claims that are immanent to the new economic form.22 Like Hegel, Durkheim also investigates the structures of the capitalist organization of work primarily with a view to the contribution they can make to the social integration of modern societies. And just like his predecessor, he runs into a series of normative conditions that underlie the market-mediated conditions of exchange—conditions that exist in the peculiar form of counterfactual presuppositions and ideals.23 In On the Division of Social Labor, Durkheim asks whether modern societies, with their constantly expanding and increasingly market-mediated division of labor, are at all capable of creating a feeling of solidarity and community among their members. Just like the author of Philosophy of Right, he is convinced that the mere prospect of economic growth and efficiency is not enough to invest the new economic form with the type of moral legitimacy required for successful social integration. This is not to say that Durkheim searches for sources of solidarity existing outside of this socioeconomic form, and which could constitute the point of reference for his analysis. The last thing he wants to do is sketch a more modern civil religion or collective ethos in order to eliminate the threat of a shortage of social bonds. Instead, Durkheim sets himself the task of identifying the conditions that could lead to a changed consciousness of social belonging within the structures of the new, capitalist organization of work themselves. The solidarity needed to integrate even modern societies should not flow from sources of moral or religious tradition, but from the economic reality. This undertaking requires the same methodological operation Hegel saw himself employed in his analysis of “civil society.” The capitalist organization of work mustn’t be presented in its accidental, empirically given form, but through the normative traits that make up its public justification. If we were to merely empirically describe this new economic form, we would gain no insight into why it should be a source of ethical integration or solidarity. Thus long stretches of Durkheim’s stylized analysis follow precisely the same line of argumentation as does Hegel’s dialectical depiction of the liberal economic relations characterized by the emerging capitalist economy.24 Both demonstrate that under the new economic conditions, every adult member of society has an entitlement to make a contribution to the common good and to receive in return an appropriate living wage. Although Durkheim does not use the term recognition, the core of his argument can easily be rendered with its help: market-mediated relations give rise to social relations in which the members of society are able to form a particular, “organic” form of solidarity, because the reciprocal recognition of their respective contributions to the common good gives them a sense of connectedness. Whereas Hegel focused primarily on market participants’

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economic independence, which was to be preserved through the existence of a living wage, Durkheim attaches special value to the fairness and transparency of the social division of labor. Durkheim was convinced that the new economic form can only take on the function of social integration if it fulfills two moral conditions, which both consist of counterfactual presuppositions in all exchange relations on the labor market. For employees to be able to consent freely to a labor contract, a level playing field must be ensured in terms of the acquisition of the necessary qualifications, and all social contributions must be remunerated in accordance with their real value for the community.25 For Durkheim, therefore, justice and fairness are not normative ideals externally imposed on the capitalist organization of work, but constitute functionally necessary presuppositions within the framework of this economic form. Without their existence, a sense of social belonging could not arise. The same is true of the second normative determination that Durkheim brings into play in his attempt to give an overview of the moral necessities of the new economic form: if market-mediated relations of work are to fulfill the function of social integration, they must not only be organized in a fair and just manner, but also satisfy the demand that individual activities be related to each other in a way that is as transparent and clearly arranged as possible. At this point Durkheim takes a decisive step beyond Hegel by proposing a criterion according to which individual activities must be shaped. His argument begins with his insight that the new relations of work can only generate “organic” forms of solidarity if all workers can experience them as a common, cooperative effort in the common interest. In order to fulfill this condition, he claims that the cooperative connection between one’s own activity and that of one’s fellow workers must be clearly visible from the perspective of each individual job. However, Durkheim maintains that this will only be possible if the various work activities are complex and demanding enough to insert each individual into what can be felt as a halfway meaningful connection with all other socially necessary work activities. He doesn’t hesitate to interpret the demand for meaningful work as an entitlement anchored within the normative conditions of the capitalist economic system: “The division of labor presumes that the worker, far from being hemmed in by his task, does not lose sight of his collaborators, that he acts upon them and reacts to them. He is, then, not a machine who repeats his movements without knowing their meaning, but he knows that they tend, in some way, towards an end that he conceives more or less distinctly. He feels that he is serving something.”26 It may be true that Hegel also entertained such ideas in speaking of “self-respect” as a form of recognition to which every member of the market-mediated society is entitled, but Durkheim was the first to go a step further and detail the normative implications of the new social form

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such that they included the entitlement to work that can be experienced as being meaningful.27

III The currently existing and thoroughly deregulated relations of work seem to scorn Hegel’s and Durkheim’s considerations on the moral conditions inherent in the capitalist economic form. The actual circumstances of societal work, be it in the post-Fordist wage production regime found in the industrial democracies, or in the low wage countries of the second and third world, is marked by such unreasonable and oppressive conditions that any demand for sustained improvement must sound like a mere wish. Just as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we are further away than ever in the history of capitalist society from an effective critique of working conditions that could have any practical consequences. Nevertheless, the analyses offered by Hegel and Durkheim have not totally lost their significance. If we take a look at recent developments in economic sociology or in economic institutionalism, we gain ever more theoretical insight into the fact that the capitalist labor market is dependent on normative conditions concealed beneath the praise for the “self-regulating powers of the market.” However, not all of the market’s pre-economic presuppositions that appear in the altered perspective of these rather new disciplines are also moral in nature. The majority of the rules analyzed there have more the character of institutional conventions and social networks.28 We don’t encounter moral norms in the strict sense until we come to share Hegel and Durkheim’s conviction that the capitalist labor market mustn’t merely be a means for increasing economic efficiency, but also a medium of social integration. Only under this premise, which is in no way self-evident, does it become apparent that the functioning of the market depends on the fulfillment of moral promises that are to be described with terms such as “self-respect,” “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” and “meaningful work.” Thus in responding to the question whether we have immanent criteria for criticizing the existing relations of work, everything depends on whether we decide to analyze the capitalist market from the perspective of system integration or social integration. If we restrict ourselves to the former perspective, then we will find pre-economic conditions and rules in the market, but no moral principles. If instead we take up the latter perspective, we will get sight of all the moral implications, which, according to Hegel and Durkheim, guarantee the market’s normative embedding in the social life-world. At this point, where we are faced with a choice between two different perspectives, the voices of those affected by the capitalist labor market can per-

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haps assert themselves in a legitimate manner after all. It may have become apparent in the course of this chapter that we cannot justify our criticism of given relations of work on the basis of the judgments of employees. If we did, we would have no argument for why such public complaints and lamentations should enjoy any kind of moral validity at all. Perhaps, however, we can bring this malaise into play at a higher level, where it doesn’t function as a normative source of criticism, but as a device for facilitating our choice between the two perspectives mentioned here. The choice between taking up the perspective of system integration or social integration cannot be merely left up to the arbitrary will of the individual theorist. Rather, the latter must justify his choice with regard to which of the two perspectives is more appropriate to the given issue at hand. But as long as employees struggle against unreasonable labor conditions, and as long as the majority of the population suffers under the existing work relations, there is little reason to analyze the capitalist labor market from the perspective of capitalist efficiency.29 At least the sons and daughters of civil society—to paraphrase Hegel—seem to be convinced that the market has as many entitlements to them as they do to it.30 In any case, the reactions of those that populate the labor markets of modern capitalism can only be appropriately explained if we take up the perspective of social integration instead of system integration. For we can only grasp the fact that people suffer under the currently existing circumstances, and are not merely indifferent to them, if the market continues to be analyzed as a part of the social lifeworld. If, however, we adopt this perspective, we will get sight of all those moral conditions on the capitalist labor market that I have reconstructed here with the help of Hegel and Durkheim. And despite the overwhelming pressure of the currently prevailing circumstances, there is little reason to abandon this reservoir of moral principles.

NOTES 1. Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Question (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002). I have reviewed this book in Literaturen, 2 (2001): 58–59. See also Eva Senghaas-Knobloch, Wohin driftet die Arbeitswelt? (Wiesbaden, Germany: Vs Verlag, 2008), Part I. 2. For example, see Christoph Morgenroth, “Arbeitsidentität und Arbeitslosigkeit—ein depressiver Zirkel,” Das Parlament—Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 6–7 (2003): 17–24; William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). 3. Jürgen Habermas, “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian Energies,” trans. Philip Jacobs, in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s Debate (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1989), 48–70.

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4. Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, 2 volumes (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984–1987). I have expressed doubts about this denormativation of the economic sphere in Critique of Power (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), chapter 9. 5. A good overview of these craftsmanship or aesthetic workers utopias is given in Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), chapter 36. For a review of the romanticist undercurrents of socialism, see George Lichtheim, Origins of Socialism (Durrington, England: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd, 1969). 6. Cf. Martin Seel, Versuch über die Form des Glücks (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1995), 142–50. 7. This is of course even truer for attempts to revive the ideal of craftsmanship and holistic activity. See Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2008). 8. I drew my first impulse for discussing the normative dimension of the societal exchange of services instead of labor from an essay by Friedrich Kambartel: “Arbeit und Praxis,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 41, no. 2 (1993): 239ff; see also his Philosophie und politische Ökonomie (Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein, 1998). 9. Axel Honneth, “Arbeit und instrumentales Handeln,” in Arbeit, Handlung Normativität, ed. Axel Honneth and Urs Jaeggi (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1980). 10. Jürgen Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. J. Thompson and D. Held (Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1982), 219–83; here 312n11. 11. Cf. Richard Münch, “Zahlung und Achtung. Die Interpenetration von Ökonomie und Moral,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 23, no. 5 (1994): 388–411. 12. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right. Trans. T. M. Knox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), § 199. 13. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right. 14. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, § 236, Add. 15. Hans Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Hegels Begriff der Arbeit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002). I am indebted to this excellent monograph for several impulses for the following line of argumentation. 16. Schmidt am Busch, Hegels Begriff der Arbeit, 59–65. 17. The formulations cited here all stem from G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, §§ 243–44. 18. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, § 245; see also Schmidt am Busch, Hegels Begriff der Arbeit, 146. 19. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), part II, chapter 5. 20. See Jens Beckert, “Die soziale Ordnung von Märkten,” in Märkte als soziale Strukturen, ed. Jens Beckert, Rainer Diaz-Bone, and Heiner Ganßmann (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus, 2007). 21. For a good overview of the debate, see Christoph Deutschmann, “Unsicherheit und soziale Einbettung: konzeptuelle Probleme der Wirtschaftssoziologie,” in Märkte als soziale Strukturen, 79–93. Talcott Parsons naturally plays an important role in this debate as well, as he also assumes a series of normative preconditions for market activity: “The Motivation of Economic Activities,” in Essays in Sociological Theory (New York: The Free Press, 1954), 50–68. Furthermore, Parsons uses the term

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“recognition” at a key point in his argumentation, because in his view normative conditions must ensure that workers recognize each other’s fulfillment of their roles in the labor process and thereby attain “self-respect”: 58. 22. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: The Free Press, 1964). 23. I will not discuss the various difficulties involved in Durkheim’s analysis. For a useful overview, see Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, A Historical and Critical Study (London: Penguin Press, 1973), chapter 7; Hans-Peter Müller, “Die Moralökonomie moderner Gesellschaften,” in Emile Durkheim, Physik der Sitten und des Rechts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1999), 307–341. 24. Steven Lukes refers indirectly to the affinity with Hegel by drawing parallels between Durkheim’s analysis and that of the British neo-Hegelian T. H. Green. See his Emile Durkheim, 265, 271, 300. 25. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 389–95. 26. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 372. 27. A short text from 1898 makes clear that Durkheim was indeed aware of all these normative implications of his sociological analysis: Emile Durkheim, “L’individualisme et les intellectuels,” English translation in Robert Bellah, ed., Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 28. Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 481–510. 29. Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Stanford, Calif.: Polity Press, 1999). 30. Philosophy of Right, §238.

11 Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory: Saving Marx by Recognition? Emmanuel Renault

Axel Honneth developed his theory of recognition as a way to inflect the Habermasian communicative turn by renewing an affiliation with the initial agenda of Critical Theory that Horkheimer elaborated in the 1930s.1 Yet “Critical Theory” initially was used as a way of euphemistically referring to Marxism. It is therefore not surprising that the disputed question of the relationship of the theory of recognition to the initial program of Critical Theory often leads to the problem of the relationship to Marx. Today, the idea of Critical Theory masks divergent theoretical projects, including those that lay claim to the tradition of the Frankfurt School. It is also the object of numerous debates in which theoretical and political differences come into play, but also strategies to harness the heritage. Among those who lay claim to the Frankfurt School tradition, one finds the partisans of the theory of recognition, but also those who are indifferent, as well as adversaries. Among those in the last group, the question of their relationship to Marx is often judged decisive. The criticisms addressed to Honneth from this point of view are of different natures. They concern the type of reading of Marx that he himself proposed, which is sometimes reproached for bearing the same bias as the interpretations developed by the founders, Horkheimer and Adorno.2 These criticisms are also concerned with what is conserved and abandoned from the Marxian agenda. The objections come to bear on the fact that normative philosophy seems to eclipse social theory,3 but they also focus on the fact that social theory is developed on a model that is too narrowly interactionist,4 and some critics judge that the analysis of social conflicts underestimates the action of structural components classically designated by notions such as ideology, social classes, and capitalism.5 Often, these critiques are animated by a conviction that it is 241

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suitable to distinguish rigorously between the true Critical Theory of the founders, who would always maintain a link with Marxian intentions, and the so-called Critical Theory of those who, following Habermas, accepted the communicative turn.6 These different criticisms can lead equally to diverse consequences: some conclude in the necessity of a renunciation of a paradigm of recognition, others in the necessity of its reformulation or its integration in a more general theoretical setting. In his earliest published works, Honneth presented his own endeavor as a form of “redemptive criticism” (rettende Kritik) of Marxism.7 After having elaborated his theory of recognition, he continued to situate himself in a tradition larger than that of Critical Theory alone, in which Marx always figured as a central element: the subject of The Struggle for Recognition can be characterized as the tradition attempting to think about the evolution of societies from the point of view of the conflicts of normative components, of which Marx, Sorel, and Sartre would be the principal representatives; in the subsequent articles, the subject was the tradition of the Hegelianism of the left, initiated by the Young Hegelians, to be renewed today in the form of a neo-Hegelianism.8 In addition, several recent texts seem to attempt to respond to certain critiques that are of Marxian inspiration. In the introduction to the debate with Nancy Fraser, the affirmed objective is to fill in one of the principal gaps in Critical Theory, that is, the lack of attention paid to political economy.9 In two recent texts, the article “Recognition and Ideology”10 and the Tanners Lectures,11 Honneth endeavors to integrate into his theoretical schema the themes of ideology and reification, the absence of which themes was considered by some as indicative of a general insufficiency. And in a recent article written with Martin Hartmann under the title “Paradoxes of Capitalism,”12 Honneth engages in a project of historical diagnosis that adopts the viewpoint of a theory of the transformations of capitalism. However, if these different developments bear witness to an undeniable continuity with certain motivations of original Critical Theory, they also bring to light the fact that a certain number of alternatives today remain open for a theory of recognition, alternatives in relation to which the relationship to Marx can play a significant role. In the following discussion, we will consider these alternatives relative to a) the relationship between normative philosophy and social theory, b) the relationship between social theory and the theory of social movements, c) the relationship between interaction and social structures, d) the historical diagnosis and its bearing on the present.

NORMATIVE PHILOSOPHY OR SOCIAL THEORY? One of the criticisms most commonly posed to the theory of recognition involves the extension of a tendency, inherited from Habermas, consisting

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in the reduction of Critical Theory to a reflection on the norms of criticism. Habermas criticized Adorno, as he did Foucault, for leaving unclear the normative presuppositions of their critical models, and even for presupposing the normative principles that contradict certain of their fundamental theses. In fact, the effort to link normative reflection and social theory, central in The Theory of Communicative Action,13 was then abandoned for reflections raised exclusively by moral philosophy and the theory of moral philosophy and legal and political philosophy. While some claim that Honneth distances himself too much from Habermas,14 a distance that leads notably to the severing of the essential link between criticism and reason, others identify, on the contrary, a proximity that remains too strong. One could have criticized Honneth for attempting to refound a critical theory on a social philosophy of normative content by focusing his reflections exclusively on the ethicomoral presuppositions of the models of social critique, abandoning conjointly the effort to elaborate an effective social criticism. In Marxian terms, Honneth as well as Habermas would be guilty of transforming a Critical Theory into political philosophy, and one would have to oppose to these tendencies the demand of a critique of philosophy, in addition to that of a theory of the contradictions and the social tendencies that bear possible emancipations. However, even if Honneth’s works up until now have above all borne on the normative side of Critical Theory, they have also for several years been oriented towards a deepening of the theory of recognition as social theory.15 Moreover, the theory of recognition that Honneth proposes offers a critique of political theory, and develops an analysis of emancipatory social potentials. From a certain point of view, indeed, the theory of recognition challenges one of the fundamental orientations of contemporary political philosophy, namely, the privilege accorded to the definition of justice and the identification of its criteria. Honneth shows that theories of justice tend to ignore the central characteristics of experiences of injustice, and they tend to be unaware of the importance of questions relating to what is called “the other of justice,” in other words, social pathologies.16 He can thus present his mode of intervention in the field of normative political philosophy in Marxian terms, by associating in the same movement Critical Theory and critique of moral. This is the case in the article “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination,”17 which underlines that it is only under certain privileged social conditions that individuals have the occasion to refer explicitly to consciously formulated moral principles in order to orient their existence, while conversely, most resistance movements of the dominated are anchored in unbearable experiences. Indeed, this critique of moral consciousness could be developed as a critique of the political as well.18

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In addition, in Critique of Power, Honneth develops a critique of Habermasian social theory that consists precisely in criticizing Habermas for minimizing the role of social struggles in historical evolution.19 This is not because Honneth abandons the idea of an articulation of the normative principles and the historical dynamics on which he later concentrates in the elaboration of an ethics of recognition.20 On the contrary, the ethics of recognition attempts to make explicit that social struggles are motivated not simply by material interests, but also by normative components (hence, the subtitle of The Struggle for Recognition, “The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts”). In this sense, the theory of recognition can well be considered as a project to revive Critical Theory, destined to be renewed, beyond Habermas, with Marxian motivations and principles (In Marx also, humiliation has been identified as motivation for protest action!). But the importance accorded to the normative dynamics particular to social struggles points to two problems: the first is relative to the function attributed to the normative components in social struggles, the second to the function attributed to social struggles in historical evolution.

WHAT CONCEPTION OF SOCIAL STRUGGLES? Three criticisms can be addressed to Honneth’s theory of social conflicts. The first imputes an overestimation of the role of normative components in relation to material interests. The objection is unfair, since The Struggle for Recognition states that it is always an empirical question to determine which roles the material interests and the expectations of recognition play. A second criticism concerns the sequence: disappointed normative expectations, moral wounds, shame, or struggle for recognition. Honneth is far from supporting the idea that the denial of recognition necessarily leads to a struggle for recognition, and he underlines that different social and cultural conditions must be fulfilled in order for individuals to engage in individual or collective practices of resistance. Here still, it is an empirical survey to which The Struggle for Recognition returns to describe the conditions of the development of the dynamics of resistance. Nevertheless, one could criticize him for insufficiently explaining the conditions of the development of such dynamics, as well as the reasons for which they lead either to emancipatory transformations of the social order, or to the demands that only contribute to the reproduction or the reinforcement of domination. These criticisms were formulated in the context of different theoretical traditions. In the frame of one Foucaltian-Deleuzian tradition, struggles for recognition are sometimes criticized for reducing themselves definitively to struggles for the recognition of identities that always consist of the effects of subjugation.21 When this critique is developed in a Marxian horizon, it takes the form of a suspicion bearing on the ideological dimension of recognition.

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Honneth is criticized for being unaware of the symbolic constraints and of the relations of power that lead individuals to lay claim to forms of recognition which do nothing but displace the dominations and injustices they endure.22 This type of objection was relayed notably by the sociology of work. Neomanagement can be described as a management of recognition, even though it results in increased precarity. The restrained implication is that different forms of domination that are more or less visible, and more or less accepted by individuals, in fact lead to a discussion of ideology of recognition.23 To respond to these objections, Honneth attempted to distinguish ideological recognition from nonideological recognition. The argument essentially consists in advancing that an institutional promise of recognition is ideological when it cannot be truly honored by the institution in question.24 It is not difficult to understand how this definition of recognition as ideology applies to managerial promises of recognition of the creativity and the autonomy of flexible labor, particularly in contexts where labor collectives are fragile or even destructured, and where, additionally, the margins of maneuver are extremely narrow. Although one can think more generally about this definition of ideology,25 it must be conceded that the idea of an ideological dimension of recognition does not necessarily imply a refutation of the agenda of the theory of recognition. Rather, the idea of an ideological dimension of recognition defines a challenge that the theory raises in order to be at the height of its critical ambitions. A third criticism concerns the manner in which the idea of struggle for recognition joins a reference to conflict and a reference to reconciliation. While some claim that Honneth pays too much attention to the conflicting dimensions of recognition,26 others criticize him for always thinking of social struggles in the Hegelian horizon of their reconciliation,27 thus lacking the type of specific conflictuality that gave meaning to the concept of class struggle in Marx, a concept that assumes at the same time that no true reconciliation is possible between partners in the struggle, and that only the transformations of the social conditions of the struggle can offer a fully satisfying solution.28 This objection raises two distinct problems. The first is to know if the struggles for recognition can be adequately conceived without a deep analysis of the social conditions of the refusal of recognition. We will return to this question in the next section. The second problem concerns the relationship between the refusal of recognition and the individual’s will to be recognized by others. When one criticizes Honneth for giving a version of struggles for recognition that is too Hegelian by interpreting the struggles teleologically from the viewpoint of their conciliatory resolution, one misunderstands Hegel’s own thought,29 and one confuses the two levels of analysis in the theory of recognition. In Honneth’s work, the need for recognition is founded on the intersubjective constitution of individuality, and struggles against the refusal of recognition always take their meaning at the horizon of a reestablishment

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of a positive relationship to the self that is intersubjectively constituted. But it is clear that there exist two different ways to respond to the denial of recognition: either by seeking positive recognition that was first refused, or by transforming, or eliminating, the conditions or the vectors of the denial of recognition. These two possibilities correspond to different normative logics. Certain social struggles aim to obtain a positive recognition from an economically or culturally opposed group, following a logic that is thus consensual, or if one prefers, reconciliatory. Other social struggles, on the other hand, develop in a purely agonistic horizon. They are directed against the agents, the accomplices, or the vectors of the refusal of recognition, to destroy them, to transform them, or to make them pay for the injustice, and not to directly obtain a positive recognition. The nurses’ strikes, during the 1990s in France, illustrate the first type of normative logic. The nurses demanded that the social value of their work be recognized at once by the doctors, the dominant social group in the institution of the hospital, and more generally, by the whole of society. In other words, a positive recognition on the part of all social agents was the goal. The demonstrations in the banlieues in the autumn of 2005 illustrates the second type of struggle. Even though the absence of an explicit claim has often been underlined, and even though it is always risky to indulge in generalizations about the demands of subaltern populations,30 it is permissible to advance the hypothesis that the situation was about a struggle aiming to reply to what is lived and expressed as a general social disrespect, which takes the form of official insults from a minister, or more diffuse forms of discrimination and social disqualification. It seems legitimate to add that this denial of recognition was conceived as giving the right to destroy all that symbolizes the denial of recognition, and that this protest action developed in a principally agonistic horizon (that of destruction and of opposition).31 To distinguish between these two different forms of response to the refusal of recognition, we propose to speak of the struggle for recognition and of the struggle of recognition, respectively. This terminological convention is authorized by Hegel, who uses the notion of “struggle of recognition” (Kampf des Anerkennens) more frequently than that of “struggle for recognition” (Kampf um Anerkennung).32 It is a characteristic of the refusal of recognition that it can lead to the attempt to destroy the factors of the denial of recognition by different means, including the struggle to death, as Hegel underlined in Phenomenology of Spirit.

INTERACTIONS, INSTITUTIONS, SOCIAL STRUCTURES? But what exactly is the relation of this theory of social struggles to social theory, properly speaking? This problem leads more generally to the fol-

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lowing question: how does a theory of recognition combine with a social theory? Honneth elaborates the fundamental theses of his social theory in Critique of Power. These theses have been criticized, and they sometimes merit criticism for their ambiguities. But criticisms have most often focused on isolated aspects of this social theory, without taking into account the fact that these theses define a research plan that can be oriented in different directions, and that certain of these orientations correspond precisely to that which is demanded, or which can be demanded by these criticisms. A First Ambiguity A first ambiguity is relative to the Habermasian distinction between system and lifeworld. In Critique of Power, Honneth explains that no social sphere can be totally free of the weight of normative anticipations, and that the “administration,” as well as the “market,” is submitted to the moral constraints of the lifeworld. But this objection can be understood in two different ways. In the first sense, it can signify that the theory of recognition, understood as an analysis of the normative components of interaction, is in itself to describe all social relations because these always consist of interactions. That is, the idea of systemic constraints can be rejected (understanding “systemic” in a large sense, in the sense of functional or structural constraints in general). But this criticism can also be developed in a more moderate way, and bears only on the idea according to which systemic relations exist under the form of separate autonomous social spheres. It is not about criticizing the idea of systemic constraints as such, but to contest a given interpretation of this idea of functional or structural constraint. In this sense, the theory of recognition can explain how normative and systemic constraints combine in social interaction, and how social situations determined or produced from such combinations can give rise to an emancipatory potential.33 The fact that this ambiguity remains explains some of the criticism raised by Fraser against Honneth.34 According to the first hypothesis, the theory of recognition should be considered as a general social theory, and according to the second, it should be integrated into a more general social theory. If one holds to the themes treated explicitly by The Struggle for Recognition, it appears that the theory of recognition has as its principal object the experience of injustice, and that it does not furnish by itself a theory of the social causes of injustice. On this point, the critics who take issue with Honneth for not proposing a theory of power or a theory of capitalism partially miss their object: to theorize the experience of injustice and to theorize the causes of injustice in fact constitute two complementary objectives rather than two terms of one alternative.35 To interpret a theory of recognition as a theory of the experience of injustice does not imply that the theory has no pertinence to the

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question of social theory. Honneth does not content himself to describe the forms of the refusal of recognition and their effects on individual experience. He also engages in an analysis of the forms of collective resistance to disrespect, and in a reflection on the social effects that can result from it. In this sense, he situates his intervention in the field of social theory, but he proposes considerations that ought to be integrated into a larger social theory, in order to take into account the causes of injustice, the specific constraints that bear on protest action, and the social effects of resistance. It is noticeable that Honneth also engages himself in this direction in articles that articulate historical diagnoses from the point of view of the structural changes of contemporary capitalism.36 It is perhaps useful to underline that the task of joining the theory of experience of injustice with the theory of systemic constraints does not only impose itself today on the partisans of the theory of recognition, but also on all those who want to continue to maintain a reference to Marx. Capitalist globalization in fact leads to the acceleration of the tendencies motivating one of the most typical claims of post-Marxism: social and political struggles are too heterogeneous to be reeled in to the homogeneity of a single material interest, such as that of the proletariat, according to the schema that had served in the conception of proletarian internationalism.37 It is no longer possible to reduce political and social struggles to an immediate expression of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production in general, or of the current regime of accumulation. The question of the unity of social struggles being for this reason relatively autonomized, it is not absurd to attempt to respond by means of an analysis of the specific normative content of the social and political demands. The theory of recognition can be mobilized to this end. In addition, the question of the characterization of the specificities of the contemporary regime of accumulation, of its tendencies and its contradictions, persists, and the problem of understanding how to move from materialist analysis of the social to the perspectives of social struggle remains. In other words, the question of neoliberalism and that of antiglobalization struggles are relatively independent of one another, and Marxist approaches should attempt to join them without, however, reducing one to the other. A Second Ambiguity A second ambiguity resides in the role that social struggles play in social evolution. In Critique of Power, Honneth criticized the Habermasian interpretation of social evolution, according to the model of a structural process of moral rationalization of the lifeworld and of instrumental rationalization of the system. He disapproved that Habermas substituted, in The Theory of Communicative Action, such a model of social rationalization

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for another model, that of Knowledge and Human Interests, in which social conflicts played a determining role. It is clear that one of the objectives of the theory of recognition is to describe the contribution of social struggles to social evolution. However, the pursuit of such an objective can take two different paths. In one direction, the theory of resistance can be interpreted as a model of social evolution, which is susceptible to be substituted purely and simply for that of Habermas. It must then be argued that the institutions can only continue to subsist if they satisfy the normative expectations of individuals, and be added that their transformations always return to the struggles aiming to bring recognition to the legitimacy of noninstitutionalized normative expectations. But the criticism of Habermas can again be understood in a more modest sense. It can indeed be understood as a model complementary to that of Habermas, without attempting to propose a general explanation, but only to describe a real, although limited, contribution of social struggles to social evolution. In the framework of the first model, the institutions tend to be reduced to the effect of struggles for recognition within the framework of a social philosophy that places the responsibility for the whole of social reality on the interactions. In the framework of the second model, it is possible to argue, on the contrary, that the relations of recognition always take place in the institutional frames that, as such, are irreducible to simple effects produced by interactions. It is equally possible to add that, if the institutions are not reducible to the productions of conflictual social action, it is because they foster functional and structural relations among themselves; one finds here the first alternative relative to the relations between interaction and systemic constraints.38 In the last texts, by proposing to develop a theory of the paradoxes of the modernization of capitalism, Honneth seems to recognize the pertinence of a macrosocial and systemic notion such as that of capitalism. He thus seems to engage in an endeavor aiming to join a conception of recognition centered on the analysis of the normative conditions of interactions, and a consideration of the consistency of these structural and institutional conditions of recognition. However, Honneth did not yet make explicit the social theory permitting the consideration of the social evolutions that are not directly explained by struggles for recognition. To this end, it would be required, for one thing, to describe the relationship between the calls for recognition and the institutional mechanisms, and for another, to propose an analysis of the relations between institutions, and finally, to clarify the nature of the relationship between institutions and social structures (to the extent that the term “capitalism” seems to designate a social structure). Here, still, these tasks encounter the objectives of contemporary Marxist research projects. Indeed, since the School of Regulation was established, one frequently recognizes one of the weak points of the critique of political economy is the theory of institutions, and a theory of institutions is necessary, in order to

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make intelligible the specificity of each of the regimes of accumulation. If one believes the School of Regulation, an adequate conception of institutions should not only be attentive to functional relationships in which these institutions are taken, but also to the modes of justification, and to the compromises that they institutionalize.39 It is true that, in a plan for reactualizing Marx such as that which the School of Regulation proposes, social evolution is explained by a crisis of functional regulations, rather than as an effect of social struggles. But other Marxian approaches put the role of class struggles at the center of historical evolution. It is well known that Marx himself proposed two explanatory schemas: that of class struggle, and that of the contradiction in the relations of production with the productive forces. He also demanded that they be joined, but opinions diverge on the question of the manner in which these two models can be mobilized today. The question is at once theoretical and political, since one of the stakes is to determine which type of historical diagnosis forms the basis of social critique.

WHICH HISTORICAL DIAGNOSTIC FOR WHICH CRITIQUE? In the last case, we endeavor to determine how the theory of recognition can intervene in these debates, by posing the general problem of the political content of the social critique that Honneth offers. His approach consists of elaborating a mode of critique appropriated from a global diagnosis of post-Fordism. In the contemporary debate, this general orientation is largely shared by all those who continue to refer to Marx, and it can lead to three different positions. In comparing the merits of salaried society to the social effects of post-Fordism, some appear to be partisans of a defense of Fordism.40 Others, underlining that post-Fordism responded to a critique of the alienations characteristic of Fordism, laud the political acceleration of some current mutations.41 Through the theme of the paradoxes of capitalist modernization, Honneth defends an intermediate position: animated by emancipatory dynamics, the modernization of capitalism would nonetheless produce effects in opposition to those that were envisioned by the social actors who resisted Fordism. Post-Fordism would thus be marked by the paradoxical mutations that would call for a radical critique of its most characteristic traits, but it would also incarnate the normative demands that definitively undermine Fordist principles.42 Even if the critical models are elaborated here from the sociohistorical scrutiny of the specificities of the present, these options seem at first glance rather distant from a type of Marxist positioning strictly speaking. Indeed, they seem to compare Fordism and post-Fordism without linking to the dynamics of capitalist accumulation, which, in different ways, give a meaning

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to the specific characteristics of these two social forms. Nonetheless, each of these options corresponds to a manner of invoking Marx in the debate: a) the interpretation of a way out of Fordism in terms of progress relies on a diagnosis, according to which the development of the productive forces led both to make the constraining social relations of production explode, and to make possible a liberation of the creativity of social labor. The defense of Fordism appears thus as fundamentally backward looking, and the victim of the illusion of politics (that is, of an abstract defense of normative principles detached from social evolutions).43 b) But the way out of Fordism can be presented under a less favorable light, since it is possible to interpret neoliberalism as a regime of accumulation resulting from a victory in the social battle engaged by the financial (propertied) bourgeoisie against the “cadres” (“corporate” or salaried bourgeoisie defined by competences associated with management and administrative functions), the employees and the workers, in order to reestablish the rate of profit and appropriate it. From this point of view, the partisans of post-Fordism seem to be like the fetishists of capitalist evolutions, blind to the struggle that traverses the fractions of the dominant classes, and more generally, the entirety of social classes.44 c) As for the third position, it attempts to recycle the theme of the contradictions specific to one phase of capitalism, by attempting to situate them in the tensions between the social base and the normative justifications (from which emerges the substitution of the problematic of “paradoxes” for that of “contradictions”). These justifications could be contradicted by a social context in which they would lose their meaning, of the sort that would also bear the demand for a social transformation. From the viewpoint of a Marxian analysis, the comparison of Fordism and post-Fordism cannot be well established, without the sociohistorical processes that govern the passage from one to the other of these regimes of accumulation becoming explicit. But here, again, it is difficult to identify the truly Marxist position. The question of the genesis of this new regime of accumulation is indeed particularly controversial. According to some, such as in the School of Regulation, it is the institutional malfunctions and the specific contradictions of a capitalist regime of accumulation that are put forth. But others privilege a political genesis of post-Fordism, such as Duménil and Lévy, who describe a new stage of the development of class struggle, or in any event, of a struggle of the financial bourgeoisie to reestablish a hegemonic position that it had lost in Fordism, and to reduce the social influence of management (also to counter their claim to direct the economy through administration, as well as their claim to structure the business like an organization, rather than a market) and administration. According to Negri and Hardt, in the operationist lineage, the accent is put on the importance of struggles to liberate social labor from its capitalist stranglehold, and the model that Honneth privileges is not far from this

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type of interpretation, because he underlines the importance of struggles against the models of recognition associated with the instruments of disciplinary subjugation (the nation-state, Taylorist worker, patriarchal family) characteristic of Fordist society. Certainly, Honneth does not conceive of these social struggles either as class struggles or as struggles anchored in the development of productive forces, and if it is about giving them complete autonomy with respect to the dynamics of the regimes of capitalist accumulation, while seeking the explanatory factor of social evolution, the link with a Marxist program of study would only be tenuous. But as we have already shown, there is no reason to interpret the theory of recognition as a global social theory, and as a complete theory of social evolution. Considered in its global evolution, Honneth’s theoretical production can be characterized by a remarkable continuity. The initial objective of a “redemptive criticism” of Marx led to the sketch of a social theory likely to identify the possibilities of emancipation in social action, as well as the processes engaging this action on the path of alienation. In developing a critique of the Habermasian critique of the system and lifeworld, by elaborating a theory of the struggle for recognition, Honneth engaged in the first side of this agenda. In the recent texts on the pathologies of the social, on reification and ideology, it is the second side of the agenda that he took on. The intentions drawn out in Marx remain at work today, and the mobilized conceptuality also gives a place to the notions typical of the Marxist tradition (reification, ideology, social contradictions). On this point notably, Honneth represents a remarkable exception in the landscape of contemporary political philosophy.45 Honneth’s originality lies more fundamentally in the defense of the Horkheimerian project of social philosophy, since it is in the context of this project that the references to Marx and Marxism are staged. By “social philosophy,” the founders of the Frankfurt School meant a program of interdisciplinary research, in which the materialist conception of history served notably to displace the questions of political philosophy onto the field of social theory. Honneth takes this project into account, and social philosophy remains a fundamental stake in his work.46 Certainly, the objective aimed at elaborating a complete, coherent, convincing social theory remains a challenge to raise for the theory of recognition, and this challenge is ambiguous, in the sense that raising it signifies doubtlessly for the theory of recognition the question of how to integrate it into a larger social theory. But the joining of one political theory to a social theory remains more generally a challenge for all Critical Theory today. The force of the first Critical Theory is partially owed to the fact that Marxism provided it with a social theory. The strong influence exercised by the communicative turn of Critical Theory can be explained in part by the

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fact that Habermas was capable of forming a substitutive social theory. It seemed to surpass the unilateralities of that which was identified, maybe by mistake, with Marxist functionalism, and it proposed theoretical hypotheses as to the relationship between different social spheres, and as to different social struggles that developed therein. Today, the stakes of the relationship of Critical Theory with Marxism remains linked to the challenge presented by joining critique and social theory. The Marxian principles in fact allow for the updating of certain insufficiencies of the theory of communicative action, but the question of knowing how to construct a social theory of replacement remains unclear. For this reason, Marxist criticisms of the theory of recognition often remain unconvincing. Ultimately, when they do not purely and simply rest on misunderstandings, they only take action on that which remains a problem to resolve, for the different agendas of Critical Theory, as well as for the different versions of Marxism itself. The problems that the theory of recognition encounters today are also those faced by the contemporary diagnoses that are inspired by Marx, and the objectives that it intends to attain are equally those that impose themselves on the forms of Marxism that wish to raise the theoretical and political challenges of the present.

