Axel Honneth: Critical Essays - With a Reply by Axel Honneth

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Axel Honneth: Critical Essays

Social and Critical Theory A Critical Horizons Book Series Editorial Board John Rundell, Danielle Petherbridge, Jeremy Smith, Jean-Philippe Deranty, Robert Sinnerbrink

International Advisory Board William Connolly, Manfred Frank, Leela Gandhi, Agnes Heller, Dick Howard, Martin Jay, Richard Kearney, Paul Patton, Michiel Wieviorka

Volume 12

The titles published in this series are listed at www.brill.nl/sct

Axel Honneth: Critical Essays With a Reply by Axel Honneth

Edited by

Danielle Petherbridge

LEIDEN • BOSTON LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Axel Honneth : critical essays : with a reply by Axel Honneth / edited by Danielle Petherbridge. â•‡â•… p. cm. -- (Social and critical theory ; 12) â•‡Includes bibliographical references and index. â•‡ISBN 978-90-04-20885-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Honneth, Axel, 1949---Political and social views. 2. Critical theory. 3. Social sciences--Philosophy. I. Petherbridge, Danielle. II. Title. III. Series. â•‡ HM480.A94 2011 â•‡301.092--dc23

2011019885

ISSN 1572-459X ISBN 978-90-04-20885-8 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

Contents Volume Foreword....................................................................................vii Acknowledgements..................................................................................ix Introduction: Axel Honneth’s Project of Critical Theory.......................1 â•… Danielle Petherbridge 1.â•‡ Situating Axel Honneth in the Frankfurt School Tradition...........31 Joel Anderson 2.â•‡Reflective Critical Theory: A Systematic Reconstruction of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy................................................59 Jean-Philippe Deranty 3.â•‡ Recognition and the Dynamics of Intersubjectivity...........................89 Johanna Meehan 4.â•‡Social Solidarity and Intersubjective Recognition: On Axel Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition...................................125 Max Pensky 5.â•‡Recognition, Pluralism and the Expectation of Harmony: Against the Ideal of an Ethical Life ‘Free from Pain’.....................155 Bert van den Brink 6.â•‡Power, Recognition, and Care: Honneth’s Critique of Poststructuralist Social Philosophy................................................177 Robert Sinnerbrink 7.â•‡ The Theory of Recognition and Critique of Institutions..............207 Emmanuel Renault 8.â•‡ Recognition: A Theory of the Middle?...........................................233 Carl-Göran Heidegren

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â•‡ 9.â•‡ The Social Dimension of Autonomy............................................255 Antti Kauppinen 10.â•‡First Things First: Redistribution, Recognition and Justification..............................................................................303 Rainer Forst 11.â•‡Recognition, Culture and Economy: Honneth’s Debate with Fraser........................................................................... 321 Nicholas H. Smith 12.â•‡ Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders...........................345 Christopher F. Zurn 13.â•‡The Nugget and the Tailings. Reification Reinterpreted in the Light of Recognition...........................................................371 Alessandro Ferrara 14.â•‡Rejoinder.........................................................................................391 Axel Honneth Notes on Contributors..........................................................................423 Index.......................................................................................................427

Volume Foreword Axel Honneth: Critical Essays edited and introduced by Danielle Petherbridge, illuminates the great richness and diversity, and offers a comprehensive assessment, of Axel Honneth’s body of work. The collection brings together leading scholars in the area, and includes a detailed response by Honneth. By presenting a full panorama of the state of the debate as well as substantive explorations of remaining issues and difficulties, the volume marks a significant development in contemporary critical theory. Jean-Philippe Deranty, Editor Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Acknowledgements Alessandro Ferrara, “The Nugget and the Tailings. Reification Reinterpreted in the Light of Recognition”, has appeared as “Das Gold im Gestein. Verdinglichung und Anerkennung” in eds. R. Forst, M. Hartmann, R. Jaeggi & M. Saar, Sozialphilosophie und Kritik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009, pp. 40–63. Thanks are due to Suhrkamp Verlag and the editors for their permission to publish the English version in this volume. Rainer Forst, “First Things First: Redistribution, Recognition and Justification”, was first published in European Journal of Political Theory 6, 2007, pp. 305–338. It also appeared in N. Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury. Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics, ed. K. Olson, London & New York, Verso, 2008, pp. 310–346. Thanks are due to Sage for their kind permission to publish the article in this volume. I would especially like to thank John Rundell; I am also very grateful to Jean-Philippe Deranty, and the contributors to this volume for their patience and support of this project. Most of all I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Axel Honneth for his generous participation and response to these essays.

INTRODUCTION: Axel Honneth’s Project of Critical Theory Danielle Petherbridge Over several decades Axel Honneth has made a profound contribution to Critical Theory, most notably in terms of defending its normative, emancipatory project and developing a comprehensive theory of society and social action that can provide a framework for analysing social relations of domination. For Honneth, the task of critical social theory requires more than simply mounting a critique of existing social conditions, notably it must also carry the potential for immanently motivating social change. In the tradition of Left-Hegelian critique in which Honneth situates his own project, Critical Theory must therefore consist of two fundamental elements: both a pre-theoretical resource or empirical foothold in social reality which reveals an emancipatory instance or need, but also a quasi-transcendental dimension or mode of context-transcending validity in order to provide a normative horizon from which to critically assess forms of social organisation.1 In other words, critical social theory requires a dialectical interplay between immanence and transcendence which can enable critical diagnoses of exiting social conditions to be made.2 Honneth considers this dialectical method or form of Â�‘transcendence within immanence’ to be the defining characteristic of critical social theory in the Frankfurt School or Left-Hegelian tradition.3 In Honneth’s

1 â•‡ See Honneth’s reconstruction of social philosophy in “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy”, in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, where he constructs the methodological concerns of critical social theory in these terms. See also Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, London & New York, Verso, 2003, p. 240. 2 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 238–9. 3 â•‡ Honneth identifies the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School with that of LeftHegelian critique, defining them in the same terms. See for example, the essays “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory” and “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, both in Pathologies of the Social: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, trans. James Ingram, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009.

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danielle petherbridge

view, one of the main problems confronting contemporary critical social theorists today, is determining which instances or experiences can be pre-theoretically located within social reality that also contain ‘system-bursting’ potential to compel change within a given social order.4 For the critical theorist to avoid claiming a privileged or paternalistic position, the emancipatory instance or experience that compels social change must be identified within the existing social order and must be of the same normativity or rationality that becomes manifest in new forms of social organisation.5 A pre-theoretical interest must “be regarded as a moment of socially embodied reason insofar as it possesses a surplus of rational norms or organizational principles that press for their own realization”.6 For Honneth this pre-theoretical condition is identified in a recognition-theoretical stance that provides the normative ground from which critical assessments of social life can be made. It is in the context of developing this recognition-theoretical approach that Honneth’s work became widely known with the publication of his 1992 book, The Struggle for Recognition.7 However despite the prominence of the 1992 book, Honneth’s work cannot be fully understood without locating the theory of recognition within the context of a broader project which has been pursued systematically from his early essays on Marx and Critical Theory, through to his studies on philosophical anthropology in Social Action and Human Nature, and his reappraisal of models of critical social theory in The Critique of Power. It also extends to his most recent work on Hegel, the later essays on object-relations theory, his debate with Nancy Fraser, and the Tanner Lectures published as Reification. The essays in this volume seek to demonstrate the breadth and systematicity that characterises Honneth’s project across these writings and to engage critically not only with the theory of recognition but with the shifts and currents that have shaped Honneth’s model of Critical Theory throughout his work. â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 239; 242. â•‡ See Honneth’s discussion in Axel Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, pp. 43–53, where he outlines the risk of a ‘strong’ context-transcending form of critique as representing either an elitist or paternalistic viewpoint, or worse being a form of despotism (p. 44). 6 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 240. 7 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995 (1992). 4 5

axel honneth’s project of critical theory3 1.â•‡ Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory

In The Critique of Power, Honneth traces the theoretical transitions between the work of Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault and Habermas, as a contribution to what he terms ‘reflective stages in a critical social theory’.8 With this methodology Honneth understands the ‘history of theory’ he presents as a ‘reflective learning process’ at the level of theory that has a teleological orientation. Significantly, for Honneth, in this trajectory Foucault is posited as the heir to Adorno, and his work is considered to provide a productive development in terms of the project of a critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition. In this sense, Honneth’s own self-understanding is that the studies in The Critique of Power represent a critico-reflexive process with systematic intent that begins with Horkheimer and Adorno, progresses with Foucault’s work, and culminates in Habermas’ theory of communicative action, which represents a theoretical advance over previous models of critical social theory.9 In this early reappraisal of the tradition of critical social theory, however, Honneth identifies a common problem in the works of these four theorists – namely, their inadequate accounts of the social and restrictive theories of social action. In this regard, as Joel Anderson shows, Honneth’s project can be situated not only in relation to the continuities, but also the differences with first and second generation Critical Theory in the establishment of his own programme of critical social theory. Although Honneth locates his project in the tradition of Critical Theory conceived by Horkheimer, he contends developed by first generation that the social-theoretical analysis Â� members of the Frankfurt School was not robust enough to develop a reflexive critique of society nor adequately able to construct the normative grounds for critique. In Honneth’s view, Horkheimer and Adorno’s incapacity to adequately analyse a communicative domain of the social leads to their inability to locate a pre-theoretical resource for critique in everyday life beyond the paradigm of labour and to a one-dimensional conception of power understood in terms of the 8 â•‡ Notably, this is the subtitle of The Critique of Power. See A. Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. Kenneth Baynes, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, & London, 1991 (1988; 1985). 9 â•‡See A. Honneth, “Afterword to the Second German Edition (1988),” in The Critique of Power, especially pp. xiii; xv–xvi.

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human domination of nature. Although Horkheimer and Adorno attempted to develop a model of social theory that was able to separate a critical method from the falsely universalising influences of the model of the natural sciences, Honneth argues they fell victim to an account of social life overly determined by the act of dominating nature by failing to develop a more complex account of social processes.10 Despite his original insights into a dimension of ‘cultural action’, Horkheimer’s adherence to a philosophy of history structured in terms of the dimension of social labour, prevented him from fully identifying an intersubjective dimension of social action, which could provide a pre-theoretical resource for critique. Moreover, in Honneth’s view, Adorno’s negativism only forces Critical Theory even further into a position in which it is no longer possible to gain access to a socialhistorically grounded form of reflexive critique and is left articulating a pre-theoretical reference point that is located in the experience of modern art.11 Notwithstanding Honneth’s attempts to reconstruct more systematically the project of Critical Theory articulated by first-generation members of the Frankfurt School, it can be argued that Honneth considers the communicative transformation of Critical Theory initiated by Jürgen Habermas offers the most promising conceptual means by which access to a pre-scientific realm of moral critique can once again be established. In this vein, Honneth’s project has been directed towards reconstructing a project of practical reason based on a comprehensive theory of intersubjectivity in an effort to extend Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Honneth attempts to develop an alternative theory of intersubjectivity that can better account for the

10 â•‡ See Honneth, The Critique of Power, Chapters 1-3. See also Slawomir Magala, “History and the Ways out of It: Reflections on Axel Honneth’s Kritik der Macht”, Thesis Eleven, no. 20, 1988, p. 119. 11 â•‡Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton, London, Routledge, 1973; Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today”, in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 64–5. In this respect, in his early work Honneth is remarkably critical of Adorno’s work and more sympathetic to Horkheimer’s original project and notion of ‘cultural action’, which for him provides the more promising way to proceed. However, in his later work, Honneth provides a much more sympathetic and renewed engagement with Adorno’s work. See for example Axel Honneth, “A Physiognomy of the Capitalist Form of Life: A Sketch of Adorno’s Social Theory”, Constellations, vol. 12, no. 1, 2005; “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism”, in Disrespect.

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normative structures that provide the moral basis of both autonomous human action and interaction. In order to address these concerns Honneth, like Habermas, posits the basis of critique in the normativity that, he argues, is immanent to intersubjectivity. Honneth adopts Habermas’ claim that social action can no longer be defined in light of the subject-object relation, but rather, must be reconceived in terms of the subject-subject relation. For Habermas, the way to avoid the impasse encountered by Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, depends on an account of reason and social action that is based on intersubjective cooperation and communication, not self-introspection. In his early essays and The Critique of Power, Honneth then largely accepts Habermas’ critique of Adorno and Horkheimer, that the philosophical-historical dead-end encountered by first generation Critical Theory can no longer be addressed by the philosophy of the subject nor the paradigm of consciousness.12 Rather, the moral dilemmas of modernity can only be addressed by an account of morality founded upon the intersubjective formation of identity and communicative interaction. Taking normative intersubjective theory as his point of departure, Honneth clearly identifies his own project as an extension and further development of the communicative paradigm initiated by Habermas.13 Where their projects begin to differ, is that for Habermas, this means the philosophy of consciousness must be replaced by a philosophy of language, whilst for Honneth this paradigm shift is represented by a broad-based theory of recognition; whilst both agree that the paradigm of labour must be supplemented with one of communication, for Habermas this is linguistically mediated, whilst for Honneth it is conceived as a multi-dimensional notion of communication, including both pre- and extra-linguisticality. Honneth’s emphasis on recognition rather than discourse as the basis for a theory of intersubjectivity can be viewed as an attempt to redirect Habermas’ original idea regarding damaged relations of recognition in the lifeworld. This marks a return 12 â•‡ Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. K. Baynes, Cambridge MA & London, The MIT Press, 1991, p. xv; Also see the essays in Axel Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. Charles Wright, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995. See Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays, trans. William Mark Hohengarten, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995. 13 â•‡ See Honneth in Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? for Honneth’s description of his project in Habermasian terms, p. 246.

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to Habermas’ early work on Hegel’s Jena lectures, where he first states, that “liberation from hunger and misery does not necessarily converge with liberation from servitude and degradation, for there is no automatic developmental relation between labor and interaction [yet] there is a connection between the two dimensions”.14 This foundational moment in Habermas’ project remains pivotal in Honneth’s own critical reconstruction, as does the turn to the early work of Hegel that inspires his own recognition-theoretic premise in his major work The Struggle for Recognition.15 These concerns to redirect the communicative paradigm can be traced back to some of Honneth’s earliest work, where he begins to develop his own program of critical social theory through his critique of Habermas’ interpretation of Marx.16 It is particularly in Honneth’s early work that he carefully begins to provide a reconstruction of the communicative paradigm that can be distinguished from Habermas in three main moves. Firstly, Honneth accepts the shift from the Marxist paradigm of production to the paradigm of communicative action, which also means accepting that the conditions of social progress are no longer located in social labour but rather in social interaction. However, he suggests that the dynamics of social change should not be understood as processes of social rationalisation that take place ‘behind the backs’ of social actors in the form of evolutionary learning processes, but rather in the moral struggles between social groups. In this sense, Honneth attempts to recover the dimension of ‘class struggle’ that he suggests was present in Habermas’ early work but receded as his project developed. Secondly, where Habermas moves to construct a theory of the universal pragmatics of language with the aim of identifying the specific normative presuppositions that constitute the rational potential of communicative action, Honneth develops a theory of recognition that can articulate the normative intersubjective conditions necessary for autonomy understood in terms of successful individual selfrealisation, thereby reorienting the normative foundations of critical social theory. 14 â•‡ Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, London, Heinemann Educational Books, 1974, p. 169. 15 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995 (1992). 16 â•‡ See the excellent study by Jean-Philippe Deranty on these aspects of Honneth’s early work in Beyond Communication: A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy, Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2009.