NOTES 1. See notably, Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today,” Constellations 1, no. 2 (1994): 255–69. 2. See, for example, Horst Müller, “Praxisphilosophie oder Intersubjektivitätstheorie? Replik zur Erhellung eines philosophien Grundlagenproblems,” www .praxisphilosophie.de/honneth.pdf. 3. This was notably the position of J.-M. Vincent, see for instance “Nouveaux regards sur l’héritage critique d’Adorno,” L’humanité (June 10, 2003). 4. Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Les horizons marxistes de la théorie de la reconnaissance,” Actuel Marx no. 38 (2005): 159–78. 5. Roger Forster, “Recognition and Resistance. Axel Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” Radical Philosophy no. 94 (1999): 6–18. 6. The question of the relationship to Habermas continues to split Critical Theory. From this point of view, nothing has changed since the situation analyzed by Helmut Dubiel in “Der Streit um die Erbschaft der kritischen Theorie,” Ungewissheit und Politik (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1994), 230–47. 7. Axel Honneth, “Domination and Moral Struggle: The Philosophical Heritage of Marxism Reviewed,” The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, trans. Charles W. Wright (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995), chapter 1. 8. See Axel Honneth, Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) and Suffering from Indeterminacy. An Attempt

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at a Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Two Lectures (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 2001). 9. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke (New York: Verso, 2003). 10. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology,” in Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 323–47. 11. Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 12. Axel Honneth and Martin Hartmann, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constellations, 13, no. 1 (March 2006): 41–58. 13. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984) and The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987). 14. For example, see Axel Honneth, ed., Befreiung Aus Der Mündigkeit: Paradoxien Des Gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus Verlag, 2002); N. Kompridis, “From Reason to Self-Realization? Axel Honneth and the Ethical Turn in Critical Theory,” Critical Horizons 5 (2004): 323–60. 15. See the debate with Nancy Fraser, and the research projects in the ensemble of research projects at the Institute for Social Research dealing with “the paradoxes of capitalist modernization” and “the metamorphoses of recognition.” 16. Axel Honneth, “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism,” Constellations 7, no. 1 (March 2000): 116–27. 17. Axel Honneth, “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination: Some Problems in the Analysis of Hidden Morality,” The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995), 205–219. 18. See Emmanuel Renault, “Radical Democracy and an Abolitionist Concept of Justice,” Critical Horizons 6 (2005): 137–52. 19. Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. Kenneth Baynes (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991). 20. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995). 21. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997); Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). See also Bert van den Brink and David Owen, eds., Recognition and Power. Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 22. See Forster, “Recognition and Resistance,” op. cit. 23. Hermann Kocyba, “Der Preis der Anerkennung. Von der taylorischen Missachtung zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjectivität der Arbeitenden,” in Anerkennung und Arbeit, ed. U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel, and S. Wagner (Konstanz, Germany: UVK, 2000), 127–40. 24. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology.” op. cit.

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25. Classically, this concept does not only designate the mystifying justifications immanent to social life, but also the legitimation of dominations and inequalities. Yet it seems that the instrumentalization of recognition by neomanagement is not only ideological because it does not offer a true recognition, but also because it induces forms of domination, and of legitimation of this domination and inequality (on this point, see Emmanuel Renault, “Reconnaissance et travail,” Travailler, no. 18 (2007): 199–35). Moreover, according to the common understanding of ideology, it is not only a mode of justification inherent to particular institutions, but also to the forms of macrosocial justifications. The question of the ideological dimension of recognition would undoubtedly merit also being posed on this scheme. 26. See Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). 27. Robin Celikates, “Nicht versöhnt. Wo bleibt der Kampf im ‚Kampf um Anerkennung’?” in Socialité et reconnaissance Grammaires de l´humain, ed. G. W. Bertram, R. Celikates, Ch. Laudou, and D. Lauer (Paris: L´Harmattan, 2006), 153–68. 28. Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Mésentente et lutte pour la reconnaissance. Honneth face à Rancière,” in Où en est la Théorie critique? ed. Emmanuel Renault and Y. Sintomer, op. cit. 185–99. 29. See Emmanuel Renault, “Ricognoscimento, lotta, dominio: il modello hegeliano,” Post Filosofie, Anno 3, (Gennaio-Decembre 2007): 29–45. 30. On this problematic, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), and Emmanuel Renault, “Le discours du respect” in La quête de reconnaissance. Regards sociologiques, ed. A. Caillé (Paris: La découverte, 2007), 161–81. 31. For an attempt to apply the problematic of recognition to “urban violence,” and for the description of the continuum of protest action that is implicitly presupposed here, see Emmanuel Renault, L’Expérience de l’injustice (Paris: La découverte, 2004), 108–117, and Renault, “Violence and disrespect in the French revolt of November 2005,” in Violence and the Post-Colonial Welfare State in France and Australia, ed. C. Browne and J. McGill (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008). 32. In the Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques there are three instances of Kampf des Anerkennens, only one for Kampf um Anerkennung; the two expressions are absent from the Phenomenology of Spirit. 33. On the question of the interpretation that is suitable to give of the interactionism inherent in the theory of recognition, and on the relation to Marx that is engaged in these texts, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Les horizons marxistes de la théorie de la reconnaissance,” op. cit. 34. Christopher Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 1 (2005): 89–126. 35. On this point, see Emmanuel Renault, “What is the Use of the Notion of the Struggle of Recognition?” Revista de Ciencia Política 27 (2007): 195–205. 36. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology,” op. cit, and “Organized SelfRealization. Some Paradoxes of Individualization,” European Journal of Social Theory 7, no. 4 (2004): 463–78. See also Axel Honneth and Martin Hartmann, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” op. cit.

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37. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London, U.K.: Verso, 1985). 38. For an analysis of the tension in the conception of institutions in Honneth, see Emmanuel Renault, “Theory of recognition and critique of institutions,” in D. Petherbridge, ed., Honneth’s Critical Theory of Recognition (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Brill, forthcoming). For a defense of these modest interpretations of theory of recognition, see Jean-Philippe Deranty and Emmanuel Renault, “Politicizing Honneth’s Ethics of Recognition,” Thesis Eleven, no. 88 (2007): 92–111. 39. See, for example, R. Boyer and Y. Sallard, Théorie de la régulation. L’état des savoirs (Paris: La découverte, 1995). 40. Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformations of the Social Question, trans. Richard Boyd (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2002). 41. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 42. Axel Honneth, ed., Befreiung aus der Mündigkeit. Paradoxien des gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus, 2002). 43. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, op. cit. 44. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Capital Resurgent: The Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). Gérard Duménil and Jacques Bidet, Altermarxisme. Un autre marxisme pour un autre monde (Paris: PUF, 2007). 45. On all these questions, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, Beyond Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2009). 46. Axel Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy,” Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2007), 3–48.

12 Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch

ON THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE OF THE WORLD OF WORK Some thirty years ago,1 shortly after Jürgen Habermas published Theory of Communicative Action, some of his critics argued that he had failed to acknowledge the importance of work for a good life in the modern world. Habermas dismissed such criticism: “If we consider the trends towards shortening working time and towards a corresponding devaluation of the relevance of labour [. . .], then it becomes evident that the historical development of industrial labour is cutting the ground from under”2 the above objection. In light of the way in which most Western countries have developed in the last thirty years, the opposite of what Habermas predicted seems to have taken place. In fact, both weekly and lifetime working hours have been increased rather than diminished, a trend likely to continue.3 Moreover, if one takes into account the fact that women’s participation in the working world has significantly increased throughout the last decades, one must conclude that the scope of work has become much broader in society as a whole. And finally, there are good reasons for assuming that, at least in Western societies, work is central to the possibility for a good life: as sociologists have shown, having work is valued by the majority of citizens not only in terms of income,4 and an individual’s social status continues to derive from his or her belonging to and role within the world of work. At the same time, the working world has undergone changes that a growing number of citizens perceive as problematic. In reaction to the crises of Keynesianism (the dominant economic theory in North America and Western Europe in the decades following the Second World War)5 new 257

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economic policies have been implemented in many Western countries. Although these measures cannot be examined here, it is appropriate to say that they have led to (i) a deregulation of existing markets, (ii) the creation of new markets, (iii) the introduction of flexible business organizations, and (iv) a reduction of social welfare programs.6 Sociologists have convincingly shown that these changes make it very difficult for many people to earn their living and to consider themselves worthy of respect.7 Given these findings, it is reasonable to say that the current working world threatens the material and moral well-being of a large number of citizens. In the light of these findings, it is not surprising that many aspects of the working world are thematized not only by social scientists but also by philosophers. Questions regarding the quality and distribution of work are of interest to business ethicists and political philosophers concerned with theories of justice.8 In the domain of social philosophy, Critical Theory9 has also taken up the modern working world as a major topic. While many investigations conducted by business ethicists and political philosophers focus on particular cases or questions,10 the approach favored by Critical Theorists is more comprehensive. In the words of two of the most prominent representatives of this school of thought—Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth—it is the aim of Critical Theory “to connect the usually discrete levels of moral philosophy, social theory, and political analysis in a critical theory of capitalist society.”11 What these authors wish to provide, then, is a theory that is both an analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism. How then does contemporary Critical Theory try to attain the aim described above? Is this attempt successful? In what follows, I shall examine these questions. My focus here will be on Axel Honneth’s attempt to work out a Critical Theory that is based on the notion of recognition. In the following section of this chapter, I will discuss the basic features of this theory. I shall then consider the criticism it has received by Nancy Fraser. In the remainder of this chapter, I will show how Fraser’s criticism can be answered within the framework of a Honneth-style Critical Theory based on the notion of recognition. I will conclude my discussion by explaining why such a framework is an attractive option for contemporary Critical Theory.

CRITICAL THEORY AS A THEORY OF RECOGNITION The main features of Axel Honneth’s Critical Theory can be described as follows: From a social-theoretical perspective, the fundamental assumption is that the core areas of societies are “institutionalizations”12 of specific forms of recognition. According to this view, every society is constituted by human rela-

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tions that “are anchored in different principles of reciprocal recognition” (RR 146). Honneth believes that such a social reality can only be analyzed with a normative social theory whose basic concepts are tailored to precisely the “expectations” (RR 132) of recognition people have. Because of this, the category of recognition functions as a socio-ontological key concept for him. In Honneth’s view, three kinds of recognition are constitutive of what he terms “bourgeois-capitalist society” (RR 138): love, respect, and social esteem. In very broad strokes, these can be understood in the following terms: individuals in a love relationship affirm one another “as needy beings” (RR 139); individuals who respect one another treat each other as subjects to whom the “same autonomy” as well as “equal rights and duties” are accorded; and individuals who esteem one another take each other to be possessors of “skills and talents . . . that are of value for society” (RR 142). If this is to be consistent with Honneth’s socio-ontological thesis mentioned above, one would need to show that the core areas of capitalist societies—which Honneth believes are the private sphere, the constitutional state, and the world of work—can be understood as institutionalizations of love, respect, and social esteem. And indeed, it is evident that Honneth claims to have proof of this when he explicitly links his social-theoretical analysis to “the core institutions of the capitalist form of society” (RR 139). In his view, modern family relationships are characterized by “loving care for the other’s well-being in light of his or her individual needs” (RR 139); moreover, both the constitutional and the welfare state are governed by the principle of legal respect; and finally, the idea of “individual achievement,” (RR 140) which Honneth believes is the “leading cultural idea” (RR 140) in the modern working world, can be explained in terms of social esteem (RR 140–41). For these reasons, he believes it is possible to “interpret bourgeoiscapitalist society as an institutionalized recognition order” (RR 138). From a moral-philosophical perspective, Honneth’s fundamental assumption is that people can only form a positive evaluative self-relation if they participate in “social relations that require an attitude of reciprocal recognition” (RR 143). However, this thesis is formal in the sense that it contains no (further) information relating to the content of such social relations of recognition. In fact, while Honneth regards participation in social relations of recognition as a “necessary condition” (RR 176) for the formation of the kind of self-relation mentioned above, he considers the content of these relations to be subject to historical changes. Apparently, qualitatively different constellations of recognition that have been formed in the course of human history are, in Honneth’s opinion, equally suited to the formation of positive individual self-relations.13 From the sociopolitical perspective, the aim of Honneth’s theory lies in developing a critique of contemporary “neoliberalism.”14 In this context, what is central is the distinction between two types of capitalism,

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a “social-democratic” one and a “neoliberal” one,15 as well as the claim that neoliberal, but not social-democratic, orders are problematic from the perspective of recognition theory.16 While social-democratic kinds of capitalism are characterized by regulated markets, significant levels of state spending, and considerable welfare-state arrangements, neoliberal orders have the following features: largely deregulated markets, rather low levels of state spending, a comparatively low level of social welfare, and an entrepreneurial culture favoring owners of capital.17 Honneth believes that in the history of North America and Western Europe, models of social-democratic capitalism were dominant between roughly 1945 and 1980, after which a “neoliberal revolution”18 has taken place.19 From the methodological perspective, Honneth claims to present a critique of neoliberalism that is “internal”20 insofar as its measure lies in relations of recognition that are constitutive for bourgeois-capitalist societies. Honneth illustrates this model of critique by referring to conflicts over distribution. According to him, such social conflicts are essentially struggles for recognition that are—or may be—carried out by reference to the principles of legal respect and/or of social esteem. In such cases, demands for the redistribution of economic goods may meet with society’s approval if they are based on proof that redistribution will remedy an infringement of claims that is identified as being based on these principles. In this context, the task of the Critical Theorist consists in furnishing this proof and making the connections explicit. Because he or she must rely on principles that are constitutive of bourgeois-capitalist society, the Critical Theorist can be said to engage in an “internal” critique in the above-mentioned sense.

NANCY FRASER’S CRITIQUE The attempt to analyze capitalist markets and worlds of work in terms of a theory of recognition has been strongly criticized. A number of Critical Theorists have expressed fears that holding to Honneth’s social-ontological thesis—that bourgeois-capitalist societies are institutionalized orders of recognition—would make an analysis of capitalist markets impossible.21 As a consequence, they say, the goal of an analysis of such societies along the lines of a theory of recognition is doomed to failure. Moreover, if recognition theory fails to provide an adequate analysis of contemporary capitalism, it is also ill-suited to ground a critique of this kind of economy that is internal in the sense of the word specified above.22 Should this be true, Honneth’s recognition theory would fail to achieve its aims in the domains of social theory and social critique. What are the arguments supporting this critique, and are they justified? Since Nancy Fraser has provided the most detailed—and influential—

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critique of Honneth’s recognition theory, I will investigate the above question by turning to the “political-philosophical exchange” between these two authors. In Fraser’s view, Honneth has not provided an adequate answer to “the question of how critical theorists should understand the social structure of present-day capitalism” (DR 211). Fraser characterizes Honneth’s analysis of the modern working world in the following terms: “In the sphere of labor, . . . recognition should be regulated by the principle of achievement, which determines the level of one’s wages according to the value of one’s social contribution. From Honneth’s perspective, therefore, struggles over distribution are really struggles over recognition, aimed at changing the cultural interpretation of achievement” (DR 213). If this holds true, however, “it follows that there is nothing distinctive about market-mediated social interactions, which are regulated, like all interactions, by cultural schemas of evaluation. Thus, there is neither any point in, nor any possibility of, conceptualizing specifically economic mechanisms in capitalist society” (DR 213). Fraser elaborates as follows: These considerations apply in spades to the labor markets of capitalist societies. In those arenas, work compensation is not determined by the principle of achievement. . . . Also important are political-economic factors such as the supply of and demand for different types of labor; the balance of power between labor and capital; the stringency of social regulations including the minimum wage; the availability and cost of productivity enhancing technologies; the ease with which firms can shift their operations to locations where wage rates are lower; the cost of credit; the terms of trade; and international currency exchange rates. In the broad mix of relevant considerations, ideologies of achievement are by no means paramount. Rather, their effects are mediated by the operations of impersonal system mechanisms, which prioritize maximization of corporate profits (DR 214–15).

In conclusion, Fraser maintains that Honneth’s theory of recognition is “congenitally blind to such system mechanisms, which cannot be reduced to cultural schemas of evaluation” (DR 215). In her view, Honneth claims that the “behavior [of markets—SaB] is wholly governed by the dynamics of recognition” (DR 216). Therefore, his theory can be qualified as merely “truncated culturalism” (DR 217). Fraser’s argument may be summed up as follows: Honneth claims that capitalist worlds of work are institutionalizations of the principle of recognition relating to individual achievements; if this thesis is correct, then the level of earned income is a function of cultural assumptions concerning the value of the remunerated occupations; however, this conclusion is false. In Fraser’s opinion, it is impossible to explain specific levels of earned income

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in terms of “cultural schemas of evaluation” concerning the social value of different professional activities. In considering this, Fraser claims to show why capitalist worlds of work cannot be analyzed in terms of recognition theory. As a result, her critique is directed not only at Honneth’s theory, but fundamentally at a certain kind of social theory as well. This is evident from her belief that, on the rigorous grounds provided by her argument, capitalist markets can only be analyzed systems-theoretically (DR 216–22). If this holds true, recognition theory is also ill suited to ground a critique of contemporary capitalism. Indeed, should the distribution of goods and income be dependent largely on “political-economic factors”—factors themselves independent of patterns of recognition— economic injustices would have to be explained by reference to these factors and remedied by measures affecting them. Criticizing such injustices on the basis of recognition theory would therefore be misleading and counterproductive.23 Is Fraser’s critique justified? There are two things to consider here. On the one hand, it should be noted that within economics there is a growing consciousness of the relevance of norms to the behavior of economic actors.24 This is a connection of fundamental importance for advocates of institutional economics. In their view, an account of “norms, mores, traditions and customs”25 is required in order to appropriately describe and reliably predict the behavior of economic actors: Prognoses of human behavior made with the help of the simple model of the homo oeconomicus have frequently been proven wrong. If one insists, on the one hand, on the general model of behavior taking constant preferences as its starting point, yet wishes to uphold restrictions whose alterations are the sole means of inducing changes in behavior, then one would be well advised to examine the relevant restrictions more closely than has often been the case thus far. Institutional economics starts from the assumption that the exactitude of prognoses generated on the basis of the simple economic model of behavior can be substantially improved if restrictions based on internal institutions—habits, traditions, ethical rules, etc.—are more thoroughly taken into account.26

From the standpoint of institutional economics, accounting for “norms, mores, traditions and customs” is thus a social-theoretical requirement. Now if, as Honneth believes, the norms constitutive of “bourgeoiscapitalist societies” are norms of recognition, then the theory of recognition would be an indispensable—and central—element for the analysis of economic behavior from the point of view of institutional economics. Thus, there are considerations within contemporary economics that speak in favor of taking Honneth’s social theory seriously.27

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On the other hand, Critical Theory has thus far not sufficiently elucidated the relationship between recognition theory and economics. In light of Honneth’s social-theoretical claims, one would have to show that—and how—”the core institutions of capitalist society” can be understood as institutionalizations of specific forms of recognition. In this context it would have to become clear why neoliberal markets can be analyzed and criticized in terms of recognition theory. As I have shown elsewhere,28 Honneth has yet to explain how the above-mentioned goals may be attained on the basis of the categories of legal respect and social esteem he introduces. It does not follow, however—as Nancy Fraser would have it—that it is impossible to understand neoliberal markets in terms of recognition theory. Whether such an enterprise can be carried out successfully rather remains an open question.

SOCIAL ESTEEM A discussion of Honneth’s conception of social esteem is quite revealing in considering whether or not the social-theoretical and social-critical goals of contemporary Critical Theory may be attained within the framework of a theory of recognition. For this reason, I will now discuss some questions and problems that this conception of social esteem poses. Here I will concentrate on three issues that I will treat in separate subsections. I will then explain the relevance of my considerations with regard to the critique expressed by Nancy Fraser and others against recognition theory.29 Two Types of Esteem What constitutes social esteem? Why is this form of recognition important in terms of moral philosophy? And how is it institutionalized in capitalist societies? In general,30 Honneth answers these questions as follows: social esteem refers to “skills and talents” whose use is “of value for society” (RR 142). Honneth believes that the moral-philosophical relevance of social esteem consists in the fact that this form of recognition is a necessary condition for the formation of “the conviction that one possesses good or valuable skills,”31 and that this conviction is a central element of a stable and positive “sense of self-worth.”32 Someone who is not socially esteemed can therefore not consider him- or herself a valuable human being. With regard to the institutional form of social esteem in capitalist societies, Honneth says: A mere glance at studies of the psychological effects of unemployment makes it clear that the experience of labor must be assigned a central position in the

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model [of social esteem—SaB] emerging here. The acquisition of that form or recognition that I have called social esteem continues to be bound up with the opportunity to pursue an economically rewarding and thus socially regulated occupation.”33

Honneth thus seems to hold that in capitalist societies having work is a sufficient condition for earning social esteem. Moreover, as his reference to “the psychological consequences of unemployment” suggests, he believes that participation in the world of work is a necessary condition for earning social esteem in these societies. Given his understanding of “social esteem” analyzed above, it follows that people who have work are socially esteemed as possessors of specific skills, while people who lack work are not socially esteemed in this regard. As a result those—but not these—people will have the conviction that they “possess good or valuable skills,” and they may consider themselves valuable and form a stable “feeling of self-worth.” To illustrate: Table 12.1 Self-Relation

Relation of Recognition

Institutional Form

Esteem for possessing specific skills

(Social) esteem for possessing socially valuable skills

Having work

In my view, it is important to distinguish between the following two kinds of esteem: 1. esteem related to specific skills; and 2. esteem related to socially useful achievements. This distinction is important because there are forms of work in bourgeois-capitalist societies that are considered socially useful, but which are not regarded as involving specific skills34 or talents. Examples of such work include so-called unskilled labor or activities in businesses organized along the principles set up by Frederick W. Taylor.35 In my opinion it is not clear how performing such work could contribute to the formation of the worker’s conviction that he or she “possesses good or valuable skills.” On the other hand, it does appear correct to say that people can view and esteem themselves as socially useful subjects by carrying out such work. For this reason, it is important to distinguish between the two kinds of esteem named above. Obviously, the modern world of work is also important when it comes to esteem related to specific skills. It is, of course, possible that people gain social esteem for skills that are (currently) irrelevant for the work world and may even have been acquired outside of it. As a matter of fact, however, many qualifications that are considered valuable in societies like ours

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require (lengthy) training in a specialized and technical field and can therefore only be acquired by participating in the work world. Moreover, due to the demands that many professional activities make on time36 it would be difficult for most people to acquire nontrivial skills outside of the work world and thereby earn social esteem. Meritocratic Esteem In his debate with Nancy Fraser, Honneth analyzes “social esteem” differently than in the writings on which I base my reconstruction above.37 These differences concern the relation of recognition social esteem constitutes as well as its institutional form; however, they do not concern the self-relation made possible by social esteem. In “Redistribution or Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser” Honneth says that social esteem refers to achievements that have “a quantifiable use for society” (RR 141). The members of such societies then esteem one another on the basis of the social usefulness of their achievements; the more useful they are to society, the higher the social esteem they will enjoy. By holding this view, Honneth explains “social esteem” along the lines of the second kind of esteem I have distinguished above.38 According to RR, the world of work is the place where social esteem is distributed. With regard to the greater or lesser amounts of social esteem to which an individual has a claim, however, it is now the social usefulness of his or her occupational work that is decisive. On the basis of this “gradual” conception of social esteem, Honneth then asserts that income that is commensurate to the social usefulness of the activity it remunerates is the institution in which the society’s esteem of the individual “legitimately” (RR 141) manifests itself. He adds that by establishing this form of social esteem, bourgeois-capitalist societies have “meritocratized” (RR 141) the premodern, feudal conception of honor. This kind of social esteem—which I shall term “meritocratic esteem”— has the following features: Table 12.2 Self-Relation

Relation of Recognition

Institutional Form

Esteem for possessing specific skills

More or less (social) esteem for achievements that are more or less valuable for society

Level of earned income

In my view, this conception of social esteem is internally problematic, and there is also a tension between it, on the one hand, and the principle

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of legal respect (in Honneth’s understanding of it) and people’s support of welfare-state arrangements, on the other hand. I shall discuss these issues separately in the following two subsections. On the Relation between the Relation of Recognition and Self-Relation The conception of social esteem proposed in RR is problematic in view of the relation between the relation of recognition and self-relation. We saw above that the interest that Honneth’s conception of social esteem holds for moral philosophy lies in the assumption that the presence of a particular type of recognition (namely, social esteem for possessing specific skills) is a necessary condition for the formation of a particular type of individual self-relation (namely, self-esteem for possessing specific skills). But how plausible is this assumption in the present case, which is summarized in table 12.2? There are three things to consider here: 1. As has already been said, it is possible to be useful to society without actualizing anything that would generally be considered a nontrivial skill or talent. This connection is expressed in labels such as “unskilled labor.” Even when such work is very useful for society (for instance, in cases of natural catastrophes or times of war), and thus provides the basis for relatively high social esteem, I do not see how it could communicate the consciousness of having valuable skills to the worker. (Of course, it is conceivable that the readiness to perform such work in the above-mentioned situations gives rise to social esteem; however, this form of recognition refers to being useful to others, and not to the kind of work that is performed.) 2. The relation between the relation of recognition and self-relation is problematic in a quantitative respect. (This follows from 1.) Even in the case of work that is generally seen to involve an actualization of nontrivial skills, an increase (or decrease) of social usefulness can be affected by factors that do not concern work-related skills, for example a change in the intensity of work, the use of different tools and machines, or a change in consumer needs and demands. On the other hand, further professional training does not necessarily lead to an increase in the social usefulness of a professional activity; and technological innovations or changes in the demands of the society as a whole can even render one’s expertise superfluous. Because a change in one’s own professional skills is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a change in the social usefulness of one’s own work, one cannot conclude from an increase in social esteem that it is accompanied by an increase in skills.

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3. Let us assume that we lived in a world in which every increase of a unit of work’s social usefulness were caused by an—quantitatively corresponding—improvement of the worker’s professional skills, and in which workers were remunerated according to the social usefulness of their work. Would we not have to believe, then, that we possessed more or less valuable skills depending on our levels of income? In other words: wouldn’t the meritocratic aspect of this form of social esteem also characterize individual self-relation? And would it be plausible to claim that recipients of (very) low incomes could believe they possessed “good or valuable skills”? Or wouldn’t one have to suspect, rather, that they would see themselves as possessing almost worthless skills and tend to form a negative “feeling of self-worth”?39 In light of these considerations, the conception of social esteem presented in RR appears to be problematic with regards to the relation between social recognition and self-relation. In fact, it is not clear why social esteem related to the social usefulness of one’s work is important for forming the consciousness that one possesses nontrivial skills, and why an increase in social esteem might be relevant in this context. In order to circumvent this problem, one could for instance try to “fit” self-relation to the relation of recognition. In this case one would claim that individuals who participate in the practice of meritocratic esteem described in RR consider themselves as more or less socially useful members of society depending on how much social esteem is accorded to them. This is illustrated in the following table: Table 12.3 Self-Relation

Relation of Recognition

Institutional Form

More or less esteem for achievements that are more or less valuable for society

More or less (social) esteem for achievements that are more or less valuable for society

Level of earned income

As we shall see below,40 it is nonetheless doubtful whether the conception of recognition sketched out in this table is attractive to contemporary Critical Theory. On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal Respect There is a tension between meritocratic esteem on the one hand and the principle of legal respect (in Honneth’s understanding of it) and people’s support of welfare-state arrangements on the other. In order to analyze

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this tension, it is necessary to take into account a number of preliminary considerations. It is of course possible to defend a gradual conception of social esteem and link this form of recognition to the social usefulness of work. Under this assumption, it is plausible to argue that the income commensurate to this usefulness is the institution through which society’s esteem of the individual is expressed. Then, however, the question arises of how the social usefulness of different types of work and the levels of appropriate income are to be determined. Since in RR it is assumed that meritocratic esteem is a characteristic of capitalist societies, there seem to be basically two ways of answering the above question: 1. The Critical Theorist who holds onto the concept of meritocratic esteem might take the view that markets are basically suited to determining the social usefulness of work. In this case he or she would have to (i) specify under which conditions markets fulfill this function, and (ii) justify why he or she is of this opinion. 2. The Critical Theorist who holds onto the concept of meritocratic esteem might take the view that markets are not suited to determining the social usefulness of work. In this case he or she would have to (iii) explain how the social usefulness of different types of work and the levels of appropriate incomes are to be determined, and (iv) justify why he or she is of this opinion. Which of these two options does Axel Honneth endorse? As I see it, there are good reasons to believe that he actually takes the view specified by option 1. Here are two of these reasons: 1. Neither in RR nor in any other writing does Honneth develop a conception of determining the social usefulness of different kinds of work and the level of commensurate income by means of anything other than markets. Moreover, nowhere does he suggest that such a conception is to be developed within the framework of Critical Theory. 2. From the sociopolitical perspective, the aim of contemporary Critical Theory is not the critique of capitalism as such, but rather of neoliberal capitalism.41 As I have pointed out, Honneth is fundamentally of the opinion that neoliberal, but not social-democratic, orders are problematic from the standpoint of recognition theory. Because regulated markets are components of the latter, it would be surprising if Honneth believed that markets in general were unsuited to determining the social usefulness of work.

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For these reasons, it is correct to assume that Honneth endorses the view specified by option 1. The question to ask, therefore, is under which conditions markets are suited to determining the social usefulness of work. Honneth’s answer to this question may be summed up as follows: in order to fulfill this function properly, markets must be “contained by the socialwelfare state” (RR 149) and be free of ideological “distortions” (RR 148). Social welfare programs and institutions are explained in RR by the principle of legal respect: “But it was also precisely this principle of equal legal treatment that could be mobilized in countless social struggles and debates, especially by the working class, to establish social rights. Thus the recognition sphere of the achievement principle was in a certain way contained by the social-welfare state” (RR 149). Honneth then elaborates: “The normative argument which made social welfare guarantees in a certain sense “rationally” unavoidable is essentially the hardly disputable assertion that members of society can only make actual use of their legally guaranteed autonomy if they are assured a minimum of economic resources, irrespective of income” (RR 149). Thus, members of a society who respect one another as autonomous subjects accord each other social rights, that is, legally backed claims on social goods that do not require having work. According to RR there are ideological distortions where activities “necessary for [society’s—SaB] reproduction” (RR 141) are not recognized as work and/or work is not evaluated solely by reference to “[its] actual content” (RR 153). As I will discuss Honneth’s theory and critique of ideology in more detail further below, I will not go into these two points here. Instead, I will point out for now that Honneth’s reflections on the theory of ideology specify no criterion or procedure for determining the social usefulness of goods and achievements. They therefore contain no argument that runs counter to my claim that Honneth would endorse option 1 laid out above. Even if Honneth does not deal explicitly with our question (ii) above, it is clear that he grounds the arguments from (i) in a moral-philosophical manner. In his view, markets have to be “contained by the social-welfare state” because otherwise the members of the society in question would not legally respect each other to the fullest extent; and if they do not recognize one another in this way, they would not be able to form the consciousness of fully being autonomous subjects. Analogously, Honneth believes that markets have to be free of ideological “distortions” because otherwise the members of society would not esteem each other according to the social usefulness of their work; and if they do not esteem one another in this way, they would not be able to form the consciousness of having valuable skills. Given our reflections so far, it is now possible to explain why there is a tension between meritocratic esteem, on the one hand, and the principle

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of legal respect and people’s support of welfare-state arrangements, on the other. According to the meritocratic conception of esteem, the members of society are socially esteemed for the social usefulness of their achievements; the greater the social usefulness of my work, the more I am esteemed by the other members of society. Now, markets are one way of determining the social usefulness of goods and achievements. In fact, market prices are aggregates resulting from the coordination of a very large number of decisions that are, in principle, made independently of each other. Since this is the case, market prices express nothing that would be ascertainable independently of them for any member of society; instead, they can be taken to determine something, namely, the social usefulness of goods and achievements. It follows that in such an environment, individuals have a recognition-related reason to strive for the highest possible income. This is so because the degree of social esteem they enjoy is determined by the level of their income, which in turn is determined by the market economy. This thought can be developed in another way, departing from an observation by the English economist William Stanley Jevons. Jevons writes: “The price of a good is the sole witness we have to the usefulness of a good for the buyer.”42 If prices are the only social witnesses of the social usefulness of goods and achievements, and if people strive to be as useful to society as possible, then they will strive for the highest possible income. Now, both conditions are satisfied in the present case. In fact, market prices express nothing that would be ascertainable independently of them for any members of the society (or the state); and due to their participation in the social practice of meritocratic esteem, people endeavor to perform work that is of the greatest possible usefulness for society. Consequently, such people will try to reach the highest possible level of income. More precisely, it is the relative social usefulness of people’s work that is decisive with regard to the higher or lower levels of social esteem they will enjoy. Thus, the greater the social usefulness of A’s work in comparison with that of B’s, the more social esteem A will receive in comparison to B. (This is suggested by Honneth himself when he speaks of the “competition for professional status” [RR 143] in connection with the distribution of social esteem.) Under the above assumption that markets determine the social usefulness of goods and achievements, it follows from the present argument that the difference between A’s and B’s incomes is decisive with respect to the level of social esteem that each of them will gain. With that, we can establish the following: in a society where people are esteemed according to the usefulness of their work and where this usefulness is evaluated by the market economy, a human individual is better positioned from the perspective of recognition theory when his or her income

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rises and/or when the incomes of other people sink. As a result, such an individual has a recognition-based reason to strive for an improvement of his or her income and to contribute to the reduction of other persons’ incomes. Moreover, since in the present context no maximum in the difference in income can be established, such an individual has a recognition-based reason to always strive anew for both an improvement in his or her own income and for a reduction in other people’s incomes by virtue of participating in the social practice of social esteem. Let us assume that members of such societies have no other practical reasons than those laid out above. Under this assumption, they will form an egotistical, insatiable will to acquire wealth on the grounds of social esteem, and they will also be eager to document how useful their work is or has been for society. In such a context, striving for professional success as well as for personal qualities on which such success is based,43 but also phenomena such as conspicuous consumption,44 can be explained with reference to the established practice of social esteem. In societies where people are esteemed according to the social usefulness of their work and in which this usefulness is determined by the market economy, a tension arises between social esteem and legal respect (in Honneth’s understanding of it). On the one hand, every human individual has reason given by the socially established form of social esteem to always contribute to a reduction in the income of the other members of society. On the other hand, his or her respect for these very others gives him or her a reason to intervene on behalf of the other’s social rights. Assuming that these rights include claims on material goods in the case of an earned income falling under a certain threshold, every individual would have (1) a reason given by recognition to intervene such that as many fellow citizens as possible would receive such an (insufficient) income; and (2) a reason given by recognition to support the financial subventions of the recipients of such income through the welfare-state. Because of this, there is a tension between the forms of recognition Honneth calls “social esteem” and “legal respect.” At this juncture one might raise the following objection: the tension described above is unproblematic both (intra)personally and socially. For if the members of a society accord one another a particular set of social rights on the basis of the respect they have for one another as autonomous subjects, they will support the fulfillment of these claims to social goods; under this assumption, however, they will believe that only the remaining part of the gross domestic product should be distributed according to the principle of social esteem. Consequently, the “coexistence” of legal respect and social esteem in one and the same society is unproblematic. Certainly, it is not logically out of the question that the forms of recognition Honneth terms “legal respect” and “social esteem” may “coexist”

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in one society. It is conceivable, for instance, that the members of such a society strive for the highest possible (relative) income as bourgeois, while intervening for the preservation of their social rights as citoyen. Yet experience shows that it is doubtful whether the tension I have sketched out can be defused for long in this way. This might be connected to the fact that social reality cannot be “departmentalized” in two different areas each of which corresponds to either social esteem or legal respect. An employer who would be in a better position in terms of social esteem if he did not financially participate in the maintenance of the company’s pension system will have reason to question the corresponding social claims and rights; and an employee who can earn a higher income by way of an individually, rather than collectively, negotiated contract will have reason to disfavor trade unionism. As these examples show, it is unlikely that a practice of social esteem related to the social usefulness of work as measured by the market economy has no negative consequences for the social recognition of social rights. To sum up: the conception of social esteem that is described in RR is in tension with Honneth’s conception of legal respect. In societies where people esteem one another according to the usefulness of their work and where this usefulness is determined by markets, the practice of social esteem tends to be problematic with regards to the preservation of social rights. Social Esteem and Ideology Critique To his analysis of “the individualistic achievement principle” (RR 147) Honneth adds some reflections on the theory and critique of ideology. Earlier I claimed that his own theory of ideology specifies no criterion or procedure for determining the social usefulness of goods and achievements independently from a market economy.45 In the present context, I shall substantiate this claim. Furthermore, I will investigate whether Honneth’s own ideology critique is attractive from the perspective of contemporary Critical Theory. In RR we read: Of course, the latter kind of social relation—which represented a third sphere of recognition alongside love and a new legal principle in the developing capitalist society—was hierarchically organized in an unambiguously ideological way from the start. For the extent to which something counts as “achievement,” as a cooperative contribution, is defined against a value standard whose normative reference point is the economic activity of the independent, middle-class, male bourgeois. What is distinguished as “work,” with a specific quantifiable use for society hence amounts to the result of a group-specific determination of value—to which whole sectors of other activities, themselves equally necessary for reproduction (e.g. household work), fall victim (RR 141).

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Hence, the concept of individual achievement, which is central to the distribution of material resources and social esteem, is determined by only one social group: the economically “independent, middle-class, male” bourgeoisie. Moreover, the transition from feudalism to “the developing capitalist society” only comes about through this “groupspecific determination.” For these reasons, the practice of social esteem has had an “unambiguously ideological character” in the developing capitalist world. If these arguments are correct, the question arises whether the concept of social esteem—as well as the social practice structured upon it—can be considered valuable at all for the Critical Theorist. Would they not rather have to be criticized as (central) elements of a violent appropriation of social goods? Honneth gives a careful answer to these questions: “Once we become cognizant of the many superimpositions and distortions inherent in the capitalist achievement principle, it is hard to see any normative principle of mutual recognition in it at all. Nevertheless putting the new idea into social practice . . . at least normatively sustains the demand that the contributions of all members of society be esteemed according to their achievements,” something that would “guarantee a just distribution of resources” (RR 147–48). This leads us to the following questions: What may be considered an ideological “superimposition” and “distortion” of the achievement principle? Which elements of the socially practiced form of social esteem have an “ideological character”? And why? With regard to these questions, RR proposes a number of arguments. There are ideological distortions if (1) activities “necessary for [society’s— SaB] reproduction” (RR 141) are not recognized as work and/or (2) work is not evaluated solely in reference to its “actual content” (RR 153). Honneth illustrates case (1) by society’s nonrecognition of care giving and upbringing as forms of work, and case (2) by the fact that “every professionalized activity automatically falls in the social status hierarchy as soon as it is primarily practiced by women, while there is a gain in status if the gender reversal goes the other way” (RR 153). In RR Honneth thus specifies a sufficient condition for determining whether an activity is work (in the social sense). The argument is this: if an activity is necessary for the reproduction of society, then it is work. The sociopolitical interest that underlies this argument consists in revealing certain activities that are not market governed as work. Honneth’s second case (2) refers to activities that are already recognized as work, and which can take place in the private or the public sector. Here he argues: if the level of income—and thus of social esteem—is determined or influenced by factors irrelevant to the work carried out (for example the gender of the worker),

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then the achievement principle is being applied in a distorted manner at best. One should note that Honneth’s reflections do not concern the question of how much social esteem should accompany a particular type of work (in contrast to other types of work). As has already been remarked, his discussion of case (1) is directed only at the question of whether or not an activity is work (and should thus generate social esteem), and his arguments regarding case (2) are formal in the sense that they simply submit an unequal remuneration of equal work to critique, but do not provide information that would be relevant for the determination of income levels for specific types of work. Consequently, no alternative to the market is cashed out by Honneth’s theory of ideology as a measure for evaluating the social usefulness of different kinds of work. Therefore, his reflections contain no argument that runs counter to my claim that Honneth supports the above option 1, and they are in line with my considerations from the preceding subsection.46 At this juncture we should consider whether Honneth’s fundamental adherence to the achievement principle is attractive from the perspective of contemporary Critical Theory. Is it plausible, within the framework of a normative theory of recognition with which contemporary neoliberalism shall be criticized,47 to consider the concept of meritocratic esteem a (central) “normative principle of reciprocal recognition” (RR 148)? In this context we should recall two problems that have already been discussed:48 1. With respect to moral philosophy, the interest of social esteem rests on the assumption that this form of recognition is a necessary condition of self-esteem related to specific skills.49 However, if social esteem refers to the social usefulness of work, the relation between the relation of recognition and self-relation becomes problematic. For one, the conceptual relation between socially useful work and skill-based work is contingent,50 and furthermore, in a world where the social usefulness of work is proportional to the skill level of the working person, the people whose work is of very little use for society would have to believe that they possess nearly worthless skills. With regard to the possibility of self-esteem related to specific skills, meritocratic esteem is thus of minor interest at best; in order to achieve its moralphilosophical aim, it is not necessary that Critical Theory rely on this concept of recognition. 2. Adhering to the concept of meritocratic esteem would be counterintuitive given the sociopolitical ambition of contemporary Critical Theory. As we have seen, one of Honneth’s interests lies in defending a social-democratic type of capitalism against the market-oriented economic policies adopted in reaction to the crisis of Keynesianism.51

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However, a social practice of meritocratic esteem is in tension with society’s recognition of social rights. For this reason, it is surprising that Honneth views the concept of meritocratic esteem as a central “normative principle of reciprocal recognition” and limits the task of social critique to identifying the “superimpositions and distortions” of the achievement principle.

RESULTS AND PERSPECTIVES What interest do my considerations hold for a social theory of recognition within the tradition of Critical Theory? In what follows, I will first elucidate the social-theoretical relevance of my discussion of Honneth’s conception of social esteem and then address two further questions arising from this. I shall conclude my discussion by briefly explaining how a Honneth-style Critical Theory might achieve its aims in the domain of social critique.52 Social-Theoretical Findings My reflections above on the concept of meritocratic esteem are of great importance with regard to social theory. As we have seen, the question of “how critical theory should understand the social structure of present-day capitalism” (DR 211) is the subject of much controversial debate. In accordance with the socio-ontological premise of his theory, Axel Honneth seeks to “interpret bourgeois-capitalist society as an institutionalized recognition order” (RR 138). In contrast, Nancy Fraser purports that such an interpretation would make the analysis of capitalist markets impossible—in her eyes, it is theoretically unfounded and politically naïve. Like Jürgen Habermas, Fraser is of the opinion that capitalist markets can only be analyzed in terms of systems theory. My considerations make it possible to explain phenomena such as the following with the help of the concept of meritocratic esteem: striving for professional success as well as personal qualities necessary in this respect (discipline, enthusiasm, etc.); striving for the highest possible income; displaying professional success (for example through a specific consumptive behavior); and calling into question social welfare policies and programs. If my estimations are correct, then it is possible to trace dispositions and behaviors that many social scientists regard as central to “the new spirit of capitalism”53 back to a specific practice of recognition: meritocratic esteem in a market economy.54 This can be shown with respect to the very phenomena Fraser cites: “prioritiz[ing] maximalization of corporate profits” is something that can be explained by the social practice of meritocratic esteem, and such a practice would doubtless have considerable influence

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on “political-economic factors such as the supply of and demand for different types of labor; the balance of power between labor and capital; the stringency of social regulations including the minimum wage; the ease with which firms can shift their operations to locations where wage rates are lower; the cost of credit; [and] the terms of trade.” As a result, it is not appropriate to infer the impossibility of a recognition-theoretical analysis of capitalist markets from the (obvious) relevance of these factors for contemporary economic processes. As my considerations show, the social structure of present-day capitalism need not be the other of recognition.55 This result is of interest for the following reasons: First, my findings offer a social explanation of why people seek to maximize their earnings or profits. They thus make it possible to challenge the view that human beings seek to do so by nature. This belief is insinuated in many (economics) textbooks and theories, even if hardly any theorist nowadays states it explicitly. However, if striving for high incomes can be regarded as an element of a specific social practice, then it is classifiable as something that is subject to historical change (and political influence). Second, my findings explain why there is no difference in principle between recognizing and egotistical behavior. Even if Honneth does not assert this, some of his discussions suggest it.56 (This might be explained by the influence of Habermas’s strict distinction between communicative and strategic action.)57 If my arguments are correct, then specific forms of economic egotism can be explained by the social practice of meritocratic esteem. Third, my findings explain—contra Habermas58—why the economy does not form a social sphere that is completely “decoupled” from recognitionbased social practices and can be analyzed in a nonnormative vocabulary alone. Of course, a social practice of meritocratic esteem might have (structural) effects that can be described with economic or sociological models. Yet if striving for professional success, the highest possible income etc., can ultimately be traced back to a specific practice of esteem, then it cannot be adequately regarded as a purely “strategic” behavior.59 For these reasons, my considerations open up a new perspective for the analysis of the “social structure of present-day capitalism” within the framework of recognition theory. Whether or not the changes in economic policies outlined in the introduction can actually be analyzed on this basis must be investigated empirically. The actual relevance of meritocratic esteem in the context of what has been termed the “neoliberal revolution” can only be determined by social scientific means. Two Follow-up Questions As we have seen, it is possible to trace some dispositions and behaviors that social scientists consider to be central elements of “the new spirit of

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capitalism” back to a specific practice of recognition: meritocratic esteem in a market economy. Striving for professional success and the highest possible income, as well as the desire to socially document these successes, can be explained in this way. As a result, meritocratic esteem is suited to explaining the occurrences of these dispositions and behaviors under the assumption that there is a market economy. In light of this condition, the following two questions arise: 1. Can markets be analyzed with recognition theory? 2. Can the existence of markets be legitimated by recognition theory? As has already been said, these questions are at the center of a controversial debate amongst Critical Theorists. Jürgen Habermas is of the opinion that markets cannot be analyzed with recognition theory, and he holds that the existence of markets can be legitimated only from a functionalist point of view.60 On the other hand, Axel Honneth has worked out a theory suggesting that the above questions can be answered in the affirmative. If, as Honneth claims, capitalist societies are “institutionalized orders of recognition” (RR 138), then markets—which doubtless belong to the “core institutions” (RR 139) of such societies—must be able to be analyzed with recognition theory; and if “the moral power of the equality and achievement principles” in fact provide “market societ[ies] with [their] legitimizing framework” (RR 150), then the existence of markets should be able to be legitimated by recognition theory. However, Honneth does not satisfactorily substantiate this view.61 In my view, markets can be understood in terms of recognition theory, and it is possible to legitimate their existence with recognition-theoretical reasons. This can be shown with resources provided by Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. In this work, Hegel analyzes market transactions as realizations of a kind of recognition he terms “personal respect.”62 Moreover, in his view such a social practice is part of a good human life in modern times. This is why Hegel believes that the existence of markets can be legitimated not only functionally but also normatively, namely, in terms of personal respect.63 Since I examine these arguments elsewhere,64 I shall not go into details here. I would like to note, though, that Hegel’s discussion of markets is of great interest to a Honneth-style Critical Theory based on the notion of recognition. Social-Critical Perspectives As I have pointed out above, contemporary Critical Theory aims to provide a theory that is both an analysis and critique of present-day capitalism. So what interest do my considerations have with respect to the

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idea of such a social critique? What perspectives do they open up for a critique of the economic policies implemented in reaction to the crisis of Keynesianism? Assuming that meritocratic esteem—or an increase in its social relevance—is a causally relevant factor for the processes of market-oriented restructuring and weakening of social insurance systems,65 one would need to investigate how this practice of esteem can be criticized in terms of social philosophy. In connection with this, one should investigate: 1. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem has (structural) effects that make it difficult or impossible for the members of society to engage in other practices of recognition that are important for them;66 2. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem has (structural) effects that delegitimate and destabilize this praxis itself;67 and 3. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem forms a necessary element of a fulfilling life in “bourgeois-capitalist societies,” or whether it might not rather be considered and criticized as a compensatory order of recognition.68 Investigating any of these fields of inquiry—which I have merely sketched here—requires extensive conceptual, normative, and social-scientific study and therefore lies beyond the confines of my present paper. As I show elsewhere,69 such research does, however, allow for a critique of contemporaneous capitalism to be formulated which fulfills the methodological requirements of Critical Theory. If this estimation is correct, then there are reasons to believe that both the social-theoretical and the social-critical goals of Critical Theory may be attained from within a framework of recognition theory.

NOTES 1. Parts of this essay were presented at the following venues: Department of Philosophy, University of North Florida, Jacksonville (March 2, 2007); Institute of Social Research, Frankfurt am Main (June 30, 2007); Department of Philosophy, Queens College, City University of New York (February 29, 2008); Department of Philosophy, University of Cologne (April 12, 2008); Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (April 19, 2008). I am grateful for the valuable remarks and suggestions I received on each of these occasions. Finally, I would like to thank Frederick Neuhouser, Michael Quante, and Christopher F. Zurn for their very helpful comments on an earlier version of my essay.

Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? 279 2. Jürgen Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. J. Thompson and D. Held, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), 225. 3. Witness, for instance, the current political discussion about raising the pensionable age in Germany. 4. Cf., for example, Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (Oxford: Polity, 1999) and Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (New York, London: W. W. Norton, 1998). 5. Cf., for example, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). 6. Cf., for example, Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Question (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003), Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, and Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, 2006). 7. Cf., for example, Bourdieu, The Weight of the World, Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers, Sennett, The Corrosion of Character and The Culture of the New Capitalism. 8. Cf., for example, Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, eds., Ethical Theory and Business (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004). One issue related to the working world that is currently being debated among political philosophers is the question whether the so-called right to work can be established. On this issue, see my discussion in Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, “Gibt es ein Recht auf Arbeit?” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51, no. 6 (2003): 949–68. 9. 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., for example, David Hoy and Thomas McCarthy, Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994) and Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte—Theoretische Entwicklung—Politische Bedeutung (Munich, Vienna: Hanser, 1986). 10. See note 8 above. 11. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, “Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition?” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London, New York: Verso, 2003), 4. 12. Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser,” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, 140. Citations to this essay will henceforth be, in text, noted by RR. 13. It should be noted that Honneth has recently stressed the need for a “robust conception of progress” that would be based on “the assumption of a development in the cultural transformations of human values which would allow for wellgrounded judgments of the transhistorical validity of a particular culture of recognition.” Axel Honneth, „Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf kritische Rückfragen,” in Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer

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Konflikte, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2003), 324–25. (Here I quote Honneth’s works with my own translation.) 14. Martin Hartmann and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constellations 13, no. 1 (2006): 44. 15. Cf. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 41–46. 16. This is the view advanced in Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism.” 17. Cf. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 41–46. 18. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 44. 19. Since defining “neoliberalism” is a matter of ongoing scientific and public debate, I have not used this term in my introduction. As Honneth’s remarks show, he uses the word “neoliberal” to refer to the economic policies set up in many Western countries in reaction to the crisis of Keynesianism in the late 1970s. What is more, he describes these policies in terms that are very similar to mine (see my introductory remarks above). We are therefore justified in concluding that the sociopolitical aim of Honneth’s theory is to provide a recognition-theoretical critique of these economic policies, which presently threaten the material and moral well-being of a large number of citizens. (Cf. the sociological literature cited in the introduction.) 20. Honneth, „Nachwort,” 334. 21. Cf., for example, Nancy Fraser, “Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth,” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (London, New York: Verso, 2003), 198–236 [hereafter cited in text as DR]; Emmanuel Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et clinique de l’injustice (Paris: La Découverte, 2004); Christopher Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy, 13, no. 1 (2005): 89–126. See also the critical discussion of these positions in Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Defense of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” in this volume. 22. See section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.” 23. Cf., for example, Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy.” 24. Current sociological investigations also point in the same direction. Cf., for example, Jens Beckert, “Die soziale Ordnung von Märkten,” in Märkte als soziale Strukturen, ed. J. Beckert, R. Diaz-Bone, and H. Ganßmann (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus, 2007), 43–62, and Nico Stehr, Die Moralisierung der Märkte. Eine Gesellschaftstheorie (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2007). 25. Stefan Voigt, Institutionenökonomik (Munich, Vienna: UTB, 2002), 19. 26. Voigt, Institutionenökonomik, 41. 27. See also Deranty, “Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory” on the relation between the theory of recognition and institutional economics. 28. Cf. H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, “Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 11, (2008): 573–86 and H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, “The Legacy of Hegelian Thought and the Future of Critical Theory,” in Applying the Ethics of Recognition: Work

Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? 281 and the Social Bond, ed. J.-Ph. Deranty and N. Smith (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, forthcoming). 29. See below, subsection entitled “Social-Theoretical Findings.” 30. In RR Honneth answers some of these questions differently. See subsection entitled “Meritocratic Esteem” below. 31. Axel Honneth, “Between Aristotle and Kant: Recognition and Moral Obligation,” in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 2007), 136 (translation slightly modified). 32. Honneth, “Between Aristotle and Kant,” 136 (translation slightly modified). 33. Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situating Critical Theory Today,” in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 2007), 75. 34. That Honneth does not see any activity as an actualization of skills follows from his assertion that “social esteem . . . can only be related to personal characteristics and skills by which the members of society differ from one another: a person can only perceive him- or herself as ‘valuable’ if he or she knows him- or herself to be recognized for achievements that he or she does not share indiscriminately with others.” (Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung, 203; here I quote Honneth’s works with my own translation.) 35. Cf. F.W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, London: Harper, 1911). 36. See above, section entitled “On the Structural Change of the World of Work.” 37. See subsection entitled “Two Types of Esteem” above. 38. See subsection entitled “Two Types of Esteem.” 39. For more on this topic, see also H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, „Marktwirtschaft und Anerkennung. Zu Axel Honneths Theorie sozialer Wertschätzung,” in Axel Honneth. Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante (Münster, Germany: Lit., 2004), 92–97, as well as Honneth’s discussion of it: Axel Honneth, „Antworten auf die Beiträge der Kolloquiumsteilnehmer,” in Axel Honneth. Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante (Münster, Germany: Lit, 2004), 99–121. 40. Cf. subsection entitled “Social Esteem and Ideology Critique.” 41. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.” 42. Cited in W. Reiß, Mikroökonomische Theorie (Munich, Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1998), 204. 43. Cf., for example, the dispositions and behaviors analyzed by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London; New York: Routledge, 1992). 44. Cf. Thorsten Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (New York: Penguin, 2005). 45. See subsection “On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal Respect.” 46. See subsection “On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal Respect.” 47. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.” 48. See subsection entitled “Meritocratic Esteem.”

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49. See subsection entitled “On the Relation between the Relation of Recognition and Self-Relation” above. 50. See subsection entitled “On the Relation between the Relation of Recognition and Self-Relation.” 51. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.” 52. Recall that the aim of Critical Theory is “to connect the usually discrete levels of moral philosophy, social theory, and political analysis in a critical theory of capitalist society.” What Critical Theorists wish to provide, then, is a theory that is both an analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism. 53. I borrow this term from L. Boltanski and È. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London, New York: Verso, 2007). 54. I will discuss the phrase “in a market economy” in the subsection entitled “Two Follow-up Questions” below. 55. For this reason, it is inappropriate to maintain that a social theory of recognition is “congenitally blind” to economic processes “which cannot be reduced to cultural schemas of evaluation” (DR, 215). 56. Cf., for example, Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology,” in Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, ed. B. van den Brink and D. Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 323–47. 57. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 volumes (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984–1987), trans. Thomas McCarthy, vol. 1, 285–95. 58. Cf. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, 153–97. 59. This view is taken by Habermas; see Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, 153–97. 60. Cf., for example, Habermas Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, 322. 61. See above, section entitled, “Nancy Fraser’s Critique.” 62. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §36 and §71. 63. To avoid misunderstandings, I should like to emphasize that Hegel was not a champion of free markets. He believed that not only personal respect, but other kinds of recognition as well were part of a good life in modern times. The realization of these kinds of recognition, however, requires market regulations and welfare-state arrangements. This was clearly seen by Hegel. For this reason, his Philosophy of Right does not champion free markets. See on this topic my discussion in H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Religiöse Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner, 2007), 93–176. 64. See Schmidt am Busch, “Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market Economy,” and Schmidt am Busch, “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie, Habilitationsschrift, Frankfurt am Main, 2009. 65. As I have remarked, this assumption can only be justified empirically. See subsection entitled “Social-Theoretical Findings” above. 66. With regard to this point one should thematize not only the relation between meritocratic esteem and legal respect, but also the relation between meritocratic and skill-based esteem.

Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? 283 67. The use of the expression “casino capitalism” to describe structures of distribution on global financial markets is an indication that a praxis of meritocratic esteem can have such effects. 68. On my reading, Hegel advances such a point of view. Cf. Schmidt am Busch, “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie. 69. C.f. Schmidt am Busch, “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie and Schmidt am Busch, “The Legacy of Hegelian Thought.”

13 Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Defense of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition Jean-Philippe Deranty

Axel Honneth’s ethics of recognition has been the subject of much criticism since it was first presented as an independent model of social theory in 1992, in The Struggle for Recognition. Amongst the different features of recognition theory picked on by its critics, one feature in particular has been especially damaging, as it has revolved around the question that has been historically the decisive one for Critical Theory: the critique of political economy. Given its intention to construe every social phenomenon in cultural or moral terms, as an expression of recognition relations, how can Honneth’s model, these critics have asked, adequately account for the specificity of economic injustice? How can a moral, psychological concept explain economic injustice, since the latter seems to have to be explained through functional, rather than moral, categories? The most famous rejection of Honneth’s “monistic” approach to all forms of injustice, including the economic one, has been famously articulated by Nancy Fraser. In a series of influential articles culminating in her 1998 Tanner Lectures, which then triggered the substantial exchanges with Honneth published in Redistribution of Recognition?, Fraser has gradually developed a comprehensive, dualistic model of social analysis, which intends most specifically to do justice to the independent logic of economic processes in modern societies, both at the descriptive and critical-normative levels.1 In this paper, however, the main reference that I will most directly engage with is not Fraser’s work, even though it constitutes the fundamental background. Instead, the central reference will be the long article dedicated by Christopher Zurn to Honneth’s accounts of economic injustice.2 This article will be at the center of my reflections for a number of strategic reasons. First, it provides a wonderfully concise and exhaustive synthesis of 285

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the debate on redistribution.3 Second, the article is based on an intimate knowledge of Honneth’s work, especially his writings prior to The Struggle for Recognition. This enables Zurn to avoid some of the mistakes made by Fraser in her accusations of Honneth. At the same time, though, this makes Zurn’s criticisms all the more serious. In particular, he is able to take into account some of Honneth’s most powerful rejoinders to Fraser’s critiques. In other words, his skeptical points against the theory of recognition are not only nourished by the explicit embrace of a substantive countermodel, Fraser’s dualistic analysis of society and her “participatory parity” model of social critique; they also contain the deadly sting of immanent critique. If one adds to this the critical virtuosity and scholarly seriousness of the skeptical reader, Zurn’s attack on Honneth’s theory of economic injustice does such a good job that it seems to leave the theory of recognition in tatters. Zurn’s initial critical review of The Struggle for Recognition, of all the critiques launched against the book, had been the most acute one, leading Honneth to a major shift in his own thinking.4 With this skeptical response to Honneth’s theory of economic injustice, one is forgiven for thinking that recognition theory as a whole had received its coup de grâce. This paper attempts to offer a defense of the theory of recognition precisely on this its weakest point, the theory of economic injustice. I would like to defend the theoretical fruitfulness of a “recognitive-theoretical” perspective for a contemporary critique of political economy. The fundamental point underlying Zurn’s critique of Honneth’s interpretation of economic injustice is that it is premised on a reductionist account of the economy, and consequently advocates only unhelpful, or even counterproductive, practical measures for the redress of injustice. Honneth is accused, at the critical level, of “(reducing) distributive injustices to recognition injustices.”5 And this is said to originate, even more seriously, from his apparent intention to explain the economic causes of injustice, and thus provide a theoretical approach to the economy, both as a separate system of social integration and as a specific origin of social injustice, as a formation resulting from deeper cultural patterns. Honneth is basically accused of propounding a reductionist, culturalist theory of the economy. Without himself adopting a Marxist stance, Zurn is thus the one who, following in Fraser’s footsteps, has given the most robust theoretical expression to date of the feeling of skepticism and frustration clearly felt by many within the critical camp, in the face of what appears to be Honneth’s emasculation of the critique of political economy as a result of its reformulation in the language of moral psychology. In the first section of the paper, I follow the steps of Christopher Zurn’s attack, which, if confirmed, leave the theory of recognition in ruins. Whilst Zurn’s reading of Honneth is perfectly accurate, and indeed remarkable for its knowledge of the different stages in Honneth’s thinking, this section

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highlights a dimension of Honneth’s thought that Zurn slightly underestimates: the radical social dependency of individual subjective formation. The imperceptible shift in emphasis I suggest has major implications for the appraisal of recognition theory’s relevance for a contemporary critique of political economy. The next two sections aim to establish this relevance. The second section starts the defense of recognition theory through substantive recourse to the work of Emmanuel Renault. In L’Expérience de l’Injustice, Renault demonstrates the efficacy of a recognitive perspective in the critique of contemporary economic phenomena, by arguing in favor of a critique “through the effects.” I defend this position and show that it not only responds to the accusations Fraser and Zurn raise against Honneth, of sociological inaccuracy or even naivety. In fact, Renault’s method shows that the sociological objections can be returned to the critiques, as it highlights the extent of social pathologies that the theory of recognition can well account for, but a model of “participatory parity” far less so. The key problem in this section is thus the link between social critique and social experience. I question the Fraserian severing of the two dimensions from the perspective of a critical theory program. The third section looks at the plausibility of using recognition not just as a clinical and normative concept, but also as a concept with explanatory potential in social theory. I show that this link between clinical, normativecritical and social-theoretical uses of recognition, in particular in relation to economic realities, has in fact been at the heart of Honneth’s project since the beginning, notably in his early critiques of Habermas. This, I argue, suggests ways in which the theory of recognition can play a directly constructive part in an alternative economic theory, beyond its role as a critique of pathologies. From that angle, there would be fruitful avenues for dialogue between recognition theory and heterodox economic theories, notably different versions of economic institutionalism.

ZURN’S CRITIQUE OF HONNETH ON ECONOMIC INJUSTICE Theory of democracy and the division of labor: the 1993 Dewey article Zurn launches his critique of recognition theory’s reductionistic stance on the economy with a reading of a crucial article published by Honneth in German in 1993, and translated and published in English in 1998, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.”6 At first glance, it could seem surprising to launch a critique of Honneth’s stance on economic injustice with this text since it is concerned primarily with questions of political philosophy. In it, Honneth argues that Dewey’s writings on democracy

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provide a fruitful alternative approach to the question of the normative foundations of democracy compared with the main contemporary contenders: liberalism, proceduralism, and republicanism. The reason Zurn chooses this text in particular to cast new light on the “redistribution versus recognition” debate stems from the specificity of Dewey’s solution to the political problem. Dewey, willfully pursuing the old Hegelian-Marxist intuition via new, pragmatist, means, argues that a vibrant democracy relies on a “fair and just division of labor.” Honneth’s explicit, unreserved appropriation of Dewey’s model, therefore, gives invaluable clues as to his own approach to the problem of the division of labor, and thus the first insights into his approach to the relation between recognitive and economic relations. Honneth’s reappropriation of Dewey’s democratic theory is guided at first by a problem that emerges most specifically for contemporary political philosophy: namely, the issue of the social foundation of political participation. Democracy relies on the requirement of individual participation to the process of will formation, yet many contemporary models of democracy offer insufficient or indeed inexistent conceptual analyses that explain and normatively clarify how individuals are motivated, and from which point of view, to participate in the debates over the issues concerning their community. This is especially the case for liberalism, as Honneth sees it, in full agreement with Habermas.7 The initial critique of liberalism in the early 1980s, that it relied on an inadequate ontology of the subject, was quickly overcome, and the second stage of the debate soon revolved around this problem of the conceptual and normative clarification of the link between society and politics. This problem is at the heart of the 1993 article. Dewey’s vision inspired by Hegel, of a politics rooted in social cooperation, was seized upon by Honneth as a most fruitful answer to the central quandary of contemporary democratic theory. Dewey’s solution, as Honneth reconstructs it, to the political-theoretical problem of individual participation to the community’s will formation is radical, and chimes in with “Left-Hegelian” approaches: democracy for Dewey is not so much grounded in, as identified with, social cooperation. Inasmuch as individuals through their interactions in the activities of social life always already collaborate and are thus pushed to deliberate amongst each other, they are already engaged implicitly in a process which the political moment simply makes explicit and reflective. Democracy, therefore, as the normative ideal of modern politics, in the end designates a certain state of society, where social cooperation is fully developed, rather than a set of institutions or deliberative procedures. This solution solves the problem of individual participation, since according to it, the participation in social life is already in nuce a participation in society’s reflexive moment of political will formation. However, it is also clear that the specific problem that is

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solved by the emphasis on social cooperation represents the main interest only for the contemporary political theorists intent on finding alternatives to liberalism. For Dewey, this vision of democratic society (as opposed to democratic politics stricto sensu) has a much broader scope. It aims at an expansive vision of society as a whole, in other words, at the possibility of individual flourishing on the basis of healthy social relations, in which participation in democratic life is only one dimension of social cooperation. The key argument fleshing out and justifying this identification of social cooperation and democratic politics, an argument that will prove crucial for the evaluation of Honneth’s approach to economic problems, is encapsulated in the pragmatist sense of the notion of “reflexivity.” In his early writings, though,8 as Honneth shows, Dewey does not characterize the distinctive type of reflexivity that is inherent in politics. Instead, he equates democratic politics and cooperative society, thus repeating Marx’s truncated notion of politics. What is missing here, in both the early Dewey and Marx, is a separate analysis of the political moment in its specific role and structure. Inspired directly by Hegel’s notion of Sittlichkeit, but failing to heed Hegel’s careful description of the state in its multiple relations to society, Dewey brings together without sufficient mediation individual autonomy and political sovereignty. The element that brings them together is the individual’s participation to the division of labor: Because each member of society contributes, on the basis of a division of labor, through her own activities to the maintenance of society, she represents a “vital embodiment” of the end of society. For that reason, she is entitled not just to a part of the freedom made socially possible; rather, as an individual she always possesses the entire sovereignty through which all jointly as a people become the sovereign bearer of power.9

However, despite the serious shortcoming of such a lack of mediation between society and politics, the decisive role played by the “division of labor” in these early writings is already significant. As in Hegel, the functionalist aspects of the economic organization, and the corresponding instrumentality of economic activity from the individual point of view, are only superficially disconnected from ethical life. In fact, in both Hegel and Dewey, the division of labor is itself an essential moment of ethicality: not only indirectly, because it allows the community to reproduce itself materially, but much more directly and importantly, because the inscription of individual activity within the overall organization of social life is the properly ethical condition for the individual’s participation in political life. In later writings,10 Dewey acknowledges the separate moment of deliberation marking the specificity of politics by contrast with social cooperation. But this acknowledgment in no way weakens the fundamental intuition that democracy in the end designates a “social ideal” rather than a specifically

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political one. As announced, it is the pragmatist understanding of reflexivity that allows Dewey to maintain his key intuition without repeating his early reductive stance on politics. The intersubjective and reflexive definition of truth in the pragmatist tradition is well known. Truth-seeking procedures, notably in the sciences, are seen as extensions of those everyday procedures that we put into play when some implicit assumptions are held in check by disruptions of experience and their failure to eventuate. Truth-seeking procedures are thus reflexive processes inquiring into, and correcting, the implicit assumptions that have been proven wrong. And for the pragmatists this process, famously, is best engaged in via a community of inquiry. In other words, it is in the essence of scientific inquiry to be “reflexive cooperation.” In his later writings, Dewey simply completes the circle that had led from society to science, back to social life. As Honneth reconstructs his argument: “in social cooperation, the intelligence of the solution to emerging problems increases to the degree to which all those involved could, without constraint and with equal rights, exchange information and introduce reflections.”11 This then leads to an idea of democratic deliberation which, as reflexive, is now relatively separate from the immanence of social life: democratic deliberation, like scientific debate, is that reflexive moment where the community of “inquirers” attempts to solve as one community a problem that has emerged in an area that concerns everyone. This, however, is not yet sufficient to justify the link that is supposed to be maintained between democratic deliberation, in its relative autonomy from social life, and the strong social ideal inspired by Hegel and Marx. The problem of linking politics and social life from the pragmatist perspective amounts to the following question: whilst the community of the “involved” is not problematic in scientific inquiry, it becomes the core problem in social philosophy. It is unproblematic to define democratic procedures as reflexive deliberations over problems arising in social life. The whole question is: who is involved in those problems and in what capacity? Why should these problems arising in social life involve all members of social life, and even more pointedly, why those members in their involvement in the division of labor? The response to this question is crucial if the division of labor and the strong social ideal depicted in Dewey’s early writings are to retain their significance. It would be perfectly conceivable, for example, to hold a similar, reflexive, version of democracy, for example a Habermasian one, without making the political moment rest strongly on the division of labor. In brief, it is clear how democracy can be described as reflexivity; the whole difficulty, and originality, of Dewey, is to make it a reflexive cooperation, where cooperation is not just cooperation at the political level, but political cooperation based on social cooperation.