Thirdly, Honneth develops a theory of modern society based on a notion of the historical shift to an institutional order of recognition relations, whereby all spheres of life can be organised recognitively, including the organisation of social labour.17 This provides a contrast to Habermas’ theory of society that traces the process of rationalisation of communicative action to the historical point at which it results in the development of two distinct modes of integration, characterised in terms of ‘Lifeworld’ and ‘System’. Honneth’s aim is to avoid a differentiation between system and social integration, pitching his analysis at a level that reveals the moral presuppositions underlying all forms of integration. One of Honneth’s main critiques of Habermas is the separation instituted between normatively and instrumentally co-ordinated action spheres, or between social and systemic forms of integration.18 In fact, Honneth’s project is pervaded by a distinctive position that fundamentally rejects anti-normative approaches to critical social theory. As the discussion by Nicholas Smith demonstrates, this is a stance that Honneth has maintained with remarkable consistency throughout his work from his original critique of Habermas in The Critique of Power to his debate with Nancy Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? Instead Honneth seeks to anchor social normativity at an ontological level and proposes that contemporary diagnoses of social life be oriented in terms of three types of social relations of recognition that are conceptualised in terms of love, law and achievement. This also enables Honneth to award the category of labour greater significance than otherwise given in Habermas’ theory of communicative action, as well as attempting to recover the moral dimension of alienation that is lost in his account. Taking as his point of departure the original anthropological insights advanced in Habermas’ early work, Honneth moves to develop an alternative anthropological approach that includes bodily aspects, non-linguisticality and mimetic expression. The anthropological premise is one that has underpinned Honneth’s project from the beginning. Most notably this project was originally outlined in his 17 â•‡See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Vol. 1., trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1984; The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Vol. 2, trans. Thomas McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1987; See Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect”, in Disrespect, for his outline of Habermas’ project in these terms. 18 â•‡ Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect”, p. 72; Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 249.

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important study Social Action and Human Nature written with Hans Joas.19 As Jean-Philippe Deranty highlights, the collection of studies in philosophical anthropology can also be understood as ‘reflective stages’ or ‘traces’ in a theory of intersubjectivity, a learning process at the level of theory that is explicitly anthropological in orientation. In this reflexive-theoretical examination, Honneth and Joas begin with the intersubjective-theoretic insights of Feuerbach and Marx, and move through various studies and contributions to a philosophical anthropology of intersubjectivity in Western Marxism, and then to anthropologies of social action drawing in particular on the German tradition of philosophical anthropology and the work of Mead (which is also pivotal to the later work in The Struggle for Recognition), and finally to studies in ‘historical anthropology’ exemplified by Elias, Foucault and Habermas. For Honneth, all social philosophical research requires a form of anthropological reconstruction. In Social Action and Human Nature, this reconstructive enquiry takes place at two levels: (1) an eÂ� xamination of the conditions of the species’ history, and (2) individual development, both of which reveal certain constants or enduring conditions. However, Honneth and Joas caution against any claim that anthropology in this sense be understood as presuming an ahistorical view of human cultures, nor that it is attempting to provide “an inalienable substance of human nature”.20 Rather, for Honneth, philosophical anthropology can only provide a reflection upon the human condition in the form of reconstructive method, as an historical enquiry into “the unchanging preconditions of human changeableness”.21 Following Plessner and Gehlen, Honneth’s anthropological reconstruction is therefore intended to confirm what “natural invariability [can] help explain universal features of species-specific human historicity and plurality”. In this respect, Honneth explains that philosophical anthropology aims to articulate not what is “fixed and limited … but rather aims at invariant conditions of human historicity”.22 In other words, philosophical anthropology takes changefulness itself to be a social constant but also seeks to confirm what is constant in human 19 â•‡ See Axel Honneth & Hans Joas, “Preface”, Social Action and Human Nature, trans. Raymond Meyer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. x. 20 â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 7. 21 â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 7. 22 â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature.


changefulness. In this context, philosophical anthropology is not viewed as a foundational science, but rather as a form of autonomous self-critique on and of the social and cultural sciences that is reconstructive in method. The studies provided in Social Action and Human Nature are therefore intended as a ‘contribution’ to the project of theoretical self-reflection, a “discussion of anthropology with systematic intent”.23 From the very early work on philosophical anthropology, Honneth has been intent on establishing the normativity inherent to intersubjective relations, which initially with Joas, he traces back to its materialistic manifestation in the work of Feuerbach. In the first instance, therefore, the work of Feuerbach and Marx are foundational for this anthropological project. For Honneth, Feuerbach is not only central to establishing the relationship between anthropology and historical materialism, but also crucially he is credited with being “the first to take into consideration both epistemologically and substantially the significance of the specifically human structure of intersubjectivity”. That is, he reveals “an a priori intersubjectivity of the human being”.24 Moreover, in Honneth and Joas’ reconstruction of philosophical anthropology, several studies in what they term ‘historical anthropology’ also assume a significant position. Not only Habermas, but also Elias and Foucault are credited for contributing to an historicisation of anthropology that highlights the ways in which these “natural preconditions of social action [can be traced] in such a manner and to such a degree that their historical and cultural plasticity becomes evident…”25 In this sense, they argue that a reflexive philosophical anthropology must take account not only of the organic bounds of the human being, but also “the historical process through which human nature has shaped itself within [these] organically set bounds”.26 The interpretations of Elias, Foucault and Habermas, can therefore be read as contributing important insights to a historically sensitised philosophical anthropology of intersubjectivity. Honneth’s understanding of philosophical anthropology is therefore alert to the ways in which historical and cultural processes have shaped and changed â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 11. â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 15. See also Jean-Philippe Deranty, Beyond Communication which provides a comprehensive discussion of the early work on philosophical anthropology. 25 â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 118. 26 â•‡ Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 118. 23 24

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subjectivity, especially the fashioning of subjectivity of and through the human body, and it is in this sense that Foucault’s work is of interest as a contribution to ‘historical anthropology’. It is notable, then, that both Foucault and Habermas figure predominantly in Honneth’s early work prior to The Struggle for Recognition in terms of his reconstruction of reflexive stages towards a theory of intersubjectivity and in the outline of his own programme of critical social theory. 2.â•‡ The Social as a Field of Struggle: Honneth’s Reading of Foucault For Honneth, this reconfiguration of the intersubjective paradigm also requires an intersubjective-theoretic notion of power that can account for the conflictual aspects of a more broadly conceived version of communicative action and provide a more comprehensive critique of the structures of social domination. It is in this respect that Honneth puts Foucault’s analysis of strategic interaction to work with Habermas’ theory of communicative action in an attempt to develop a reflexive critique of power and domination. Despite arguing that Foucault lapses into a systems-theoretic analysis of power, Honneth suggests that Foucault’s understanding of the social as a domain of strategic interaction is instructive for developing an intersubjective-theoretic notion of power that is lacking in Habermas’ account.27 Significantly, this enables Honneth to articulate a much broader notion of interaction and give much greater credence to social domination. In this way, Honneth develops an account of the social that perceptively analyses a relational notion of power at a micro-level, at the level of everyday interaction in the lifeworld. Honneth therefore conceives domination in broad terms, not just at the level of systemic production, nor in terms of the colonisation of the lifeworld but in everyday interactions, thus avoiding the false opposition between a norm-free domain of power and a powerfree domain of communication that he argues results from Habermas’ theoretical presuppositions. Certain currents in Foucault’s work represent an attempt to conceptualise what Honneth has termed a ‘struggle-theoretical intuition’

27 â•‡Honneth locates this action-theoretic notion of power mainly in Foucault’s interviews and essays in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, New York, Pantheon Books, 1980.


that offers an alternative to Habermas’ systems-theoretic analysis and gestures towards a conception of social development as “a process of differentiation mediated by social struggles”.28 Moreover, Foucault’s account of the social as a field of agonistic struggle provides an Â�important counterbalance to Habermas’ account of the social in terms of consensus and mutual understanding. For Honneth, Foucault’s intersubjective-theoretic notion of power in terms of the ‘practical intersubjectivity of struggle’, provides an alternative to Habermas’ restrictive account of power rendered in either systemic terms, or otherwise as a distorted form of communication. One of Honneth’s unique achievements is to bring together through reconstructive critique, the insights contained in Habermas’ ‘intersubjective-theoretical turn’ with Foucault’s motif of the struggle-constituted notion of the social.29 Honneth’s immanent critique of Foucault in The Critique of Power is important not only in terms of the project of articulating the centrality of struggle to the paradigm of the social, but also, to the articulation of an intersubjective-theoretic notion of power. Foucault’s work, it might be argued, provides an under-acknowledged nodal point in the conceptual history of intersubjectivity that Honneth traces throughout his own work. To be sure, in Honneth’s view, the action-theoretic account of struggle and power within Foucault’s work is ultimately cancelled out by what he identifies as a countervailing tendency towards systems-theoretic explanations typified by the analysis in Discipline and Punish and the idea of power-wielding institutions. His contention is that the action-theoretic premises of Foucault’s work that elucidate an ongoing process of social struggle are contradicted by his analysis of disciplinary power in which the subjectivating practices of social institutions such as the school, prison and hospital form a totalising form of power. Honneth carries this critique of structural and systematising forms of institutional analysis through to his later work, avoiding all forms of functional explanation. However, some critics have questioned whether Honneth has provided an adequate account of the role

â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power. â•‡ In this sense, Honneth offers an especially original reconstruction of Foucault’s work that traces not only the impulses and tensions between the action-theoretic and systems-theoretic tendencies, but also an attempt to construct a productive dialogue between Critical Theory and French post-structuralist thought that both predates and distinguishes it from Habermas’ more dismissive treatment in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. See Robert Sinnerbrink’s essay in this volume. 28 29

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of institutions in the processes of subject-formation, even in its recognitive forms. In his contribution to this volume, Emmanuel Renault provides a critical analysis of what he perceives to be Honneth’s inadequate account of institutions and institutional power. He contrasts what he considers to be Honneth’s uni-directional notion of institutions as ‘expressions’ of recognition with an alternative notion of institutions as ‘constitutive’ of recognition, by drawing on Foucaultian and Weberian stances. In Honneth’s own analysis, the engagement with Foucault’s work only convinces him that the centrality of a notion of ‘struggle’ for a critical social theory can only be achieved by replacing Foucault’s notion of power/struggle, with a morally motivated concept of social struggle drawn from Hegel’s early writings. Nonetheless, the insights taken from Foucault’s work form an important contribution to Honneth’s working out of a notion of social struggle that is later incorporated into the theory of recognition, one that several authors argue has receded in his later work. This issue becomes especially important in relation to Honneth’s later conceptualisation of ethical life in The Struggle for Recognition, where he posits a ‘provisional end-state’ of social struggles within a horizon of social relations of solidarity. With this later move, questions have been raised about whether Honneth retains the ‘agonistic’ aspects of a theory of recognition that were evident in his early work, particularly in terms of the consequences this may have for a politics of recognition.30 In his contribution, Robert Sinnerbrink suggests that by foregrounding the morality, rather than the politics of recognition in his later work, the action-theoretic model of the social as a field of social struggles that was a crucial inspiration for Honneth’s early reconstruction of critical social theory is deemphasised in Honneth’s subsequent work, an observation Honneth concedes in reflecting upon his own work in his ‘Rejoinder’ to this volume. However, despite the productive contributions of both Foucault and Habermas to the project of critical social theory, Honneth concludes that neither theorist is able to accomplish the ambitious task outlined by Horkheimer, that is, to provide a comprehensive action-theoretic account of the social nor the basis for a reflexive critique of power.

30 â•‡ Also see Danielle Petherbridge, “Anthropology, Recognition, and Power” (forthcoming); Bert van den Brink’s contribution to this volume, Chpt. 5.


In the end, neither Habermas nor Foucault adequately conceptualises an action-theoretical account of the key dimensions of ‘culture’ and ‘social struggle’ that Horkheimer originally articulated. Honneth’s response to both Habermas and Foucault, therefore, is to attempt to develop an expanded notion of recognitive-communicative action that is applicable to the coordination of action in all spheres of social life. The consequence of Honneth’s own reconstruction of a more broadly conceived theory of communicative action is that he also attempts to redefine the analysis and critique of domination, and to incorporate a notion of conflict and social struggle as central to the paradigm of the social. Honneth is therefore compelled to look elsewhere to bring together a notion of social struggle and conflict together with a normative theory of society and social action, and this reorientation becomes the defining element of his project in The Struggle for Recognition.31 3.â•‡ The Theory of Recognition To accomplish the task of bringing together a notion of social conflict and a normative theory of society, Honneth turns to Hegel’s Jena philosophy of recognition, which for him provides the means to reconstruct Foucault’s struggle-theoretic insights in normative-theoretic terms. Through an intersubjectivistic reading of the early works of Hegel, Honneth develops a theory of recognition which is posited as the normative ground for a model of critical social theory. The concept of recognition is intended to provide a framework for analysing social conditions of individual self-realisation and the development of social relations and institutions. The normative foundation of recognition is grounded anthropologically and conceptualised as an originary notion of undamaged intersubjectivity which is understood to provide the fundamental preconditions for successful subject-formation and the development of ethical life. With the interpretation of Hegel developed in The Struggle for RecogÂ� nition, Honneth posits recognition as the normative ground of sociality and conflict and develops the three-sphered model of normative 31 â•‡ In other words, as Foster has pointed out, Honneth is therefore compelled to look for an alternative pre-theoretical point of reference as the basis for normative critique within social reality. Roger Foster, “Recognition & Resistance: Axel Honneth’s Critical Social Theory”, Radical Philosophy, vol. 94, March/April, 1999, pp. 6–18, here p. 9.

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recognition relations and corresponding practical self-relations that has become synonymous with his mature project. This recognitiontheoretic ideal forms the basis of Honneth’s model of a formal concept of ethical life and the means by which he attempts to justify his particular model of critical social theory as an evaluative framework for analysing the conditions for full human flourishing. The three intersubjective patterns of recognition constitute Honneth’s version of a good or ethical life in the sense that they provide the conditions for successful identity-formation or the development of an ‘ethical personality’.32 The three spheres of love, law and achievement, which recall Hegel’s divisions between family, state and civil society, are central to the development of three corresponding forms of practical selfrelation. The formal concept of ethical life is to be understood as a normative ideal in which specific patterns of recognition enable individuals to acquire the self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem necessary for full self-realisation. Honneth wants to suggest that this ideal is not merely a theoretical construct but that it is pre-scientifically located in the structure of intersubjective social relations and can offer an evaluative framework from which to critically assess the general conditions for successful subject-formation within existing forms of social organisation. Such an orientation towards ethical values is, however, not intended to provide a substantive notion of the ‘Good Life.’ Rather, Honneth wants to account for a notion of ethical life in formal terms only: the three interdependent patterns of recognition are intended to account for successful self-realisation in an abstract manner in an effort to avoid embodying particular visions of the good life. The anthropological structures of recognition are intended to provide a contexttranscending claim to validity that is universally applicable regardless of historical or socio-cultural context. The forms of recognition associated with love, rights, and achievement as Honneth presents them, therefore, “do not represent established institutional structures but only general patterns of behaviour”, which he argues, “can be distilled, as structural elements, from the concrete totality of forms of life”.33 In this volume, Max Pensky and Bert van den Brink both question whether post-traditional values can indeed be extracted from all versions of the good life, and raise numerous issues about the â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 136–7. â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 174.

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compatibility of Honneth’s concepts of social solidarity and the formal concept of ethical life with modern social complexity and ethical pluralism. Honneth argues, however, that the notion of ethical life is not a theoretical proposal that intends to determine once and for all which values might constitute an ethical life. The development of substantive values must be left open to historical change and to the future of social struggles.34 Honneth therefore also attempts to justify the contextimmanent features of recognition by leaving the model open enough to account for the particularity of socio-cultural and historical contexts in which recognitive identity claims are made. Nonetheless, he posits that the content of the three conditions of recognition is thick enough to offer normative criteria for successful identity-formation that extends normative theory beyond the scope of deontological or Kantian approaches that are based on self-determination and moral autonomy alone. With the construction of a formal concept of ethical life, Honneth attempts to traverse a middle path between communitarian and Kantian models on which normative criteria can be based. In contrast to communitarian approaches, Honneth accounts for ethical criteria and structures of identity-formation without returning to a relativistic option that would seem to offer no way of distinguishing between better or worse notions of the good life. On the other hand, Honneth questions not only whether the formal criteria of Kantian-based theories thin out our anthropological understanding of the human condition too much but he also suggests they fail to explain the motivational basis for adhering to formal criteria. He maintains that deontological theories are too weak to be able to account for the motivational source for morality; nor can they convincingly establish a connection to a pretheoretical emancipatory interest.35 Honneth argues that an approach that re-configures an anthropology of recognition relations, and combines it with the problem of an ethical imperative from the vantage point of the intersubjective conditions for self-realisation, is a far more convincing way to ground critical social theory. Although he retains a commitment to a Kantianderived idea of individual autonomy he also argues that because it has the character of a mere ‘ought’, it is too far removed from the everyday â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 179. â•‡ Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today”, in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, p. 66. 34 35

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moral experiences of social lifeworlds and forms of ethical life to have any motivating validity. As Antti Kauppinen suggests Honneth’s theory of recognition does not merely account for the capacity for autonomy but the social and psychological conditions for exercising autonomy.36 For Honneth, “the possibility of realizing individual autonomy depends on being able to develop an intact self-relation through the experience of social recognition”.37 A subject can only achieve autonomy if she is able to acquire the necessary forms of self-relation – self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem – through participation or involvement in corresponding forms of social recognition.38 In his contribution, CarlGöran Heidegren reconsiders the qualitative value and complex nature of these patterns of recognition and outlines an ethically ‘thicker’ conception of interpersonal interactions that might mediate between what he terms recognitive attitudes and expressions of recognition.39 Honneth’s own means of articulating the necessary structural conditions for a formal concept of ethical life is provided by the connection he makes between the necessary experience of the three forms of intersubjective recognition, the three corresponding forms of self-relation, and the forms of social organisation required to ensure successful selfrealisation.40 This structural recognition-complex is grounded on “an anthropological conception that can explain the normative presuppositions of social interaction”.41 For Honneth, there is a developmental logic between the three forms of self-relation that a subject acquires through processes of socialisation. Firstly, a subject must acquire basic self-confidence attained through loving relationships in which she has the capacity to express her own embodied needs and know they will be met by the care of significant others. Secondly, this basic selfconfidence is a prerequisite for the subject to be able to secure a 36 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 5; See also Bert van den Brink and David Owen, eds, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 7. 37 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 180–1. 38 â•‡ See Honneth’s response to Kauppinen in this volume. 39 â•‡See also Ikäheimo, Heikki & Laitinen, Arto, “Analysing Recognition: Identification, Ackowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons”, in eds. van den Brink & Owen, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory. 40 â•‡ See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 173; Also see the discussion by Christopher Zurn in “Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life’â•›”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 26, no. 1, 2000, p. 115. 41 â•‡ Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect”, p. 72.


positive feeling towards herself as a person worthy of self-respect because she is considered a morally responsible and autonomous being equal to all others in the context of legal relations. Thirdly, this principle of equality before the law subsequently provides the capacities required to experience oneself as an individual who is valued for her contribution to society as well as deriving a sense of self-worth in the knowledge that she is integrated into a shared value-community.42 In Honneth’s view, the three forms of recognitive relations “represent normative perspectives with reference to which subjects can reasonably argue that existing forms of recognition are inadequate or insufficient and need to be expanded”.43 In Honneth’s view, the three patterns of recognition constitute standards for ‘healthy’ forms of social relations against which ‘pathologies’ or ‘misdevelopments’ of social life can be identified and potentially transformed. The key to understanding Honneth’s approach is the connection he makes between anthropology, social philosophy and the diagnoses of social pathologies which is central to his method of critical social theory. As Christopher Zurn explains, in his reconstruction of the tradition of social philosophy, Honneth identifies the diagnosis of social pathologies as one of the defining characteristics of the discipline, a method which is intended to elucidate forms of social suffering or ‘abnormal’ forms of social development that inhibit full human flourishing.44 In this respect, it might be argued that Honneth’s more recent work has not only been dedicated to the further development of the theory of recognition but also to analysing a range of social pathologies, most notably in his essay on ‘invisibility’ and the Tanner lectures on reification. 4.â•‡ Recognition as the Basis for a Critical Social Theory: Anthropological or Historical Justification? This philosophical reconstruction sheds light on Honneth’s defence of anthropological arguments in terms of the intersubjectivity of recognition and the construction of a formal concept of ethical life as the basis

â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 173–4. â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 143. 44 â•‡ See Axel Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy” in Disrespect, pp. 3–48. 42 43

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for the project of critique. In keeping with this conceptual approach, Honneth also explains processes of social change in relation to the structural interconnection between the three patterns of recognition. According to Honneth, it is the deep-seated normative demands intrinsic to the structure of recognition-relations that compels individuals and groups to struggle for expanded forms of recognition and new forms of social organisation.45 Honneth explicitly makes the link between normative theory and the intersubjectively constituted motivational aspects of his critical social theory on the basis of a theory of injustice. As Rainer Forst enumerates in his discussion of the debate between Honneth and Fraser, contexts of justice are always primarily contexts of injustice, even though for Forst, they also presume a specific context of justification. For Honneth, social domination can only be adequately critiqued if we begin from the experience of injustice, that is, normativity can only be derived negatively, not on the basis of ideality. This is a premise that has endured from his earliest essays through to his most recent work. In the final chapters of The Struggle for Recognition and essays such as “Disrespect”, Honneth identifies misrecognition or the “social dynamics of disrespect” as the means by which he can explain an emancipatory interest structured into the fabric of intersubjective relations. Honneth argues that the social struggles of disadvantaged groups with whom he initially identifies an emancipatory interest, are “not motivated by positively formulated moral principles, but by the experience of having their intuitive notions of justice violated. The normative core of such notions of justice is always constituted by expectations of respect for one’s own dignity, honor or integrity”. When subjects fail to receive the intersubjective recognition they feel they deserve, they experience this lack or denial of recognition as a form of moral injustice or as “feelings of social disrespect”. Honneth argues that the denial of recognition may cause the entire personality of the subject to collapse because human subject-formation is so critically dependent on the experience of recognition. It is for this reason that when deepseated normative expectations of intersubjective recognition are not met, people react with negative feelings of “shame, anger, or indignation”.46 This internal connection between a deep-seated emancipatory â•‡ See Zurn, “Anthropology and Normativity”, p. 115. â•‡ Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect”, pp. 71- 2.

45 46


interest in recognition and feelings of disrespect, furnishes Honneth with the core explanatory concept of a “moral grammar of social conflict”.47 In his more recent work, however, Honneth has sought to delineate more strongly the conditions of social recognition that are open to historical change and normative progress, and those that are deep-seated human constants. Although the historicist dimension was present in The Struggle for Recognition, notably, it was more explicitly defined in relation to the two recognitive conditions of law and achievement.48 Significantly, in The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth exempts love from the potential for normative development, arguing that only relations of law and achievement are open to the possibility for progressive change.49 In Redistribution or Recognition?, Honneth reassesses these early formulations and attempts to add an historicist dimension to his analysis of the development of the three spheres of recognition and accompanying forms of practical self-relation. It is only once the family becomes a distinctly privatised and separate sphere, and when we can speak of the emergence of a distinct phase of ‘childhood’ in which a specific model of primary care is fostered and the concurrent development of a modern notion of love, that it is possible to conceptualise ‘love’ as a specific form of recognition-relation that is crucial for selfconfidence and the expression of embodied needs; it is only once rights become universalised and disaggregated from forms of status and privilege that it is possible to speak of a form of self-respect that is attributed to all individuals on the basis of their status as an autonomous human being accorded equal rights; and this, in turn, requires that rights be separated from status and that the contribution individuals make to society enabling them to feel esteemed for their contribution, becomes further individualised and ‘meritocratised’ and open to

47 â•‡ This is of course the subtitle to The Struggle for Recognition. See Chapter 8 of The Struggle for Recognition for a discussion. 48 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 174–5. 49 â•‡ There, love is still conceptualised in the following anthropological terms: “the experience of love, whatever historical form it takes, represents the inner-most core of all forms of life that qualify as ‘ethical’. Because it does not admit of the potential for normative development, the integration of love into the intersubjective network of a post-traditional form of ethical life does not change its fundamental character. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 176.

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contestation in regard to the values that determine the recognition of individual achievement.50 Significantly, Honneth now argues that moral expectations of social recognition cannot be exclusively justified with reference to an anthropological model: “Rather, such expectations are the product of the social formation of a deep-seated claim-making potential in the sense that they always owe their normative justification to principles institutionally anchored in the historically established recognition order”. Moreover, he now specifically attributes the “differentiation of the three spheres of recognition” to the historical development of “bourgeois-capitalist society”, and emphasises the profound normative structural transformation that emerges with modernity as initiating the shift to a social-recognition-order.51 Honneth has therefore more recently acknowledged that the anthropological structures of social recognition alone cannot adequately provide justification for grounding a critical social theory. He now more strenuously attempts to maintain a form/content distinction, suggesting that only the form of moral expectations of recognition represents an invariant anthropological feature whereas their content depends on the different ways in which they become institutionalised and differentiated within in any given society.52 Furthermore, in order to sustain a basis for critique, Honneth now incorporates a notion of “validity surplus” which he suggests is internal to the three forms of recognition, arguing that: “…each principle of recognition has a specific surplus of validity whose normative significance is expressed by the constant struggle over its appropriate application and interpretation”.53 All forms of recognition, including love, therefore are now conceptualised as containing an internal conflict dynamic that ensures each is open to permanent contestation and development with regard to the way in which they are applied, institutionalised and interpreted.54 However, for Honneth,

â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 139–141. â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 137; 142. Honneth acknowledges, however, that this ‘revolution’ of the social recognition-order occurred with “class- and gender-specific delays” (p. 142). 52 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 174. 53 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 186. 54 â•‡ In this sense, Honneth attempts to amend the view proposed in The Struggle for Recognition, that love does not have the potential for normative development. He is now convinced that love also possesses a surplus of normative validity that emerges 50 51


socially institutionalised forms of recognition never exhaust their normative potential, rather each form of recognition has a surplus of validity that is never fulfilled and that is open to the promise of continual expansion and the potential for ongoing learning processes.55 The content and mode of institutionalisation of each form of recognition is therefore permanently open to rational debate and dispute and subject to publicly reasoned forms of justification.56 This aspect of subjecting recognition to ‘the space of public reason’ is an element that Honneth has also begun to emphasise more strongly in recent work.57 However, the notion of validity surplus does not just apply separately to each of the three spheres of recognition, it also applies to the general development of social relations of recognition. Honneth now argues more definitively that in order to justify a form of context-Â� transcending validity that extends beyond a particular social context, the notion of a surplus of normative validity needs to be complemented by a theory of moral progress.58 Honneth’s assessment for the need for a concept of moral progress particularly arises in the context of justifying the basis of a recognition-theoretical concept of justice in his debate with Nancy Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? There, Honneth addresses the problem of identifying a pre-theoretical basis for critique that does not merely entrench prevailing social conditions. As he had already identified in The Struggle for Recognition, the issue is to be able to differentiate between progressive or reactionary forms of social struggle and to be able to critically assess “the developmental direction [of] present-day social conflicts…”59 In Honneth’s view, a theory of progress is required in order to avoid a form of ethical perspectivism or a form of justification that gives new social movements a privileged or elitist status.60 and expands as a result of interpretative conflicts. See Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, ff. 35, p. 192. 55 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 186. 56 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 145. 57 â•‡See Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?; Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in eds. Bert van den Brink and David Owen, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007. 58 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 263. 59 â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 182–3. 60 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 116; Axel Honneth, “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Priviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, in Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, trans. James Ingram, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009.

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Nonetheless in Redistribution or Recognition? as well as in later work, Honneth continues to maintain the primary anthropological claim articulated in The Struggle for Recognition with recourse to a “distinctively human dependence on intersubjective recognition” and the normative conditions for self-realisation that this entails.61 This has also crucially involved proceeding ontogenetically by developing an anthropologically derived model of subject-formation that has recently been expanded with further recourse to object-relations psychoanalysis. 5.â•‡ Intersubjective Dependency and Subject-formation In developing an anthropological foundation for a normative theory of intersubjectivity and socialisation in The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth further extended Hegel’s theory of recognition with anthropological features drawn from the work of G.H. Mead and Donald Winnicott. This unique combination of theoretical resources became the defining characteristic of Honneth’s work, providing the basis for his well-known tripartite theory of recognition, which structures an intersubjective theory of subject-formation and normative forms of socialisation. In his articulation of a recognition-theoretic model of subject-formation, Honneth initially emphasised the compatibility of Mead’s and Winnicott’s accounts of individualisation through socialisation. For Honneth, both are originally understood to hold similar views about the subject’s psychic organisation as a process of internalisation of the communicative patterns of interaction partners.62 With recourse to object-relations theory, Honneth’s original intention in The Struggle for Recognition was to extend Mead’s intersubjective account of socialisation beyond the internalisation of moral consciousness to the centrality of primary affectivity for successful subject-formation.63 For Honneth, this also meant further developing Mead’s notion of the ‘I’ in psychoanalytic terms, seeking to explain it as a pre-conscious source of innovation by which new claims to identity emerge and are asserted. Accordingly, an individual’s future ability for the articulation â•‡ Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 138. â•‡Axel Honneth, “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis”, Philosophical Explorations, no. 3, September, 1999, pp. 225–242, here p. 231. 63 â•‡ Axel Honneth, “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory”, p. 231. 61 62


of his or her needs and desires is understood to be dependent on conditions of support and care from significant others. Only with a particular quality of primary care can the individual be confident enough to allow for the creative exploration of his or her inner impulses without fear of being abandoned. This emotional, body-related sense of security provides an underlying layer that forms the psychological prerequisite for the development of all further attitudes of self-respect. To explain the precarious balance between independence and attachment in primary affective relationships, Honneth provides a recognition-theoretic interpretation of Winnicott’s work, which emphasises the lasting significance of prelinguistic interactive experiences for subject-formation. In Honneth’s view, Winnicott’s work, makes it possible to reconceptualise Hegel’s notion of love as a form of recognition or ‘being oneself in another’ in empirically verifiable terms and provides a more robust means of theorising recognition than Mead’s social psychology. The engagement with object-relations theory initially furnishes Honneth with two fundamental criteria in the development of a theory of recognition. Firstly, it provides him with the central category of ‘symbiosis’, which becomes the defining feature of what he terms a theory of ‘primary intersubjectivity’. Secondly, he views objectrelations theory as providing a more empirically oriented account of Hegel’s dialectic between dependence and independence, now recast as the struggle to find a balance between mergence and separation in early childhood.64 In this respect, Honneth argues, that object-relations theory is especially suited to a ‘phenomenology of recognition’ because “it can convincingly portray love as a particular form of recognition only owing to the specific way in which it makes the success of affectional bonds dependent on the capacity, acquired in early childhood, to strike a balance between symbiosis and self-assertion”.65 In Honneth’s reading, Winnicott’s work is central to the articulation of a theory of socialisation that emphasises the importance of early primary relations for securing the necessary balance between attachment and independence that is fundamental for both successful self-development and the basis for all future forms of recognition relations. In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth views the object-relations theory of Winnicott as particularly amenable to extending the intersubjective insights and account of self-realisation first provided by 64 65

â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 98. â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 98.