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Once again, the missing link is provided by a pragmatist conceptual scheme. This scheme will be crucial in the subsequent discussions of Honneth’s approach to the economy: Social action unfolds in forms of interaction whose consequences in the simple case affect only those immediately involved; but as soon as those not involved see themselves affected by the consequences of such interaction, there emerges from their perspective a need for joint control of the corresponding actions either by their cessation or by their promotion.12

On that model, political procedures are called for to coordinate and regulate the consequences of actions that originate at first from particular parts of society, but which can be seen to in fact affect all members of society. Politics then is truly a reflexive moment where society attempts to solve its own internal problems. The division of labor comes into play in this scheme as soon as the argument is given a normative twist and a specifically democratic version of politics is sought: for all individuals to be involved in the reflexive process of political deliberation, they must already see how they are indirectly affected by the actions in which they are not directly involved. This, division of labor ensures, since it shows how individual activity is essentially related to, indeed defined by, its place with the overall social organism. Put negatively: a society is not truly democratic, even if its political procedures formally are, if social agents cannot see how the actions of others relate to them, and their actions are related to the others. Once again, democratic politics is rooted in a democratic society. Indeed, as Zurn highlights very well, the argument functions at two levels: a fair division of labor is required not just as the (social) condition of true democratic politics; it is also required for subjects to develop their self-esteem. Honneth’s third sphere of recognition is synonymous with the notion that arises from this idea of a just and fair division of labor. As a result: only a fair and just form of a division of labor can give each individual member of society a consciousness of cooperatively contributing with all others to the realization of common goals. It is only the experience of participating, by means of an individual contribution, in the particular tasks of a group, which in its turn cooperates with all the other groups of a community through the division of labor, that can convince the single individual of the necessity of a democratic public.13

We verify here that the direct problem tackled by Honneth in the 1993 article is indeed that of “the moral foundations of democracy,” but that it points in fact to a much broader conception of society at large, to an expansive “social ideal.” Basically, for Dewey, and clearly for Honneth also, there is no sense in talking of democratic politics separate from a democratic

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society. To put it differently, democracy can only be achieved via social transformation, the same conclusion that The Struggle for Recognition had already reached one year earlier. In the mean time, a highly charged concept of the division of labor has been shown to be necessary: political freedom requires justice in the division of labor; through the division of labor, each individual activity is defined in its social significance. Zurn’s critique of Honneth’s reductionist stance in economic matters is based on Honneth’s double argument according to which a fair and just division of labor is the condition for a true democracy, and for a correct individual development. On the one hand, Zurn acknowledges the great insights that Honneth can gain through his return to Dewey: by grounding politics in the ideal of richly articulated and diversified social life, he avoids the monolithic solutions of other value, or identity-orientated political models; he emphasizes the link between plurality in social life and the vibrancy of democracy; and finally he can indeed “emphasize the importance of greater economic equality for a healthy democracy in a way that competing theories do not.”14 At the same time, though, Honneth’s Deweyan solution leads to a fateful truncated view of economic activity, precisely because of the strong link that is from now on established between economic distribution and recognition. The “consciousness of cooperatively contributing to the realization of common goals” not only provides the platform that enables individuals to take part in democratic deliberation. It also provides recognition of the individual’s contribution to society, it gives the individual his or her social value. Honneth thus finds in Dewey, after Mead, a direct confirmation of his third sphere of recognition.15 The problem, however, is that from now Honneth approaches the economy the wrong way around. Because the ideal of a fair and just division of labor has provided such a powerful model for an alternative, more expansive, and basically more radical, image of politics, from now on the economy is only ever analyzed by Honneth in this way. Before the famous exchange with Fraser, one finds in a 2001 article the explicit shift to this position: the rules organizing the distribution of material goods derive from the degree of social esteem enjoyed by social groups, in accordance with institutionalized hierarchies of value, or a normative order. . . . Conflicts over distribution . . . are always symbolic struggles over the legitimacy of the sociocultural dispositive that determines the value of activities, attributes and contributions. . . . In short, it is a struggle over the cultural definition of what it is that renders an activity socially necessary and valuable.16

In this text, the culturalist reduction of the economy seems to be complete. Zurn’s subsequent critical points all rely on the identification of this shift, and the resulting conclusion whereby, basically, the

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economy is explained through culture. In the remainder of his article, Zurn systematically lists all the problems that emerge once economic distribution is analyzed as the result of a “sociocultural dispositive,” and economic injustice is therefore said to have to be redressed through cultural struggles aiming for the recognition of the value of contributions to social cooperation. Honneth’s Reductionist Theory of Social Injustice After he has pointed to the fateful inversion in Honneth’s approach to the economy, the first critical point raised by Zurn is the problematic consequence that arises from the link between distribution and recognition in regard to phenomena of economic injustice. Using Fraser’s ideal-typical example of a person suffering injustice solely on the basis of their economic position (the “skilled white, male industrial worker” retrenched as a result of a speculative corporate merger), or examples like the unequal increase in wages or the impoverishment of large populations due to the fluctuations of global capital, Zurn starts with the commonsense remark, that these injustices “result from the economic imperatives of capitalist markets alone”, that they therefore must be analyzed in pure economic terms, and that it is therefore inadequate to “reduce” such “distributive injustices to injustices in underlying evaluative patterns.”17 The second set of critical points is closely connected to the first, but this time is pitched at the level of social theory more directly. Honneth’s account seems particularly inadequate in view of fundamental premises of contemporary social theory regarding the rise and structure of the capitalistic system. Honneth can reduce economic injustice to a problem of recognition only at the cost of disregarding the fact that, as Fraser claims, “capitalist society’s distinguishing feature, after all, is its creation of a quasi-objective, anonymous, impersonal market order that follows a logic of its own.”18 Honneth thus seems to ignore first of all a basic tenet of social theory: the gradual emancipation of the sphere of material-economic reproduction from the cultural-symbolic. Secondly, he also seems to ignore the resulting logic of capitalistic market, their system-like operation, “a familiar point since Adam Smith and Hegel forward,”19 that markets function as though an “invisible hand” was directing them from behind. In other words, Honneth seems to ignore the basic fact that the explanation of phenomena specific to the economic order ought to be in categories of instrumental and causal, not communicative or normative, rationality. Thirdly, Honneth’s reduction of economic phenomena to the cultural order seems to ignore another fundamental feature of contemporary markets, a feature directly linked with their system-like operation: the fact that the structural differentiation of society leads to an explosion of complexity.

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All this taken together leads to a third, equally serious accusation: if the theoretical analysis conflates phenomena belonging to different orders, its practical relevance is seriously in doubt as it risks advocating practical solutions that fail to address the real causes of injustice, or even worse, advocates solutions that in fact compound the injustice, because, for example, of negative feedback effects it is not able to take into consideration.20 As noted in the introduction, the great strength of Zurn’s attack is its intimate knowledge of the full breadth of Honneth’s writings. He doesn’t simply confront Honneth’s theory of recognition, by propounding an alternative, competing theory. He also undermines Honneth’s theory from within. This is especially the case in the last part of his article, where he takes into account Honneth’s rejoinder to Fraser’s critiques, and reconstructs with great accuracy the spirit of Honneth’s response. The latter is based on the idea that “we should conceive of the rules of material allocation in any society as determined by that society’s comparative evaluation of different ways of contributing to social reproduction and the attributes necessary for doing so.”21 Against the background of the three sets of criticisms expressed above, this solution, Zurn argues, can only work at the cost of facing a fourth problem which only compounds its untenability: Honneth can reduce all economic distribution to the expression of relations of recognition only at such a high level of abstraction, that his analyses become empirically and practically irrelevant. This is what Zurn calls the “generality/concretion dilemma.” This fourth attack on the theory of recognition’s account of economic injustice is waged in separate waves, which repeat some of the earlier accusations. We only need to mention the first two waves, as the third is based on similar arguments as the initial critical point listed above. First, at the level of the political philosophical implications of his model, Honneth can tie so strictly the theory of democracy to the notion of fair and just division of labor only at the cost of yet another sociological reduction: this time, by ignoring the fact that the world of work is no longer the sole foundation for a social cooperation upon which democratic deliberation and individual self-esteem could rely. Honneth therefore can hold on to the 1993 model of reflexive cooperation only if he gives a very abstract notion of “work,” as designating any socially significant individual activity. This, however, makes him incapable of distinguishing between different types of cooperative associations (from bowling clubs to factory floors) and their distinctive significance for allowing individuals to take part in “reflexive cooperation.” But then the theory becomes so abstract as to be empirically and practically useless when it comes to analyzing real forms of injustice, notably in terms of the transformations that would be necessary to challenge distributive patterns (bowling clubs and factory floors, for example, would be signifi-

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cant in very different ways). Secondly, in terms of the analysis of social injustice, Honneth can explain economic injustice in terms that are adequate to its actual economic aspect (for example, the political-economic factors explaining the reality of low wages) only if his definition of work, as that which the recognitive structure is supposed to reward, is so abstract as to be useless empirically and strategically. Honneth would have to accept, for example, to explain capital mobility, the main political-economic reason explaining the low level of wages (if one accepts that capital mobility works as constant pressure against wage increase through the threat of delocalization), as being itself the result of an order of recognition, say between labor and capital. But this would lead to such an abstract and simplistic description of the complex reality of contemporary capitalistic processes as to be without any real value analytically, and thus lead once again to useless or even counterproductive practical recommendations. The call to transform the unjust, recognitive relation between labor and capital would tell us nothing substantial and precise in any given situation, for example in the situation of the “industrial worker.” Once again, Zurn concludes, the theory must choose between theoretical accuracy, at the cost of practical insignificance, or maintain empirical and practical significance at the cost of renouncing the centrality of recognition as paradigmatic notion.

FIRST DEFENSE OF HONNETH: RECOGNITION AND THE EXPERIENCE OF ECONOMIC INJUSTICE Against this devastating attack, the first line of defense consists in granting that recognition theory, qua social theory, is not sufficient to account for the specificity of economic action as opposed to other types of social action, but that it is extremely useful, perhaps irreplaceable, to account for the experience of economic injustice, qua experience. This is the line taken by Emmanuel Renault in the chapter dedicated to the economic institutions of injustice in L’Expérience de l’Injustice and in other recent writings.22 As Renault writes, “It is clear that, on its own, a theory of recognition is incapable of producing a theory of capitalism, but it never intended to do that anyway. However, by relying on theories elaborated by the sociology of work and the economic sciences, it can nevertheless engage in the analysis of the effects of recognition produced by the institutions of waged work and the capitalist market.”23 Instead of reasoning through the causes, making the critique of injustice methodologically dependent on the analysis of the causes of injustice, Renault proposes to conduct the critique of economic injustice by looking at the effects of contemporary economic processes. Why, Renault asks, should a critique through the effects be less effective, qua critique, than a critique

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through the causes?24 It doesn’t have be an either/or alternative. The critique of the impact of economic processes on contemporary minds, bodies, and souls can be shown to complement, rather than replace, a structural critique of political economy. Here, the point would be to show the benefit of adding the critique of pathologies from the experiential perspective to the structural analysis. This is what Renault but also Honneth have both attempted to do in their latest texts. Let us briefly outline the arguments Renault brings forward to demonstrate the relevance of recognition theory for a critique of the experience of economic injustice. This will demonstrate, first of all, the relevance of the theory of recognition for the analysis of contemporary social pathologies. By contrast, this will point to weaknesses in the dualistic approach to socialcultural and economic injustices. Renault’s proposition for a renewed critique of political economy from the perspective of its effects on individuals relies squarely on two of Honneth’s fundamental premises. This basic acceptance of these Honnethian premises is also what allows us to use Renault for a defense of Honneth, despite their dissimilarities on some important aspects of the theory of recognition.25 Renault accepts first of all Honneth’s intersubjectivistic premise, namely, that a positive relation to oneself, itself the condition for a minimally wellfunctioning subjectivity, is fully dependent on the recognition of the social value of one’s existence. He also accepts that work is one of the main types of action through which individuals are able to achieve such social recognition of their individual existence. This second premise is precisely one of the points on which Zurn incriminates Honneth for his alleged sociological naivety. Renault explicitly acknowledges that a Honnethian approach to the critique of economic injustice needs to bite the bullet and run against the grain of much contemporary social theory which has decreed the end of the centrality of work. We return to this key problem of the interpretation of the “centrality of work” thesis later on. Once those two basic premises are accepted (the intersubjective vulnerability of individuals and the importance of work for social recognition), following Renault, what one needs to do is study separately the different institutions involved in the economy and how work is misrecognised, or denied recognition in them. This is done through the study of the pathologies of modern societies which specifically relate to the world of work. Here critical theory relies massively on empirical research drawn from the psychology and sociology of work. The first major economic institution is the market. Working individuals are involved in it in two ways: through the structures of the labor market, and through the recognitive effects of the commodity and services markets. In the labor market, the relevance of recognition theory is obvious. This is after all what the third “sphere of recognition” is explicitly about. As

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Honneth writes in the 2001 Theory, Culture and Society special issue on recognition: “The rules organizing the distribution of material goods (notably wages – JPD) derive from the degree of social esteem enjoyed by social groups, in accordance with institutionalized hierarchies of value.”26 The labor market produces specific injustices, whereby some forms of work, some statuses attached to specific professions, are not sufficiently recognized, or not recognized for their proper social value, and this injustice is reflected in the wages. An unjust scale of wages is directly analyzable in terms of recognitive injustice. In any case, this is quite precisely how it is experienced by those who feel their wage represents a form of social injustice.27 However, as Renault argues convincingly, the commodities and services markets also have recognitive effects (even if at this stage, to repeat, they are not to be “explained” through recognition). The price that the market puts on products is a reflection of the value that society (as a whole or just as an aggregate) attaches to them. In Marx, for example, one of the structural conditions of exchange value is the “social validation” of use value.28 If a product is not seen as being socially useful, it will not be exchanged. This, however, is directly linked to work: for the work of an individual to be part of social labor and take place within the division of labor, it has to be recognized as being socially valid, as producing socially validated products. In the capitalistic system, this occurs through the exchange of the products of labor. The price of a product is therefore a more direct than indirect recognition of the value of that individual’s activity. Beyond the issue of any causal explanation of the formation of prices, the fact remains that the prices of the products of labor reflect a recognitive order. And so the recognition model is particularly well placed to give a rich and accurate account of real experiences of economic injustice in contemporary markets. This is a very basic but quite important point to stress in defense of recognition theory. Indeed, as a matter of fact, many social struggles in developed and developing nations relate directly to the question of wages, and in these struggles, it would appear that the theory of recognition can point to a strong empirical verification of its conceptual claims. Before we talk about the “skilled, male industrial worker who loses his job because of a corporate merger” and other cases brought forward by opponents of recognition theory, it seems difficult to ignore the massive sociological reality that many social struggles of the present turn around the question of wages, or more simply, that one of the main individual experiences of injustice in contemporary societies turns around the feeling that one’s wage is not a fair reward for one’s contribution to society. This remark can be taken in two ways. First, it is simply a way of pointing to Honneth’s critics, that this is not a minor form of modern experience, that it is in fact a very important one, at least in “quantitative” terms. This is a simple empirical vindication of recognition theory: as a matter of fact

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a great deal of contemporary injustice today has to do with direct forms of misrecognition of people’s contributions to society, to injustices and inequalities in the order of material and symbolic remunerations. More theoretically, we can already make a general point: such substantive link between social reality and the norms of the social critique is crucial for a critical theory program. This is what has guided Honneth from the beginning. It draws our attention to the question that Honneth has consistently aimed at functionalist or system-theoretical approaches to economic injustice: in what way are the norms of critique immanent to the social reality you are criticizing?29 To formulate Honneth’s question as simply as possible: what exactly is unjust in economic injustice? Consider for example the now famous “skilled white male worker who becomes unemployed due to a factory closing resulting from a speculative corporate merger.” What exactly in unjust in his plight? In order to account for the normative aspect of the economic fact, Honneth argues, you need to consider it from the perspective of the experience of the worker himself. The injustice would then have to be described in terms similar to these: “losing one’s job as a result of a financial deal.” And if you then ask what, from that perspective, constitutes the injury, chances are you will say something like this: that the worker’s contribution through his investment in the job, over a period of time, was simply disregarded, counted for nothing, was not recognized, in the face of the power wielded by financial interests. His subjective investment, his person, basically meant nothing in the face of financial operations. The point that is made here should not be misconstrued. At this stage, the issue is not the link between the normative description of injustice and the explanation of the causes of injustice. This is the topic of the next part. The point here is strictly the recourse to social experience for the cogency of the normative description. From that point of view, an indirect effect of Fraser’s methodological dualism (the strict distinction between normative description and causal explanation) is that in her model the norms underpinning the normative description itself, qua description, are external to the experience of the individuals. For the retrenched worker, however, the injustice is not that he cannot fully participate in society, but that he has counted for nothing. From the point of view of a Critical Theory program, such a link is essential. As we will see in a moment, it has also significant political relevance. Now, the second great institution of the economy: the capitalist firm, can also be shown to produce injustices that are best analyzed as injustices of recognition. Again, this is a very important area to focus on if one is interested in contemporary social pathologies. What Renault has in mind here is the type of suffering that has resulted from the shift to post-Fordist modes of work organization. Indeed, the empirical material Renault refers to is also at the heart of two recent articles by Honneth dedicated to the “paradoxes of capitalism.”30 Sociological and psychological research has

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documented beyond doubt the seriousness of pathologies directly related to the new modes of production and work organization. This trend, as Honneth shows, is compounded by other contemporary social developments that contribute through their own logic, to making individual subjectivity a new enforced norm that can in some cases lead to an increase in subjective vulnerability. Once again, the focus on the reality of contemporary societies, this time in terms of the reality of contemporary work, provides a powerful empirical vindication of recognition theory. This empirical vindication, once again, is also a theoretical one, since it is precisely a distinctive feature of Critical Theory, taken strictly, that it establishes a strong link, not just between social experience and critique, but also, more precisely, between its normative apparatus and social pathologies. By focusing on the importance of work for contemporary individuals, as one of the main axes in their lives through which they can develop their subjectivity, or, in pathological cases, find their subjective life affected, the theory of recognition proves particularly well placed to deal with one of the most important areas of socially induced suffering in contemporary societies. It proves this by showing first of all, in its conceptual apparatus, how important work is normatively for modern subjectivity. And it proves this secondly, by providing an adequate theoretical grammar to describe contemporary pathologies of work. This critical nexus: pathologies of work as specifically social pathologies, and the centrality of these pathologies in modern society—this nexus has always been at the heart of Honneth’s thinking, right from the beginning.31 With the development of the recognition paradigm, notably through the various shifts in the interpretation of the “third sphere,” it could appear as though work gradually receded in the background. The third sphere of recognition seems to give only a partial entry point into contemporary pathologies of work, by focusing solely on the social-psychological, the recognition of one’s contribution to the division of labor at large. Renault’s treatment of the pathologies of work, as it relies in particular on the groundbreaking work of Christophe Dejours, is able to cover more dimensions of the vast array of injustices in the world of work. In particular, it can take into account different types of pathologies that are difficult to approach theoretically yet essential in the face of the modern experience of work: the different types of suffering linked to the lack of recognition of individuals’ psychosomatic investment in their work.32 However, with his latest studies on the paradoxes of capitalism, Honneth has reconnected, albeit in altered ways, with his initial project of a “critical conception of work.” His diagnosis of the pathologies of the neoliberal economy has regained some of the diagnostic wealth of his earlier writings on work. By contrast with Renault’s and Honneth’s analyses of post-Fordist pathologies as pathologies of recognition, a dualistic approach, with its emphasis

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on the economic aspect of economic injustice runs the risk of severing social-theoretical analysis from real social pathologies, and thus of remaining blind to their reality or at least greatly underplaying their gravity, but also their theoretical import. Undeniably, there are other sites in contemporary societies, beyond work, “for the development of participation-motivating self-esteem through cooperative activity.”33 This is where the overemphasis on political-philosophical dimension in the 1993 article which dealt with Dewey’s theory of democracy leads one astray. As we saw, Zurn is right to establish a direct link between that article and Honneth’s broader interpretation of the division of labor, notably in its impact on economic injustice. But by focusing so much on the political-theoretical side of the argument (that democracy requires a fair division of labor), he seems to underestimate what makes the theory of recognition invaluable for a critical analysis of the recognitive effects of contemporary economic systems. Reminding Honneth of the great references in twentieth-century social and political theory that have supposedly established as fact the marginalization of work experience for contemporary subjects, both for their self-realization and their participation in democratic life, one runs the risk of underestimating the importance of work today, as a result of the mass of suffering that post-Fordist work organizations impose on so many individuals. This underestimation of work threatens to come at a high political cost: many of today’s political struggles do as a matter of fact center on work, not just in relation to the problem of wages, but also regarding the conditions of work, and the resistance to the unrelenting attacks of neocapitalism and its political representatives on all forms of workers organizations and associations. Once again, the argument at first is mainly empirical: Fraser and Zurn do not pay sufficient attention to the great sensitivity of recognition theory to the real existing social pathologies of our times, with their real political refractions. Zurn could reply that this criticism is extremely weak because it amounts to saying that he has not sufficiently acknowledged the empirical accuracy of Honneth’s model. He could point out that his core criticism in relation to the function of work remains unaltered: Honneth ignores the fact that other forms of social interaction today can also provide the sense of selfesteem through cooperation that is required as a basis for true democracy. But the empirical claims made above also have social-theoretical import: the extent and gravity of the suffering caused by work show in the negative that, notwithstanding Habermasian and post-Habermasian social theory, work remains a central medium for subjective identities today, and indeed an essential precondition of true democratic life.34 To say it in very simple terms, one of the strong points of recognition theory is that it shows like no other how contemporary societies are “sick with work,” or that their sickness is “a sickness of work.” If democracy designates a social ideal and

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not just a set of formal procedures it is democracy itself that is affected by this sickness. Zurn acknowledges at several points in his article that “Honneth is surely right about how most distributive harms are experienced by individuals,”35 but this concession only makes things worse, because it in no way attenuates the sustained criticism of Honneth’s social-theoretical framework. This indicates that in the Fraserian model of critical theory, there is a radical methodological gap between social experience and social theory. Feelings of injustice are only epiphenomenal by comparison with the “sociotheoretic” truths that only the critical theorist has access to: namely, the relevant norms of critique and the relevant explanations of injustice. Even before we address the issue of the causes of injustice, the radical gap between experience and critique shows its limitation very quickly, from a “critical theory” perspective. It is not just a truncated view of current social pathologies, especially those resulting from the organization of work, to interpret them solely as obstacles to full social participation. This amounts to an intellectualization of what are direct attacks on individual senses of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. More deeply the severing of critique from experience implies that critical social theory is not interested, as theory, in the subjective effects of social processes. Against this tendency towards an objectivistic attitude towards social reality, it seems important, in today’s context, to trust subjective experience, notably when its reports to what extent the intensification of work, both as an activity and as a psychological demand, leads to numerous forms of physical and psychological distress. Whatever great theorists might have said about the pluralization of modern identities, the massive empirical literature in the sociology and psychology of work should also be taken seriously.36 In any case, this severing of critical social theory from social experience is precisely what Honneth has constantly rejected. This is one of the central points of contention he has with Habermas, for example.37 This has direct political implications. According to the classical definition of critical theory, its grounding in pretheoretical facts is twofold: first in terms of the norms of critique, which have to be immanent to social life; and second, at the other end of the circle so to speak, in terms of the practical (political) import of theory, which has to be able to relate practically and productively to real social struggles. One important aspect of this critique of sociological abstraction concerns the political import of critical theory. As early as 1980, in the book cowritten with Joas, and in a number of articles since, Honneth has linked the severing of social theory from social experience to a rupture of the circle between theory and practice. In Habermas, the analysis of social reproduction in terms of ideal communication and the borrowing of system-theoretical arguments to describe societal rationalization make it impossible for social theory to turn productively to practical attempts

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at transforming society. The objective descriptions of social theory describe processes that occur behind the backs of the participants and therefore cannot directly inform their struggles. Recognition theory is devised to a great extent to avoid this shortcoming: it intends to be a communicative theory of society that avoids the severing from social experience, in terms of its normative language and consequently in terms of its capacity to enlighten social struggles. By contrast, the Fraserian framework seems to repeat the Habermasian objectivism in relation to economic injustice, with similar detrimental political consequences. As soon as one accepts uncritically the vision of commodities and labor markets as social systems operating according to their own, specific imperatives, the critique of markets appears external and arbitrary. What, then, is the political recommendation derived from the imperative of “participatory parity”? Given that the norm is external to the markets, it seems to resume itself to an empty demand to “change” the current structure of production and exchange. It is difficult to see what more precise, practical recommendations the “participatory parity” model could advocate by comparison with the model of recognition. Indeed, since it refuses to anchor its theoretical claims in social experience, it does not have the Honnethian option of finding some initial signs in the social movements themselves. But there is a more serious problem. What is the credibility of a demand to change structures of production and exchange if one views markets as functional subsystems obeying a strictly instrumental, nonnormative logic of their own? And worse still, if one views those markets as historical products of systemic differentiation? Both features seem to entail the conclusion that contemporary markets have developed as a result of a logic of maximization of economic efficiency, are products of rationalization processes. Habermas drew the correct conclusion from that thesis by restricting his critique of political economy to the thesis of the colonization of lifeworlds, without putting the critical acumen into markets themselves. In short, as soon as one uncritically goes along with a systemic vision of markets, it seems difficult to see how one can avoid a slide from functional efficiency to social normativity. After all, if markets have developed according to their own logic, does this not mean increased economic efficiency? This is the massive argument presented by all those who reject calls for transforming the current economic order: how do you know that your external norms, if applied, would actually make things better? If markets are the “invisible hands” that maximize their efficiency behind the backs of the agents involved, why would you want to trifle with them? Would you not make things worse? In the light of the alleged functional superiority of markets, what is the normative validity of subjective effects? Methodological dualism seems to want to have it both ways: against economic rationalism, it brings forward maldistribution as an unjust effect of markets; but it has robbed

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itself of the possibility to argue in this way since it appeals to system-theoretic arguments in discussing the economy, in the light of which subjective effects are irrelevant. As we can see, the discussion about the grounding of the norms of the critique of economic injustice inevitably takes us into the explanatory problem of the causes of economic injustice. We now turn to this problem, the relationship between critical theory and its implicit theory of economic reality.

THEORY OF RECOGNITION AND ECONOMIC THEORY The severing of the critique of economic injustice from the experience of injustice might constitute a problem or not, depending on one’s orientations in critical social theory, but it seems as though the main point in Zurn’s criticism remains: so far nothing has been said to counter his claim that the theory of recognition, with its emphasis on the moral dimensions of the division of labor, propounds a vision of modern economy that is descriptively false and practically useless or even counterproductive. The rejoinders to Zurn and Fraser so far have amounted to a countercritique based on the idea of a truncated sociological approach to current injustice, but the main point of the dispute, the link between normative critique and causal explanation of injustice, has so far remained untouched. In this last section, I would like to go beyond what both Honneth and Renault have proposed on that topic, and make some tentative first steps in a new direction, seeking to ascertain how far recognition theory could also provide the conceptual grid for an analysis not just of the effects of economic processes, but also of those processes themselves. In fact, as we shall see, we can find in Honneth himself some tantalizing indications already pointing the way in that direction. Renault, as we noted, is quite cautious on this account, insisting solely on the analytical power of recognition theory for the diagnosis of modern pathologies. Honneth on the other hand, as Zurn shows very well, is more ambiguous, sometimes implying that the recognition framework provides more than a grammar of experiences, at other times seemingly backing down and acknowledging that his “concept of recognition is, of course, not sufficient to explain the dynamics of developmental processes in contemporary capitalism.”38 Despite his explicit reservations, I find a point of entry into this new terrain once again in Renault. After acknowledging that “It is clear that, on its own, a theory of recognition is incapable of producing a theory of capitalism, but it never intended to do that anyway,” Renault provides a number of justifications for still upholding the value of that theory in the

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critique of political economy. Not only does the “critique via the effects” provide a good description of pathologies, it also points back, retroactively as it were, to the structures that are responsible for injustice.39 This, we can note, already counters to some extent one of the features of Zurn’s critique. Whilst the latter argues that a nondualistic social theory that fails to analyze economic injustice in economic terms muddles the causal explanation (with the practical downsides already noted), Renault retorts that the close attention to the experience of economic injustice as injustices of recognition in fact already helps to identify the causal, structural forces responsible for injustice. This shift from the phenomenological to the normative to the causal-explanatory occurs in two unrelated ways. At first, there seems to be no reason to go back in a direct way from the phenomenological and the normative to the explanatory. The ways in which people feel misrecognised does not say anything about the reasons for their plight; nor does the critique of an unjust order, whether or not it is grounded in those feelings of injustice. One has to acknowledge, however, that the theory of recognition is also, amongst other things, the theory of this passage from the normative to the explanatory inasmuch as it is a theory of social movements.40 This aspect is particularly well developed by Renault who relies on the sociology of social movements to make explicit the different dynamics that are at play in the transformation of individual feelings of suffering into collective experiences that eventually lead to fullblown political claims. The normative and practical dynamics of social movements, through which the latter structure themselves, formulate their claims, identify their strategic and tactical allies and enemies, and so on, have an irreducible cognitive dimension. A social movement cannot organize itself, in terms of the definition and clarification of its normative and political goals and means, without identifying and analyzing the causes of the wrong against which it is directed. This does not mean that the analysis is necessarily correct. But the moment of analysis of the causes of injustice is an indispensable moment in the rise of a social movement. For the individuals involved in the social movement, this means that understanding that one suffers from socially caused injustice (and not just from individual maladaptation for which each individual is responsible separately) entails understanding how that injustice occurs, in other words, understanding the causes of injustice. Indeed, Honneth’s embrace of a pragmatist conception of emotions to analyze the rise of social movements implies just as much: negative emotions and feelings are the incentives not just to want to change things, but first and foremost incentives to try to understand how and why the habitual ways of being in the world were challenged. The huge difference with Fraser’s model is, once again, that this cognitive process is directly anchored in social experience. At this level, though, the concept of recognition has no explanatory power; it is the concept required for the

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clinical phenomenology of injustice and for its normative indictment, but the notion of practical, normative, and cognitive dynamics entails precisely a passage into a different conceptual landscape with the move to causal explanations. Nothing so far says that in that new landscape (causal explanations) recognition continues to be relevant. Indeed, it seems Renault would be happy to leave it at that, and refrain from making recognition an explanatory concept as well.41 Despite this caution, however, Renault also agrees with Honneth when he shows, like the latter, that contemporary modes of economic production and work organization have placed recognition at the heart of their new operations. Both Renault and Honneth thus speak of recognition as a “factor of production” in the new post-Fordist economy. Recognition becomes a key factor of production in a number of senses: first in that it becomes a central element in the new forms of consumption, advertising, and marketing. This, according to Honneth, is linked to the culture of authenticity and ever increasing individualization that is characteristic of modernity, but which acquires a new form in recent years with the exploitation, the “organization,” of subjective identity features and capacities. This economic exploitation of subjectivity, in the marketing sense of the term, coincides with the exploitation of subjective capacities of workers, who are increasingly under the pressure to conform their subjective identity to the demands of the teams, the company, the brand, and more generally to a new “order of recognition” that constrains them to present their life as a continuous path of symbolic recognition. In describing the shift to a post-Fordist mode of production, Renault and Honneth follow a wealth of French and German sociology, which independently of Honneth’s theory of recognition has described the new economic order in those terms.42 In other words, recognition is one element in the functional explanation of the economy. With this, we move much more decidedly towards the idea that recognition is not just a phenomenological and a normative concept, but also a concept that has explanatory value. We can see where the proposition is heading: recognition is not sufficient to fully explain economic processes, but it is a constitutive element in them. Zurn has highlighted very well the difficulty of such a thesis and Honneth’s difficulties in dealing with it. An extreme version of this idea would be fully “expressivist.”43 It would see all social institutions, including the economic ones, as being “expressions” of recognitive relations. There is no doubt that some of Honneth’s texts flirt with this position.44 According to this model, all social institutions, including the economic ones, are constrained by a normative order which precedes and transcends them. Much more likely is it that economic institutions (like other institutions) produce effects of recognition, and that those relations of recognition are also elements that contribute, in their own way, to a certain extent, but to an extent only, to the functioning of those institutions. This,

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in fact, seems to be Honneth’s position in his final rejoinder to Fraser: “I continue to assume that even structural transformations in the economic sphere are not independent of the normative expectations of those affected, but depend at least on their tacit consent.”45 This, in fact, was Honneth’s position even before he had developed the grammar of recognition. It was the solution he had adopted as an alternative to Habermas’s dualistic analysis of society and the economy. This, obviously, is a central aspect of this discussion, if only because Zurn’s sociological remonstrances to Honneth, and Fraser’s own dualistic social theory, are clearly inspired by Habermas’s partial acceptance of a systemtheoretical description of societal differentiation in relation to the economic and administrative spheres of society. Already in his dissertation, Honneth had flagged an alternative approach to the description of modern capitalism, one that would avoid the risk, extremely serious for the prospects of critique, of propounding a vision of the economy as a norm-free subsystem of society: “in the case of both symbolic and material reproduction the integration of the accomplishments of action takes place on the way toward the formation of normatively constructed institutions. This formation is the result of a process of communication realized in the form of understanding of struggle between social groups.”46 In other words, however systematically the integration of individual actions might appear to occur, Honneth argued already then, this integration, whether in the areas of symbolic or material reproduction, always involves the intervention of institutions, which are themselves concretions of recognitive relations. The most fundamental argument at stake here, which Honneth is forced to deal with, the one notably that makes an expressivist-recognitive theory of the economy inadequate (i.e., the analysis of the economy in pure recognitive terms), is the notion of the complexity of action integration as a result of the unpredictability and impenetrability of the nexus of unintended consequences. Basically, markets cannot be reasonably presumed to be organized through any willful social action. This acknowledgement of the independent, system-like behavior of economic processes is precisely at the heart of Habermas’s hypothesis of a decoupling of subsystems from the lifeworld: “Survival imperatives require a junctional integration of the lifeworld, which reaches right through the symbolic structures of the lifeworld and therefore cannot be grasped without further ado from the perspective of participants.”47 The “invisible hand” of the market mechanisms is too “hidden” to be made sense of by the participants, and it does allow an integration of individual actions that would otherwise be impossible. As a result, two types of action integration, one symbolic, the other material, one through communication, the other via nonlinguistic steering media, must be postulated for modern societies.