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Hegel and Mead, however, in subsequent work Winnicott’s objectrelations theory, particularly his account of subject-formation and primary affectivity, comes to replace the former centrality of Mead’s social psychology.66 It is possible to argue that Honneth’s reconstruction of Winnicott’s theory around the central concepts of symbiosis and primary affective relations, subsequently became the primary reference point for the theory of recognition, and anticipates the turn to an ontology of affective attunement in his recent work Reification. Several theorists, including Iris Marion Young, Amy Allen and Johanna Meehan, have criticised Honneth’s notion of love and the mother-infant dyad upon which his theory of recognition is founded as blind to the dynamics of power that are also operative in primary relationships.67 They contend that Honneth’s model of affective care as a relation of mutual recognition overlooks the fact that the motherinfant relation is in fact structured by “asymmetries of power, dependence and unreciprocated labour…”68 As Allen enumerates, even though the primary relation between parent and child might be constituted by love, it is also inevitably an asymmetrical power relationship. In her contribution to this volume, Meehan supports this claim arguing that Honneth’s model of the infant-caregiver relation moves too seamlessly between the normative and the descriptive, not only screening out forms of power but also problematically conceiving such relations as mutually recognitive. She also argues that there are other ways to conceive of early forms of relationality between infants and primary care-givers both within developmental psychology and

66 â•‡ The increasing importance of object-relations theory for Honneth’s project, and the replacement of Mead with Winnicott’s interactionist psychoanalytic perspective is evident in the following works: Axel Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, in Symposium on Axel Honneth and Recognition, Inquiry, no. 45, 2002; Axel Honneth, “Facetten des vorsozialen Selbst. Eine Erwiderung auf Joel Whitebook”, Psyche, Vol. 55/8, 2001; “The Work of Negativity: The Psychoanalytic Revision of the Theory of Recognition”, in eds. Jean-Philippe Deranty, Danielle Petherbridge, John Rundell & Robert Sinnerbrink, Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory, Leiden & Boston, Brill, 2007. 67 â•‡ See Iris Marion Young, “Recognition of Love’s Labor: Considering Axel Honneth’s Feminism”, in eds. Bert van den Brink and David Owen, Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 189–212; Amy Allen, “Recognizing Domination: Recognition and Power in Honneth’s Critical Theory”, Journal of Power, Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2010, pp. 21–32; Johanna Meehan, “Recognition and the Dynamics of Intersubjectivity”, Chapt. 3 in this volume. 68 â•‡ Young, “Recognition of Love’s Labor”, p. 207.


psychoanalysis that do not posit a primary mergent state but rather highlight the distinctiveness of the self from the first days of the infant’s life. In response to other critical exchanges, particularly with the psychoanalyst Joel Whitebook, Honneth’s use of the concept of symbiosis as a primary intersubjective category has also come under scrutiny. Whitebook argues, that the existence of at least some form of ‘prereflexive proto-self ’ is difficult to deny as it is evident that infants “bring much to infant-mother interaction that is specifically their own”. Moreover, the development of a body-scheme presupposes the existence of a least a ‘bodily ego’ which is constituted by “the infant’s distinct physiologically determined repertoire of dispositional states”. This in turn, “becomes the fundament upon which more elaborated and reflective forms of selfhood are constructed”.69 Recent research in developmental psychology such as that conducted by Stern, also challenges this view of an initial subjectless state, drawing on numerous studies that point to the existence of at least an emergent or core sense of self from the earliest phases of life.70 The work of both Stern and Whitebook poses questions about the complex genesis of the subject, and about what the nature of the ‘inter’ of intersubjectivity actually refers to. In those exchanges, Honneth has been urged to consider whether the category of symbiosis can do the work required and whether it can be conceptualised in the manner he originally intended. His recent position and further work on psychoanalysis and objectrelations is framed with the feasibility of the central category of symbiosis in mind and represents a modification to his theory which takes into account some of both Whitebook’s and Stern’s considerations, which he further reiterates in his ‘Rejoinder’ in this volume. In recent essays, Honneth has modified his account of the notion of an originary undifferentiated state as the basis of the theory of recognition and reconsiders the way in which the motivation for the struggle for recognition is conceptualised. It is the ‘permanent striving’ to recreate momentary or episodic moments of fusion with the primary care-giver that compels “the subject to rebel again and again against

69 â•‡ Joel Whitebook, “First Nature and Second Nature in Hegel and Psychoanalysis”, Constellations, Volume 15, no. 3, 2008, pp. 386–7. 70 â•‡ See Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, London & New York, Karnac Books, 2006 (1985).

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the experience of not having the other at our disposal”.71 Honneth clarifies his most recent position in the following terms: I now assume that the impulse to rebel against established forms of recognition can be traced to a deep-seated need to deny the independence of those with whom one interacts and to have them, ‘omnipotently’, at one’s disposal. We would then have to say that the permanence of the ‘struggle’ for recognition stems not from an unsocializable ego’s drive for realization but rather from the anti-social striving for independence that leads each subject to deny, again and again, the other’s difference.72

Honneth acknowledges that this explanation constitutes a shift away from his earlier thesis that the ‘struggle for recognition’ is motivated by a particular kind of moral experience that stems from negative feelings of being unjustly or inadequately recognised. Rather, the thesis now proposed is that struggle or conflict is a response to an anthropologically posited human need to recreate the experience of symbiosis and thereby negate the independence of the other. It is this primary negative experience that compels subjects to seek to deny the independence or recognition of the other but also, he suggests, to recreate a mergent state by seeking security in a homogeneous community when subjects feel threatened.73 In more recent work on object-relations theory, the primary concept of ‘affective recognition’ has noticeably begun to emerge as an ontological category. Honneth now continuously emphasises that the primordial experience of symbiosis is purely an affective category rather than being a cognitive process or one of moral experience.74 In other words, it is only by experiencing a primary affective relation, whereby 71 â•‡See Axel Honneth’s “Rejoinder” in this volume; Axel Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, in Symposium on Axel Honneth and Recognition, Inquiry, no. 45, 2002, p. 504. 72 â•‡ Honneth, “Grounding Recognition”, p. 504. 73 â•‡ Honneth, “Grounding Recognition”, p. 504. In a more recent essay, Honneth seeks to revisit this problematic via a more sympathetic engagement with Freud, and reclaims a specific reading of his work for an intersubjective theory of the subject. In this later essay, Honneth seeks to explain the anthropological condition of a ruptured symbiosis in terms of the negation or repression of an original separation anxiety from the lost love object, which creates a permanent existential anxiety. It is the ‘affective’ re-appropriation of this repressed anxiety that enables the subject to accept it as a motivational element in her own personality and to recognise it as something that is also self-willed. See Axel Honneth, “Appropriating Freedom: Freud’s Conception of Individual Self-Relation”, in Axel Honneth, Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, trans. James Ingram, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009, pp. 126–145. 74 â•‡ See Honneth, “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory”, p. 234.


the infant is first attached to and ‘affected’ by a primary care-giver, that she can in secondary process begin to internalise the normative expectations and viewpoints of her interaction partners and begin to develop a sense of self.75 This primordial sense of recognition is understood to provide a sense of affirmation that is confirmed in expressive and affective gestures towards the other, according them social validity.76 6.â•‡ Reification and the Primacy of Recognition In his recent work Reification, Honneth extends the affective concept of recognition in a manner that signifies a significant reconfiguration of the category. Honneth now posits an affective form of recognition as a primary, existential mode of relatedness or ‘being-in-the-world’ that is prior to all other forms of human relation. He also explicitly refers to this originary affectivity as a ‘transcendental condition’ that is prior to the three normatively oriented forms of mutual recognition previously outlined in The Struggle for Recognition.77 In other words, Honneth now posits a two level order of recognition: recognition refers, firstly, to an elementary form of recognition at a social-ontological level and, secondly, to the three normatively derived forms of recognition – love, law, and achievement – conceived in terms of a formal notion of ethical life. Honneth considers that this “â•›‘existential’ mode of recognition provides a foundation for all other more substantial forms of recognition in which the affirmation of other persons’ specific characteristics is at issue”.78 Honneth compares this primordial form of ‘recognition’ with Heidegger’s notion of ‘care’ or ‘attunement’, Lukács’ notion of ‘engaged praxis’, Dewey’s notion of ‘practical involvement’ and Cavell’s notion of ‘acknowledgement’. In order to construct this elementary notion of â•‡Deranty, Beyond Communication, p. 448. â•‡Axel, Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition’â•› ”, in Recognition, Axel Honneth & Avishai Margalit, Supplement of the Aristotelian Society, no. 75, 2001, pp. 116–119. Here Honneth draws on Daniel Stern’s work in The First Relationship: Infant and Mother, (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1977), to establish a performative and preverbal notion of recognition based on the early infant interactions between caregiver and infant, although without taking on board Stern’s theory of intersubjectivity or his objections to the notion of originary symbiosis. 77 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 152. 78 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 90, ff. 70; Somogy Varga, “Critical Theory and the TwoLevel Account of Recognition - Towards a New Foundation?”, Critical Horizons, vol. 11, no. 1, 2010, pp. 19–33. 75 76

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recognition, Honneth reconstructs what he perceives to be a second, ‘unofficial’ reading of Lukács’ analysis of reification in History and Class Consciousness, where reification is understood as a deviation from a ‘correct’ or ‘genuine’ mode of relating to the world. According to Honneth, reification can be understood as the temporary loss, concealment or ‘forgetfulness’ of the elementary form of recognition. In Honneth’s view, therefore, Lukács’ concept of reification presupposes “a more primordial and genuine form of praxis, in which humans take up an empathetic and engaged relationship towards themselves and their surroundings”.79 In this reconceptualisation, the notion of recognition is substituted for Lukács’ conception of engaged praxis and Heidegger’s notion of care, to identify “the structure of a specifically human mode of existence”. This existential form of recognition as ‘involvement’ or ‘attunement’ designates an affective and engaged mode of interaction with the world. Moreover, Honneth contends that this recognition stance indicates an “empathetic engagement in the world, arising from the world’s significance and value, [that] is prior to our acts of detached cognition”. Recognition here indicates that in our interactions with the world, we do not primarily take a contemplative, detached or cognitive stance but rather assume a positive or affirmative practical engagement, an existentially conceived notion of “caring comportment”.80 Honneth critically contrasts this ontological conception of recognition with “communicative” or “intentional” stances. In this later work he notably argues that Mead’s notion of perspective-taking is inadequate because it lacks an account of the antecedent emotional attachment that is required before subjects can learn to take the perspective of the other.81 Honneth now argues that reciprocal perspective-taking is a “kind of intersubjective stance [which] is always already connected with an element of positive affirmation and emotional inclination, which is not sufficiently expressed in the attribution of rational motives”.82 Honneth had already begun to develop this theoretical stance in his conception of the ‘moral epistemology of recognition’ with affective

â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 27. â•‡Honneth, Reification, pp. 32–38. 81 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 42. 82 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 35. 79 80


and expressive affirmation at its core.83 For Honneth, recognition means much more than merely ‘perceiving’, ‘identifying’ or ‘cognising’ the other in terms of acknowledging the other’s identity. Rather, ‘recognition precedes cognition’ both ontogenetically and conceptually; it refers to an affirmative affective stance towards the world that precedes all forms of interaction or recognition, a premise that Alessandro Ferrara critically discusses in his contribution to this volume. Moreover, in the later work, recognition refers to a pre-cognitive affirmative stance not only towards others, but also the self and the world, and is the very condition of rational thought and all further moral or ethical orientations. In order to legitimate this primordial recognition stance, Honneth once again emphasises the fundamental importance of affectivity in ontogenetic development. Drawing on developmental psychology, particularly the research of Peter Hobson and Michael Tomasello, Honneth highlights the child’s affective attachment to a significant care-giver as fundamental to his or her ability to adopt the perspective of a second person. Developmentally a child requires emotional or affective receptivity to another before the capacity for cognition and the ability to take a decentred perspective is acquired. Leaning on Adorno’s notion of ‘libidinal cathexis’, Honneth contends that an openness or receptivity to the world and ability to perceive an external reality requires an originary attachment to a concrete other that is oriented by love. He also assumes that it is only through this primary affective attachment that subjects learn to take a ‘recognitional’ stance to nonhuman objects. Honneth therefore takes up Adorno’s idea that the “human mind arises out of an early imitation of a loved figure of attachment”.84 By imitating the meaning given to an object by a significant other, the child also internalises the value that object has for another subject.85 In response to critics of his Reification lectures, Honneth has attempted to further modify his claims and to defend his recent socialontological stance, arguing it is possible to separate out the second 83 â•‡ Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition’â•›”, p. 126. This stance also clearly points towards the position developed in his latest work Reification. 84 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 44. Here Honneth cites Adorno’s aphorism 99 in Minima Moralia to the effect that “a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.” Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, London & New York, Verso, 2005, p. 154. 85 â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 63.

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order normative orientation of recognition understood in terms of a formal concept of ethical life, from a more anthropological notion of recognition understood as an ‘affectedness’ or ‘antecedent identification’ towards others, our self, and nature. The normatively oriented forms of recognition represented by love, law and achievement are then considered to be normative extensions of this elementary form of recognition that are “filled-out” historically.86 Honneth clarifies that he means to argue that the ontological notion of recognition refers merely to a primary ‘receptivity’ or ‘affective engagement’ that is a precursor to all other forms of human action or interaction but does not determine the particular stance taken towards another person. As he explains: “Love and hate, ambivalence and coldness, can all be expressions of this elementary recognition as long as they can be seen to be modes of existential affectedness”.87 In this respect, perhaps one of the most striking characteristics in Honneth’s more recent amendments to the theory of recognition is the shift from the centrality of the notion of social struggle to one of primary affect. These latest reconsiderations and emendations to the theory of recognition reveal fruitful potentials for further research and the expansion of a rich vein in Critical Theory. Honneth’s generous engagement with his critics has been characteristic of his work from the beginning and his “Rejoinder” in this volume provides not only a comprehensive and engaged dialogue with his interlocutors but also further clarifications and points of departure. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Honneth has made an enduring contribution to Critical Theory and his preparedness to engage in critical debate continues to create the opportunity for the productive reworking of Critical Theory. I would like to warmly thank the authors for their contributions to this volume, and especially Axel Honneth for his extremely generous participation and response to these essays.

â•‡Honneth, Reification, p. 152. â•‡Honneth, Reification, pp. 151–2.

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Chapter one

Situating Axel Honneth in the Frankfurt School Tradition Joel Anderson I have never had the intention of continuing the tradition of a school … The line of thought that gets attributed, in retrospect, to the Frankfurt School was a response to historically specific experiences with fascism and Stalinism, but above all to the incomprehensible Holocaust. A tradition of thought remains vital by proving its essential intuitions in the light of new experiences; that doesn’t happen without giving up those parts of theories that are no longer adequate. Jürgen Habermas1

Historical mantles are rarely worn comfortably. The associated expectations can be quite a burden. So it is not surprising that, like Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth refrains from identifying himself as a ‘Frankfurt School’ theorist. In his case, however, there is really no denying the lineage. Not only is he the successor to Habermas’ chair in social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, but as research director of the Institute for Social Research there, he sits in the office that was once Theodor Adorno’s. At Honneth’s insistence, however, the old furniture has all been replaced. Insofar as the Frankfurt School tradition represents a contemporary phenomenon at all, it is a diverse approach that has been constantly developing and changing over its eighty-year history. My aim here is not to provide a definitive account of this lineage – nor to sort out which members of subsequent generations have ‘betrayed’ the tradition – but rather to situate Honneth’s own work historically, so as to highlight certain distinctive features of his approach and provide

1 â•‡J. Habermas, “Bemerkungen zu Beginn einer Vorlesung” in Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1985, p. 209 (quote translated by J. Anderson).

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additional points of entry for the diverse range of readers drawn to his work. I begin by providing a thumbnail sketch of some of the central themes in the first generation of the Frankfurt School. I then look in some detail at how Jürgen Habermas and members of his generation transformed critical social theory, taking it in several new directions. I then take up Honneth’s approach, arguing that it involves a retrieval of some original Frankfurt School themes, but against the irreversible background of the Habermasian landscape and in a political and intellectual climate that gives his approach its specifically third-generational character. 1.â•‡ The Original Frankfurt School The first generation of the Frankfurt School is relatively simple to identify since they almost all worked for their namesake: the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) in Frankfurt am Main. After an initial period under Carl Grünberg (1923–28), the Institute gained its recognisable character under the directorship of Max Horkheimer and included Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Löwenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann and Friedrich Pollock.2 The Frankfurt School’s distinctive approach to social inquiry sought to bring about emancipation from ideological blinders by bringing to 2 â•‡ For an interesting discussion of the comparison between the ‘inner circle’ of the first generation, and the particularly interesting outer circle (which includes, for example, Walter Benjamin), see A. Honneth, “Critical Theory” in Social Theory Today, eds. A. Giddens & J. Turner, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1987, pp. 347â•›ff. For an overview of the Frankfurt School’s history, see M. Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984; R. Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories and Political Significance, trans. M. Robertson, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1994; R. Wiggershaus, Jürgen Habermas, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2005; H. Dubiel, Theory and Politics: Studies in the Development of Critical Theory, trans. B. Gregg, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1985; Z. Tar, The Frankfurt School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1977; H. Dubiel, Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft, 3rd ed., Weinheim, Juventa, 2001; and L. von Friedeburg, “Geschichte des Instituts für Sozialforschung” http://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/institut/geschichte. htm (last consulted on 12 February 2007). It should perhaps be added that my perspective here undoubtedly reflects my own ‘knowledge interests’ and my own experiences as a student of Habermas and Honneth (in 1987–88 and 1992–93), as a regular visitor to Frankfurt since then, a translator of their work, and a co-author with Honneth.

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awareness the material conditions of our own knowledge of the world, a theme inherited from Georg Lukács (and ultimately from German Idealism, if one understands that as the broad tradition extending from Kant through to Marx). In the formulation worked out by Horkheimer,3 the thesis is that the social world can be adequately grasped only if it is recognised that the cognitive activity that comprises the social world is itself conditioned by material conditions that are, in turn, the products of the natural history of the human species. The social world thus lacks the ‘given’ character of the physical world and must be seen as our construction. The very political implication of this is that the social world could be otherwise. This is something that traditional ‘bourgeois’ social science tends to obscure, thereby perpetuating the status quo under capitalism. The task of ‘Critical Theory’, then, involved a form of reflective social science that was able to provide an account of its own origins. Understanding thought – including social criticism – as a product of social processes provides insight into what shapes our thought, a form of insightful self-understanding that opens up a particular form of freedom. And since it is impossible to sustain a reductionistic or positivistic attitude in this reflexive social inquiry, Critical Theory is also always geared toward revealing traces of reason in the materially conditioned social world. And the key to doing this, it was felt, is to have reflexive social inquiry start out from the subjective experiences of participants in the social world, particularly in the domain of labour. This was the methodological conviction guiding the original group in the interdisciplinary projects they pursued, working together as a more or less coordinated team.4 This core focus was complemented by related work in the aesthetics of experience (Benjamin and Adorno) and work in political theory and political economy (Neumann and Kirchheimer). But the guiding concern of the original Frankfurt School was with emancipation through reflective social science, as a matter of articulating the structures of consciousness underlying the experience of the working class in particular.

3 â•‡See especially M. Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory” in Critical Theory, New York, Herder and Herder, 1972 (originally 1937), pp. 188â•›ff. 4 â•‡ The results of this interdisciplinary research were published in the house journal, Die Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (“Journal for Social Research”) until the Nazis closed the Institute.

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After the Institute was shut down by the Nazis in 1933, the exiled circle remained relatively intact, especially during the initial period in New York, where they were housed at Columbia University (not, as is often thought, at the New School for Social Research, which was staffed by other Jewish, Marxist émigrés from Europe). Horkheimer, Adorno and the others pursued the defining themes of the first generation – Freudian Marxist analyses of the roots of totalitarianism in mass culture – themes that became the basis for work carried out in Frankfurt, after the Institute for Social Research was reestablished under the directorship of Horkheimer (later rector of the University of Frankfurt). During this second heyday of the Institute (1950–70), the term ‘Frankfurt School’ came to stand for a social-theoretic approach employing methods of qualitative social science to expose the ideological structures responsible for various ‘societal pathologies’.5 Regarding the pathologies on which these analyses focused, one can retrospectively discern two broad forms that they assumed, each of which gets taken up differently by the second and third generations of the Frankfurt School. On the one hand, the Frankfurt School was concerned with pathologies that come into view through the lens of critical sociology, particularly social and political institutions. Here the focus is on, for example, the ways in which universities, the media, political party machines, corporations and so on come to serve various oppressive interests. The other approach pursued by firstgeneration figures focused on subjective experiences of alienation, disorientation and reification, and of tracing these perversions of human interiority to ‘late-capitalist’ modernity. (As we shall see, one way to think of the subsequent history of the Frankfurt School is that Habermas focused on this second line, while Honneth’s aim has been, together with others from his generation, to rehabilitate the more subject-related dimension.) 2.â•‡ Overlapping Generations: Habermas at the Institute for Social Research It was at the Institute for Social Research that Jürgen Habermas got his first research job (in 1956), after a couple of post-doctoral years as a 5 â•‡ That said, we also already find in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (from the exile period) early indications of the first generation’s turn away from social theory toward


features writer for newspapers. But the widespread perception of the baton of Critical Theory being handed from the first generation to Habermas is decidedly misleading, and a brief historical digression seems appropriate in this regard. The empirical projects on which Habermas worked during those early years have defined much of his reputation: the critical potential of the social movements, the threat of public discussion being instrumentalised by the media, and the Marxian idea that guaranteeing material welfare is a precondition for social justice. But the direction he was taking actually fitted uncomfortably within the Institute, which under Horkheimer’s directorship had become something quite different from the early days, to the point that Horkheimer kept the copies of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung locked in the cellar of the Institute.6 As Habermas summed it up in a 1979 interview: … I do not share the basic premise of Critical Theory, as it took shape during the early 1940s, the premise that instrumental reason has gained such dominance that there is really no way out of a total system of delusion [Verblendungszusammenhang], in which insight is achieved only in flashes by isolated individuals.7

Whether this is a fair representation of 1940s Critical Theory, it is clear that Habermas was geared more toward the possibilities of democratic politics and toward the simultaneously theoretical and emancipatory task of revealing the distortions of contemporary politics, and this led to clashes with Horkheimer. What particularly irritated Horkheimer was the implicit activism he perceived in, for example, Habermas’ introduction to the Institute’s study of university students and in the long overview article on Marxism commissioned (and extremely well received) by Hans-Georg Gadamer.8 The tensions grew and in a move

the more resigned stance found in Horkheimer’s late writings on religion and Adorno’s aphoristic aesthetics. 6 â•‡ See Habermas’ interview with Honneth et al., “Dialectics of Rationalization” in Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, ed. P. Dews, London, Verso Press, 1986, p. 95. 7 â•‡ Habermas, “Political Experience and the Renewal of Marxist Theory” (interview with Detlef Horster and Willem van Reijen) in Dews, Autonomy and Solidarity, p. 78. 8 â•‡ The two texts here are: Student und Politik and “Literaturbericht zur philosophischen Diskussion um Marx und den Marxismus”, Philosophischer Rundschau 5, 1957, pp. 165–235. For a discussion of Horkheimer’s attitudes toward Habermas – and Gadamer’s active support of Habermas’ career – see Wiggershaus, Jürgen Habermas, pp. 41–51.

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that represents the rough equivalent of denying tenure (as well as a snubbing of Habermas’ main backer, Adorno), Horkheimer refused to approve Habermas’ plan for a Habilitationschrift on the public sphere and instead directed him to begin work on a new three-year project for the Institute. Habermas responded by resigning and, with the support of Wolfgang Abendroth (the sole West German Marxist professor of philosophy at the time), Habermas was able to complete his ‘habilitation’ – on the basis of the groundbreaking Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – and take up a position in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. Habermas returned to Frankfurt two years later (in 1964) as professor of sociology and philosophy, and from the work published in the 1960s, one can see even more clearly how he was pulling away from his mentors at the Institute. What began to emerge as Habermas’ distinctive approach to critical social theory was a focus on specifying the conditions under which human interaction would be free from domination. Whereas the first generation had (at least initially) looked to various forms of economic, political, cultural or psychoanalytic ‘crisis’ as sites of emancipatory impulses, Habermas focused on free interpersonal interaction as it was found in ordinary life and, specifically, in the pragmatics of coming to an understanding with someone about something, to serve as the key source of emancipatory impulses. The end of the first generation’s era came around 1970, with the deaths of Adorno (1969), Pollock (1970) and Horkheimer (1973), who had already retired to Switzerland much earlier. At the same time, von Friedeburg left the Institute to become Hessian Minister of Education in 1970 (and see through a controversially progressive democratisation of the German education system), and Habermas left for Starnberg in 1971. In addition, after the founding of the Social Sciences Department in 1971, the Institute no longer offered courses and thereby became dependent on soft money for funds. As a result, although it remained in operation, the Institute receded as the institutional home of critical social theory in Germany, although that has arguably now changed.9

9 â•‡ For information on the current activity of the Institute, see the excellent website: http://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de.

situating honneth in frankfurt school tradition37 3.â•‡ Habermas, the Second Generation, and the Emphasis on Normative Foundations

The second generation of critical social theory came of age during the 1970s. By the early 1980s, they had published major works, secured university professorships, and were attracting PhD students. In addition to Habermas, one can think here of Alfred Schmidt, Karl-Otto Apel, Albrecht Wellmer, Claus Offe and Oskar Negt. Habermas himself spent 1971–81 in Starnberg (near Munich) as co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Research into the Conditions of Life in the Scientific-Technical World, where he was able to hire fifteen researchers to pursue research that integrated empirical and theoretical work addressing topics such as societal pathologies, processes of rationalisation, legal evolution, ego-identity, communicative competence, moral development, and more.10 In addition, this was a time when Habermas (along with Ernst Tugendhat and Wellmer, who were both associated with the Starnberg group) was studying analytic philosophy of language as part of developing his universal pragmatics of communication.11 And especially given that this period gave rise to the defining work of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, Habermas’ 1300-page The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), it might well look as if this was the second generation’s Institute for Social Research, but this time with multi-million-Deutschmark funding and no Nazis at the door. Again, however, the reality is more complicated. Indeed, Habermas recently said in an interview, “For me, it was the worst of times. It was simply a mistake to [go to Starnberg]”.12 It seems that,

10 â•‡Particularly important for this new direction were the influence of developmental psychologists Rainer Döbert and Gertrud Nunner-Winkler, the social evolutionist Klaus Eder, the sociologists Helmut Dubiel and Ulrich Rödel, and the Heideggerian cum analytic philosopher Ernst Tugendhat. 11 â•‡ Many of the writings from the Starnberg period can be found in Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1984, partially translated in On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, trans. B. Fultner, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2000. 12 â•‡ The quote comes from an interview conducted by Rolf Wiggershaus with Jürgen Habermas on 27 January 2003 at his home in Starnberg, as part of the preparation of Wiggershaus’ book, Jürgen Habermas, and is quoted on pages 111–112 therein. See also, Habermas, “Das Starnberger Debakel. Ein Rücktritt und eine persönliche Erklärung. Warum ich die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft verlasse”, Die Zeit, 8 May 1981.

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despite the diversity and quality of the work being done in Starnberg, Habermas much preferred the smaller-scale and looser group he organised later, around the 1985–1990 Leibniz project that led to the 1992 publication of Between Facts and Norms.13 In any event, after he announced his resignation in 1981 and, after a brief appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to Frankfurt to become professor of philosophy (with Honneth as his first Assistent). And remarkably, although the philosophy department was housed during those years literally around the corner from the Institute for Social Research, Habermas never had much to do with the Institute. Second-generation sociologist Helmut Dubiel wrote in 1988: After Adorno’s death it was decided that the Institute for Social Research would focus – in contrast to Adorno’s philosophical and aesthetic interests – on empirical sociology of industry and labour unions. As a result, the current inhabitants of the Institute are much less in a position than Habermas to claim that they stand in the tradition of Critical Theory.14

These were years in which Habermas focused his energies very little on empirical work and almost exclusively on the defence of reason as a philosophical project, what he terms the “discourse theory of truth and morality”.15 That approach – along with the various related social-theoretic approaches of the second generation – was motivated largely by a sense that the first generation of the Frankfurt School had failed to address adequately the issue of normative foundations. Drawing on Lukács’ radicalising synthesis of Marx’s concept of alienation and Weber’s thesis of the ‘iron cage’ of Western rationalisation processes, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Fromm, Benjamin and others opposed ‘reification’ of the human spirit by capitalist and bureaucratic forces, but its wrongness was taken to have a kind of self-evidence. Insofar as they thought their standards of criticism needed analysis, they offered a quasi-metaphysical account rather than a normative justification. 13 â•‡ See Habermas’ remark on how much better the Leibniz group worked: “Compared with my time in Starnberg, I have to say: that’s the way to do it” (quoted in Wiggershaus, Jürgen Habermas, p. 126). The Leibniz group included Ingeborg Maus, Rainer Forst, Günter Frankenberg, Klaus Günther, Lutz Wingert and the late Berhard Peters. 14 â•‡Dubiel, Kritische Theorie der Gesellschaft, p. 13. Interestingly, Dubiel became director of the Institute from 1989 to 1997, although not much really changed until 2001. 15 â•‡ See especially the essays collected in Postmetaphysical Thinking (German, 1988) and Truth and Justification (German, 1999).