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Honneth’s fundamental intuition in social theory is one he shares with Hans Joas, and the one that has been, from his very first texts onwards, the main inspiration behind his critical and constructive work: a thorough, unashamed, action-theoretic stance, rejecting all functionalist and systemic arguments. How can such a stance deal with the problem of the complexity of modern society, which makes a communicative approach to the complexity and apparent functional independence of economic systems untenable? Is an action-theoretical stance in social theory irremediably condemned to committing a basic social-theoretic fallacy, to propounding embarrassing “empirical distortions”? Joas has shown that this objection is based on a misunderstanding of the scope and meaning of an action-theoretical stance: the latter does not deny the existence of unintended, unplanned consequences of action. Rather, it refuses to generalize the consequence drawn from them to apply them to the analysis of society as a whole, and maintains that social action, qua action, remains both theoretically relevant, and indeed necessary for an adequate approach to social movements and democratic theory.48 An action-theoretic stance in social theory does not deny unintended consequences of action, it denies that social action remains alien to, and utterly powerless in front of, them. Quoting Charles Taylor, Joas insists that: “Making intelligible ‘in terms of action’ means the attempt to relate in a transparent way all the unplanned ‘systems’ of consequences of actions to the real actions of real actors. ‘It is certainly not the case that all patterns stem from conscious action, but all patterns have to be made intelligible in relation to conscious action’.”49 To support his claim, Joas remarks, after Honneth, that Dewey’s theory of the division of labor is typically the type of sophisticated social theory integrating the notion of unintended consequences without denying the possibility of a specifically social action.50 Honneth argues along similar lines in his final discussion of Habermas in Critique of Power, but already interprets the action-theoretic approach in a “struggle for recognition” sense. His argument starts in the negative. What Habermas says of material reproduction is in fact already true of communicative action: “the cultural integration of social groups takes place through an entire complex of communicative actions which are not able to be surveyed as such by members of groups.”51 If the impossibility of actively coordinating individual action was the reason behind a system-theoretical approach to the economy, the same would have to abide for culture and social integration, as they too are unintended outcomes of communicative processes. But with the distinctions already hinted at and made explicit by Joas, one does not have to bite the system-theoretical bullet: it is one thing to acknowledge the impossibility of a fully intended functional coordination of action, another to exclude all normative dimensions in the mechanism of action coordination. Rather,

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with Honneth, an alternative image of society can be presented, one that acknowledges its system-like appearance, on account of its complexity, but refuses to radically separate domains of action, and therefore finds a normative component in all of them. This alternative image, then, is one where indeed there are functional dimensions to action coordination, but where, also, relations of recognition, and notably relations of power, play a decisive, “constitutive” role. We can see why the Dewey article, as Zurn correctly saw, provided such an excellent entry point for assessing Honneth’s theory of economics. With Dewey’s social-democratic solution to the problem of “unintended consequences” (through the ideal of a solidarity-based division of labor where each can see his/her actions affecting and being affected by those of others), Honneth had in fact given an preliminary, action-theoretic, intersubjectivistic response to functionalist reservations, and not just an answer to a strict question of political theory. What this solution through a “thick” interpretation of the division of labor precisely entails, Honneth saw very clearly as early as 1988 in The Critique of Power. Already then he had given significant indications about the relationship between the system-like dimension of action coordination, and the communicative-normative (later: recognitive) dimension: “both spheres of reproduction require mechanisms that so unite the particular processes of communication or cooperation in a complex that . . . they are able to fulfill the corresponding functions of symbolic reproduction or material reproduction. In both cases, mechanisms of this kind represent institutions in which the respective accomplishments of action are normatively institutionalized, that is, under the constraint of the action orientations of subjects that are stored up in the lifeworld, while their execution is sanctioned by the degree of autonomy of a society found in democratic agreements or under authoritatively bound orders.”52

The institutional moment that Honneth refers to in this passage is the one through which recognition intervenes constitutively in economic action. Recognition here means normatively regulated social relations, which in fact, inasmuch as they are relations between groups and classes, are always asymmetrical, since they are underpinned by specific relations of power. As the key quote above indicates, Honneth distinguishes two separate moments. First, there can be a coordination of economic actions (of the “accomplishments of action”) only under the constraint of institutionalized “mechanisms” that reflect the state of class and group interactions (and in fact of their conflict, since power is unequally shared). Accordingly, pure, strategic, atomistic individual action, the aggregate of which, according to the neoclassical model, constitutes the economic system, is a pure abstraction. Instead the social-philosophical insight nourished by the intersubjec-

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tivistic premise and a communicative approach to society insists on the fact that economic actions have an irreducibly “cultural” dimension, if by that is meant, as the Critique of Power argues, the class- and group-specific filtering of social action.53 In clear terms: economic processes, as social realities, are always partly “constituted” by the interactions of the groups in presence, because such economic processes require institutions which to some extent reflect the state of the power relations existing between the different groups of society. The institutional dimension that unavoidably frames economic action qua action, as it concretizes the asymmetrical relations of the different social groups at a given time, always introduces a normative dimension into it. Secondly, the “execution” action, in other words, the end result of action coordination, the overall economic action as it actually takes place at the level of society, is subject to a second normative “control”: the reflexive level of politics, in which group struggle, in the case of democratic politics, finds a second, more reflexive, institutionalized expression. In clear, it is an abstraction descriptively (social-theoretically) and a mistake practically, to evacuate from the analysis of economic action the asymmetrical relations of power between groups, which the theory of recognition reframes as struggle for recognition. This solution, where recognition is coconstitutive of economic action, is basically the solution that Honneth brings again into the debate with Fraser, when he asserts that “even structural transformations in the economic sphere are not independent of the normative expectations of those affected, but depend at least on their tacit consent.” Even in the case of economic processes, Honneth proposes, some basic relations of recognition are necessary for the system to function at all, even qua system. Zurn is not happy with this solution because, according to him, it is, once again, caught in the generality/particularity dilemma. According to him, this solution remains undeniably true if it remains at a very high level of abstraction. For example, a basic trust, some socialization processes, a legal framework, are necessary for economic action to be possible at all. But for him this claim is so abstract that it yields no specific explanatory benefit. If on the other hand, social theory aims to provide the kind of explanatory economic analysis that Fraser sketches with her list of political-economic factors behind low wages, then one has to give up the recognitive stance. Instead, one is forced to rely on a functionalist analysis, of the “market imperatives” kind. But Zurn and Fraser in my opinion give an inaccurate image of what economic analysis can achieve. They seem to take it for granted that homogeneous, uncontroversial analyses of economic phenomena can be provided in every case. This seems to be a naïve vision of what economics as a science can offer. Economics as a theory and as an empirical descriptor is anything

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but a unified science. Economic science is not unified in any of its aspects: not in its retrospective descriptions (count the many opposed explanations of historical economic crises); nor in its explanations of current economic phenomena; nor in its predictions; not even at the level of basic measurements (take the example of the great incertitude regarding real unemployment rates); nor, and most definitely not, in its basic methodological premises, unless the institutional hegemony of the neoclassical model is mistaken for a scientific proof of validity. It is simply not the case that one can simply gesture towards economic science and trust that it will be able to provide uncontroversial descriptions, explanations, and predictions of economic phenomena. However, the way in which Fraser and Zurn refer to the necessity of an explanation of economic injustice through the “causes of injustice,” seems to gesture towards such value-neutral economic analysis. Secondly, and more positively, one can find in nonneoclassical economic theory, some powerful models that provide a strong support, from within economic theory for the basic suggestions that Honneth makes on the basis of his work in social theory. This is a fascinating aspect of Honneth’s final rejoinder to Fraser on the issue.54 Honneth initially returns the immanent critique perspective against Fraser. He points out that the empirical examples Fraser mentions against him run the risk of repeating Habermas’s gesture: a distinction that is supposed to be purely analytical, the dual “perspectivism” of recognition and redistribution, ends up in an ontological reification of society along dual areas of integration. Fraser runs the risk of contradicting her own methodology by ontologizing the economy as a separate realm of society. Fraser’s and Zurn’s positivistic approaches to the economy seem to originate in the uncritical acceptance of Habermas’s system-theoretical approach to economic issues. Their approach to economic analysis would then be grounded in a social-ontological reification of economic processes as processes severed from social interaction. By contrast with this position, in a fascinating final page, Honneth provides a few thoughts that hint once again at an alternative analysis of economic processes which would encompass the role played by social interactions. His conclusion, then, is that: “There is little sense in merely appealing to the importance of capitalist imperatives without considering how changes in normative expectations and action routines have paved the way for social negotiations about the scopes of these imperatives.”55 What Honneth could have added is that there exist in fact excellent economic theories that can be shown to adopt the main critical intuitions highlighted above. These theories directly rebut the claim that Honneth can marry economic analysis and recognition logic only by succumbing to the generality/concretion dilemma. For example, some of the basic premises of the American institutionalists are very close to those with which Honneth approaches the economy: that it is impossible to study an economic system

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without reference to the broader culture; that individual economic action is therefore always largely informed by its social context, following “working rules” that are essentially normative; that economic “laws” are not laws of nature but institutional arrangements that reflect the balance of power and the state of group antagonism at a give place and time; that conflict, the asymmetry of power relations, is thus crucial in analyzing a given, empirical economic situation (of a whole economy, or a specific labor market).56 I would even claim that Honneth’s criticism of positivistic approaches to the economy overlap massively with some the basic social-theoretical assumptions of regulation theory. This is a very tentative claim, because regulation theory can be read itself in a functionalist way. I will just remark that, on some versions of regulation theory, one rejects a rational-individualistic premise at the methodological level: the basic theoretical gesture is to insist on the social embeddedness of individual action (where economic goals themselves are shown to be dependent on the social context); and the major focus of inquiry concerns the role of mediating forces, in the shape of institutions, which help to explain the shift from the microeconomic to the macroeconomic level. This is basically what the concept of regulation points to: microeconomic relations cannot by themselves explain the coherence and cohesion of the macroeconomic system of the full economy; rather intermediary “mechanisms,” to use Honneth’s language, through which individual actions are coordinated, and which have a fundamental normative dimension, are required, even just at the primary level of description and analysis, even prior to any attempt at critique. Regulation theory also starts with the assumption of asymmetrical power relations, against the neoclassical fiction of a transparent web of relations between individual actors.57 In the present discussion, the important point to draw from the comparison of recognition theory with “heterodox” economic theories is that it helps to see that what appears at first glance to be a commonsense criticism from Fraser and Zurn (that one should analyze economic injustice in economic terms, where economic analysis means pure functional analysis) in fact is not that commonsense after all. By contrast with the countermodels offered by institutionalism and regulation theory, Fraser and Zurn’s own versions of what economic analysis looks like seems too indebted to functional approaches, to the point of granting too much to a neoclassical understanding of economic science and economic reality. Honneth’s critical insights on the other hand appear well supported by those two alternative economic theories. This contrast between the two positions on economic issues becomes especially apparent if we return to the example used by Zurn to prove the uselessness of recognition theory in approaching the injustice, with the example of low wages. All the elements cited by Zurn to demonstrate the “evaluatively independent” logic behind remuneration rates can be shown,

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from an institutionalist perspective, to contain elements of class struggle, as well as mediatory mechanisms in which the balance between employers and employees, capitalists and workers is shifted in favor of the latter, thus explaining the exact price of labor in that particular context.58 Indeed, Fraser herself quotes “the balance of power between labor and capital,” or “the stringency of social regulations” as such “political-economic factors.” This seems to be quite at odds with the notion of markets operating as “results from economic imperatives alone.” This criticism of the Fraserian model is to some degree unfair, because the elements just quoted simply make the point that recognitive structures are not robust enough to account for such economic factors. But we have seen that this is because Fraser has a reductive reading of Honneth on economic issues. Once the depth at which Honneth pitches recognition theory is acknowledged, as the primary force of social integration, as an equivalent, for example, to Dewey’s social-theoretical interpretation of the division of labor, this reading demonstrates its limits. Conversely, Zurn’s acknowledgment that economic processes do require recognitive processes, but that Honneth can only remain very vague on this, is rebutted by the example of the two economic theories cited. If the overlap between Honneth’s social theory and economic institutionalisms can be minimally accepted, the examples of what theories in this camp have achieved in terms of detailed, mathematically formulated, concrete economic analyses of their respective areas of interest, are sufficient rejoinders to the criticism that Honneth can relate the economy to the recognitive order only at the cost of falling to the generality/concretion dilemma. And so the concept of recognition might well possess the conceptual depth that Honneth grants it, even in the economic sphere. Recognition at first is simply a descriptive term providing a conceptual language to describe the phenomenology of contemporary social pathologies. Beyond the phenomenology of injustice, Honneth uses it also as a thread for his alternative theory of justice, as a normative guideline. This chapter has tried to defend the thesis that it is precisely this intimate link between social experience and social theory that is the strength of Honneth’s position. Such a link between pretheoretical experience and social theory is of course the mark of Honneth’s unwavering faithfulness to the Critical Theory program strictly taken. However, such faithfulness brings with it enormous challenges, which his critics have not failed to highlight. As Fraser and Zurn have argued most prominently, to anchor social theory claims in the experience of injustice can lead to reductive positions in theory. This is most obviously the case in regards to economic injustice: even if the (some) experiences of economic injustice can be described in terms of recognition, the causes of that injustice, and therefore the practical measures to be taken against it, surely cannot. This chapter has tried to defend Honneth’s posi-

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tion against these such criticisms, by emphasizing in particular the descriptive and normative cogency of Honneth’s position in the current context. As Emmanuel Renault has shown convincingly, the vocabulary of recognition can help to refresh the critique of capitalism, by providing the possibility of a “critique through the effects.” From that perspective, however, a powerful rejoinder has emerged against attempts to conduct critical social theory without reference to social experience. An objectivistic stance towards the social risks underplaying and misconstruing the real pathologies of the contemporary world. For that reason, it is not clear how such stance would form the basis for a political theory that would be in any way more concrete or cogent than one based on recognition. Indeed, as recognition theory is indebted in its very conceptuality to the reality of social experience, it can be informed by the latter to propose corrections to universally accepted dogmas of contemporary social theory, notably regarding the place of work in contemporary society and for contemporary subjects. Recognition thus appears to be a concept not just with descriptive, normative, and critical value, but also with explanatory value, a key concept of social theory. Indeed, by pointing to the fundamental normative layer underpinning capitalist orders, recognition designates not just the normative core that makes experiences of suffering also experiences of injustice. It also designates a symbolic framework outside of which capitalistic orders would not be able to function. By insisting in this way on the irreducible normative, social-cultural dimensions at the heart of the functioning of economic orders, Honneth performs perhaps the most important intervention in contemporary social theory, by questioning the uncritically accepted vision of markets as autopoetic subsystems obeying an autonomous logic of their own. Honneth’s insistence on the regulating role of social institutions in the very functioning of economic thereby provides a powerful social-theoretical complement to the attempts undertaken within economic theory to challenge the neoclassical hegemony.

NOTES 1. The main texts preceding the 2003 book are articles gathered in Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), notably the “Introduction” and “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Postsocialist’ Age,” 11–40. Also important are “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3 (2000): 107–120 (reprinted in this volume) and “Recognition without Ethics,” Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 2–3 (2001): 21–42. The exchanges with Honneth as said are gathered in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (New York: Verso, 2003).

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2. Christopher F. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 1 (2005): 89–126. 3. See also the excellent discussions of the debate by Simon Thompson, “Is Redistribution a Form of Recognition? Comments on the Fraser-Honneth Debate,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2005): 85–102; and Leonard Feldman, “Redistribution, Recognition, and the State: the Irreducibly Political Dimension of Injustice,” Political Theory 30, no. 3 (2002): 410–40. 4. Christopher F. Zurn, “Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life,’” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26, no. 1 (2000): 115–24. Honneth responds to Zurn’s critique by seemingly dropping previous references to philosophical anthropology and by embracing the solution that Zurn in his review had flagged as the most appropriate (or rather, least dubious) one to ground the normative basis of critical theory: the idea of a normative differentiation accompanying societal differentiation. 5. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution and Democracy,”100. 6. Axel Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today,” Political Theory 26, no. 6 (1998): 763–83. 7. See Axel Honneth, “The Limits of Liberalism: On the Political-Ethical Discussion concerning Communitarianism,” in The Fragmented World of the Social (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 231–46. 8. Notably in the 1888 article John Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” in The Early Works of John Dewey, vol.1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 227–49. 9. Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” 237. 10. Especially in the 1927 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, quoted by Honneth in the reprint edition (Chicago: Gateway Books, 1976). 11. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.” 12. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.” 13. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.” The English translation leaves out the essential clause in the German text: “which cooperates with all the other groups of a community through the division of labor.” 14. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 96–99. 15. See Dewey’s reflection, which is very close to Mead’s similar reflections on the topic: state institutions, by “enabling all members of society to count with reasonable certainty upon what others will do,” create “respect for others and for one’s self,” The Public and Its Problems, 29, quoted by Honneth in “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation,” 771. 16. Axel Honneth, “Recognition or Redistribution? Changing Perspectives on the Moral Order of Society,” Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 2–3 (2001): 43–55. 17. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 101. 18. Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? 214, quoted by Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 102. 19. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 102. 20. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 102–103. 21. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 104.

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22. Emmanuel Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice (Paris : La Découverte, 2004); see in particular chapter 3: “The Institutions of Injustice,” 179–246. See also the following recent texts by Renault, all relevant for the present discussion: “Radical Democracy and an Abolitionist Concept of Justice. A Critique of Habermas’ Theory of Justice,” Critical Horizons 6, no. 1 (2005): 137–52; “Biopolitics and Social Pathologies,” Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 159–77; “Du Fordisme au Postfordisme. Dépassement ou retour de l’Aliénation?,” Actuel Marx 39 (2006): 89–106. See also Jean-Philippe Deranty and Emmanuel Renault, “Politicising Honneth’s Ethics of Recognition,” Thesis Eleven 88, no. 1 (2007): 92–111. 23. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 212. 24. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 212. 25. The two main points of difference between Honneth and Renault in their use of recognition for social critique are: the concept of identity, which Renault defends as an essential notion for social critique; the relation between recognition and institutions. The latter is a central issue for critical theory’s approach to economic phenomena, as section three will demonstrate. 26. Honneth, “Recognition or Redistribution?” 54. 27. Zurn accepts this analysis, and indeed finds it to be one of the strong aspects in Honneth’s recognitive approach to the economy. At the same time, however, it is precisely this quote which allows Zurn to launch his subsequent criticisms. 28. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 215. 29. This is for example the leading question that guides his critical reappropriation of Marx, see especially the crucial article in which the shift to recognition within a Marxist paradigm is sketched: Axel Honneth, “Domination and Moral Struggle: The Philosophical Heritage of Marxism Reviewed,” in The Fragmented World of the Social, 3–14. 30. Axel Honneth, “Organized Self-realization. Some Paradoxes of Individuation,” European Journal of Social Theory 7, no. 4 (2004): 763–78; Martin Hartmann and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constellations 13, no. 1 (2006): 42–58. 31. See Axel Honneth, “Work and Instrumental Action,” in The Fragmented World of the Social, 15–49. On the transformations of Honneth’s social-critical account of work, see Nicholas Smith, “Work and the Struggle for Recognition,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 1: (2009): 46–60. 32. See Christophe Dejours, Souffrance en France. La Banalité de l’Injustice Sociale (Paris: Seuil, 1998). In English, see Christophe Dejours, “Subjectivity, Work and Action,” Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 45–62. For a critique of the lack of consideration of the material, somatic dimensions in Honneth’s approach to recognition and recognition pathologies, see my “Repressed Materiality: Retrieving the Materialism in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 113–40. 33. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 106. 34. See my “Work and the Precarisation of Existence,” European Journal of Social Theory 11, no. 4 (2008): 443–63, which presents the work of Christophe Dejours, especially the theses presented in Souffrance en France in the context of contemporary social theory. 35. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 116.

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36. One can acknowledge the pluralization of the axes of identity formation for modern individuals, and still insist on the relative centrality of work. Work remains decisive as a factor of identity formation for a great number (the majority?) of individuals, at a basic empirical level. At a conceptual level, one can show that work remains central, not in the sense of being the exclusive axis of identity formation, but in the sense that the work experience is a privileged place where the different identities can be either successfully integrated, or where they come apart, for example when contradictory demands can no longer be reconciled (between family and work for example). The latter is a major source of work pathologies today. See Yves Clot, La Fonction Psychologique du Travail, 4th edition (Paris: PUF, 2004). 37. See in particular Axel Honneth, “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination” in Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2007), 80–96 as well as Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situation Critical Theory Today,” in Habermas: A Critical Reader, ed. Peter Dews (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999), 320–37. 38. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 250, quoted by Zurn, at 114. 39. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 212. 40. Chapter 8 of Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition is dedicated to that question. 41. Against this, Renault propounds a “constitutive” theory of recognition in relation to institutions: institutions are not just expressions of presocial recognition relations, they also produce their own recognitive relations. Specific institutions produce specific forms of injustice. If that is true, however, then it seems difficult to limit the ontological status of these forms of recognition to that of effects: they would seem to also be involved in the functioning of those institutions, and thus be “coconstitutive” of them. 42. In particular the work of Stephan Voswinkel and Hermann Kocyba. Similar points can be garnered from the work of Luc Boltanski, in particular in his book cowritten with Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2007). 43. See the essential passage in Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 196–200. A similar argument is presented in Renault, “Politicising the Ethics of Recognition,” 99–102. 44. See Thompson, “Is Redistribution a Form of Recognition?” 93. 45. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 250. See Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 114. 46. Axel Honneth, Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), 293. 47. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume II, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 232. Quoted by Honneth, Critique of Power, 292. See another late summary from Habermas: “Modern societies are integrated not only socially through values, norms, and mutual understanding, but also systematically through markets and the administrative use of power. Money and administrative power are systemic mechanisms of societal integration that do not necessarily coordinate actions via the intentions of participants, but objectively, “behind the backs” of participants. Since Adam Smith, the classic example for this type of regulation is the market’s ‘invisible hand’,” Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996), 39.

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48. Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 223–44. 49. Joas, The Creativity of Action, 232. 50. Joas, The Creativity of Action, 290n73. 51. Honneth, Critique of Power, 292. 52. Honneth, Critique of Power, 293. 53. Honneth finds this concept of “cultural action,” the class-specific experience of the overall division of labor, in the interstices of Horkheimer’s early writings: “The ‘cement’ of a society . . . consists in the culturally produced and continuously renewed action orientations in which social groups have interpretively disclosed their own individual needs as well as the tasks required of them under the conditions of the class-specific division of labor,” Critique of Power, 26. Honneth refers specifically to Max Horkheimer, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research,” in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993), 1–14. 54. See Honneth’s counterobjection in Redistribution or Recognition?, 253–56. 55. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, 256. 56. For a clear synthesis of “old” and “new” institutionalist arguments, see Malcolm Rutherford, Institutions in Economics: the Old and the New Institutionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 57. Indeed, regulation theory provides a revised version of the labor theory of value, against the assumption that the latter is now definitely condemned to scientific antiquity. A clear and synthetic introduction into regulation theory can be found in M. Aglietta, “Capitalism at the Turn of the Century: Regulation Theory and the Challenge of Social Change,” New Left Review 232, no. 1 (1998). In particular, this paper makes quite explicit the social-theoretical and political implications of regulation theory. 58. For a precise analysis of neoliberal economic reality integrating the dimension of class struggle, see the decisive study by Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution, trans. Derek Jeffers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).

14 On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality Arto Laitinen

Often different theorists use different terms to discuss the same issues, and same terms to discuss different issues.1 Terminological confusions will always be with us, and the best we can hope for is clarity in different usages. But sometimes even a single mind may be slightly torn by conflicting understandings on how to delineate the scope of a concept, how to determine how extensive field some term or concept has—and therefore what scope of phenomena a successful theory is ultimately meant to cover. This essay is a response to that kind of conflict when it comes to “recognition” as used in such slogans as “struggle for recognition,” “need for recognition,” “mutual recognition,” “interpersonal recognition,” “public recognition,” “recognition of difference,” “institutional recognition” or “emotional recognition.” The conflict arises from two basic insights which play a role in defining or delineating what recognition is. I call them the mutuality-insight and the adequate regard–insight. The former is the idea that recognition involves inbuilt mutuality: ego has to recognize the alter as a recognizer in order that the alter’s views may count as recognizing the ego. There always needs to be two-way recognition for even one-way recognition to take place. The adequate regard–insight in turn is that we do not merely desire to be classified as recognizers, but to be treated adequately, in the light of any and all of our normatively relevant features. Both of these insights build on a third central idea, that recognition from others matters because it is relevant to one’s practical relations-to-self: say, respect from others is relevant for self-respect. But crucially for this paper, the two insights pull in different directions—they are in tension when it comes to deciding the scope of “recognition.” This paper is an attempt to 319

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negotiate the tension by comparing and assessing more and less restricted views on “recognition.” I discuss four issues on which definitions of recognition may be more or less restricted. The first question concerns the scope of possible recipients of recognition, and the second question possible recipient-dependent conceptual restrictions on whether recognition has taken place at all. On these questions I try to be true to both of the two conflicting insights. The mutuality-insight leads naturally to a strict conception of recognition (only recognizers can be recognized; recognition takes place only when two-way recognition takes place). By contrast, the adequate regard–insight leads to an unrestricted view (also other beings than recognizers can be treated adequately, and one-way adequate regard is conceptually possible). I argue that the tension between these is best negotiated by a two-part story, which will distinguish terminologically recognizing (and being recognized) from successfully giving and getting recognition. It is slightly unfortunate to have to draw such technical terminological distinctions, but drawing this distinction helps to make substantive points that upon reflection need to be made, given the mutualityinsight and adequate regard-insight. Or so I argue. The other two questions are: what sort of responses to what sort of features amount to recognition. Again, the adequate regard–insight would lead to an unrestricted normativist view: any kinds of responses that are normatively called for by any normatively relevant features may be cases of recognition. The mutuality-insight might motivate a narrower suggestion developing the idea that only other recognizers (or persons) can be recipients of recognition2: only the kind of features that can only be had by other recognizers (or persons) can serve as the basis of recognition, and only the kind of responses, which are forms of taking the other as a recognizer (or a person) count as recognizing.3 I will argue that while such responses to such features are an important subclass of recognition, the unrestricted normativist view captures the full scope of recognition better. We should not in advance define recognition in a restricted way which rules some cases out (even though the mutuality-insight might seem to motivate some restrictions). We can fully preserve the force of the mutuality-insight with the two-part story, without restricting the scope of features and responses that amount to recognition.

SELF-RELATIONS AND WHY RECOGNITION MATTERS A starting point is the idea that getting recognition matters for the practical relations-to-self of the recognized ones. Respect is related to self-respect, esteem to self-esteem, denigrating feedback concerning one’s abilities is related to an internalized sense of incapacity, experienced humiliations are

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related to a sense of inferiority, and so on.4 The connection between recognition from others and self-relations is a readily intelligible and interpretative one, although also causal. Now various other things may also affect relations-to-self. Say, eating pills with certain chemicals may cause changes in one’s moods or brain functionings, which may then causally contribute to changes in one’s self-esteem. These kinds of effects are totally different from the way in which, say, respect from others is connected intelligibly to self-respect. They have none of the rational connection between “A thinks such-and-such about B” and “B thinks such-and-such about B.” It seems that recognition from others matters to relations-to-self in a distinctive “readily intelligible” way, which we understand when we understand what recognition is. The relevance to relations-to-self may be central in trying to delineate what recognition is: perhaps any feedback from others which is relevant for one’s relations-to-self in the readily intelligible way will count as recognition. In the next subsections I develop this insight in two rival directions which are in tension (one stressing mutuality, the other stressing adequate regard). In addition to the relevance to relations-to-self there are five further (related) ways in which getting recognition matters. Before moving on, it is good to mention these to prevent the impression that relevance to selfrelations is the only reason why recognition matters. A plausible definition of recognition should leave conceptual room for all these ways in which recognition matters, and a satisfactory full account of recognition would cash out all these claims, or explain why some of them are mistaken. First of all, recognition is directly desirable in itself. Desire for recognition in its different forms is an intelligent, independent motivational force. Note that a desire for recognition can be abused by others—say, by giving merely symbolic recognition to underpaid workers. But its existence can also be falsely neglected—as in the neoliberal assumption that the only thing that motivates people is money and economic rewards. Secondly, recognizing and getting recognition are constitutive of nonalienated horizontal relationships of unity, of different kinds (for example, mutual respect, mutual care), which are directly desirable, and are a matter of being at home (bei sich) in the social world. Recognizing and getting recognition are constitutive also of nonalienated vertical relationships of unity, of different kinds (for example, living under just, legitimate, self-governed institutions, living under institutions whose goals and principles one can identify with), which are directly desirable, and a matter of being at home (bei sich) in the institutional world. Consider for example recognition from the state. Just like recognition from other individuals is relevant for the self-relation of the individuals, so is recognition from the political institutions. And just like recognition

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from others is constitutive of reconciliation, unity or “being by oneself in another” so is recognition from the state. Or negatively, lack of recognition from the state may be constitutive of alienation and frustration. Some violations make the state something like an “enemy,” some policies or goals make it more like a “stranger,” and some structural features may make it “impotent” in crucial respects, and such experiences may lessen one’s feeling of “being at home” in the institutional world. Thirdly, via affecting self-relations of the relevant parties, getting recognition is a precondition of agency.5 As Honneth and Anderson sum it up: In a nutshell, the central idea is that the agentic competencies that comprise autonomy require that one be able to sustain certain attitudes toward oneself (in particular, self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem) and that these affectively laden self-conceptions—or, to use the Hegelian language, “practical relations to self”—are dependent, in turn, on the sustaining attitudes of others.6

Fourthly, recognizing and getting recognition is arguably in different ways a precondition of identity formation, self-realization, good life and positive freedom. For example, defining one’s practical identity and fundamental aims in life is arguably a dialogical business, and self-realization via such identity-defining aims benefits from feedback and “personalized esteem” from others. Further, good life is arguably spent in subjectively rewarding pursuit of objectively worthwhile activities and relationships, which include standing in relations of recognition, and arguably one’s freedom is partly constituted via guarantees of nondomination which are forms of recognizing and respecting one’s standing.7 Fifthly, we can point out the possible ontological relevance for the very existence of groups, institutions, states, even persons. Independent states exist only when recognized by other states. It may be that the way in which groups and institutions are dependent on subjective takes can best be cashed out in terms of recognition.8 It might seem puzzling how recognition might play a role in the ontology of persons. But if we accept that human beings are potential persons when born, and acquiring the relevant capacities is dependent on recognition; or if we accept that being recognized is one constitutive aspect of being a person, there is no puzzle.9 So getting recognition matters in various ways, which a satisfactory full theory of recognition will explain. The readily intelligible way in which recognition from others is relevant to the practical relations-to-self is especially helpful in guiding us in the question of what recognition is, or what all subspecies of recognition have in common. But it can lead in different directions when combined with an idea about adequate regard and when combined with an idea about mutuality.

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ADEQUATE REGARD The way that others treat or regard one is relevant for one’s relations-to-self in the readily intelligible way discussed above. So one suggestion might be that perhaps any kind of regard from others counts as recognition or misrecognition—adequate recognition simply being adequate regard from others, and inadequate recognition being inadequate regard. Before discussing such a conceptual connection between regard from others and “recognition,” let us take a closer look at adequate regard. How should A treat and regard B? What are the criteria for adequate treatment or regard? In answering this, we might try to start from A’s prior commitments, or from B’s normative expectations, or from B’s actual experiences of being treated adequately or inadequately, or from normative outcomes of actual struggles or contracts between A and B. These will definitely play some role in explaining how actual practices and goings-on are structured by normative convictions. But actual convictions are always fallible—think of cases of ruthless slave owners with consistent lack of commitments towards the well-being of slaves, or slaves with internalized sense of inferiority and consistent set of low normative expectations. One would like to say that there is something to be criticized or improved in their actual commitments or expectations, however consistent they are. So it seems we cannot but assume that changes in actual convictions may be cases of improvement or learning. Something is learning only if the latter view is better than the earlier view. And it is better thanks to its content, not thanks to the fact that it is held at a later stage—mere temporal change does not tell us which changes are for the better and which for the worse. It would have been better to have the better views even before. So some contents of convictions are (at any given time) better than others, whether or not they are actually held at that time. We may then say that the criterion for adequate (as opposed to inadequate) regard is given by the contents of the best possible views and convictions that would be available to the parties. (Unavailability may in principle rule out some views that would otherwise in principle be even better). And these contents of adequate regard give us the best theory of what are the relevant differences between people and relevant equality between people that make a difference in how they ought to be treated and regarded. I have elsewhere defended the view that in addition to the basic equality of persons, at least differences in merits and in special relationships (such as parent-child relationship) make a normative difference.10 Something is adequate regard towards a person if it is an appropriate response to the normatively or evaluatively significant features F of the other. These features generate reasons to respond in certain ways—certain

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responses are called for or required by the features. The reason-governed “responses” at stake can arguably be of a variety of sorts of things: there is a plurality of kinds of responses that are normatively called for. Following Raz the relevant responses may be said to include first, “appropriate psychological acknowledgement of value,” or “regarding objects in ways consistent with their value, in one’s thoughts, understood broadly to include imaginings, emotions, wishes, intentions, etc.,”11 and secondly, expressing this cognition in language or by other symbolic means. Third, relevant responses include protecting, preserving, and not destroying what is of value. Fourth, the beings with evaluative features can be engaged with in different ways, which Raz explains in this way: “We do so when we listen to music with attention and discrimination, read a novel with understanding, climb rocks using our skill to cope, spend time with friends in ways appropriate to our relationships with them, and so on and so forth. Merely thinking of valuable objects in appropriate ways and preserving them is a mere preliminary to engaging with value.”12 A fifth kind of response consists of various kinds of external promotion which goes beyond protection but is not a matter of engaging with the valuable objects. Thus there is a variety of kinds of adequate responses. There is also a variety of normatively relevant features which call for such responses. The recipient may be a sentient being capable of pain and pleasure, a mortal being, an agent, a moral agent, a thinker, a valuer, a self-conscious being, subject of emotions, a person; holder of some institutional status; good in some particular respect in some genre—having merits or achievements; having instrumentally valuable features; having intrinsically valuable features; a friend, a loved one; etc. These features call for different kinds of responses. I will assume that there is an irreducible plurality of principles that are relevant, corresponding to the plurality of features that can be at stake (against causing pain or death, for respecting agency, for granting institutional standings in a fair manner etc). Let me add a comment about “responsiveness.” I will assume that it is the normative features of the other that directly call for or require responses. The other person need not have made any suggestions, requests, invitations, questions, queries, demands, summons, calls for help. But of course, she may have. And indeed, such initiatives call for a response more explicitly, and in typical cases the fact that an initiative was made will have normative significance. (Some initiatives may of course be normatively insignificant, and make no difference to the normative predicament of the other agent). Talk of “response” may suggest that we mean responsiveness in the narrow sense in which a response is always a second step in an interactive sequence, whose first step is an initiative. But the initiative (the first step in an interactive sequence) can itself be taken to be a response to a situation, or to normative requirements. Initiatives are always made from within

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some or other normative predicament—sometimes what is called for are “initiatives” in this narrow sense. Think of a group of people waiting in a lobby and someone striking up a conversation. And naturally, some initiatives may be insulting or violate the rights of others. So even initiatives can be responses to a situation, and may be cases of inadequate treatment of others. So both the first and second steps of such mini-sequences, both initiatives and responses in the narrower sense are governed by normative features of the situation, to which they are responses in a broader sense. The broader sense of responsiveness to normatively relevant features is at work in adequate regard for the other. To recap, we can understand adequate regard in terms of responsiveness to the real normative relevance to the features of the other. Below we will ask whether all sorts of responses count as “recognizing” or whether we should define recognition in a narrower way. One suggestion is that any kind of adequate regard is (in the readily intelligent way) relevant for the practical self-relations, and thus a case of recognition: any normatively required responses to any normative features will do. But there may be other reasons to opt for narrower views. These narrower views think that only some subclasses of responsiveness or regard count as “recognition.” Apart from that issue, in this essay I will assume that however narrow a view of “recognition” we adopt, the criterion for adequate recognition is identical with the criterion for adequate regard: adequate recognition is a matter of responsiveness to the real normative relevance to the features of the other. I call this the “response model” of adequate recognition. So even though it may be an open question whether all cases of adequate regard are cases of recognition, all adequate recognition (as opposed to misrecognition or nonrecognition) is always a case of adequate regard in the relevant respects. However narrowly or widely we define the scope of things that count as recognition, what makes it adequate are the features of the other.

ADEQUATE REGARD AND THE UNRESTRICTED NORMATIVIST ACCOUNT I will now turn to the two fundamental insights concerning what recognition is. One fundamental idea is the mutuality-insight: “getting recognition” in a sense which can affect one’s practical relations-to-self presupposes that one recognizes the recognizer as a recognizer. I discuss it in the next subsection. The other insight is that struggles for recognition are not merely struggles for being held to be a “recognizer” (which is the minimum entailed by the mutuality-insight), but for getting adequate regard from others, in view of any and all of one’s normatively and evaluatively relevant features. (After all,

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being held to be a person, or recognizer more broadly, is compatible with quite horrific kinds of treatment). We can call this the “adequate regard– insight.” According to it, struggles for recognition concern struggles for adequate regard from others, in light of one’s normatively relevant characteristics. The only restriction that the adequate regard suggests for what counts as recognition in the relevant sense is that it must be responsiveness to normatively relevant features. So it leads to an “unrestricted normativist” view that recognizing is a matter of any normatively called for, or required, responses, based on any normatively relevant features, had by any beings. Recognizing in this sense can be successful even though there is nothing about B’s way of relating back to A which would make a difference—B need not have recognized A, or be aware of the response etc. It is possible that A recognizes B, even if B is unaware of this. This view is thus unrestricted on the four issues at stake: what kind of entities can be recognized (any!), what kind of features can call for a response (any!), and what kind of response can be called for (any!), and whether anything about the recipient makes a conceptual difference on whether recognizing has taken place (no!). Or more precisely, the features in question must be normatively relevant features (although any normatively relevant features will do—they need not be, for example, ones had by recognizers only), the entities in question must be bearers of normatively relevant features (although any kinds of entities will do—they need not be recognizers), and the responses must be normatively called for or required responses (but any kinds of responses, emotional, cognitive, institutional, attitudinal, behavioural, expressive, etc will count as different varieties of recognition). On this view, in principle any entities may have normatively relevant features, which call for certain kinds of responses, and these responses count as recognizing the entity in question, whether a person, an animal, an institution, a work of art or an area of wilderness. Of course, only some of these entities care about how they are recognized, but this does not mean that other beings cannot be recognized in this extended or unrestricted sense—being responded to adequately.13

THE MUTUALITY-INSIGHT AND TWO KINDS OF RESTRICTIONS The other insight, (one requiring a bit of reflection before it becomes evident) is that recognition in any sense that can make a difference to one’s practical relations-to-self is always two-sided. One can “get recognition” only from agents that are in turn recognized by one as minimally competent givers of recognition. It follows that recognition is something that

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concerns, even potentially, only recognizers. This is the insight, explored famously by Hegel, that I call the mutuality-insight. The kind of mutuality at stake in the case of mutual recognition is not merely extrinsic reciprocity, so that first A does some service to B, and later B does some service to A. It is rather a kind of double-sidedness intrinsic to every single event of recognition: in any single event, where B gets recognition from A, B must have in turn recognized A as a recognizer.14 In unsuccessful cases, A’s relevant attitudes or regard may in fact be there, but if B totally denies A any kind of standing as an (even minimally competent or relevant) judge, then no putative “judgements,” “convictions” or “regard” by A count as giving recognition to B. Take for example a case of a violinist who gets recognition from an art critic—the violinist must have recognized the art critic as a relevant judge capable of forming opinions, and as someone whose opinion counts. Getting, say, random feedback from a computer, or from dice, does not count as getting recognition, however positive the feedback is. Or, if B thinks that A has wronged her, then B must already regard A as a moral agent capable of “wronging” and not merely of “causing damage” (in the way of natural catastrophes). And by regarding A in light of such a distinction, B must at least implicitly regard himself as capable of drawing the distinction and more or less competently applying it to A—and thus B must implicitly regard himself as a recognizer.15 It is this kind of interrelation that is championed in Hegel’s dense analysis in Phenomenology of Spirit.16 This insight leads to the restricted view that recognition in the relevant sense concerns quite sophisticated beings only: ones capable of regarding each others (and themselves) as recognizers. That is, recognition of recipients, who are capable of normative expectations concerning the regard and treatment they receive from others. Such recipients can stand in relations of mutual recognition and can experience being recognized or misrecognized in the sense which presupposes that the recipient in turn recognizes the recognizer as a relevant judge. Only beings that care about being recognized, and have normative expectations on how others regard them, can get recognition in any relevant sense that can affect their practical relations-to-self. Indeed, it seems that the capacity to form relevant practical relations-to-self, and to form normative expectations concerning the behaviour of others and to give recognition to others, are interdependent capacities that develop together. Only beings with such capacities can be said to “get recognition” in the relevant sense, if getting recognition depends on recognizing the recognizer in turn, and if getting recognition has the intelligible connection to practical selfrelations. Thus the mutuality-insight leads to a restricted view on the realm of beings that can get recognition—only potential recognizers can do so. This is the first difference to the unrestricted view.