Moreover, despite their aspiration to provide a grounding of their critique in a self-reflective form of social science, Horkheimer and the others could not explain how they could presume to occupy a privileged standpoint from which to expose ideology. In other words, in Habermas’ view, they failed to apply their standard of critical reflexivity to their own theory. Habermas’ own work in Knowledge and Human Interests (originally published in 1968) shared some of these weaknesses – something he later acknowledges in his self-critical “Afterword”.16 It thus became the task of The Theory of Communicative Action to set a new course, one that could provide an adequate underpinning for the analysis of social reproduction, social pathologies, and directions for emancipatory transformation. In Habermas’ own words, his aim was to develop “a social theory concerned to validate its own critical standard”.17 Thus Habermas is concerned with ‘critique’ in two senses: in the Leftist sense of pointing out injustices and in Kant’s sense of an examination of the conditions for the possibility for something, in this case, of the basis for critique in the first sense. For Habermas, the normative foundations for critical social theory are to be found in the proper understanding of communicative action, in particular, of the ‘idealising presuppositions’ that must be undertaken by anyone trying to come to an understanding with someone about something. This approach combines a norm-based theory of how coordinated social action is possible with a ‘discourse theory’ of how claims are justified. According to Habermas’ discourse theory, every communicative act carries with it claims to validity (truth, rightness and sincerity), where the validity being claimed is a matter of being able to stand up to criticism under ‘conditions of discourse’, namely, a context of justification that the participants view as beyond reproach (for which he now no longer uses the oft-misunderstood phrase “ideal speech situation”). This ‘discourse theory’ is at the centre of his work on moral theory, democratic theory, rationality and truth.18

16 â•‡Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro, Boston, Beacon Press, 1971. 17 â•‡Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. T. McCarthy, Boston, Beacon Press, 1984, p. xli. 18 â•‡See especially the essays in the excellent collection On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. M. Cooke, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1998 and Truth and Justification, trans. B. Fultner, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2003.

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According to Habermas’ ‘communication-theoretic’ account of social action, what makes it possible to coordinate action is our ability to come to an understanding with each other about something, where this process of coming to an understanding is again tied to open-ended processes of discursive justification. Indeed, it is our need for soÂ�cial coordination, according to Habermas’ social pragmatism, that generates from within pressures toward reaching agreement, thereby unleashing “the rational potential of communicative action”. In addition to providing a ‘discourse-theoretic’ account of Â�normative foundations, Habermas’ analysis of processes of communication is itself a direct contribution to critical social theory, particularly in his culture-Â� critical analyses of domination in terms of systematically distorted communication. This is a theme that recurs in a wide variety of contexts, from his attacks on technocratic politics, to his defence of radical democracy, to his reinterpretation of reification in terms of the “colonisation of the lifeworld”. The key idea is that what is most pernicious in various trends in highly industrialised societies – bureaucratisation, militarism, technocracy, laissez-faire economics, privatisation, mediatisation, ideologically driven approaches to immigration and social policy, and so on – is the fact that entrenched interests are able to neutralise and squelch the sort of public political debate that would reveal the injustices of the status quo. The point – often overlooked by commentators on Habermas – is not the teleological claim that talk is always good but rather that silencing and muzzling are bad.19 Habermas’ focus on reaching communicative rationality and on progressive learning processes is very much in the Frankfurt School tradition of intertwining the explanation of societal transformations with a critical, normative perspective. But in contrast to the first generation’s focus on structures of consciousness and crises of capitalist accumulation, Habermas focuses on general, universal features of communicative action, arguing that these provide a more defensible basis for social critique than the claims about consciousness central to the first generation’s approach. This move is not, of course, uncontroversial. Indeed, internationally, Habermas’ focus on the universality

19 â•‡ See, for example, Habermas’ critique of Rawls as allowing ‘gag rules’ in the interest of social stability: Habermas, “Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism”, The Journal of Philosophy, 92, 1995, pp.109–131.


and unity of reason has led many contemporary critical theorists to look not to him but to Adorno, Benjamin and other members of the first generation for allies in developing their critical analyses. 4.â•‡ The Second Generation: Radical Democracy and Modernist Reason The modernist impulse so central to Habermas’ work is echoed in that of the other members of the second generation, albeit to different degrees. Albrecht Wellmer, for example, has sought to develop a version of modernity that retains the aspiration to truth while accommodating the aesthetic and postmodern insight that transparency of meaning, completeness of understanding, and certainty of knowledge are necessarily beyond our reach.20 Karl-Otto Apel first introduced the idea of ‘discourse theory’ before it was picked up by Habermas, and he has been the driving force behind the attempt to put discourse theory on more transcendental foundations. For Negt, von Friedeberg, Offe and others, the focus has been on trying to make sense of how, in complex societies, the impersonal imperatives of economics and politics can be tamed and kept from taking over more dimensions of social integration in complex societies than is necessary.21 None of these theoretical developments occurred in a vacuum, of course. Habermas in particular is a famously engaged intellectual, intervening in debates over the student movement and university reform, the reluctance of Germans (and Heidegger in particular) to come to terms with their Nazi past, the deficits of pacifism in the face of human rights violations, the hijacking of German unification by nationalist fervour and corporate greed, and Germany’s new postnational identity as a country of immigrants bound by European and international law.22 But in all these cases, the motivating concern is the same: to restore, defend and radicalise the universalistic imperatives 20 â•‡A. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism, trans. D. Midgley, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1991. See also, Axel Honneth’s laudatio, “Artist of Dissonance: Albrecht Wellmer and Critical Theory”, Constellations 14 (2007): 305–314. 21 â•‡See, for example, C. Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, ed. J. Keane, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1984 and O. Negt & A. Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. P. Labanyi, J. Daniel & A. Oksiloff, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 22 â•‡ For an overview, see Robert C. Holub, Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere, New York, Routledge, 1991.

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of procedural rationality, modernist culture and genuine democracy. This universalistic focus has been the target of numerous attacks, but it is motivated by a profound distrust for German tradition, stemming from the defining experience of this generation’s coming of age. Habermas has described how, on learning as a sixteen-year-old the full scope of the atrocities committed by Germans during the war: I knew that, despite everything, we would live on in the anxiety of regression, that we would have to carry on in that anxiety. Since then I have cast about, sometimes here, sometimes there, for traces of a reason that unites without effacing separation, that binds without denying difference, that points out the common and the shared among strangers, without depriving the other of otherness.23

For Habermas’ generation, the reliance on common sense so prevalent in progressive Anglo-American thought is just not an option.24 The second generation’s ‘anxiety about regression’ and the felt need for a bulwark against deep-rooted authoritarian and xenophobic traditions in Germany, has had three prominent effects. First, it clearly contributed to the second generation’s strong emphasis on constitutional principles, human rights, and the law, especially since the mid1980s.25 Second, it added a great deal of heat to Habermas’ confrontations during the 1980s with postmodernism and poststructuralism, which he has tended to see as not simply mistaken but dangerous, for they

23 â•‡Habermas, The Past as Future: Interviews with Michael Haller, trans. & ed. M. Pensky, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1994, pp. 119–120. 24 â•‡ Thus, the pragmatist approach to social criticism taken by Americans such as Richard Rorty or Cornell West is simply not an option for Habermas. It may seem ironic that someone so theoretically committed to deliberative democracy and pragmatism has as little faith in common sense has Habermas does. Part of the scepticism has to do with German history, but it also has to do with his theoretical commitment to a vigilant conception of critical reason, according to which we find, in the everyday practices of ordinary individuals, ideas of truth and moral rightness that transcend any settled common sense and challenge the taken-for-granted authority of traditions we inherit. This is a key point of contention in his debates with Hans-Georg Gadamer, a translation of which can be found in G.L. Ormiston & Alan D. Schrift, eds., The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, Albany, SUNY Press, 1989. This sceptical stance toward hermeneutics and common sense is much less prominent among members of the third generation. 25 â•‡In the case of Habermas, see “Law and Morality”, trans. K. Baynes, in ed. S.M. McMurrin, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 8, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1988, pp. 217–279; Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a DisÂ� course Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1996; and the 1995 debate with Rawls in The Journal of Philosophy (cited above).


attack the primary resource that keeps us from slipping back into barbarism: communicative reason.26 Third, and most significantly, the second generation has tended to see an internationalist orientation as particularly important in the effort to ensure that the insanity of the Third Reich never again returns. Philosophically, this means looking beyond the German tradition in ways that have been considered heretical even in post-war Germany. In particular, Habermas’ reliance on Anglo-American philosophy seems at least in part to be motivated by a desire to have German and American intellectual cultures so intermarried as to render absurd the idea of a pure German ‘Sonderweg’ (the ‘distinctive path’ between Bolshevism and Americanism that was touted by Nazi intellectuals). In that regard, Habermas has been remarkably successful. Together with Karl-Otto Apel (and the third-generation sociologist Hans Joas), he has made philosophically respectable the pragmatism of Dewey, Peirce, and especially G.H. Mead. And, in conjunction with Starnberg collaborator Ernst Tugendhat and the publisher Suhrkamp, he has helped open German philosophy departments to analytic philosophy. By the late 1980s, in fact, the key points of reference for Habermas’ graduate students and associates were more likely to be Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett or John Rawls than Adorno, Lukács or Marx – a shift that generated quite a bit of confusion on the part of foreign scholars who had gone to Frankfurt in search of ‘Continental Philosophy’. This turn to analytic philosophy represents perhaps the clearest departure from the first generation of Critical Theory – and not merely from Horkheimer and Adorno’s prejudices against the banality of all things American. Habermas’ insistence on very high standards for justification has drawn him into debates about truth, rationality, normativity and knowledge that are highly developed in Anglo-American philosophy. And his efforts to cash out his intuition that traces of reason are to be found in the deep structure of everyday situations in which people jointly try to figure something out (Habermas’ phrase is “verständigungsorientiertes Handeln”) have led him into the heart of very technical issues in philosophy of language. Initially, this may have been seen as a peculiarity of Habermas’ own approach – and, for some, even as evidence that Habermas had left the Frankfurt School

26 â•‡ See especially The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity and the essays in The New Obscurity.

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tradition altogether – but there doesn’t seem to be any turning back now in this regard. Some degree of familiarity with analytical philosophy has become an entry requirement for many contemporary Critical Theorists.27 Once certain demands for rigorous argumentation have been internalised and once certain technical theoretical issues can no longer be dismissed out of hand, critical social theorists have no alternative but to address these issues. In effect, Habermas’ appropriation of analytic philosophy has raised the bar and made critical social theorists accountable for responding to more challenges than ever before: they must appropriate the increasingly large corpus of the Frankfurt School tradition (along with its roots in Kant, Hegel, Marx and Freud), stay informed and connected to empirical social science research, and now also answer to challenges from analytical philosophers, who as members of the dominant culture typically feel little or no obligation to fill in the gaps in their background that would make the argumentation of their Frankfurt School interlocutors seem less foreign. The question is then whether anyone can master the full scope of the Frankfurt School tradition, once the scope has been broadened and the demands raised so high. As sociologists are quick to point out, the typical response to increasing complexity is specialisation, and this is what we see happening in the third generation. Perhaps this is a good thing. But the compartmentalisation of these domains of inquiry makes it hard to see how there could be such a thing as ‘Critical Theory in the Frankfurt School tradition’. In what sense can it be said that discussions of Adorno’s aesthetics, debates about the conceptual status of constitutional rights to freedom of religious expression, and arguments over the exact nature of validity claims are all discussions within that tradition? In a sense this is the question of whether there really is a ‘third generation of the Frankfurt School’. 5.â•‡ Axel Honneth and the Third Generation: Unifying Themes and Ongoing Differences There is, of course, no fact of the matter as to whether a third generation really exists. Schools of thought are complex and dynamic 27 â•‡ Because I am focusing on those members of Habermas’ generation who have joined him in engaging, at least to some degree, analytic philosophy, I will not have much to say in what follows about members of the second generation who either


phenomena we construct to bring order to the real-world messiness of publications, dissertations, conferences, patterns of citation, institutional affiliations, research aims, grants, dust-jacket blurbs, critical book reviews, and so on. But if one takes the themes and methodologies that are broadly shared by the first two generations and then looks at the institutional and personal connections to the second generation, then the outlines of the third generation begin to take shape – not only in the continuity of the tradition, but also in its distinctiveness. Institutionally, perhaps one of the most striking things about the third generation is how international it is. There are numerous figures working in this broad tradition all over the world, from Dublin to New York to Rome to Lima to Sydney – often with very strong personal and institutional links to the second generation.28 And many of the most important players in this generation of critical social theory work outside Germany. To keep my discussion manageable, however, I am limiting my focus here to German figures and particularly to philosophers who have been students of second-generation figures (such as Apel, Wellmer, Schmidt and especially Habermas). With regard to cultural and social history, the political consciousness of this generation is shaped by a different constellation of events to those influencing earlier generations. The original Frankfurt School generation came of age in the struggle to understand the non-revolutionary consciousness of the majority of German workers (despite their ‘objectively revolutionary’ situation), and then faced, as mature theorists, National Socialism’s crimes against humanity. The second generation came of age in the face of (revelations of) Nazi atrocities, and participated in the transformations around 1968 as mature theorists. The third generation came of

have been concerned exclusively with empirical studies (von Friedeburg and NunnerWinkler) or have restricted themselves to keeping alive the flame of the older generation (Alfred Schmidt). 28 â•‡It could be argued that the tradition is being kept alive as much outside Germany as within by such figures as Andrew Arato, Kenneth Baynes, Seyla Benhabib, Jay Bernstein, James Bohman, Susan Buck-Morss, Jean Cohen, Peter Dews, Alessandro Ferrara, Jean-Marc Ferry, Nancy Fraser, David Held, Dick Howard, David Ingram, Martin Jay, Douglas Kellner, Thomas McCarthy, David Rasmussen, William Rehg, Gillian Rose, Steven Vogel, Georgia Warnke, Stephen K. White, Joel Whitebook and others – many of whom studied with Habermas or Marcuse – as well as by secondgeneration figures as Richard Bernstein, Fred Dallmayr and Agnes Heller. At the same time, it must be said that few outside Germany follow the Frankfurt School tradition of combining interpretations of classic texts (Hegel, Marx, Freud, Lukács, and so on) with both critical social theory and social scientific research.