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The mutuality-insight also implies that there are conceptual restrictions concerning B’s way of relating back to A that make a conceptual difference on whether A has in fact given recognition to B. B can get recognition from A only if B in turn recognizes A as a recognizer. Further, B must be aware of A’s response, before that response can have an effect on B’s practical relations-to-self. Furthermore, the more important the issue at stake is, the more significant the effect may be. Perhaps there is even a borderline so that if B does not take that issue to have any significance, then B does not get recognition at all. This is the second difference to the unrestricted view motivated by the adequate regard–insight. Further, the mutuality-insight may (but need not) motivate views according to which recognition is always a matter of responses of a special kind, namely recognitive attitudes which are cases of taking the other as a person, or as a recognizer more broadly. And that it is a matter of responsiveness to features which are had by persons or recognizers only.17 I will try to cast doubt on such restrictions concerning the relevant features and relevant responses below.

THE TENSION AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT: THE TWO-PART STORY Thus the two insights lead in slightly different directions. There is a tension on at least two issues: Who can be recognized or get recognition—any beings with normative features or only ones that are capable of experiencing being recognized and recognizing the recognizer in return? And are there conditions concerning B’s way of relating back to A that make a difference on whether A has in fact recognized or given recognition to B? Possible recipients of recognition are either (1) anything with normatively relevant features: including animals, works or art, wilderness, etc. Adequate regard-insight suggests that any bearers of relevant features can be recognized in the relevant sense. Possibly any kind of individual entities, which come to being and cease to exist, may in the meantime acquire and lose normatively relevant features. This view can be called “unrestricted” (or “monological,” “recognizee-insensitive” or “loose”). Or then, possible recognizees are (2) recognizers only; ones capable of “getting” recognition which presupposes regarding the other as a relevant recognizer. This view can be called “restricted” (or “dialogical,” “recognizeesensitive” or “strict”).18 Thus there is a tension at least on two issues—concerning which things can be said to be recipients of recognition, and under what conditions. I will suggest that both views are right about something. A two-part story will be able to preserve this suggestion. We can negotiate the tension con-

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Table 14.1. The Tension

Possible recipients Facts about B’s regard which make a difference to whether A is successful in her recognition of B The correct theory

Adequate Regard–Insight

Mutuality–Insight

Any possessors of normative features None

Recognizers only

The unrestricted normativist view

B must recognize A as a recognizer, be aware of A’s response, and not be totally indifferent towards it. The restricted view

cerning these two issues by noting that “recognition” can mean two things, which differ on two counts. I will reserve the terms “recognizing”/”being recognized” to one of them, and “getting recognition”/”giving recognition” to the other. The former is identical with adequate regard, the latter is not. First, A recognizes B, whenever A (more or less adequately) responds to B in ways called for or required by B’s normatively relevant features, whether or not B recognizes A as a recognizer, or is aware of this response, or cares about it at all, and indeed whether or not B is even capable of this. To this we can add that logically, B is recognized by A, whenever A recognizes B. The unrestricted normativist view gets this fully right. Secondly, B gets recognition from A, only in cases where B not only is capable of recognizing A, but in fact recognizes A as a recognizer, and is aware of this response, and cares about it. And A successfully gives recognition only if B in fact gets recognition. The restricted view gets this fully right.19 This is what I suggest as the best way of dealing the tension between the adequate regard–insight and the mutuality-insight. The former leads Table 14.2. The Two-Part Story Combining an Unrestricted Normativist View Concerning Recognizing, and a Restricted View Concerning Giving Recognition.

Possible recipients Facts about B’s regard which make a difference to whether A is successful in her recognition of B The correct theory (The fundamental insight)

Recognizing and Being Recognized

Successfully Giving and Getting Recognition

Any possessors of normative features None

Recognizers only

The unrestricted normativist view (Adequate regard–insight)

B must recognize A as a recognizer, be aware of A’s response, and care about it at least a bit. The restricted view (Mutuality-insight)

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in an unrestricted normativist account, and the latter in a more restricted account. This is so at least concerning two questions: possible recognizees, and further conceptual conditions on recognition taking place. So my claim is that we should adopt a two-part story: an unrestricted normativist account concerning recognizing and being recognized, and a more restricted account concerning giving and getting recognition.20 This suggestion conceives of “recognition” as a term with a narrower and broader extension, a bit like “castle”: “Sometimes ‘the castle’ is used to refer to the castle proper, sometimes it used to refer to the ensemble of the castle and the ground and buildings located within its outer walls. . . . The castle proper is not the same thing as the castle in the broad sense, but it is a (proper) part of the castle in the broad sense.”21 Or in golf, a “hole” can refer to the hole itself, the cavity in the green, or in a broad sense it can include the green and the fairway all the way from the tee. Similarly, “recognition” can refer to the mutuality-involving phenomenon of successfully giving and getting recognition, (and the related phenomena such as struggles for getting recognition), or it can refer to the more inclusive neighbouring phenomena which I here call “recognizing” and “being recognized” (and the related phenomena such as struggles for the public recognition of, say, wildernesses as things of value).

SOME NARROWER CONCEPTIONS OF THE FEATURES AND RESPONSES AT STAKE So far, so good. We still need to discuss two questions, where one might want to adopt more or less restricted views: what kinds of responses, to what kinds of features, are at stake in giving and getting recognition. Perhaps only responses that affirm that the other is a recognizer (e.g., a person), and only features only had by recognizers (e.g., persons) are at play? Or perhaps some other restrictions apply? I will try to argue that here the only way not to compromise the adequate regard–insight is to have an unrestricted normativist view concerning the possible features and the range of responses. Recall, the insight is that any kinds of responses from others, which are required or called for by any of our normatively relevant features, may intelligibly enhance our positive relations-to-self when adequate, or may be experienced as misrecognition or inadequate recognition, when inadequate. Furthermore, this account does not compromise the mutuality-insight, because the crucial conditions of mutuality have been taken into account in the more strict definition of giving and getting recognition. So the view to be defended here is that while there are differences between recognizing/being recognized, and giving/getting recognition, we should adopt

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the unrestricted normativist view concerning the features and responses in question in both cases. In this subsection I will take up a number of narrower suggestions, and show that they are best conceived as subclasses of recognition. First, we can start with “recognizing” in the sense of taking the other as a relevant judge. It is crucial for the mutuality of recognition, and is the kind of recognition that B must extend to A, in order for B to get recognition from A. Because of its centrality to mutual recognition, this must indeed be a core case of giving and getting recognition. But it is a very narrow case. Think of a club whose sole activity is accepting and rejecting members. The only thing that membership brings with it is the power to participate in accepting or rejecting members. This is not nothing, but hardly encompasses everything that struggles for recognition are about. Certainly, if B recognizes A as a relevant judge, then various sorts of judgments by A may matter to B, and not merely whether A in turn takes B as a relevant judge. Recognition would be a very narrow phenomenon indeed if that were all. One way of making this suggestion plausible would have to draw on the distinction (made, e.g., by Brennan and Pettit), that “recognition” is really only the rather minimal inclusive step of regarding the other as someone who counts at all, as included in the game so to speak.22 Any adequate or inadequate moves in the game in no way diminish or add to this recognition as inclusion, although of course they matter in their own right. Generalized, this view would hold that it is a matter of other sorts of normative theories (say, ethics, political philosophy, theories of respect or esteem) to capture the breadth of adequate regard–insight, “recognition” is best reserved to be a mere precondition, mere inclusion in the club or the game. In this view, for example degrees of respect, or esteem, are not forms of recognition, but further forms of regard, which differ from recognition as inclusion. In a sense, this is a merely terminological dispute. But including for example respect and esteem as forms of recognition helps to preserve the substantive claims about why regard from others matters. If the “moves in the game” affect one’s relations-to-self, are intelligibly connected to the regard from others, and can be adequate or inadequate responses to one’s normatively relevant features, and further affect the kinds of “relationships of unity” that can be called mutual recognition, then why not stick to the broader usage which enables one to make these points in the language of “recognition”? Secondly, the next suggestion may be that recognition is a matter of cognitive judgements about descriptive features of the other. It seems that descriptive judgments by A about B matter to B: what sort of assertions does A make about B? Does A recognize B in the sense of (re-)identifying him as the person he is? Does A have true or false views about B’s descriptive features? Does A classify as a person, or recognizer at all? Concerning such

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judgments, characterizations, and identifications, we have a straightforward account of when they are adequate: when the judgments are true about the features of the other. We can however distinguish between “mere identification” of such features, and acknowledging them in a motivationally effective way as having normative relevance. With the help of this distinction we can see that even successful identification alone does not suffice for adequate recognition, if such motivationally effective acknowledgement of normative significance is missing.23 Some descriptive features have no normative or evaluative significance at all (in some situations), and we can put such cases aside. Whether such features are mischaracterized descriptively or not does not matter. For example, if someone says that I have exactly 3,762 hairs on my head, that is probably totally irrelevant. But misidentifying or mischaracterizing descriptive features which do have evaluative or normative significance does matter, and struggles for recognition may concern such mistakes. So, for example, if someone claims that I do not have the mental abilities to concentrate on complicated issues (and therefore ought to be left out from collective self-governance), that matters a lot. So one aspect of the adequate regard we want from others is correct identification and descriptive characterization. Mistakes in them often matter. So we can include “mere identification” as one type of relevant response to normatively and evaluatively significant features—it is necessary but not sufficient for adequate regard. Recognition in the relevant sense goes beyond mere identification—one can identify B as an X and yet withhold the corresponding recognition (one can, for example, grant that someone has the mental abilities involved, and yet deny access to practices of collective self-rule). So what is needed seems to be an element of motivationally involved acknowledgment of the normative significance of the facts and features that make B an X, and delivering the responses that such features call for or require. Recognizing some concrete being as an X is more than merely identifying it as some X—it is regarding it, in a motivationally effective way, as possessing thereby some normative status, and responding accordingly. (Or so the unrestricted normativist view argues). So perhaps, third, the extra responses that are involved are emotional responses? The emotional regard in question might be a matter of caring about the other, and a matter of emotional sensitivity to the needs of the other, or to their relevant features more generally. Such emotional responses are adequate, when they are fitting or appropriate (for example, not exaggerated).24 Again, it seems that emotional responses are only some among the variety of relevant responses: other responses may be cognitive, volitional, or behavioural; or cases of granting institutional statuses, and so on. So it

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seems that recognition need not be merely about emotional responses— this suggested view is too narrow. Fourth, in the debates exemplified by Taylor’s essay “Politics of recognition,” recognition is often taken to be a matter of public, symbolic affirmation of the value or standing of cultural minorities. The affirmation may be a matter of explicit symbolic acts, or a matter of implicit messages sent by policies.25 There is some debate about when such affirmation is adequate, but the most important ideas are assessments of the value of the cultures (which may well be a too complex thing to judge, to be of practical relevance), and respect for the individuals whose culture is at stake, combined with the affirmation of the significance of the cultures to those individuals.26 Again, this is an important class or subclass, but best seen as a special case. Does not mutual, universalistic basic respect count as a form of recognition, even though it is not based on cultural differences? That at least seems central to the tradition of recognition from Fichte and Hegel onwards and is taken into account in Taylor’s “universalist” form of recognition. And surely recognition of other minorities matters as well, and not only cultural ones? And if some minority grows into a majority, surely their adequate regard does not cease to matter? Fifth, talk of “institutional recognition” can refer to a situation where the recognizer is an institutional, organizational agent, such as a committee, club, parliament, or state. (It would be clearer to use the vocabulary of institution-to-individual recognition in this respect). Or, it can refer, more specifically, to the kind of recognition in question: when A recognizes B as X, X can be some institutional role or status. Let us consider the suggestion that all recognizing is a matter of granting institutional statuses. When A recognizes B as an X, B thereby becomes an X, holder of some institutional role or status (say, when a state grants him a citizenship), if A has the normative power to effectively grant X-hood. The unrestricted normativist view would obviously hold that there are also varieties of noninstitutional recognition, but would further give a broader account of institutional recognition. All recognition need not be a matter of performative acts where B first acquires the status. B’s X-hood can also be reaffirmed (by A or by others). Note that also other individuals, groups, and institutions than the one who had the power to grant the status can participate in such reaffirming. They can treat (more or less adequately) B as a citizen. Thus, to be granted a citizenship may be a form of institutional recognition directly. What constitutes recognition in this case need not be any analogue of “basic attitude” on part of the state, but the very performative act in which one is turned from noncitizen to citizen, the granting of the status. Once that has happened, a closely related kind of recognition on

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behalf of anyone is responsiveness to the normative relevance of the fact that one is a citizen. But the normativist view would hold that a third kind of recognition by institutions is possible, namely responsiveness to the features which make it either required or permissible for the institution to grant the status. If one is denied a status for wrong kinds of reasons, that constitutes a case of misrecognition. By contrast, another kind of adequate recognition may take place in, say, a respectful and considerate letter of rejection. Suppose one has applied for a membership in some club, and receives an official letter of rejection. The letter may give recognition to the fact that the applicant has met the relevant criteria, but due to the policy of the club to take only so and so many new members annually, she was rejected this time, but is encouraged to apply in the future. This may be a fully adequate response to one’s normatively relevant features (in the situation), and thus adequate kind of recognition: one gets confirmation that one has such and such significant features, but does not this time acquire a further relevant feature, that of membership and the normative powers and statuses that come with it. In a more general way, we can say that if the institution or club treats individuals in light of their normative standing, it thereby recognizes them, whether or not the normatively relevant features are of institutional kind. This goes to show that some, but not all, recognition is a matter of performative acts through which one acquires new institutional statuses, or roles. The sixth view I wish to discuss here is a so-called “personifying account,” developed in detail by Heikki Ikäheimo.27 A paradigmatic case of mutual recognition is arguably that of two persons taking each others as persons, and responding adequately to the normative significance or status that the other has merely qua a person. And a striking case of lack of recognition is that of identifying someone as a person (as a possessor of all the descriptive person-making features), but explicitly denying that this person has the normative status of persons—explicitly denying that the other is a possessor of the moral status of person. So it might be tempting to suggest that all recognition involves attitudes of taking the other as a person and a possessor of the normative status of persons—perhaps “recognizing” just is taking such a “personifying” attitude and nothing more?28 This suggestion takes there to be a great affinity between recognitive attitudes and what Peter Strawson calls “reactive attitudes,” such as blame, gratitude, resentment, and guilt, which carry the implication that the target of the attitude is held to be a free and responsible agent.29 In a famous way, Hegel held that being punished entails that one is recognized as a responsible agent. As Hegel puts it, naughty boys enjoy themselves when getting their ears boxed, as they are thereby recognized as agents.30 By contrast, if one trips over because there were stones on one’s

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way, and one kicks the stones in anger, this kicking carries no such recognition. Kicking stones is not called “punishing” (even when the stones are taken to be the cause of one’s tripping).31 What Strawson called “reactive attitudes” (guilt, resentment, gratitude, etc.) are typically ones which carry the implication that the object of the attitudes (self or other) is thereby regarded as a responsible agent. For example, while holding the other to have valuable features is not a personifying attitude, holding the other to be a responsible origin of those valuable features is a personifying attitude. So there clearly is an important range of attitudes which imply that the other is regarded as a person. To highlight the importance of this range of attitudes is a definite virtue of the “personifying” definition. Thus there is considerable support for the suggestion that recognizing in the relevant sense just is taking such a personifying attitude and nothing more.32 But an unrestricted normativist account would make several points against the suggestion that “recognizing” a matter of appropriately regarding the other as a person, and nothing more.33 First, recognition of persons may be more detailed than merely taking to be a person. It need not only be a matter of taking the other as a person, but it may be a case of taking the other as some particular kind of person (say, having certain merits), or as some individual person (say, a loved one). So in a scheme A takes B to be X, X may be something more informative than simply “a person”: “a person with certain merits,” or “a member of some relevant group,” or “a loved one.”34 So it seems it is wrong to say that recognition is taking as a person and nothing more. Secondly, insofar as groups, institutions, states are among the recipients that can get recognition in the relevant sense (because they are recognizers themselves and can recognize the other as a recognizer), it need not be the case that they must thereby be regarded as persons of some sort. It suffices for mutual recognition that they are recognizers of some sort, either persons or not. So in a scheme A takes B to be X, X can be “a recognizer,” “a group agent,” “an institutional agent,” “an independent state,” etc.35 Thirdly, recognition need not be a matter of attitudes only, as the personifying attitude analysis may suggest. It can be a matter of acting, emoting, expressing the attitudes or emotions, a matter of statuses, relations, etc.36 Indeed, once one grants that for example states can be recognizers, the suggestion comes to mind that a main way in which states recognize individuals is by granting them statuses, such as citizenship. Fourthly, we can imagine a community without a concept of a “person,” but with highly sensitive views about the normative features that we regard as “person-making” properties (such as self-consciousness, rationality, moral agency, etc.). Now arguably each of these properties is normatively relevant, so it is not even clear that there’s any normative function that personhood as such has, on top of the person-making properties. Perhaps

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there is: perhaps, say, equality of persons cannot ultimately be captured with the conceptual resources of “person-making properties” only. In any case, we can definitely say that in a community where “personhood” as such is not paid attention to, but the normative relevance of selfconsciousness, moral agency, and rationality, etc., are regarded in a sensitive and responsible manner, the individuals are being “recognized.” It is just that in the scheme A takes B to be X, X is “a self-conscious being,” “a moral agent,” “a rational animal,” etc., and not “person.”37 So it is perhaps best to say that “to recognize” in the relevant sense is not necessarily “to take as a person,” but rather to regard as someone who counts, as a possessor of some normatively relevant features, as X where X can be a variety of normatively relevant characteristics. Fifthly, one may be deeply attached to human beings, which (depending on one’s conception of “persons”) need not literally be persons, say newborn children, or mentally retarded human beings. One may certainly regard them as concrete beings that count, very significantly, without taking them as “persons.” The personifying account would have to hold that such beings are not recognized in the relevant sense. According to the normativist view defended here, they may well be unable to get recognition, but they can nonetheless be recognized (and the kind of responsiveness at stake in recognizing them may be very highly cherished by the recognizers). Sixthly, recognition of other persons may be a matter of taking them as possessing some particular evaluative features, say, esteeming their ability to produce good shoes which are valuable for the community. The characteristic in question can be had by nonpersons, say by mindless machines which just produce shoes. Thus, to take someone or something as possessing that characteristic does not imply that we regard that thing as a person. Is this “recognition”? According to the “personifying” view suggested above, it would not be. But it seems to be: a shoemaker may take pride in his ability to make better shoes than machines do, and may feel recognized by others who tell him that he is better than machines. The same goes for recognizing B as a sentient being, whose pains and pleasures matter. There are other sentient beings than persons, so taking someone’s sentience to matter does not entail that it is thereby regarded as a person. And so on. These six points try to show that being regarded as possessing normatively relevant features is not the same as being regarded as a person. Nonetheless, both of them can be something desirable in itself, can lead to struggles concerning adequate “regard,” can affect one’s self-relations in suitable way, can be institutionalised in various ways, and thus both of them fit what is fruitfully thought of as “recognition.” Even in cases of persons, all aspects of the regard need not be “personifying”; some may be neutral concerning personhood. We legitimately want adequate regard concerning even those aspects of our being which are shared with nonpersons.

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This concludes my partial survey of narrower views concerning the normative features and responses called for or required by them, that are at stake in recognition.38 The only view capable of preserving the full force of the adequate regard–insight seems to be the unrestricted normativist view.

CONCLUSION This paper has tried to negotiate a tension between two insights (mutualityinsight and adequate regard–insight). It suggested a terminological distinction, in order to make a substantive point. The terminological point is that A can successfully “recognize” B, even when the further conditions for B “getting recognition” are not met. If A recognizes B (as a possessor of normatively significant features), then thereby B is recognized by A. There are no further conditions for “being recognized.” But there are further conditions for “getting recognition”: B must recognize A as a recognizer, must be aware of the response, and must care about it. Further, A successfully gives recognition only when B gets recognition. Recognizing is a matter of (more or less adequate) responsiveness to the other as a possessor of normatively and evaluatively significant features, that is, responsiveness to the other which is sensitive to the other’s normative standing. Recognizers include any beings capable of responding to normatively and evaluatively significant features (persons, groups, institution; other animals are a borderline case), whereas any possessors of normatively and evaluatively significant features can be the objects of such responses (including works of art, machines, animals, natural surroundings, etc.). What B wants, when he wants recognition, may be precisely that sort of responsiveness or regard that can in principle be extended to any possessors of evaluative features. The realm of beings that can “get” recognition is considerably more restricted than the realm of beings that can be responded to as possessors of normatively relevant features. This is because B’s “getting” recognition from A goes beyond merely being responded to by A. It includes being aware of A’s response, and especially it includes B’s recognizing in turn A as a judge. Thus the realm of beings that can potentially “get recognition” is the same as the realm of recognizers. Concerning the relevant features and responses, the unrestricted normativist view holds that B can be recognized as a possessor of any normatively significant features F (the features need not, for example, be ones that only persons or recognizers possess). Variations in the features in question lead to different varieties of recognition. And the reason-governed “responses” at stake in recognizing can be of a variety of sorts of things, for example, such basic attitudes or regard as “respect,” “esteem,” “love”; expression of

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Table 14.3 The Overall View on Recognition Recognizing and Being Recognized Possible recognizers Possible recipients Facts about B’s regard which make a difference to whether A is successful in her recognition of B Relevant features Relevant responses Adequate vs. misrecognition

Successfully Giving and Getting Recognition

Persons, groups, institutions (including states), possibly other animals Any possessors of Recognizers normative features None B must recognize A as a recognizer, be aware of A’s response, and care about it at least a bit Any normatively significant features Any responses called for or required by the normatively relevant features Whether or not responses are sensitive to what the normatively relevant features of the other require or call for

such regard; action; situation-specific cognitive, affective, conative responses; especially symbolic gestures; granting institutional statuses; having certain kind of institutional design or practical outlook, etc. What unites these is that they are responses that are called for, or required, by normatively significant features, and that it is meaningful to expect such responses, and that lack of such responses may rightly be experienced as lack of recognition. So we need not specify in advance any strict definition on what sorts of responses to normatively significant features may count as recognizing, or be relevant for getting recognition—any may be. The challenge for defenders of more restricted views is to explain why some sorts of adequate responses to normatively relevant features are not cases of recognition.

NOTES 1. I wish to thank Heikki Ikäheimo, Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, and Christopher Zurn for comments on a draft of this paper. 2. In this essay I will take it for granted that the possible recognizers include any beings that can guide their behavior and attitudes in light of normative requirements created by normatively relevant features of others. These include individual persons, groups, and institutions, including states. The borderline case consists of other animals, which can perhaps respond reliably to normatively relevant features (avoid dangers, eat healthy food, provide help, enjoy company), without being able to draw a distinction between the features as descriptive and features as normatively

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relevant, and without being able to feel that they ought to do something. Perhaps an argument could be made that they implicitly recognize normative relevance of the features, and thus that their responses count as recognition. They always perceive their world in the light of significances or affordances, and never as purely descriptive. In this essay I will leave other animals aside, and focus on human individuals, groups, and institutions. 3. These suggestions are closely related to the idea that the genus of recognition is “taking the other as a person” in Heikki Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 447–62, and Ikäheimo, “Taylor on Something called Recognition,” in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor, ed. A. Laitinen and Nicholas H. Smith (Helsinki, Finland: The Philosophical Society of Finland, 2002), 99–111. I have reformulated it here in terms of features and responses. 4. See Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 25–73; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1995); Margaret U. Walker, Moral Repair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 5. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition; Joel Anderson and Axel Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice,” in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, ed. John Christman and Joel Anderson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 6. Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice,” 131, italics added. 7. For a more detailed treatment, see Arto Laitinen, “Social Equality, Recognition, and Preconditions of Good Life,” in Social Inequality Today. Proceedings of the 1st Annual Conference of the CRSI 2003, ed. Michael Fine, Paul Henman, and Nicholas Smith (North Ryde, Australia: CRSI, Macquarie University, 2003). 8. See Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Recognition and Social Ontology (forthcoming). 9. See Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood?” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 463–78; essays in Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Dimensions of Personhood, (Exeter, N.H.: Academic Imprint, 2007). 10. Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition”; Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2006): 47–70. 11. Joseph Raz, Value, Respect and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 61. 12. Raz, Value, Respect and Attachment, 162–63. 13. Building on the distinction between acknowledging normative entities and recognizing in Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons,” in Recognition and Power, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 33–56, we can distinguish conceptually between acknowledging the validity of general principles (say, “honesty is valuable” or “honesty calls for a range of positive responses from respecting to promoting”), or specific normatively relevant

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features, property instances (“B’s honesty calls for a range of positive responses from respecting to promoting”), and responding to the bearer of these features accordingly (esteeming B as an honest person). Only the latter is “recognizing” in the relevant sense. Given the distinction between recognizing and giving recognition that I draw in this essay, there are importantly two kinds of bearers of normative features: ones which can in an extended, unrestricted sense be recognized, and others (recognizers) which can properly be given recognition to. 14. As G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111–12 puts it, each action is the action of both. 15. The degree of certainty of any of one’s belief testifies that one takes oneself to be so-and-so competent author of the belief in question. The degree of certainty of views concerning the other testifies that one takes oneself to be so-and-so competent author of views concerning the other. Some of these views count as “recognizing” the other. 16. For Hegel, in any single event of someone getting recognition, arguably both parties must take both parties as recognizers. So, if R stands for a “recognizer,” A must take B as R, A must take A as R, B must take A as R, B must take B as R, for even a single event of “getting recognition” to occur. Or as Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktische Philosophie (Freiburg, Germany: Karl Alber Verlag, 1977), 137 puts it: “Recognition, as a double-signifying act of two self-consciousnesses, is a relation in which the relata relate to themselves through the relation to the other, and relate to the other through their own self-relation. Thus, the self’s relation to itself is made possible by the corresponding relation to the other.” (Translated in Robert R. Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 51). The analysis below will suggest that in some cases this may be slightly too strict, at least concerning single responses—a case where A regards B as possessing normatively relevant features (and remains noncommittal on whether B is a recognizer), and B takes A as a recognizer, will qualify. 17. See Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition,” Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “Esteem for Contributions to the Common Good: The Role of Personifying Attitudes and Instrumental Value,” in The Plural States of Recognition, ed. Michael Seymor (Palgrave, forthcoming). 18. “Recognizee-sensitive/insensitive” is used in Ikäheimo, “Taylor on Something called Recognition,” “monological”/”dialogical” in Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition,” and “strict”/”loose” in Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition.” The terms “recognizee-insensitive” and “monological” should not be taken to have the connotation that the recognizer is being monological, or insensitive. Rather, it is the definition of recognition which either does or does not take the “receiving end” into account in deciding whether what the “sending end” does counts as recognizing. 19. When both A and B are persons, we have a case of “interpersonal” recognition, and when they are groups we have a case of “intergroup” recognition and so on. For most combinations (say, recognition of a group by a state) similar readymade handy expressions cannot be found, although perhaps we can call it state-togroup recognition. Variations in A and B lead to many varieties of recognition (from persons, groups, and institutions we get nine combinations).

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20. The choice of terms here is not artificial, but follows the grammar of “giving” more generally. One for example “gives” money to another person, but “puts” money in a machine. Giving recognition is no exception—it would sound funny to say that we “give” recognition to the value of wilderness, although it sounds acceptable to say that we recognize the value of wilderness. See Risto Saarinen, God and the Gift: An Ecumenical Theology of Giving (Collegeville, Pa.: The Liturgical Press, 2005). 21. Galen Strawson, “The Self and the Sesmet,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, no. 4 (1999): 99–135, 131. In Strawson’s view “I” can refer to a mental entity or a human being, so he compares the usage of “I” to the usage of “castle.” 22. “Suppose that I give someone esteem or disesteem in a given dimension. I will recognize that person—I will give them respect or countenance—just so far as I treat them as falling within the domain of those who are subject to estimation, positive or negative; I will let the person count. The esteem I give in this sort of case will come in degrees and the degree given will be sensitive to the comparative performance of relevant others. But the recognition I give will not come in degrees and will not be sensitive in the same way.” Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 20. 23. See Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition,” on identification, acknowledgment and interpersonal recognition. 24. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, discusses such “emotional recognition” in the developmental context. 25. See, for example, Andrew Mason, Levelling the Playing Field (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 59; or Jean Hampton, “Correcting Harms Versus Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution,” UCLA Law Review 39 (1992): 1659–1702 on how policies “send messages.” 26. See, for example, Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” Peter Jones, “Equality, Recognition and Difference,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2006): 23–46. 27. Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Ikäheimo, “Taylor on Something called Recognition,” Heikki Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5–6 (2007): 224–47. 28. See Ikäheimo “On the Genus and Species of Recognition”; we discuss and develop this view in Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition”; see also Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Esteem for Contributions to the Common Good” on how an unrestricted normativist view and a personifying view understand esteem based on contributions to the common good. 29. Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). 30. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §413 in Miller’s translation. 31. In a different case, of course, even persons may be objects of similar treatment: the boys may get their ears boxed out of anger, by someone who would not consider it an appropriate form of punishment, but who temporarily lost selfcontrol. In this case, the beating is not a sign that the boys would be recognized as responsible—the beating is just an (unjustified) expression of anger. The intention or attitude with which the deed was done is relevant to recognition.

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32. Note that this goes much further than a club, whose only activity is to accept and reject new members. The personifying view holds that membership comes with various significances and statuses, which make a great difference to how one ought to regard the other in different situations. 33. More sophisticated versions of the personifying account, such as Ikäheimo’s, may not be vulnerable to all these points. 34. See Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition.” Even the Strawsonian reactive attitudes carry the implication that the other is regarded as a certain kind of person (not an irresponsible one, and one who committed certain kind of deed). 35. See Arto Laitinen, “Social Equality, Recognition, and Preconditions of Good Life.” 36. For an analysis of recognition concerning attitudes, acts, expressions, and statuses see Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition.” 37. See Arto Laitinen, “Sorting out Aspects of Personhood: Capacities, Normativity and Recognition,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5–6 (2007): 248–70. 38. I discuss one further view, based on Scanlon’s theory, in Arto Laitinen, “Recognition, Needs and Wrongness: Two Approaches,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 1 (2009): 13–30.

15 Making the Best of What We Are: Recognition as an Ontological and Ethical Concept Heikki Ikäheimo

Recognition, or Anerkennung, is a notion that has inspired generations of philosophers and social thinkers ever since Hegel wrote his notoriously difficult and ambiguous paragraphs on the fascinating figures of the lord and the slave, and the “struggle of recognition” between them.1 Yet, never has this notion been an object of a more widespread interest than today. Perhaps for partly independent reasons, recognition has simultaneously become a prominent theme both in recent critical social theory and in the specialized circles of contemporary Hegel scholars and Hegelian philosophers. If we want to think of recognition as a focus of a major philosophical “research program”2—now or in the near future—a lot may depend on whether these currently mostly unrelated strands of talking about “recognition” can find each other in a mutually rewarding way. That this will happen, however, is not at all self-evident, since at least so far it has remained rather unclear what exactly the common reference point of these discussions is, if there is any. Is there a unified phenomenon, or concept, which the different ways to talk about “recognition” are after? What I want do in the following is to argue for both the unity and the central importance of the concept of recognition. I aim to show that there is indeed a unified, holistic concept that is broad enough to unite the main strands of contemporary ways of discussing “recognition,” and further to show that what it grasps is something essentially important to what we are and what makes our lives better or worse. The layout of the article is as follows. I will first put forward two somewhat ideal-typical ways to look at recognition and what makes it important—the “ontological” and the “ethical”—and argue that conceiving of recognition in terms of practical 343

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attitudes of “taking something/one as a person” covers them both. I will then spell out in some detail the ways in which recognition in this sense is constitutive of the various components that make up full-fledged personhood. After thus discussing the ontological importance of recognition, I will show that recognition (on the very same concept) is perhaps the most fundamental factor in judgments concerning the ethical quality of actions, persons, interpersonal relationships, and social life in general. Finally, based on the preceding reflections, I will give a slightly new twist to the Hegelian idea that recognition drives progress in history. The general aim of the article is to clear a path for a unified approach in social philosophy that has both ontological depth and critical bite, and is capable of drawing on what may be the deepest, arguably cross-culturally shared, elements of the collective self-understanding of our life-form. It is here, in providing means for such a holistic philosophical enterprise, that the so far unfulfilled promise of the Hegelian notion of recognition lies.

TWO APPROACHES TO RECOGNITION How important is recognition? How is it important? What difference does it make whether there is more, or less, recognition, or indeed, whether there is any recognition at all? Two basic answers to these questions are represented, even if not explicitly distinguished, in the recent literature. On the one hand, many authors think that recognition makes a qualitative difference to the world in that it changes the quality of what it affects. On the other hand, other authors think that recognition makes a generic or ontological difference to the world in that it makes what it affects what they essentially are. As to the first, “qualitative,” approach the claim has clearly not been only that recognition just makes things somehow qualitatively different, but more precisely that it, at least as a rule, makes them somehow better.3 Two mutually complementary points of views stand out here. First, it is widely thought that recognition is good for the self-identities, self-conceptions, or generally speaking self-relations of individuals. Thus, recognition affects, to put it very roughly, psychological life for the better. Secondly, it is also widely thought that recognition is good for interpersonal relations, and thereby for the coherence, harmony, or “inclusiveness” of communities, societies, or social life in general. In other words, recognition affects, to put it again roughly, social life for the better.4 As to the second, “ontological,” approach the claim is hence that recognition makes what it affects the kinds of beings they essentially are. In other words, somehow, through recognition new kinds of entities come into being. Whereas the qualitative—or perhaps one should say ethical—ap-

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proaches are popular among critical theorists who are inspired by the Hegelian notion of recognition without drawing directly on Hegel’s work,5 the ontological approach is prominent among Hegel scholars and philosophers more generally sympathetic to, and influenced by, Hegel. Here the claim, put forth by contemporary neo-Hegelians like Robert Brandom or Robert Pippin, is that recognition is something through which the realm of “spirit” comes about, or through which mere animals develop into “spiritual beings.”6 How do these two approaches—the ethical and the ontological—relate to each other, and are they really approaches to the same issue?7 One obstacle in the way of answering this question or establishing communication between the two approaches is, no doubt, the word “spirit.” Whereas “recognition” has always inspired the Hegelian left, “spirit,” with its theological or suspiciously metaphysical “right-Hegelian” connotations, is certainly not among the favorite words of critical theorists inspired by “recognition.” But we should not get stuck with words. It is generally the case that if one is not able to say what one is talking about in other words, or in the words of others, one will have hard time in communicating with others who have a different approach. In what follows, I will suggest a translation that should be helpful for bridging the gap between the two mentioned approaches to recognition and what makes it important. Let me first note something that is more or less generally acknowledged in Hegel scholarship today, yet may not be wholly obvious to everyone interested in recognition. That is, contrary to the traditional textbook view on Hegel, “spirit” for Hegel is not a name for some distinct entity or transcendent principle beyond or above the phenomenal reality. Rather, “spirit” is best understood as a title word, or headline, for a great number of interrelated philosophical issues, all of which have to do with factors which essentially distinguish us, or our form of life, from mere animals, or from a merely natural form of life.8 Assuming that this reading is correct and fruitful, as I believe it is, what exactly is then the “us” who are the general theme of philosophy of spirit in Hegel’s sense? An answer which provides us with a translation for talking about what Hegel talked about under the general title “spirit” is this: the us in question is us persons. In other words, so I suggest, the best way to translate the Hegelian talk about “spirit” into contemporary philosophical parlance is to translate it into talk about “personhood.” The idea that recognition is something that distills spirit out of mere nature can thereby be expressed by saying that recognition is constitutive of the basic features and structures that essentially distinguish persons and their lifeworld from mere animals and their natural environment—or the life-form of persons from a merely animal life-form.9 By translating “spirit”-talk into “personhood”-talk we have already established a point of contact between the ethical and the ontological approaches to recognition. We can now say that whereas the ethical approaches see

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recognition as something that makes our life as persons better in various ways, the ontological approaches see recognition as something that makes us persons in the first place. Seen in this way, the question about whether the ethical and ontological approaches to “recognition” are really approaches to the same issue boils down to the question whether there really is something called recognition or Anerkennung that does have such a dual ethical-ontological role in our lives as persons. My thesis is that there is, and in what follows I will focus on a particular concept of recognition, according to which recognition is just such an ethical-ontological phenomenon. On this concept, which I have discussed elsewhere in more detail, recognition consists of practical attitudes whereby subjects take other subjects as persons.10 In more than one sense subjects develop into persons through recognition, that is, by taking, and being taken by, others as persons. And in more than one sense the extent to which persons so recognize and are recognized mutually is a decisive measure with which we judge the ethical quality or goodness of life of persons. Recognizing others as persons, being recognized by them as a person, and thereby being a person is, I want to argue, as much ontologically, as it is ethically, foundational for our form of life.