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age during the upheavals of the late sixties and the new social movements of the seventies, and faced as mature theorists the fall of the Berlin Wall, the resurgence of European nationalism, and the acceleration of globalisation. And theoretically, they have grappled with the fall of the subject, the disunity of reason, and the challenges to universalistic proceduralist conceptions of justice. Whether as advocates or as critics, their thinking has been shaped by a widespread emphasis on particularity, difference and pluralism. Amid this diversity, however, Axel Honneth figures as the undisputed gravitational centre of the third generation of the Frankfurt School tradition. And since viewing him as such serves to sharpen further the contours of the third generation, I shall begin by briefly recounting his institutional and thematic links to earlier generations and then identify three defining themes of Honneth’s work, themes that he shares with other third-generation theorists and that distinguish them from the first and second generations. I then go on to discuss each of these themes in further detail, highlighting certain areas of ongoing controversy within the third generation. Although not a student of Habermas, Honneth did finish his dissertation (directed by Urs Jaeggi at the Free University of Berlin and later published as The Critique of Power) while on a fellowship in Starnberg (1982–83) while Habermas was nominally director of the Institut für Sozialwissenschaften that served as the temporary successor to the institute he had run with von Weizacker. He was then hired by Habermas as the assistant professor (1983–89) in his research group in Frankfurt, where they frequently co-taught seminars. Then, after a rapid succession of appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin, the University of Konstanz, and (as professor of political philosophy) at the Free University of Berlin, Honneth returned to Frankfurt to take Habermas’ chair in social philosophy in 1996. Despite these relocations, however, Honneth continued to work at shoring up the infrastructure of Critical Theory in Frankfurt, as one of the instigators of a biweekly Humanwissenschaften section of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, as the editor of several book series in critical social theory (with publishers Campus, Akademie, and Fischer – rather than Habermas’ publisher of choice, Suhrkamp), and as the host to numerous influential visitors to the Frankfurt philosophy department. Finally, in 2001, Honneth assumed the directorship of the Institute for Social Research and has been the driving force behind a large number of new initiatives, including a


major grant from the Volkswagen Stiftung on “Structural TransforÂ� mation of Recognition in the 21st Century” (for 2007–2010), several projects built around the research focus “Paradoxes of Capitalist Modernisation”, a book series with Campus Verlag, and the excellent new journal WestEnd, founded in 2004 with a subtitle that indicates the ambitions of the new Institute: “Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung”. Honneth can be seen as working on three theoretical fronts more or less simultaneously. First, there is the continual mining of the tradition of modern Western philosophy for resources for Critical Theory, from Hegel to Adorno, from Lévi-Strauss to Castoriadis. Second, there is the theoretical engagement with qualitative social science research. And third, there is the development of critical social theory per se, particularly of the normative issues and, most specifically, in working out the details of his theory of recognition. And particularly with regard to this last task, Honneth aims to engage not only self-identified critical theorists but also the wider public of mainstream (and, internationally, predominantly analytic) philosophy – a task that, despite the growing acceptance of inter alia Hegelian lines of thought, remains a deeply asymmetrical matter of trying to convince English-language philosophers of the relevance of work being done in other countries. Against the background of these three areas of theoretical activity and the intellectual trajectory sketched earlier, it becomes possible to identify three central themes in Honneth’s work thus far that are recognisably ‘Frankfurt School’, and yet distinctive of him, and that set much of the agenda for the third generation: a conception of society and history based on the struggle for recognition by social groups (section 6), a greater attention to the ‘Other of reason’ (section 7), and a contextualisation of normative foundations in the deep structures of subjective experience (section 8). These three themes represent points of controversy within the third generation, but they primarily serve to mark out important points of contrast with Habermas and the second generation. In highlighting the contrasts in what follows, however, it is important not to overestimate these contrasts, for Habermas and Honneth share the fundamental conviction that the social institutions that safeguard undistorted forms of intersubjectivity must be based, at least in part, on universalistic principles.29

29 â•‡Like Habermas, Honneth criticises Foucault, Lyotard and other neo-Â�Nietzscheans or postmodernists with – as he puts it with regard to Lyotard – becoming

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I now take up each of these themes briefly, discussing in each case the basic line of Honneth’s approach, the departure from the first and/ or second generation of the Frankfurt School, and the different directions from which Honneth’s positions have been challenges within the third generation. 6.â•‡ The Agonistic Path to Social Justice Honneth’s account of ‘the social’ focuses on the central role of conflict between social groups, rather than between individuals (as is assumed by Hobbesians and rational choice theorists) or between structural entities (as systems theorists, structuralists and even post-Â�structuralists assume). This reinterpretation of the social was the focus of The Critique of Power: Stages of Reflection of a Critical Social Theory.30 There he argued that, in their own ways, Horkheimer, Adorno, Foucault and Habermas all end up marginalising the genuinely social dimension of critical theory. What is needed, he argues, is an account of the social that emphasises that society reproduces itself through the often-conflictual interaction of real social groups, which are themselves the products of ongoing activities of interpretation and struggle on the part of participants. Honneth’s theory of recognition – first articulated in The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflict31 – is to provide the answer. On this view social groups represent both driving forces of historical development and essential conditions for human flourishing. With regard to the first, historical claim, Honneth is opposing Marxian and Weberian strands of critical social theory that have focused on deep structural dynamics, be they the first Â�generation’s focus on the domination of nature by ‘instrumental reason’, or HaberÂ� mas’ analysis of the conflict between ‘system’ and ‘lifeworld’, or FouÂ� cault’s treatment of disciplinary regimes. Against such ‘hypostasising’ “ensnared in the premises of his own thought; the antipathy to universalism forbids a solution to the very problem which he came up against with his demand for an unforced pluralism of social language-games. For, if recourse to universal norms is on principle blocked in the interests of a critique of ideology, then a meaningful argument in support of the equal rights to coexistence of all everyday cultures cannot be constructed” (“An Aversion Against the Universal: A Commentary on Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition”, Theory, Culture, and Society, 2, 1985, p. 155). 30 â•‡German, Suhrkamp, 1986. English, trans. K. Baynes, MIT Press, 1991. 31 â•‡Trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1996. German original, Suhrkamp, 1992.


philosophies of history, and inspired both by his reading of the young Hegel and his generation’s practical and theoretical involvement with the ‘New Social Movements’, Honneth sees historical development as a matter of the emergence and struggles of social groups. Although he is guided by the Hegelian normative ideal of overcoming diremption (Entzweiung) through reconciliation and although he is somewhat more sanguine than many of his contemporaries about the degree to which these social struggles are part of a process of progressive development, Honneth’s consistent focus on the dynamic, ‘agonistic’ nature of the social world is typical of a generation that is much more attuned to the positive aspects of heterogeneity and ambivalence than Habermas tends to be. The question of just how progressive we can expect the struggles of groups for recognition to be has become a central fault-line within the third generation. In part, this is a question of how to conceptualise the anticipated point toward which these struggles are directed. Especially the normative guiding light of an anticipated point in the future of a social existence ‘free from pain’ sits uncomfortably with the emphasis many third-generation critical theorists place on pluralism, openness, difference, and even the unavoidably tragic character of social life.32 From this perspective, the objection frequently levelled at Honneth is that he is – despite his pronouncements to the contrary – implicitly wedded to a rather homogeneous notion of convergence and reconciliation. In line with this, many members of this generation focus on creative impulses and on the need for revolutionary imaginaries to complement evolutionary forces – in part as a rediscovery of the transformative dimension of aesthetics (including Foucault’s aesthetics of existence) and even some fascination with the embrace among some French theorists of the liberating dimension of transgression.33 For others, however, the recent history of identity politics and nationalist movements serves to highlight how social struggles for recognition are often not a route to social justice but rather an impediment to it. This is clear, for example, in the rather sharp debate between Honneth and

32 â•‡ C. Menke, Tragödie im Sittlichen: Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit nach Hegel, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1996. 33 â•‡ See, for example, Wellmer student Christoph Menke’s book, The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida, trans. N. Solomon, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1998. And here, contemporary theorists can draw inspiration from the writings of first-generation thinkers Marcuse and Adorno.

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Nancy Fraser,34 in which Fraser points to the dangers in holding the aspirations to social justice hostage to the vicissitudes of just any social movement. In part, in light of the negative aspects of ‘identity politics’, these theorists argue that the more pressing need is for normative criteria that can provide critical leverage, precisely with regard to the conflicting claims of social groups. And it is thus not surprising that so many critical theorists of this generation are focused on issues of human rights and the conditions for international democratic processes.35 The open question is whether to put more trust in reason as it has been worked out in conceptions of justice and constitutional traditions or rather in the ongoing historical process of transformation of those standards themselves (and whether Honneth can make this antifoundationalist move without ending up with a contextualism that lacks sufficient critical leverage). 7.â•‡ Listening Critically to the ‘Other of Reason’ Honneth’s focus on social conflict as the motor of history fits with an intuition of his that is at least as deep-seated: the idea of a ‘semantische Überschuß’, that is, a ‘surplus’ of meaning and significance that goes beyond what we can now fully capture, appreciate, or articulate.36 According to Honneth (and this is perhaps the point of closest affinity with fellow Hegelian Charles Taylor),37 it is with our inchoate feelings, and at the margins of traditions, and more generally in the encounter with the conflicted and the unresolved that the needed innovative resources for Critical Theory are to be found. As we have seen, this theme is already reflected in the focus on the agonistic creativity of social struggles, but in his work since The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth has extended his normative view to capture more fully the aesthetic dimension of subjectivity and the emotional basis of moral 34 â•‡Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram & C. Wilke, London, Verso, 2003. 35 â•‡ H. Brunkhorst, W.R. Köhler & M. Lutz-Bachmann, Recht auf Menschenrechte: Menschenrechte, Demokratie und internationale Politik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1999; and M. Lutz-Bachmann & J. Bohman, Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cospomolitan Ideal, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1997. 36 â•‡A. Honneth, “Gerechtigkeit und kommunikative Freiheit. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Hegel” in eds. B. Merker, G. Mohr & M. Quante, Subjektivität und Anerkennung, Paderborn, Mentis, 2004, p. 225. 37 â•‡ See especially C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989.


sensitivity. Against Habermas’ more exclusive focus on the individual ego’s capacity for self-determination, Honneth has emphasised the creative power of the unconscious. Echoing themes from Castoriadis, from Adorno’s concept of the non-identical, as well as themes from the ‘ethical turn’ in postmodernism, Honneth has sought to make room in his critical social theory for the voices that have been silenced and marginalised as the ‘Other’ of reason – while at the same time retaining his commitment to the Enlightenment heritage of emancipatory reason.38 This greater openness to the Other is widespread among thirdgeneration theorists, whether that ‘Other’ is to be found in the public domain of pluralistic, multicultural sociality, in the domain of worlddisclosive aesthetic experience, or in plumbing the unconscious depths of the self. First, as the neighbour we do not understand, the Other plays a central role in third-generation discussions of individual liberty and respect for cultural diversity within pluralistic, multicultural societies.39 The heightened awareness of issues of integration, cultural identity and nationalism are very topical, of course, but the attention may also have something to do with the fact that, like the original generation of the Frankfurt School but unlike the second generation, several members of the third generation bring their Jewish identity into the discussion.40 Second, as the site of aesthetic experience that 38 â•‡On this range of issues, see especially “The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism” in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. S. White, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 289–323; “DecenÂ� tered Autonomy: The Subject after the Fall” in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 261–271; and section 1 of his “Rejoinder” in Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, eds. B. van den Brink & D. Owen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007. See also the other essays collected in Honneth, Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit: Aufsätze zur praktischen Philosophie, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2000 and the discussion of ‘self-trust’ in J. Anderson & A. Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice” in Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, eds. J. Christman & J. Anderson, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 133–135. 39 â•‡G. Frankenberg & U. Rödel, Von der Volkssouveränität zum Minderheitenschutz, Frankfurt, 1981; B. Peters, Die Integration moderner Gesellschaften, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1993; H. Brunkhorst, Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community, trans. J. Flynn, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005; and (fourth-generation Frankfurt School theorist) R. Forst, Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism, trans. J.M. Farrell, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002. 40 â•‡ Micha Brumlik, Gertrud Koch and Martin Löw-Beer have worked hard to keep issues of the Holocaust and the place of Jews in Germany high on the cultural-political agenda, in part through the impressive but short-lived journal Babylon (which ceased

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challenges and stretches us to envision new possibilities, the encounter with the Other figures in numerous authors’ discussion of the emancipatory potential of aesthetic experience, drawing largely on Hegel’s and Adorno’s work, but often in combination with that of Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault and others.41 And, finally, there is the Other within, the aspects of oneself that elude our attempts at domestication. This is, of course, a central theme in psychoanalysis, which has been gaining renewed attention after being largely abandoned by the second generation.42 In a parallel vein, there is Hans Joas’ attempts to accommodate within social theory the creative and innovative moment of impulse and initiative in a more pragmatist vein, drawing, like Honneth and Habermas, on Mead’s concept of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’.43 8.â•‡ Normativity, Reification, and the Deep Structures of Subjective Experience One of Habermas’ central charges against the first generation of the Frankfurt School was its normative deficit, and this led to the second generation’s focus on universalistic principles of morality, justice and truth. In light of the points already made, it will come as no surprise that the third generation is sceptical about the abstractness and uniformity they see in these approaches. Instead, they have focused on the importance of attention to the concrete Other, the unavoidability of publication in 2002). Although the first generation was predominantly Jewish, the second generation includes, to my knowledge, only one Jew, namely, Tugendhat, who initially returned to his native Venezuela after retirement, in part because of the difficulties he faced as a Jew in Germany; see his Ethik und Politik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1992. He now lives again in Germany. 41 â•‡ H. Fink-Eitel, Die Philosophie und die Wilden: über die Bedeutung des Fremden für die europäische Geistesgeschichte, Hamburg, Junius, 1994. J. Früchtl, Ästhetische Erfahrung und moralisches Urteil: eine Rehabilitierung, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1996. M. Seel, Die Kunst der Entzweiung: zum Begriff der ästhetischen Rationalität, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1985; G. Koch, “Was ich erbeute, sind Bilder”. Zur filmischen Repräsentation der Geschlechterdifferenz, Frankfurt, Stroemfeld Verlag, 1988. 42 â•‡ See, for example, M. Löw-Beer, Selbsttäuschung: Philosophische Analyse eines psychischen Phänomens, Freiberg, Alber, 1990; as well as Honneth, “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Supposed Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis”, Philosophical Explorations, 3, 1999, pp. 225–242; and “Aneignung von Freiheit Freuds Konzeption der individuellen Selbstbeziehung”, in Pathologien der Vernunft: Geschichte und Gegenwart der Kritischen Theorie, ed. Axel Honneth (Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2007), pp. 157–179. 43 â•‡ H. Joas, The Creativity of Action, trans. J. Gaines & P. Keast, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997.


substantive ethical assumptions, the pluralistic character of reason, and the contextual nature of applying standards. The question, however, is how to give these concerns their due while still addressing the concern Habermas highlighted, namely, that the normative principles licensing social critique are not self-justifying. Honneth’s proposed solution is to locate the critical perception of injustice more generally within individuals’ negative experiences of having broadly ‘moral’ expectations violated.44 In lived experiences of denigration and disrespect, he argues, we can see most clearly what it means to deny people what they deserve. Importantly, however, this cannot be deduced from the outside. Rather, the sense of being wronged emerges within the subjective experience of victims of disrespect and finds its expression, as a moral claim, in social struggles. According to Honneth, although some social struggles are driven by self-interested conflicts over resources, once the ideology of instrumentalist reason is undermined, we can see these struggles as also giving expression to moral claims that can serve as normative standards. In many ways, Honneth’s approach is thus closer to that of the first generation of the Frankfurt School than to Habermas’ views, in that he looks to the experience of being subjected to domination (especially in the context of labour) to find the normative core for social critique.45 It is out of the history of social struggles that Honneth reconstructs the normative standards for social criticism. The possibility for sensing, interpreting and realising one’s needs and desires – in short, the very possibility of being somebody – depends crucially on the development of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. These three modes of relating practically to oneself can be acquired and Â�maintained only intersubjectively, through relationships of mutual recognition. These relationships are not ahistorically given but must be established and expanded through social struggles. The ‘grammar’ of these struggles turns out to be ‘moral’ in the sense that the feelings of outrage and indignation generated by the rejection of claims to recognition imply 44 â•‡ This is the central theme of The Struggle for Recognition, especially chapters 5, 6 and 8. For Honneth’s own account of how he came to this position, see Honneth’s Afterword to the second German Edition, 1988, reprinted as a preface in the English translation of The Critique of Power. 45 â•‡See Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory”, in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, ed. Fred Rush, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336–60.