RECOGNITION AND THE CONSTITUTION OF PERSONS Let us start with a simple observation. There are beings which differ from other beings that they otherwise resemble in that, unlike those other beings, these beings organize, or experience their world as organized, by values and social norms. Such beings—ourselves that is—we call persons, and the other beings which we otherwise resemble are those animals that are not persons. Let us call them “mere animals.”11 When philosophers talk about what distinguishes us persons from mere animals, they often focus only on one or the other of these two dimensions on which we persons are different from mere animals; that is, either on the dimension of values, or that of norms. To pick up an example of a philosopher belonging to the first mentioned group conceiving of personhood in axiological terms, Harry Frankfurt famously distinguishes between persons and subjects that are not persons, or as he says “wantons,” by saying that whereas wantons are driven by immediate desires, persons are capable of distancing themselves from these immediate motivating states of theirs. In a nutshell, for Frankfurt persons are creatures that care about something and thereby experience their world in light of values that are not reducible to desirability in the immediate animal or wanton sense.12 This is also what in Frankfurt’s conception makes persons free in contrast to the desire-bound animals or wantons.

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The latter group of philosophers conceiving of the difference between persons and mere animals in deontic terms includes contemporary neoHegelians like the already mentioned Robert Brandom who conceptualizes the difference between animals and “us” by saying that whereas animals are driven by desire and experience their world in terms of “erotic significances” determined by the immediate demands of their natural needs, we—persons, I translate—organize and thereby experience our world in terms of collectively authorized and administered norms. Again, this means that persons, in contrast to mere animals, are free in a distinctive way. Namely, for Brandom and other contemporary neo-Hegelians who emphasize Hegel’s proximity to Kant’s legalistic conception of knowledge and action, freedom is governance by collectively self-authorized norms.13 Both the axiological and the deontic views clearly hit essential elements in our intuitions about how persons differ from mere animals and there seems to be no fruitful way to reduce one view to the other. Contrary to the impression that contemporary—one might say deontic—neo-Hegelianism gives, my claim is also that Hegel’s conception of spiritual subjects, or in our terms persons, includes both deontic and axiological elements and that this is an essentially important feature of it. This relates to the fact that Hegel’s notion of recognition between persons, spelled out in terms of attitudes of “taking something/-one as a person,” has both a deontic and an axiological dimension. That recognition has several dimensions, or, more exactly, that the attitude of recognition is a genus for more than one species, is one of the major insights of Axel Honneth’s work on recognition. This insight is central to what I will say, although I will concentrate here on only two dimensions—respect and love—whereas Honneth distinguishes three attitudes of recognition.14 What hence unites respect and love in the relevant senses is that they are both species of the genus recognitive attitude and thereby, I propose, different ways of “taking something/-one as a person.”15 Both of these ways are, I will argue, constitutive of corresponding dimensions of our being persons: whereas what I mean by “respect” is constitutive of the deontic dimension of personhood on which the deontic neo-Hegelians focus, what I mean by “love” is constitutive of its axiological dimension on which philosophers like Frankfurt focus. The term “dimension” is meant to suggest that the deontic and the axiological accounts both focus on features that are essential, mutually irreducible, and interrelated components of what it is to be a person in a full-fledged sense. This already suggests that personhood is a complex notion. Another source of complexity—as well as of the rather confusing nature of the philosophical literature on personhood—is the fact that whereas some accounts of personhood define personhood in terms of psychological capacities, others define personhood as some kind of a status. Thus, there

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are, on the one hand, what we could call “psychological concepts of personhood” according to which being a person is having person-making psychological properties or capacities that nonpersons (such as mere animals) do not have. On the other hand there are “status-concepts of personhood” according to which being a person is having some kind of a person-making status or statuses that nonpersons (such as slaves) do not have.16 Furthermore, what exactly it means to be a person in the sense of having a person-making status or statuses involves two distinct ideas which are usually not explicitly distinguished. One of these is what I call the “institutional status-concept of personhood,” according to which being a person is having collectively administered “institutional or deontic powers,” paradigmatically basic rights, that distinguish persons from nonpersons. Another idea present, even if more rarely made explicit, in the discussions of personhood is that being a person is having person-making social or interpersonal significance(s) in the eyes of others, or in short being recognized as a person by others in concrete contexts of interaction. This latter concept, which I call the “interpersonal status-concept of personhood” is easily mixed with the institutional statusconcept, but it should not be. Whether you have rights or other person-making deontic powers that give you the institutional status of a person within the institutional system of a given collective or society is one thing, but whether you are seen and treated by concrete others in light of person-making significances that make you a person in their eyes and thereby give you the interpersonal status of a person in concrete contexts of interaction is another. Here again, I suggest that the psychological, the interpersonal, and the institutional concepts grasp different, mutually irreducible, and interrelated components, or as I say “layers,” of what it is to be a person in a full-fledged sense of the word. We can schematically organize all of the mentioned views on personhood—the deontic, the axiological, the psychological, and the two status-views—as referring to different dimensions and layers Table 15.1 Components of Full-Fledged Personhood Deontic Dimension of Personhood

Axiological Dimension of Personhood

Psychological layer of personhood

capacity for exercising deontic coauthority

capacity for intrinsic valuing or care

Interpersonal (status-) layer of personhood

significance of deontic coauthority

significance of someone whose happiness is intrinsically important

Institutional (status-) layer of personhood

person-making deontic powers (basic rights, etc.)

Corresponding recognitive attitude

Respect

Love

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of “full-fledged personhood” according to table 15.1. The components included in the table may seem strange at start, but each of them will be explained in its turn. The general idea here is that each of the components included in the table—the psychological capacities for exercising “deontic coauthority,” and for intrinsic valuing or care; the interpersonal statuses of a coauthority, and someone whose happiness is intrinsically important; as well as some basic rights or other “deontic powers”17—can, and should, be seen as “personmaking” features or essential components of personhood, since lack or loss of each of them can equally well be understood as lack or loss of part of what makes individuals fully, or full-fledged, persons. And as far as I can see none of them are reducible to the others, even if they are in many ways interconnected. It is these interconnections, in which recognition plays the central role, that makes “full-fledged personhood” a holistic phenomenon with a dynamic internal structure and unity. Let me explain. Respect and the Deontic Dimension of Personhood Starting from the deontic dimension of personhood, what is thus distinctive of persons on this dimension is that persons administer or govern their life with collectively self-authorized norms. For such collective administration of norms to take place the subjects in question have to have two general properties: first, they have to have the relevant psychological capacities needed for partaking in norm administration or deontic coauthority (the psychological layer of the deontic dimension of personhood); secondly, they need to have the interpersonal significance or status of a coauthority for each other (the interpersonal layer of the deontic dimension of personhood). The latter property is necessary, since there is no collective norm administration without the administrators forming a “we” or collective of coauthority by taking each other as coauthors and thereby attributing each other this status. This is true of all social norms—from conceptual norms to the moral ones—to the extent that they really are social norms freely followed and sanctioned by the members and thereby operative within a collective.18 Accepting that taking others as coauthorities of the norms whereby shared social life is regulated is a species of interpersonal recognition, it therefore needs a name whereby it can be identified and distinguished from the other species. Because of its Kantian, legalistic, connotations the Kantian name respect is apt for it.19 We can now say, in the footsteps of the deontic neo-Hegelians, that when a person respects the relevant others and is similarly respected by them as a coauthority of the norms or institutions of a collective, she is free or autonomous in the sense of governed by collectively self-authorized norms.

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As to the institutional layer of personhood, this is a special case of norms and institutions that can come about within such a life-form. Being a person in this institutional sense is having some particular deontic powers or statuses such as basic rights (say, the right to life or to property). Thus anyone’s being a person in this institutional sense is dependent on the necessary conditions of norm institution being in place. In this sense the deontic interpersonal status of a person—being such a condition—is ontologically more fundamental than the institutional status of a person. Note also that having rights without having authority on one’s rights is not being free in the sense just mentioned. Let us now make a brief overview of the constitutive role of recognition as respect in our being persons on the deontic dimension. First of all, respect is constitutive of the interpersonal layer in that being a person in the interpersonal sense of having the interpersonal status of a coauthority simply is the same thing as being respected by others. But, secondly, respect is also constitutive of the psychological layer of personhood, and in two different ways. First, since it is not possible to be a coauthority with others without respecting them as coauthorities, the capacity for respecting others is itself part of the deontic personmaking psychological capacities. Secondly, another and quite different way in which respect is constitutive of these capacities is that their development and maintenance is causally affected by their subject’s being respected by others and thereby being included into the “we’s” or collectives of norm administration constitutive of our life-form. If an infant is not respected by relevant others, and thereby not included into the normative networks constitutive of the life-form of persons as an active member with an authority-status corresponding to its (actual and/or potential) capacities of exercising authority, these capacities are unlikely to develop or actualize ideally. And as we know well, at least systematic disrespect by relevant others can also be harmful for the person-making capacities of an adult.20 Finally, as pointed out already, as a social institution, institutional personhood is dependent on respect in that there are no social norms and no institutions at all without some individuals respecting each other as coauthorizers or administrators of the space of social norms constitutive of any lifeworld of persons.21 Love and the Axiological Dimension of Personhood Since love considered as a form of recognition, as well as the whole of what I call the axiological dimension of personhood, has not been at issue in the recent deontic neo-Hegelianism, it may be useful to discuss it a bit more extensively. An important point to note is that without being persons in the axiological dimension individuals could not be persons in the deontic dimension either. We can easily see this by posing a simple question: what is it in persons that makes them interested or motivated to organize

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their life by social norms in the first place? Why, indeed, is it that we persons care about social norms, whereas those animals that are not persons, or Frankfurtian wantons, do not? The quite obvious answer is that we persons have concerns which mere animals do not have. In contrast to animals that are moved by immediate desire, persons are concerned about their life more generally, and maximally as a whole. This is what gives persons a value horizon and motivational structure that is far more complicated than that of mere desiring animals. “Life” does not obviously mean here merely life in the biological sense, and the concern characteristic of persons is not merely about staying biologically alive. Rather, what is at stake is a concern for the goodness of life or happiness, whatever it is exactly that this consists of for each person. There are two general ways to conceive of the axiological dimension of the life-form of persons by focusing on the concern for goodness of life, or happiness, as characteristic of persons. First, we can understand happiness or the goodness of life as one object (or property) among others which persons value. Secondly, we can understand “happiness” as a title word for anything that a person values so that the success or flourishing of these things is what his happiness, or the success or goodness of his life, for him, consists of. According to the latter conception, which I will follow and which I believe Hegel also had in mind, being concerned or caring about one’s own happiness (intrinsically) is nothing else than valuing something and thereby wishing what one values to flourish.22 When one experiences what one values flourishing, one is happy or leads a subjectively good or flourishing life. But not only are persons, as persons, concerned about their own lives. They can be, and usually are, concerned about the lives of at least some other persons as well. In caring about the happiness of another person one values and wishes those things that she values to flourish. Valuing things, and thereby wishing that they flourish, simply because they are constitutive of another person’s happiness, or in other words for her sake, is one of the basic senses of what we mean by loving someone.23 In loving someone in this way, one internalizes the value horizon of the loved as part of one’s own value horizon. Thereby I value x if I believe it is constitutive of the happiness of someone that I love, yet I would not (necessarily) value x would I not love this person—I value it not for my own sake, but for her sake, and still this is my valuing and part of my value horizon. In other words, the value horizon of the loved person becomes part of the value horizon of the loving person, but the former retains, within the latter, an irreducible reference to the loved person. Recognition as love produces, as Hegel puts it, an “identity of interest,”24 which, however, retains difference within it. For Hegel, love is also one of the forms (if not even the paradigmatic form) of “being or knowing oneself in one’s other,” which is Hegel’s general formula for freedom.25 Hegel’s notion of freedom brought about by love is

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more complicated than Frankfurt’s in that in the Hegelian picture mutuality is of prime importance. As one is really free on the deontic dimension only when those whom one respects as coauthorities respect oneself similarly as a coauthority, one is really free on the axiological dimension only when those whose value horizons one has internalized through love as part of one’s own value horizon have similarly done so in their part.26 Between mutually loving persons, who mutually “find themselves in each other” in that both have the value horizon of the other as an irreducible component of their own value horizon, there is a harmony (even if never complete) of valuing and motivation. Such an effortless mutual reinforcement of individual wills through each other is—this I take to be Hegel’s deep intuition—as important a sense, or component, of interpersonal freedom as mutually binding oneself and the other by coauthorized norms is. Leaving love out of the picture ignores important elements of the whole scope of Hegel’s notion of freedom. All in all, granted that social norms are all about organizing life, they clearly have relevance only for subjects that are intrinsically concerned about their life or that of others. Furthermore, what kind of life such subjects, persons that is, hope for themselves or the others they love, or in other words what for them has value, is decisive for what they will find as acceptable content of norms with which their life is organized. The point is of course not that persons are constantly engaged in calculation about whether following this or that norm is advantageous to oneself or some others, but more generally that apart from what persons value and what they therefore find worth promoting or protecting, the whole practice of living by norms simply makes no sense at all. The idea of collective norm administration by valueless subjects is an absurdity,27 as would be the idea of freedom as governance by collectively self-authorized norms the contents of which are unconstrained by what those having authority value. This should not be understood as suggesting that subjects need, or can, develop into full-blown persons on the axiological dimension first in order then to start the business of norm administration: the axiological dimension is also dependent for its part on the deontic. For instance, to the extent that having at least complex ends in mind depends on propositional thinking which it is impossible to develop without learning a natural language, the deontic story is already involved in the axiological one. We develop into thinkers of complex thoughts only by taking part in the collective administration of conceptual norms involved in talking a language.28 And yet, that children start to talk a language and have the drive to become better in talking, and thereby thinking, certainly depends on their having a motivation structure that is not just about having the given immediate desire fulfilled by immediately given objects. All in all, the deontic and axiological dimensions of personhood depend on each other in complex ways and therefore also develop (and deteriorate) hand in hand.

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Let us now make a brief overview of the role of recognition as love in our being persons on the axiological dimension of personhood. This role is to an extent, even if not wholly, analogical to that of respect in the deontic dimension. First of all, love is constitutive of the interpersonal layer of the axiological dimension in that being a person in the interpersonal sense of having the interpersonal status of a someone whose happiness is intrinsically important for others is simply the same thing as being loved by those others. The idea I am proposing here is that the interpersonal person-making status of someone whose happiness is intrinsically important corresponds to the recognitive attitude of love in a manner analogous to the correspondence between the interpersonal person-making status of coauthority and the recognitive attitude of respect. But secondly interpersonal love is also constitutive of the psychological layer of the axiological dimension of personhood, and in two different ways. First, even if caring intrinsically only about one’s own happiness, or loving oneself, is enough for having an evaluative horizon that elevates one above mere animality, and is also sufficient for participating in norm administration, we do think that also the capacity to love other persons is part of having the normal psychological makeup of a person.29 At least a thorough incapacity to love others is regarded as a serious deficiency or pathology of personhood. A second, and quite different, way in which interpersonal recognition as love is constitutive of the axiological person-making psychological capacities is that the development, and perhaps maintenance, of these person-making capacities seems to be, to some extent at least, dependent on their subject being loved by others. What ever the exact dynamics here are, it is common sense that at least an extreme lack of love by others is not favorable for the ideal development of one’s capacity to love oneself or others, and thereby to lead a life with the rich axiological texture characteristic of persons.

THE ETHICAL QUALITY OF LIFE WITHIN A LIFE-FORM FOUNDED ON RECOGNITION It is often said, in Kantian vein, that the other person limits or constraints my will. The thought is that such limiting of the will by the other is morally or ethically centrally important. In a more Hegelian vein, the others toward whom I have attitudes of recognition—respect or love—are constitutive of my will, or more generally of the socially or recognitively mediated kind of structure and content of intentionality that makes me a psychological person. On the other hand, that others have the kind of structure and content of intentionality that makes them psychological persons and that they intend me accordingly—with recognition that is—are what make me a person in the interpersonal sense. It is constitutive of the life-form of persons that

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persons see and are seen by each other in terms of person-making significances or statuses. These significances or statuses distinguish them, within each others’ points of view, as persons (in the interpersonal sense) from nonpersons. On the Hegelian account, recognition of others is thus not only something that limits us, but something that quite generally makes us what we are—persons. In addition to being ontologically fundamental to our being persons, recognition in the sense of taking someone as a person is also morally or ethically central to our lives as persons. This shows in the fact that the extent to which persons recognize and are recognized by each other in particular relationships, social contexts, or societies is decisive for our moral or ethical judgments concerning these social formations, as well as the persons involved. One way to look at this is the following. Intuitively, being wronged, or at least an important aspect of it, is being treated in ways which involve inadequate respect toward one as an authority of the norms of action that affect one, or inadequate concern for one’s happiness for one’s own sake. Being morally wronged thus is—or, on a weaker formulation, involves—not being recognized or taken as a person adequately in the interpersonal sense by the wrongdoer—and this means, not being a person in interpersonal status to a sufficient degree in the interpersonal relationship in question. The moral wrongdoer, however, also corrupts her own personhood in the sense that part of what it is to be a full-fledged person in the psychological sense is to have adequate respect and love for others. Moral wrongs range from everyday inconsiderateness of others to moral atrocities. It is the latter that philosophers usually have in mind when they talk about treating persons as nonpersons, and ask what it is and how it is possible. The more terrible the case, the clearer are its contours in terms of violation and corruption of personhood of both the sufferer and the agent. “Psychopath” is a term used for an individual who is systematically unmoved by the claims for normative authority or happiness of others to an extent that defies the comprehension of a more normal person. We tend to say that there is something in a psychopath that makes him “inhuman,” or “not quite human.” By this we mean (and I shall return to this below) that the psychological capacities or features of such an individual are deficient as to a central element in what we think makes persons persons: recognition for others. Yet, ethically even more troubling are the cases where persons are deeply moved by the authority and happiness of some persons but where they show remarkable coldness toward those of other persons. The concentration camp guard—if there ever was one—who deeply loves his children and takes seriously the moral judgments of his wife or neighbors may be the paradigmatic example. But people can show brutal indifference and coldness toward selected others in more normal circumstances as well.

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Think, for instance, of the husband and father who employs and keeps an illegal immigrant worker in conditions he would find simply inhuman were anyone to propose life and work in similar conditions to him or his family members, relatives, or friends. The unsettling fact is that the extent to which we recognize or personify each other, and thus are persons in the sense of subjects and objects of recognition, may vary dramatically from one relationship to another. Now, assuming that we have no convincing reason to radically revise the connection that we draw in everyday moral judgment between moral wrongs and lack of recognition or personification, then the basic thesis of the “ethical” accounts on the importance of recognition is perfectly reasonable: more recognition makes both the psychic and the social life of persons better. And what is important, it makes them better ethically.30 If this is so, then recognition does indeed seem to have a dual ethical-ontological role in our lives.

ARISTOTELIAN ESSENTIALISM WITH NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM? Not everyone will be convinced at this point. What I have said will sound suspicious to anyone having an aversion toward anything resembling Aristotelian normative essentialism.31 Even more, postulating that what is essential to the life-form of persons is something as nice as respect and love does have a distinct ring of naïveté to it for many ears. Indeed, one might ask whether this is anything but a curious mixture of long outdated Aristotelian essentialism with naïve psychological optimism. How to reply? First of all, whatever philosophers or theorists make of it, normative essentialism is deeply inbuilt to how we experience our shared life outside philosophical seminars. So deeply that wholly exorcising it would shake what may be the most solid foundations of moral or ethical thinking, independently of philosophical schools or cultural difference. If anything is universally shared, certainly the conviction that at least extreme cruelty is—somehow—contrary to our very essence is so shared. It is characteristic of our thinking about atrocities that we associate with names like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Milosevic and their likes that we see them as epitomes of “inhumanity.” We locate this inhumanity both on the side of the perpetrators as well as the victims: The acts, and therefore the characters, of the perpetrators are studied in light of their apparent “inhumanity”; and the predicament of the victims is similarly described in terms that highlight its “inhumanness”—we say that people are being treated like animals, that they are being butchered, poisoned like vermin, burned like dirt or pollution, and so on.

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The conviction that seeks expression here, namely that these and similar actions are somehow against what we are, or against our very essence, is, I want to argue, perfectly rational; yet it is quite badly served when it is expressed in terms of “humanity” or “inhumanity.” Rhetorically powerful as it may be to talk in this way among those who already find it the right way, there are others who will find it sentimental nonsense. After all, amongst all living beings that we know of, only humans are capable of the kinds of actions we are talking about. How could moral atrocities be somehow inhuman(e) if they are among the things that only humans do?32 What this question reveals is simply the well-known ambiguity of the term “human(e)”—being biologically human is one thing, being morally or ethically human or humane is another. If one does not believe in the prospects of marrying ethics with biology, yet feels that there is something important to the thought that evil is against what we are, then one needs to look elsewhere. Rather than focusing on what it is to be a human being, my suggestion is to look instead for a theory of personhood that can articulate, organize, and philosophically justify our deepest intuitions about what makes us what we are. Following this line, we can save the rational core of the thought that the events mentioned are somehow against, or contrary to, our essence, by interpreting it as referring to us as persons, or to our intuitive notions about what makes us persons. With the risk of some repetitiveness, we can thus say that it is characteristic of the actions mentioned that the perpetrators radically fail to recognize their victims as persons. One consequence of this is also a radical failure of moral self-relations that are constitutive of psychological personhood. That is, the extent to which individuals have respect and love for particular others is the extent to which they judge and evaluate their own thoughts and actions, and themselves, from the deontic and axiological viewpoint of these others.33 A radical failure to be moved by the authority or vulnerability of others, and thereby a radical lack of respect or love for them, cancels out this interpersonal aspect of self-relations and makes them seriously defective morally.34 On the side of the victims, this means a radical loss of their personhood in the interpersonal sense—not having the interpersonal status or significance of persons in the particular social contexts or relations in question.35 True, the capacities which enable the perpetrators to act in the way they do cannot be wholly wrenched apart from what makes persons persons. On the contrary, it is precisely their being persons in the sense of creatures acting and thinking in norm-governed ways, caring about at least their own life (however perverse their convictions about what makes it good or better may be) and representing complex ends as valuable and thereby motivating for action, that distinguishes the Nazis, Stalin’s bureaucrats, or the Khmer Rouge as killers from, say, cats killing mice out of natural instinct. That they have these capacities is inseparable from their having, and having had, at least some recognition for some others. Yet, what makes them the monsters

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they are is the catastrophic selectivity of their recognition of other psychological persons as persons in the interpersonal sense.36 Toward selected others, their attitudes wholly—or at least to a radical extent—lack recognition, the complete lack of which toward all others by them (or, for that matter, by all others toward them) would have meant that they themselves would never have developed into persons in the first place.37 One way to draw the difference between those who are considered as morally ill, disabled, or infantile on the one hand, and those who are considered as morally evil on the other, is that whereas the former are considered to be generally relatively incapable of recognition of others, the latter show, toward particular others, a significant fall from the level of recognition to which they are considered to be capable and which is considered as appropriate toward the particular others in question, in the contexts in question.38 All in all, saying that recognition as respect and love is essential to our form of life entails no particular optimism about what persons, or humans, are like empirically speaking. It is just saying that moral or ethical shortcomings in the sense of lack of adequate respect and love for others as persons are also ontological shortcomings—and this is merely spelling out the thought that seeks expression when we judge perpetrators and their acts, as well as the predicaments of their victims, as “inhuman(e).”

PERSONHOOD AS A TELOS Spirit, or the spiritual form of being is, as the deontic neo-Hegelians emphasize, an achievement;39 and it is one that prevails only through a constant process of reproduction. “We” make spirit, by and large, by recognizing and being recognized. This is to say—following the translation I am proposing—that we produce and reproduce personhood in ourselves and each other, and thereby the life-form of persons in general, by taking each other as persons. One of the features of this translation is that it can spell out at least part of the teleological thrust of Hegel’s concept of spirit in more or less down to earth terms. As Hegel puts it, the “essence of spirit is freedom”40—and Hegel clearly means that it is essence in the Aristotelian sense of a self-realizing telos. For the skeptics, Hegel’s joining hands with Aristotle in not only accepting normative essentialism, but also accepting the thought that the essence of spirit has some kind of tendency to realize itself is, of course, only so much the worse for Hegel. However, if interpersonal recognition constitutes an essential element of spirit and thus of freedom on the Hegelian conception, then at least part of saying that spirit tends to realize its essence is simply saying that there is a general thrust to more recognition. Is this a credible claim? It surely seems so, and at least in two ways. On the one hand, the expectation of recognition is certainly an important element of all human

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interaction, and in many tangible ways lack of adequate recognition is a problem in all human relationships. As partakers in interaction we feel the necessity of recognition as a burning need whenever adequate recognition is clearly denied of us, or of ones we deeply care about. If anything is a moral experience comprehensible to anyone, not being seen as someone who has authority in practices that affect one or what one values, or not being seen as someone whose happiness is intrinsically important, clearly is. Such experiences come in degrees, and they are, as subjective experiences, of course by no means infallible. Yet, they are experiences of (degrees of) exclusion from the life-form of persons as persons, and to the extent that they are articulated clearly enough, such experiences of radical—or ontological—exclusion form a source of motivation potentially as powerful as anything in the human realm. On the other hand, as I have argued, independently of the extent to which we ourselves experience recognition as being realized in the particular relationships and social lifeworlds in which we or those close to us partake, it seems to accord with some of our deepest moral convictions that the extent to which people in general are treated as persons—that is, with recognition—in particular relationship, cultures, or communities, is a decisive measure of the ethical credentials of these.41 Thus, to the extent that we are genuinely in touch, or identify, with our convictions, we in principle have motivation for seeing to it that there is more, rather than less, recognition, not only in our own life or that of our nearest loved ones, but in the world more generally. Needless to say, we have all kinds of expectations in human relationships, as well as all kinds of convictions and motivations concerning these with varying depth and seriousness. Yet, if recognition is thought along the lines suggested above—as constitutive of what we are as persons—then the expectations, convictions, and motivations concerning recognition concern, not simply something in us, but our very essence: the motivation, however latent in us toward more recognition, is a motivation which in principle drives us to realize personhood in ourselves and others. Surely this motivation is deeply affected by the particularities of one’s social and cultural environment, often trumped by other motives and sometimes catastrophically hindered, yet it is a deep undercurrent in human life that should not be underestimated. It is this undercurrent, I suggest, that the teleological thrust of spirit, that is, of personhood, centrally consists of, and it is thereby that our essence has a tendency to realize itself.

CONCLUSION All in all, presuming that the above reflections on the ethical-ontological double role of recognition for the life-form of persons make sense, they

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point to a way of grounding immanent social critique on ontology.42 Importantly, the social ontology of full-fledged personhood drawing on Hegel’s notion of recognition, as outlined here, is not a theoretical construction from a philosophical ivory tower, but arguably merely an explication and systematization of central elements of our everyday intuitions about what makes us what we are.43 Making these intuitions explicit, giving them a systematical place in an overall philosophical account of reality, and lending them thereby a clear and respectable articulation, is a task for an unprejudiced critical social philosophy with ontological depth and immanently critical bite.44 Although things will no doubt turn out to more complicated when probing the details, the first approximation gets us already close to the truth: the more recognition—and thereby personhood—a relationship, community, society or culture embodies or encourages, the better it is ethically speaking. This, at least, seems to be what we actually think—and it does not seem particularly reckless to assume that the “we” in question involves reasonable people very widely across cultural differences.

NOTES 1. I am grateful to Axel Honneth and the participants of his research colloquium in Frankfurt am Main April 17, 2008, the participants of the workshop on recognition at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research June 30, 2007, colleagues at the FEP-SEP conference in University of Sussex September 8–10, 2007, the participants of the workshop on Recognition and Solidarity in the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies December 17–18, 2007, the participants of the conference Limits of Personhood June 6–8, 2008 in Jyväskylä, as well as to Louis Carre, Andrew Chitty, Volker Heins, Michael Quante, Titus Stahl, Italo Testa, and Christopher Zurn, for helpful comments and questions. Many of my thoughts about recognition stem from years of discussion and cooperation with Arto Laitinen. Finally, I am indebted to my wife Ming-Chen Lo for encouragement and always sharp-sighted critique. 2. Avishai Margalit, “Recognition II: Recognizing the Brother and the Other,” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 75 (2001): 127–39, 127. 3. There are also views according to which recognition may, at least sometimes, change things for the worse. Much here depends on how exactly one defines the concept. If one understands “recognition” as qualitative or generic “identification,” that is, as classification of things—most relevantly of persons and groups—then it is obvious that this can take place in ways that are harmful. Classifications can be stereotypic, violently imposed, etc. Yet, if one means by “recognition” at least roughly what Hegel meant with “Anerkennung,” then it is simply a different concept than the concept(s) of (numeric, qualitative or generic) identification. For details, see Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement and Recognitive Attitudes between Persons,” in Recognition and Power, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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4. Some authors put more emphasis on the psychological effects of recognition, others on the social ones. And whereas some authors seem to have only one or the other in view, others have both. Axel Honneth is an author in whose work both the psychological and the social aspects are clearly present, even if the psychological ones have a certain priority in it. Furthermore, already in Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral and Political Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), these qualitative themes are intertwined with the Meadian (broadly speaking) ontological question of how animals develop into beings with selfconsciousness; and the ontological approach to recognition continues in Honneth’s recent book on reification: Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Moreover, like others adopting what I call the “ontological” approach to recognition, Honneth is heavily influenced by Hegel. Part of what makes Honneth’s work on recognition so interesting in my view is that it defies easy categorization. 5. Nancy Fraser is a prominent example here (see her contribution to this volume). I lay no claim of doing justice to the details of Fraser’s important work in this paper. I assume, further, that Fraser would emphasize that her approach to recognition is political rather than ethical. 6. See Robert Brandom, “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms,” European Journal of Philosophy 7, no. 2 (1999): 164–89, Brandom, “The Structure of Desire and Recognition: Self-consciousness and Self-constitution,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 33 (2007): 127–50, Robert Pippin, “What is the Question for which Hegel’s Theory of Recognition is the Answer?” European Journal of Philosophy 8, no. 2 (2000): 155–72. Compare Terry Pinkard’s contribution to this collection. 7. Compare the discussion of the relationship of an “ontological” and a “normative” sense of “recognition” in Robert Sinnerbrink, “Recognitive Freedom: Hegel and the Problem of Recognition,” Critical Horizons 5, no. 1 (2004): 272–95. 8. I borrow the notion of “headline” or “title word” from Pirmin StekelerWeithofer. For Stekeler-Weithofer’s way of conceiving the grand words of philosophy, such as “spirit,” “consciousness,” “reason” or “will” as title words, see Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, „Zur Logik des “Wir”—Formen und Darstellungen gemeinsamer Praxis,” in Kultur—Handlung—Wissenschaft, ed. Matthias Gutman, Dirk Hartmann, and Walter Zitterbarth (Weilerswist, Germany: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2002). 9. If this claim sounds strange as a Hegel interpretation, consider what Hegel actually discusses under the headline “philosophy of spirit” in his Encyclopedia. Under “subjective spirit” emotional, intentional, and psychological features distinctive of persons (or in Hegel’s anthropocentric terminology, of “man”); under “objective spirit” social and institutional structures distinctive of the collective life of persons (from a point of view of their ideal configuration of course); and under “absolute spirit” the different forms in which persons, in distinction to mere animals, are able to represent, or reflect on, the whole of their form of life and its position in the universe in general. A possible source of confusion is that “personhood” (or Persönlichkeit) is also a technical term used by Hegel and that the ways in which Hegel uses it are not exactly the same as mine. Here it is enough just to emphasize that my usage of “personhood” should not be mixed with the particular way in which Hegel uses it.

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10. See Heikki Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 447–62, Ikäheimo and Laitinen “Analyzing Recognition,” and Heikki Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” in Dimensions of Personhood, ed. Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, a special issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 5–6 (2007) (available also as a resale book by Imprint Academic). In these texts, and in what follows, I use the expression “taking something/-one as a person.” See also Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood?” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 463–78, and Arto Laitinen, “Sorting Out Aspects of Personhood: Capacities, Normativity and Recognition,” in Dimensions of Personhood (2007). 11. There is a great temptation, and long tradition to which also Hegel belongs, to identify the distinction between persons and “mere animals” with the distinction between humans and nonhuman animals. On my account, whether all persons are humans and whether all humans are persons are empirical questions. Furthermore, the distinction between persons and “mere animals” is a terminological simplification since what I mean by personhood “in the full-fledged sense” has several components all (or at least almost all) of which come in degrees. For an overview of philosophical discussions on personhood, see Dieter Sturma, Die Philosophie der Person (Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh, (1997), and Sturma, „Person und Menschenrechte,” in Person. Philosophiegeschichte—theoretische Philosophie—Praktische Philosophie, ed. Dieter Sturma (Paderborn, Germany: Mentis, 2002), and Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Dimensions of Personhood, a special issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 5–6 (2007). I discuss, and argue for, the multidimensional and multilayered model of full-fledged personhood presented in this paper more in detail in Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons.” 12. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20, originally formulated the distinction between wantons and persons in terms of the concept of higher order desire. Later on, the notion of higher order desires became replaced in his writings with the notion of care, and most recently by love: Harry Frankfurt, Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). This last mentioned move eventually brings Frankfurt’s position into contact with that of Hegel. 13. For Brandom’s account of how desiring animals may develop into the level of mutual attribution of authority and thereby “self-consciousness,” see “The Structure of Desire and Recognition.” For Brandom’s views on freedom as constraint by collectively self-authorized norms and on the role of recognition in it, see, among others, Robert Brandom, “Freedom as Constraint by Norms,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 187–96, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), and “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism.” In using Brandom as an example of a deontic approach to spirit, or personhood, I lay no claim of doing justice to the details of his position. 14. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, calls the three attitudes of recognition “love,” “respect,” and “esteem” (Liebe, Achtung/Respekt, Wertschätzung). The way in which I spell out respect as an attitude of recognition differs from Honneth’s way since I distinguish more explicitly between respecting someone as an authority and Respecting someone as a rights bearer (see footnote 21). I leave out the third

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attitude here for reasons of space, and also since I am somewhat hesitant about its exact ontological significance. See however my “A Vital Human Need—Recognition as Inclusion Into Personhood” (forthcoming), where I suggest, among other things, that a third attitude of recognition which I call “contributive valuing” is constitutive of the cooperative structures of the lifeworld of persons, and that it should not be mixed with instrumental valuing. Ikäheimo and Laitinen “What is Esteem? Two Rival Accounts” (forthcoming) discusses this attitude in more detail. 15. Note that I am only talking about recognition between persons, or about interpersonal recognition, whereas Hegel uses “Anerkennung” in other senses as well. My conception of the “species” of interpersonal recognition is not meant to be exhaustive of all the less systematic ways in which Hegel uses the term, but rather a rational reconstruction of what I think are clearly ontologically and ethically foundational forms of interpersonal recognition for the realm of spirit in general. 16. An example of a psychological concept of personhood is the one advanced by Lynne Rudder Baker in Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and “Persons and Other Things,” in Dimensions of Personhood (2007), according to which persons are defined by the psychological property or capacity of self-consciousness, or more exactly what she calls “the first-person perspective.” An example of a status-concept of personhood is the one advanced by Michael Tooley, “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 1 (1972), according to which being a person is the same thing as “having a serious right to life.” Although personhood is variously defined either in terms of psychological properties or capacities or of statuses, both capacities and statuses are somehow present in most discussions of personhood. It is, however, one of the sources of confusion in the debates that authors often talk about personhood both in terms of capacities and of statuses without explicitly distinguishing these two ways of speaking. The more or less standard taxonomy of concepts of personhood into “moral” and “metaphysical” concepts does not help, since “moral personhood” can be defined, and is variously defined, both in terms of psychology and of statuses. This standard taxonomy is unhelpful also in that it seems to rule out a priori the perfectly live option that moral capacities and/or statuses are at least part of what makes persons metaphysically distinct from other beings. 17. If you want, think of “deontic coauthority” as a metapower, since it is basically the power to determine (with others) who has which “deontic powers” (rights, responsibilities, and so on). 18. Note that this does not involve the claim that everything that we want to call norms are social norms in this sense. But do social norms have to be selfauthorized—can’t they be imposed by an external authority? One point to note is that the origin of norms is not at issue here: it’s not who happened to write a law, but rather whose authority makes it the law within a collective. The Hegelian thought is that there is no such a thing as wholly external authority, since even the lord has to be recognized by the slave, or the God by the believer, for the lord or God to have authority on the slave or the believer. This means that authority is necessarily a relation of coauthority. On the other hand, mere coercion is not authority at all, and decrees enforced by brute force are just that, not social norms. In short, collective self-authorization is necessary for there to be social norms within a collective.

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A further fact—one that is important for moral and political judgment concerning particular relationships, communities, or societies—is that in most cases of social norms and institutions, not all those whose life they regulate are equally respected as their authorizers. Therefore, what is a freely accepted institution for some part of a population may be closer to a system of coercion for others whose authority is not asked or does not count equally. Indoctrination and ideology present complications to this rather simple picture that cannot be discussed here. 19. Deontic neo-Hegelians call it simply “recognition,” since they do not distinguish between different recognitive attitudes. Hegel rarely uses “respect” (or “Achtung” or “Respekt”) in talking about recognition (“Anerkennung”), but since love clearly is a species of recognition for Hegel, yet it is not exhaustive of the species, we need to use distinct names for the other species as well. 20. It is this sense in which recognition relates to person-making psychological capacities that is at the center of Axel Honneth’s work on recognition. 21. It is important to distinguish between respecting someone as an authority of social norms and institutions, and respecting* her as a bearer of institutional or deontic statuses such as basic rights. Respecting* someone as a bearer of rights is compatible with having no respect toward her as an authority of her or anyone’s rights. Since this is the case, the assumption that having rights and being respected* as a rights holder promotes the self-respect of rights bearers is much less obvious than it is sometimes thought to be. Compare Joel Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” in his Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980). 22. This is also roughly Frankfurt’s position in Reasons of Love. 23. This needs to be contrasted with A’s valuing things because they are constitutive of B’s happiness and because B’s happiness is constitutive of someone else’s (such as A’s) happiness. This is not valuing something simply because it is constitutive of B’s happiness, or not for her own sake. Here I have to bite the bullet and say that if a person does not value something for the sake of some others, her valuing it is always her valuing it “for her own sake.” The “sake” here refers, not to one valuable thing among others, but to the particular valuing horizon in which something is valuable, or to its subject whose happiness is constituted by the success or flourishing of what in her horizon is valuable. I use “being concerned about someone’s happiness for her sake” synonymously with “being intrinsically concerned about someone’s happiness.” To be absolutely clear, “being concerned about someone’s happiness” should be understood in the sense of “wanting that he be happy,” and not of “wanting that he be unhappy.” 24. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1821]), § 161. 25. Alan Patten, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), among others, rightly emphasizes the importance of this formula for Hegel’s complex concept of freedom. In my view, however, he downplays the extent to which agency in general is, according to Hegel, constitutively dependent of the subject’s having particular interests. 26. Contrast this with the misery of loving someone to whom your happiness is of no significance, or someone who wishes you to be unhappy. The importance of mutuality is clearly in view in Hegel’s discussion of what he calls “universal

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self-consciousness”: G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, ed. and trans. Michael John Petry (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1978–1979 [1830]), § 436. 27. It is absurd in two ways. First, an agent that does not value anything has no motivation for norm administration. Second, respecting someone as a deontic authority or norm administrator in something that is of complete indifference to her is senseless. Compare Ronald H. Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics 112 (January 2002): 267–91, who says that Kantian legislation without value is arbitrary. What I say is that it is impossible, and that the fact that this is so is in no way affected by the fact that legislation, or administration, is a collective practice, as the deontic neo-Hegelians say it is. See also John McDowell, “Responses,” in Reading McDowell: On Mind and World, ed. Nicholas H. Smith (London: Routledge, 2002), 276 and note 10, who criticizes Brandom by saying that if norm administration is not to be arbitrary, it has to be constrained by norms that are independent of norm administration. I find this point acceptable if it is understood as saying that not all norms are social norms. My point is, however, that the whole deontic or legalistic discourse on spirit, personhood or “second nature” (the last one is McDowell’s favored wording) lacks touch on reality if it neglects the axiological dimension of valuing and thereby motivation. Hegel—from the beginning to the end of his career—was perfectly clear on this. See Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), chapter 7 on the relationship of the quest for happiness and ethical norms in Hegel; see also Alfredo Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), part III, chapter 8, § 8 on Hegel’s way of reconciling Kantianism and Aristotelianism in his discussion of the will. 28. This is not to say that all thinking is dependent on language. For one view on which forms of thinking are language-dependent and which aren’t, see José Luis Bermudez, Thinking Without Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 29. Peter Strawson thinks that someone “who manifested the personal reactive attitudes in a high degree but showed no inclination at all to their vicarious analogue would appear as an abnormal case of moral egocentricity, as a kind of moral solipsist”; he says further that such an individual is “barely more than a conceptual possibility” (Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” originally published 1962, in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974), 15). As far as I can see, what Strawson calls “reactive attitudes” (his famous examples are “resentment” and “gratitude”) can be conceived of as emotions that are constituted by (1) the pro-attitude that someone should have particular kinds of attitudes—namely recognitive attitudes of respect and/or love—toward someone, and (2) the belief that this is (or the belief that this is not) the case. That is, C expects A to have recognition for C or B, and reacts with resentment when this is not the case, or with gratitude when it is. Strawson’s point is hence that an individual (C) who is very sensitive about A’s attitudes toward himself (C) but not toward B is barely possible. Now, I take it that C’s being concerned of A’s recognition, or lack of it, toward B involves C’s recognition of B. The axiological dimension of Strawson’s thought cited is thus that deeply caring about oneself, and thereby caring about being recognized by others, but not caring about anyone else and thereby about their being recognized by third persons, is hardly possible. Whether this is true or not, clearly the idea of a person

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who has no intrinsic concern for the well-being of others whatsoever represents a kind of limit case in our moral imagination. Below I will suggest that those we call “psychopaths” are individuals who are relatively incapable of recognition—in the sense of love or respect—of others. See also Honneth’s discussion of autism as an incapacity for recognition: in Honneth, Reification, 42–44 and 58. 30. Note that this is a quite different claim from the morally or ethically neutral one saying that recognition from others makes us psychically stronger, or psychically better equipped for self-realization. 31. By “normative essentialism” I mean a view according to which things have an essence that they can realize to a greater or lesser degree, and according to which realizing it to a greater degree makes an entity somehow better. Such a view can be readily identified as an Aristotelian one. To be exact, however, what I understand by the Aristotelian variant of normative essentialism is a position that declares, furthermore, that entities have some tendency toward a greater degree of realization of their essences (see section entitled “Personhood as a Telos”). I am only arguing for Aristotelian normative essentialism about one particular class of things, namely persons. 32. Compare Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996) and Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000). 33. This would be the starting point of my answer to the question posed by Judith Butler in her critical reply to Honneth’s theory of reification: what exactly does it mean that recognition involves taking up the position of the second person? (See Honneth Reification, 97–119.) In loving someone, I relate to my thoughts and actions, and to myself as their subject, from an evaluative viewpoint which includes the evaluative viewpoint of the loved person (in the way discussed in section entitled “Recognition and the Constitution of Persons”); and in respecting someone I judge my thoughts and actions, and thereby myself, by norms that incorporate the deontic coauthority of the respected person. 34. Compare the discussion of “arrogance” as corruptive of personhood in Robin S. Dillon “Arrogance, Self-Respect and Personhood,” in Dimensions of Personhood (2007), 101–126. Part of what I say in this paper can be seen as an implicit dialogue with her more Kantian approach to lack of (self-) recognition as a corruption of personhood. 35. This may, or may not, have effects on the self-relations, or more generally on the psychological layer of personhood, of the victims. Yet, the badness of nonrecognition/ nonpersonification is clearly not exhausted by the psychological effects. See also Heikki Ikäheimo, “A Vital Human Need: Recognition as Inclusion Into Personhood,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 1 (2009): 31–45. 36. In relation to this, the fact that the victims are also not respected* as holders of what ever basic rights are constitutive of personhood in the institutional sense (whether according to philosophers’ recommendations, the various declarations of “human rights,” or actually existing systems of rights), seems less important for our judgments about the moral quality of the events in question. The same goes for, say, slavery: not having rights is not the worst thing about it. This is not to say that institutional personhood in the sense of basic rights is not important at all; on the contrary, it gives stability to social life and secures individual life in that it

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makes persons less vulnerable to the lack of interpersonal personhood in the eyes of particular others. 37. This comes close to Honneth’s Adorno-inspired talk about reification of persons as “forgetfulness of recognition” in Honneth, Reification. Even if the usefulness of the figure of “forgetting” may be debated (see Frederick Neuhouser, “Axel Honneth: Verdinglichung,” a review in Notre Dame Philosophical Review (2006) ndpr.nd .edu/review.cfm?id=5941 [accessed September 16, 2007]), Honneth’s point is clear: reification in the sense of A’s relating to B without recognition is a lack of something that was a necessary ingredient in A’s becoming a person himself, namely of recognition. The present article can be read as an argument against Jonathan Lear’s claim that recognition in a sense in which it is constitutive of the most basic person-making capacities of “symbolic thought, language,” etc., on the one hand, and recognition in a sense in which it is constitutive of human well-being, on the other hand, are two different phenomena. (See Lear’s critical discussion in Honneth, Reification, 131–43. In fact, Honneth himself makes a similar distinction between “existential” and “substantial” forms of recognition in Honneth Reification, 90n70.) 38. There is of course much more to be said about this distinction. One obvious issue to take into account is the fact that attitude patterns of individuals toward particular others (individuals or groups) are affected by cultural environment, and are also vulnerable to deliberate manipulation and indoctrination. 39. See, for instance, Pippin, “What is the Question,” 161. 40. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, § 382, as well as G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827–1828, trans. Robert R. Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3–7, and Robert R. Williams’ introduction to the latter. 41. One question that obviously needs close scrutiny is how exactly to conceive of the appropriateness or adequacy of the quantity of recognition in particular cases and in the particular spheres of social life. In general, quantifying respect, as well as love, is something philosophers have not spent much time thinking about, even if these are unsurpassable elements of our moral life. For example, if, as Kant says, we ought to treat each other not only as means (that is, as nonpersons), but also as ends (that is, as persons), what is the right, or acceptable, mixture of these ways of treating each other in the different spheres of our lives, and how are we to conceive such mixtures conceptually? In Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “What is Esteem? Two rival accounts” (forthcoming), we approach this theme in terms of “claims of personhood” which determine how much recognition is appropriate in each case, but obviously much more work needs to be done on this issue (compare Alice Le Goff, “B. van den Brink and D. Owen, eds.: Recognition and Power, A. Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory,” Revue du MAUSS 9 [December, 2007]). Let me make one point concerning this, however, to address a question posed by Bert van den Brink in discussion: it is inappropriate at least to respect someone in something in which he is incapable of being an authority. Thus saying that “more recognition is always better” is, as van den Brink notes, simplifying. But two things need to be noted. First, we do think that as a rule the better way of overcoming a discrepancy of this kind between respect and capacity is a higher level of capacity (and thus claim for respect) rather than a lower level of respect. Secondly, not only the actual, but also the potential, capacities of the recognizee for exercising authority are relevant

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for judging the appropriateness of levels of respect toward him. Another important issue is that although interpersonal recognition, by its very nature, comes in degrees, the institutionalization of deontic powers making up the institutional status of a person is by no means necessarily a matter of degrees. It is up to us to legislate, if we so decide, that each and every being fulfilling what ever criteria we choose decisive has the same basic “person-making” rights without degrees. For more on this see Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” 242–45. 42. On immanent critique, see Antti Kauppinen, “Reason, Recognition, and Internal Critique,” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 479–98. 43. What I am proposing resembles what Christopher Zurn calls a “strong metaphysical project” of recognition” (see his “Anthropology and Normativity: a Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life,’” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26, no. 1 (2000): 115–24). Yet, contrary to what Zurn suggests belongs to such a project, I am not declaring “ontological or metaphysical truths about the timeless essence of humanity “ (122, emphasis mine), which would be an anthropological enterprise, but rather appealing to deeply embedded intuitions about personhood as an ideal, or, as one could also say, to the collective normative-essentialist selfunderstanding of our life-form. 44. Let me note one way in which what I have said about the “ethical” importance of recognition might seem strange, and perhaps disappointing, to many of the proponents of the ethical approach to recognition. That is, I have not talked at all about “recognition” (in the sense of acceptance, paying notice, appreciation, and so on) of particular identities, on which much of the discussion on the “politics of recognition” focuses. One reason for this is that the rather unclear notion of “recognition of identity” would require a thorough analysis and there is only so much one can discuss in one paper. Another reason is that I do not think that “recognition of identity” is at all as vitally important either ethically or ontologically as is recognition as love and respect. To put it bluntly: if the relevant others around you do not care about your well-being intrinsically, and if they also do not respect you as having authority in matters that concern you, what they happen to think of your particular features may ease or worsen your predicament, but it does not change the fact that it is quite miserable anyway. On the other hand, that people do not appreciate all the particular features of your identity is really not that bad, provided that they genuinely care about what is good or bad for you, and provided that they genuinely respect you as having authority—for example, on which criteria or norms particular identities are to be evaluated and judged on. In other words, even if others’ appreciation of one’s particular qualities or “identity” is not insignificant, what certainly matters much more is to be taken as a person.

Index

Adorno, Theodor, 143, 241, 243 Aglietta, Michel, 317 Albertini, V., 207 alienation, 2, 29–30, 138–43, 224, 250, 321 Allen, Danielle, 184 Altmeyer, Martin, 189, 194, 204, 206, 208, 209 amour de soi, 22–24, 35 amour propre, 11–12, 21–46, 142; as source of human ills, 25–31; psychological responses to, 35–38; rationality and, 38–43; socio-political responses to ills of, 31–35 Anderson, Elizabeth, 180, 184 Anderson, Joel, 339 Aristotle, 137, 164, 167, 184, 185 Aristotelianism, 4–7, 355 Augustine, 21 Austen, Jane, 154 Bacal, Howard, 194, 206 Baker, Lynne Rudder, 362 Balint, Michael, 203 Bauer, Bruno, 181–82 Beckert, Jens, 238, 280 Bellow, Saul, 182

Benjamin, Jessica, 15, 87, 189, 191 199–202, 206, 208, 209 Bennett, Jonathan, 105 Bermudez, José Luis, 364 Bernstein, J. M., 12–13 Bion, Wilfred, 193, 195, 199 Bloch, Ernst, 238 Bollas, Christopher, 194 Bolognini, Stephano, 194 Boltanski, Luc, 282, 316 Bourdieu, Pierre, 222, 239, 279 Boyer, R., 256 Brandom, Robert, 103, 123, 127, 148, 345, 347, 360, 361 Brennan, Geoffrey, 331, 341 Britton, 194 Brudney, Daniel, 14–15 Buber, Martin, 208 Butler, Joseph, 155, 159, 181, 182 Butler, Judith, 254, 365 Castañeda, Hector-Neri, 104 Castel, Robert, 223, 237, 256, 279 Celikates, Robin, 255 Chiapello, Eve, 282, 316 Chitty, Andrew, 45, 46 Christianity, 13, 80, 112–13, 120, 149, 164, 183 369

370

Index

Clot, Yves, 316 Cohen, G.A., 185, 187 Cohen, Joshua, 44, 186 communicative action, 3, 9, 17, 241–42 Comte, Auguste, 158, 165, 182 Cooper, John, 185 Danto, Arthur, 67 Darwall, Stephen, 125 Dejours, Christophe, 299, 315 Deleuze, Gilles, 244 Dent, Nicholas, 25, 44 Deranty, Jean-Philippe, 18, 253, 255, 256, 280 Deutschmann, Christoph, 238 de Vries, Willem, 105 Dewey, John, 287–92, 300, 307–308, 312, 314 Dickens, Charles, 158 Dillon, Robin, 365 Donner, Wendy, 184 Dornes, Martin, 190, 202, 206, 209 Dubiel, Helmut, 253 Duménil, Gérard, 251, 256, 317 Durkheim, Emile, 225, 234–37, 239 Düsing, Edith, 125 Eagle, Morris, 194, 206 economics, theories of, 249–51, 309–13 Eliot, George, 158, 160, 162, 167, 182 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 158, 182 Engels, Friedrich, 172, 187 esteem. See recognition Feinberg, Joel, 153, 169–72, 180, 186, 363 Feldman, Leonard, 314 feminism, 3, 211 Ferrarin, Alfredo, 364 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 158, 161, 164, 174, 184, 187 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1, 12–13, 47– 87, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 107, 109, 113, 114, 116, 125, 129, 132, 145, 206, 208, 333

Forster, Roger, 253, 254 Foucault, Michel, 243–44 Frank, Manfred, 91, 103 Frankfurt, Harry, 117, 126, 346–47, 352, 361, 363 Franks, Paul, 85, 86, 87 Fraser, Nancy, 15–16, 17, 18, 126, 127, 144, 242, 247, 254, 258, 260–63, 265, 275–80, 285–87, 292–94, 298, 300–306, 309–14, 360 Freud, Sigmund, 15, 190–92, 195, 200–205, 206–208 Fromm, Erich, 201 Frommer, Jörg., 208, 209 Früchtl, Joseph, 126 Fukuyama, Francis, 144 Gattig, Ekkehard, 194 Gill, Michael, 180 Glover, Jonathan, 365 Goldman, Alvin, 13, 102, 105 Granovetter, Mark, 239 Green, T.H., 239 Grice, Paul, 86–87, 104 Habermas, Jürgen, 9, 91, 103, 114, 116, 123, 126, 130–31, 142, 144, 189, 224, 227–29, 237–38, 241– 44, 247–49, 252–54, 257, 275–77, 279, 282, 287–90, 300–302, 306– 10, 315, 316 Hahn, Susanne, 126 Halbig, Christoph, 105, 125 Hampshire, Stuart, 182 Hampton, Jean, 341 Hardt, Michael, 251, 256 Hartmann, Martin, 242, 254, 255, 280, 315 Hegel, G. W. F., 2–3, 5, 11, 13, 14, 21, 64, 73, 79, 81, 87, 89–106, 107–127, 129–49, 172, 181, 189, 200, 208, 209, 213, 216, 229–38, 242, 245– 46, 255, 277, 282–83, 288–90, 293, 327, 333–34, 340, 341, 343–66 Hegelianism, British, 2 Heidegger, Martin, 116

Index Held, Virginia, 184 Hellinger, Bert, 194, 208 Herder, J.G., 116, 120 Herman, Barbara, 44n7, 180n8 Hill, Thomas, 186 Hitler, Adolf, 355 Hobbes, Thomas, 21, 81 Hogarth, 70 Holbein, Hans, 80 Honneth, Axel, 4, 7–11, 16–17, 103, 113, 114, 118, 120–21, 126, 127, 144, 186, 187, 189, 197, 201, 206, 241–56, 258–82, 285–317, 322, 339, 341, 347, 360, 361, 363, 365, 366 Horkheimer, Max, 241, 252, 317 Hoy, David, 279 Huhn, Tom, 87 Hume, David, 144, 151, 155, 178, 179, 181, 187, 188 idealism, 2–3, 12–13, 48–49, 54–56, 76, 83, 94, 199 Ikäheimo, Heikki, 19, 334, 338–39, 340, 341, 342 Jacobi, F. H., 49 Jaeggi, Rahel, 45 Jesus Christ, 80, 116 Jevons, William Stanley, 270, Joas, Hans, 301, 307, 317 Jones, Peter, 341 Kächele, Horst, 198, 208 Kambartel, Friedrich, 238 Kant, Immanuel, 9, 12, 13, 14, 21, 51– 53, 61, 65–67, 113, 130–34, 136–38, 148, 149, 347, 353, 364, 365, 366 Kantianism, 4–7, 48, 60 Kauppinen, Anti, 367 Kim, Jaegwon, 13, 102, 105 Kittay, Eva, 184 Klein, Melanie, 15, 189–90, 192–96, 203, 207 Kleist, Heinrich von, 116 Kocyba, Hermann, 254, 316 Kohut, Heinz, 201, 203

371

Kojève, Alexandre, 144, 189 Kompridis, Nikolas, 254 Korsgaard, Christine, 144–45 Kreines, James, 144 Krejci, Erika, 208 Küchenhoff, Joachim, 194, 209 Lacan, Jacques, 189, 206 Laclau, Ernesto, 256 Laitinen, Arto, 18–19, 359, 361, 362, 366 Laplanche, Jean, 86 Laurence, Ben, 187 Leibniz, G. W., 139–40 Lévy, Dominique, 251, 256, 317 Lichtheim, George, 238 Locke, John, 81, 156, 181 Loewald, Hans, 194 Lombard, Lawrence, 105 love. See recognition Luhmann, Niklas, 9, 126 Lukács, György, 9 Lukes, Steven, 239 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 146, 184 Mahler, M., 202 Margalit, Avishai, 359, 365 Markell, Patchen, 144, 254 Marshall, T. H., 126 Marx, Karl, 2, 9, 14–15, 17, 31, 32, 33, 151–88, 241–42, 250, 252, 289–90, 297 Marxism, 2, 10, 214, 222, 241–45, 248– 53, 286, 288 Mason, Andrew, 341 materialism, 47–49, 54–55, 64–65, 81 McCarthy, Thomas, 279 McDowell, John, 134, 364 Mead, George Herbert, 5, 45–46, 292 medical ethics, 114–16 Meggle, Georg, 104 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 70, 189 Mesch, Walter, 126 Michelangelo, 80 Mill, John Stuart, 155, 158–60, 163, 165, 181, 182, 184

372

Index

Miller, A. V., 89, 100–101 Miloševic,´ Slobodan, 355 Mitchell, Stephen, 190, 206 Modell, Arnold, 208 Money-Kyrles, Roger, 193–96, 204, 207–208 Morales, Maria, 184 More, Thomas, 164, 184 Morgenroth, Christoph, 237 Mouffe, Chantal, 256 Müller, Hans-Peter, 239 Müller, Horst, 253 Münch, Richard, 238 Nagel, Thomas, 187 Negri, Antonio, 251, 256 Neuhouser, Fred, 11–12, 85, 86, 186, 364, 366 Newman, Kenneth, 194, 206 O`Brien, Lucy, 67–68, 87 Ogden, Thomas, 208 Parsons, Talcott, 9, 238–39 Patten, Alan, 363 Pettit, Philip, 170, 186, 331, 341 phenomenology: French, 3; theological, 3 philosophical anthropology, 3, 5, 19, 75–80, 343–67 Pildes, Richard, 180 Pinkard, Terry, 14, 103, 360 Pippin, Robert, 105–106, 145, 147, 345, 360, 366 Plato, 80, 164, 193 Pöggeler, Otto, 125 Pol Pot, 355 Polanyi, Michael, 232, 238 Popper, Karl, 91 pragmatism, 2, 104, 289–92 psychoanalysis, 3, 15, 189–209; narcissism and, 189–91, 203–205. See also recognition, as acceptance of reality, and, recognition, personal vs. propositional psychology, 3

Quante, Michael, 13, 125 Raphael, 80 Rawls, John, 118, 121–22, 126, 127, 130–31, 151, 153, 168–69, 178, 179, 180, 186, 187 Raz, Joseph, 324, 339 Reagan, Ronald, 172 recognition: as acceptance of reality, 190–96, 204–205; adequate regard vs. mutuality in, 18–19, 319–42; agency and, 14, 18–19, 47–49, 54–61, 64–69, 130–32, 135–39, 322; capitalism and, 6–10, 17–18, 165–67, 169–73, 212, 220, 223– 37, 241–42, 247–52, 257–78, 293– 317; care and, 114–15, 154–63, 201–202; concern-based vs. respectbased, 14–15, 160–72, 177–79; contemporary normative theory and, 4–7, 13–14, 113–24, 242–44, 288; critical theory and, 8–11, 131, 189, 223–29, 236–37, 241–56, 257–78, 285–313, 343, 345; cultural and evaluative pluralism and, 3, 116, 122; democracy and, 287–92; economy and, 15–18, 214–21, 285–317; embodiment and, 13, 47–87; esteem, 5–8, 17–18, 21–43, 168–69, 196, 211, 259, 263–78, 292–94, 296–300, 320–21; experience and, 295–305; freedom and, 55–62, 64–69, 72– 76, 131–36, 143, 349, 351–52; as a good, 129–30; group reification and, 16, 212, 215–16; identity vs. status models of, 16, 213–22; identity politics and, 211–13, 221; ideology and, 241–42, 244–45, 252, 269, 272–75; immanent critique and, 225–29, 231–37, 298–303; individuality and, 55–61, 200; intersubjectivity and, 2–3, 49–50, 54–55, 57, 59–63, 69–74, 91, 95–102, 109–110, 129, 189–91, 198, 199–205, 216, 245–46, 269,

Index 308–11, 325–28, 331, 352, 357–58; law and, 5–8, 10, 34–35, 47, 85, 107, 111–12, 115, 118–22, 130–31, 153–54, 166, 170–72, 217–18, 259, 267–72; love, 5–7, 114, 159– 63, 201–203, 259, 347, 350–53, 347, 350–53; misrecognition and, 213, 216–19; multiculturalism and, 3, 13, 16, 114, 119–22, 211–13; nature and, 122–24, 133; norms and, 49–55, 63–64, 83–85, 132– 34, 232–33, 236–37, 262, 346–55; objects of, 320, 324–38, 344–67; paradigm of, 1–11; personal vs. propositional, 15, 190–209; personhood and, 356–59; practical attitudes and, 19, 162, 176–79, 323–24, 334–36, 343–44, 346, 347–53; practical relation-to-self and, 320–22, 344; redistribution and, 211–15, 219–21, 260, 286, 288, 293–95; respect, 5–8, 22–23, 30, 34–35, 113–16, 153, 168–69, 171, 190, 196, 197–98, 211, 230– 31, 259, 267–72, 320–21, 347, 349–50; the right, the good, and, 7, 14, 129–49; rights and, 12–13, 47, 49–55, 61–64, 64–69, 169–72, 196–97, 199–202, 211, 348, 350; self-consciousness and, 91–102, 107–113, 200; self-realization and, 114, 116–21, 130, 152–56, 172–76, 179, 225–27, 322; social facts and, 136–39; social philosophy and, 7–11, 242–44, 246–50, 252, 258–63, 275–78, 287, 290, 303– 13; social spheres of, 8, 258–59, 276–77; social struggles and, 5–6, 10–11, 244–46, 251–53, 297, 304; theology and, 3, 112–13; true communist society and, 151–88; work and, 16–17, 173–76, 223–39, 245, 250, 257–78, 294–301, 305; world-disclosure and, 130, 163–67. See also amour propre Regan, Donald, 144

373

Regan, Ronald H., 364 Reich, Reimut, 194, 204, 209 Reinhold, Karl L., 51 Rembrandt, 80 Renault, Emmanuel, 17, 280, 287, 295–305, 313, 315, 316 respect. See recognition Richardson, Henry, 145 Ricœur, Paul, 113, 120, 125, 126, 255 rights. See recognition Rorty, Richard, 116, 117, 126, 144 Rosenfeld, 194 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1, 11–12, 21– 46, 81, 142, 167, 186, 209 Rubens, 80 Rutherford, Malcolm, 317 Saarinen, Risto, 341 Sachs, David, 186 Sallard, Y., 256 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 189, 242 Scanlon, T. M., 125 Scharff, 194 Schlegel, Friedrich, 116 Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph, 17–18, 238 Schneider, 194 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 155, 159, 182 Schwarzenbach, Sibyl, 185 Schweikard, David, 104, 106 Searle, John, 105 Seel, Martin, 238 Segal, Hanna, 193, 207 Senghaas-Knobloch, Eva, 237 Sennett, Richard, 238, 279 sentimentalism, 154 Sherman, Nancy, 145 Siep, Ludwig, 13–14, 103, 144, 340 Sinnerbrink, Robert, 360 Smith, Adam, 209, 293 Smith, Nicholas, 315 social pathologies, 9, 18, 243, 252, 287, 297–303 Sophocles, 140 Sorel, Georges, 242 Spivak, Gayatri, 255

374

Index

Stalin, Joseph, 355 Stanislaw, Joseph, 279 Stehr, Nico, 280 Steiner, John, 194 Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin, 360 Stephen, Fitzjames James, 159–61, 182, 183 Straus, Erwin, 87 Strawson, Galen, 341 Strawson, Peter, 87, 334–35, 341, 364–65 Sturma, Dieter, 361 Taylor, Charles, 113, 116–17, 119–20, 126, 133, 144, 307, 333, 339, 341 Taylor, Frederick, 264, 281 Thomä, Helmut, 198, 208 Thompson, Michael, 146 Thompson, Simon, 314, 316 Todorov, Tzvetan, 209 Tooley, Michael, 362 Tress, W., 208, 209 Tronto, Joan, 184 Tugendhat, Ernst, 91, 103, 208 utilitarianism, 4–7

Veblen, Thorstein, 281 Vidal, Gore, 181 Vincent, Jean-Marie, 253 Voigt, Stefan, 280 Voswinkel, Stephan, 316 Waldron, Jeremy, 126 Walzer, Michael, 118–19, 126, 186 Weber, Max, 9, 221–22, 281 Weiß, 194 well-ordered society, 151; non-ideal societies and, 176–79 Wiggershaus, Rolf, 279 Wilde, Oscar, 155, 181 Wildt, Andreas, 15, 103 Williams, Robert, 87 Wilson, William Julius, 237 Winnicott, Donald, 15, 191, 199–201, 203, 206, 208 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 75, 87, 145 Wood, Alan, 85–86 Yergin, Daniel, 279 Zurn, Christopher, 255, 280, 285–88, 291–316, 367

About the Contributors

J. M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He works primarily in the areas of aesthetics and the philosophy of art, ethics, critical theory, and German Idealism. Among his authored books are The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism, and the Dialects of Form (1984); The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (1992); Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (2001); and, Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (2006); he edited Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (2003). He is presently at work on a book provisionally entitled Torture and Dignity: Reflections on Moral Injury. Daniel Brudney is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He writes on political philosophy, medical ethics, and philosophy and literature. He is the author of Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy (1998). His recent publications include “Grand Ideals: Mill’s Two Perfectionisms” (History of Political Thought, 2008); “Choosing for Another: Beyond Autonomy and Best Interests” (Hastings Center Report, 2009); “Styles of Self-Absorption” (forthcoming in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Literature); and “Nineteenth-Century Ideals: Self-Culture and the Religion of Humanity” (forthcoming in The Cambridge History of 19th Century Philosophy). Jean-Philippe Deranty is senior lecturer in philosophy at Macquarie University. He has published extensively in contemporary European philosophy and critical theory. His latest publications include Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (2009). 375

376

About the Contributors

Nancy Fraser is Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York. She currently holds a “Blaise Pascal International Research Chair” at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Her books include Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space for a Globalizing World (2008); Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics, ed. Kevin Olson (2008); Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (2003) with Axel Honneth; Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (1997); and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989). Axel Honneth is professor of social philosophy at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Social Research. He specializes in practical philosophy and the theory of society. His English language publications include The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory (1990); The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1995); Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1999); Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange (coauthored with Nancy Fraser, 2003); Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (2007); and Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (2009). Heikki Ikäheimo is Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Macquarie University. He is currently working on applications of the concept of recognition in theories of personhood and social ontology. His publications include articles on recognition, personhood, and Hegel’s theory of subjective spirit, as well as the monograph Self-consciousness and Intersubjectivity: A Study on Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (2000), and the collections Dimensions of Personhood (2007) and Recognition and Social Ontology (forthcoming). Arto Laitinen is a Research Fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and Docent at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His current research interests include mutual recognition, solidarity, and normativity. His publications include Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources: On Charles Taylor’s Philosophical Anthropology and Ethics (2008); the co-edited collections Recognition and Social Ontology (forthcoming); Hegel on Action (forthcoming); and a number of articles on the nature of recognition, including “Interpersonal Recognition—A Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood?” (Inquiry, 2002). Frederick Neuhouser is professor of philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of three books: Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, And the Drive for Recognition (2008); Foundations

About the Contributors

377

of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (2000); and Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (1990). He is currently working on a project on social inequality from a Rousseauian perspective. Terry Pinkard is University Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His interests are largely in exploring the German tradition in philosophy from Kant to the present, especially German Idealism. He has produced many books, including, as author, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (1994); Hegel: A Biography (2000); and German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (2002); and, as editor, Heine: On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (2007). Michael Quante is full professor of practical philosophy at Universität Münster and associate editor of the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. His main areas of research are German Idealism, practical philosophy, philosophy of mind, and biomedical ethics. His books, in English, include Hegel’s Concept of Action (2004) and Enabling Social Europe (2005). His books, in German, include Menschenwürde und Personale Autonomie (2010); Karl Marx: Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte (2009); Person (2007); Einführung in die Allgemeine Ethik (2003); Personales Leben und menschlicher Tod (2002); Ethik der Organtransplantation (2000); Hegels Begriff der Handlung (1993). Emmanuel Renault is maître de conférence in the Philosophy Department at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Lyon). Editor of the Journal Actuel Marx, coeditor of the Journal Critical Horizons, he has written articles and books on Hegel, Marx, and contemporary critical theory: Marx et l’idée de critique (1995); Mépris social. Ethique et politique de la reconnaissance (2000); Hegel. La naturalisation de la dialectique (2001); Philosophie chimique. Hegel et la science dynamiste de son temps (2002); L’Expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et clinique de l’injustice (2004); and Souffrances sociales. Sociologie, psychologie et politique (2008). His last book: Lire Marx (2009). Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch is Postdoctoral Researcher in Philosophy at Universität Münster and Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt. His areas of research include nineteenth-century European philosophy and contemporary social and political philosophy. He is the author of Hegels Begriff der Arbeit (2002); Religiöse Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie (2007); and „Anerkennung“ als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie (2009). He has coedited Heinrich Scholz. Logiker, Philosoph, Theologe (2005) and Hegelianismus und Saint-Simonismus (2007).

378

About the Contributors

Ludwig Siep is University Professor of Philosophy at Universität Münster. He is member of the Northrhine-Westphalian Academy of Arts and Sciences and corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His fields of research encompass practical philosophy, history of philosophy, especially German Idealism, and applied ethics. He is author of Hegels Fichtekritik und die Wissenschaftslehre von 1804 (1970); Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (1979); Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (1992); Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes (2001); and Konkrete Ethik (2004). He has also edited Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (2005) and Kommentar zu John Locke, Zweite Abhandlung über die Regierung (2007). Andreas Wildt is Private Docent in Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin. His publications include Autonomie und Anerkennung. Hegels Moralitätskritik im Lichte seiner Fichterezeption (1982) and articles on issues in moral and political philosophy, and the philosophy of subjectivity. Christopher Zurn is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky. His scholarly interests focus around deliberative democratic theories of constitutional democracy, and issues in contemporary critical social theory. He has authored Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review (2007) and coedited with Boudewijn de Bruin New Waves in Political Philosophy (2009).