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normative judgements about the legitimacy of social arrangements. Thus, in place of Habermas’ focus on undistorted relations of communication as revealing a standard of justification, Honneth focuses on the progressive overcoming of barriers to full interpersonal recognition, barriers such as legal exclusion and cultural denigration, as well as rape and torture. In this way, the normative ideal of a just society – what Honneth calls, in a phrase intended to synthesise liberalism and communitarianism, a “formal conception of ethical life” – is empirically confirmed by historical struggles for recognition.46 We can reconstruct these social struggles as aspiring to secure the fundamental conditions for individual self-realisation and self-determination,47 but what grounds these normative criteria in the real world are the very real feelings of humiliation and denigration that the oppressed actually feel. The idea then is to ground the critique of social structures – and of globalising capitalism, in particular – in these subjective experiences of social fragmentation and reification.48 Drawing on themes found in the early writings of Hegel, Marx and Lukács,49 Honneth aims to keep alive a sense of ‘romantic anti-capitalism’ against the hegemonic antiutopianism of current market Liberalism, at least in this sense: that critical social theory must foster a sensitivity to the devastating personal suffering caused by market forces. In several regards, Honneth’s approach to normative issues fits into a broader concern within the third generation with issues of particularity, contextuality, and substantive, non-proceduralistic principles. For example, many of those working explicitly on normative theory have focused typically on the ‘messier’ dimensions of application, contextual justification, the role of emotions, the Gilligan-Kohlberg debate

â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, ch. 9. â•‡ See, for example, Anderson & Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”. 48 â•‡In addition to Honneth’s collection of essays, Desintegration, Frankfurt, Fischer, 1994; see also U. Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. M. Ritter, London, Sage, 1992; and G. Schulze, Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart, Frankfurt, Campus, 1993. 49 â•‡Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, trans. Joseph Ganahl, New York, Oxford University Press, 2008, ch. 1 and “A Fragmented World: On the Implicit Relevance of Lukács’ Early Work” in Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. C.W. Wright, Albany, SUNY Press, 1995, pp. 50–60. 46 47


over an ‘ethics of care’, judgements of appropriateness, evaluative claims about the good life, and applied ethics generally.50 At the same time, however, Honneth’s focus on subjective experience as the point of departure for his social critique and moral evaluation has not convinced everyone in his generation of the Frankfurt School. To begin with, there is a concern that subjective experiences of humiliation are potentially fickle bases for criticism, in that feeling hurt seems immune to criticism. Nancy Fraser put this objection in their recent debate: “To stress the victim’s subjective feelings of injury is to endanger the possibility of a democratic adjudication of justice claims”.51 This objection fits with plenty of third-generation work that is closer to Habermas and to left-leaning procedural political theories of welfare rights, radical equality and social justice. One way in which critical social theory can develop is along these lines, with theoretical principles of justice grounding critiques of globalising capitalism. In his most recent work, however, Honneth has continued to maintain that the focus of social critique – both in his justification and its target – should be the pathological effects on subjects generated by certain aspects of contemporary capitalism. In further developing his approach in his 2005 Tanner Lectures on reification52 and in his recent discussions of “paradoxes of capitalism”,53 he continues to frame his normative critique as part of an analysis of the negative experiences generated by pathological social structures. It is likely that it will continue to be one of the key points of dispute within the third generation of Frankfurt School critical social theory. And, ultimately, this is a debate about how to understand contemporary capitalism: does its

â•‡ For example, eds. M. Kettner & K-O Apel, Zur Anwendung der Diskursethik in Politik, Recht und Wissenschaft, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1992; M. Brumlik, Advokatorische Ethik: zur Legitimation pädagogischer Eingriffe, Bielefeld, KT-Verlag, 1992; H. NaglDocekal & H. Pauer-Studer, eds., Jenseits der Geschlechtermoral: Beiträge zur Feministischen Ethik, Frankfurt, Fischer, 1993; L. Wingert, Gemeinsinn und Moral, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1993; K. Günther, A Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law, trans. J. Farrell, Albany, SUNY Press, 1993. 51 â•‡N. Fraser, “Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth” in Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram & C. Wilke, London, Verso, 2003, p. 234, note 4. 52 â•‡Honneth, Reification. 53 â•‡For example, Honneth, “Organized Self-Realization: Some Paradoxes of Individualization”, European Journal of Social Theory 7 (2004): pp. 463–478; and Martin Hartmann and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism”, Constellations 13, no. 1 (2006): 41–58. 50

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pathological character lie primarily in the subordinating maldistribution it creates or more directly in what it does to people, its reifying and humiliating effects? 9.â•‡ Concluding Remarks Situating theorists within traditions or schools of thought always runs the risk of occluding the diversity and disagreement within traditions, of overemphasising the systematic coherence of the theories, and of neglecting the role played by those outside of the largely stipulative boundaries of a tradition. The foregoing attempt to situate the critical theory of Axel Honneth in the tradition of the Frankfurt School has doubtless fallen prey to some of these misrepresentations. In addition, talk of distinct ‘generations’ within the Frankfurt School is misleading insofar as Habermas and Honneth are still both actively pursuing their research programmes. Members of the second and third generations continue to respond to each other’s innovations, as well as to the ongoing reappropriation of first-generation thinkers.54 My hope is that the focus on central themes and generational differences has brought certain outlines and fault lines more clearly into focus. Clearly, however, other lenses would have allowed other connections to come into view. Amid all the diversity, several distinctive foci continue to unite Frankfurt School Critical Theorists. These include concerns with the normative question of how to tune and calibrate the instruments for perceiving injustice; the critical and reflexive role of the social sciences; and the resurgent issue of how to correctly theorize capitalist crises, together with their multidimensional impact on individual lives and the supporting social fabric. And, perhaps most centrally, there is the shared sense that reason, autonomy, and freedom are not timeless metaphysical categories but real historical developments, driven forward (to the extent they are) by efforts to respond appropriately to political, social, cultural, material, and psychological crises through 54 â•‡ See the essays in the Festschrift for Honneth: Rainer Forst, Martin Hartmann, Rahel Jaeggi, and Martin Saar, eds., Sozialphilosophie und Kritik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009; and Jürgen Habermas, “Arbeit, Liebe, Annerkennung (Zum 60. Geburtstag van Axel Honneth),” Die Zeit, July 16, 2009.


the often-difficult emergence of more inclusive, nuanced, perspicuous, and complex modes of life. In this sense, at least, there is no difficulty situating Axel Honneth at the heart of the unfinished project of Critical Theory.55

55 â•‡In places, the present essay builds on an earlier essay, entitled “The ‘Third Generation’ of the Frankfurt School” and published in Intellectual History Newsletter 22, 2000, pp. 49–61. In preparing both that version and the present one, I benefitted from comments from Casey Blake, Howard Brick, Bert van den Brink, Peter Dews, Rainer Forst, Axel Honneth, Pauline Kleingeld, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas McCarthy, Kevin Olson, John Victor Peterson, Thomas Schmidt and Chris Zurn.

Chapter two

Reflective Critical Theory: A Systematic Reconstruction of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy Jean-Philippe Deranty Most of the critiques of Axel Honneth’s social philosophy have targeted specific aspects of his work, specific points in his arguments, without acknowledging the highly coherent aspect of his model, indeed its quasi-systematic nature. Overlooking this aspect of his arguments, however, the tight interdependency that interlocks them and makes them reciprocally supportive might well be a way of making one’s life easier. In return, the strong consistency in Honneth’s comprehensive theory throws down the gauntlet to other critical theorists: How can one develop a normative theory of modern society without making explicit and justifying the theory of subjectivity that one implies? Is it not one of the central tenets of Critical Theory, at least in its German version, that it is misguided, ‘abstract’, to dissociate diagnostic and critical claims from explanations about constitution? This essay has a modest aim: to emphasise the reflective and systematic dimensions in Honneth’s social philosophy. In the first part, I define three fundamental assumptions underpinning Honneth’s model as it has been developed in his first publications until the book co-written with Nancy Fraser. I call these assumptions ‘axioms’ in a loose sense, to emphasise that they are taken as fundamental background assumptions that are justified immanently by the fact they underpin each other. I demonstrate the interdependency of these three main premises by highlighting the extent to which their methodological and theoretical implications are themselves interconnected. As a result, a fundamental isonomy is the structural rule that connects the different tenets of Honneth’s thought. In the second part, I show how the systematicity of Honneth’s model does not run into logical circularity thanks to its specific reflective nature. Honneth’s criterion of truth seems to lie in the idea that social philosophy owes its claims to scientific validity from a reflective stance

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that ensures it is fully aware of its position in the ‘history of truth’, to employ a Hegelian notion that seems appropriate here. Reflectivity designates two separate kinds of methodological criteria. Firstly, an awareness of the conceptual advances in the field. This is achieved through the analysis of the logical and methodological contradictions, shortcomings and errors that have emerged and been resolved in the field. Secondly, a constant relating of the conceptual models to the progress in empirical knowledge. As a consequence of this conception of truth as the history of overcoming errors, Honneth also endorses a view of social philosophy as fundamentally fallible, both internally and externally. However, the clarifications and the making explicit that the reflective stance enables, combined with systematic consistency, also simultaneously allow claims that are fallible in principle to be substantially justified. In the third part, I focus on the latest writings to show how the two shifts that the first model has undergone do not put in question the long-term coherence of Honneth’s social philosophy. The roots that tie these later writings to the earlier texts should be well visible, which is why, in the third part of the essay, I prefer to focus on the systematic interconnections between these later writings. 1.â•‡ Honneth’s Three Axioms The three basic theoretical decisions that build the argumentative core of Honneth’s model are: an historical-conceptual thesis about modernity, a two-fold social-ontological thesis about subject constitution and social reproduction, and finally a political axiom impacting on the form and content of the first two axioms. 1. The first axiom concerns the conceptual and normative interpretation of modernity as historical fact. This is the first axiom precisely because for Honneth the normative progress accomplished with modernity is a fact, and thus represents the first necessary presupposition in any relevant discussion in social philosophy. In this, Honneth obviously shares a premise with much of contemporary moral, social and political philosophy, and indeed his Hegelianism starts with the idea of modernity as progress in ‘subjective freedom’, as moral progress. This is the idea that in modern societies reliance on a transcendent origin and a transcendent guarantor of social values has

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disappeared and that modern societies are therefore structured around the fundamental norms of value pluralism and individual freedom.1 Honneth articulates these two norms within a framework borrowed from Habermas. Accordingly the basis for his conceptual reconstructions of the normative structure of modern society is found in the premise that the mechanism that integrates societies is the sharing of a background consensus around fundamental norms and values. Traditional and post-traditional societies are contrasted by comparing the modes through which they define the values and the personality types corresponding to their societal aims. Traditional societies are said to have been ‘integrated’ around rigid norms and values corresponding to social aims anchored in and justified by religious and metaphysical belief systems. These rigid cultural frameworks were translated into behavioural models that defined group-specific qualities and capacities contributing towards these substantial social aims, typical behavioural models that were of course hierarchically ordered. With the demise of religious and metaphysical reference, the objectivity and substantiality of hierarchical value and personality frameworks were radically undermined and collapsed. As a result of this historical shift, a double structural transformation occurs: on the one hand, social integration occurs no longer ‘vertically’ along the hierarchical scale of values and norms, but ‘horizontally’ through the conflict of plural value representations vying for their recognition as valid ways of achieving the general ethical aims; on the other hand, since social status is no longer tied to group ownership, and with the pluralisation of ethical values, a process of individualisation in the process of acquiring social esteem is set in motion. “For the first time, the subject appears as an entity individuated through its life-history”.2 Subjects for the first time appear as universal subjects of rights and as particular subjects able to be recognised for their unique qualities and performances. The famous three spheres of recognition are thus first of all the product of historical evolution. Recognition is another name for the contested yet normatively unquestionable fact of basic individual equality. 1 â•‡See A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity, 1995 and “Post-traditional Communities: A Conceptual Proposal”, in Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007, pp. 254–262. 2 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 125

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The idea of mutual recognition as historical fact, the insight into modern right especially, as one of the key institutional expressions of the principle of universal equality, has major methodological implications. It makes Honneth immediately suspicious of all theoretical approaches implying a pessimistic interpretation of modernity. This is one of the central grounds for his early critical assessment of the first generation of Critical Theory, Foucault, and a range of contemporary sociological studies.3 It is also one of the important reasons for his scepticism towards the letter of Marx’s historical materialism. There are of course other aspects to his critique of Marx, but one that follows directly from his vision of modernity is that Marx’s totalising theory of ideology is blind to the achievements of modernity, notably to the normative advance represented by modern right.4 This reading of history also underlies Honneth’s constant rejection of structuralist arguments, whether they are used in the construction of the theory of society,5 or in reading Marx.6 This rejection does not just arise out of his theoretical scepticism towards functionalism in social theory, but more simply, to his teleological reading of modernity that emphasises the normative continuity in modern history. 2. Honneth embraces without reserve the intersubjectivistic turn proposed by Habermas. One way to characterise this turn simply is from the perspective of what Habermas has termed the “detranscendantalisation of the subject”.7 The subject is no longer the defining instance in theoretical and practical situations, as an isolated, selfenclosed, self-reflectively accessed individuality opposed to a world of 3 â•‡ See the collection of reviews of sociological and social-theoretical publications in A. Honneth, Desintegration. Bruchstücke einer soziologischen Zeitdiagnose, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer, 1994. 4 â•‡See for example The Struggle for Recognition, p. 238. But also in Honneth’s first publications: “History and Interaction” (first German publication: 1977), in ed. G. Elliott, Althusser. A Critical Reader, Oxford, 1994, pp. 73–91, and “Work and Instrumental Action. On the Normative Basis of Critical Theory” in The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. C.W. Wright, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995 (first German publication: 1980). 5 â•‡ See for example the critique of Levi-Strauss’ reliance on structuralist arguments, which, according to Honneth, contradicts the deep intuition underlying the anthropologist’s work, in The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, pp. 135–149. 6 â•‡Again, his very first article (“History and Interaction”) defined a position that has not changed since. 7 â•‡ See Habermas’ famous late reformulation of the shift, “From Kant to Hegel and Back Again: The Move Towards Detranscendentalisation” in J. Habermas, Truth and Justification, ed. Barbara Fultner, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003, pp. 175–211.


objectivity. The embeddedness of the subject in a supra-subjective symbolic world structured by language, means that a prior interconnection always exists between subject and object, an interconnection that the young Hegel described as a “medium” or “element”.8 As a consequence, the subject-object paradigm, which showed its limits in the aporias that Kant encountered, must be replaced by an intersubjectivistic one. Instrumental rationality appears only as one aspect of reason, made possible by the more fundamental communicative one. Honneth’s thought is deeply influenced by this argument to the point where his work can be seen to some extent as only detailing or developing Habermas’ breakthrough. In systematic terms, the ‘intersubjectivistic turn’ of the philosophical methodology chimes perfectly with the first general historical axiom. What is true of modern society is true of modern philosophy: both consist in the gradual, tentative, conflict-ridden uncovering of the intersubjective nature of subjectivity and rationality. Indeed the relationship between modern society and modern philosophy is of reciprocal influence: the passage from traditional to post-traditional communities was made possible by the progress in social and political philosophy,9 but the shift from a monological to an intersubjectivistic model of reason is itself obviously determined by the larger social and historical evolution. Habermas often reconstructs teleologically the history of modern philosophy as a gradual discovery and an explication of the historical and symbolic dimensions of reason. Similarly, a great part of Honneth’s work consists of the detailed verification of a similar vision of the history of theory, with a focus on the specifically social dimensions of intersubjectivity. Previous social theories are critiqued for having premised their account of modernity on a reductionist concept of reason interpreted exclusively as instrumentality. This is famously the critical stance taken by Honneth against the first generation of Critical Theory. Equally, Honneth has quite systematically studied the most famous theories of interpersonal intersubjectivity, and has critiqued them from the perspective of communicative reason. The theories of intersubjectivity of Fichte, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, Levinas 8 â•‡ See Habermas’ seminal article from 1967, which contains the seeds of much of Honneth’s work: “Labour and Interaction. Remarks on Hegel’s Jena Philosophy of Mind” in J. Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. J. Viertel, London, Heinemann, 1974, pp. 142–169. 9 â•‡ See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 201.

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and Sartre are all interpreted as ‘traces’,10 that can be teleologically reconstructed as a series of “stages of a theory of intersubjectivity” leading to the communicative paradigm.11 In fact Honneth radicalises Habermas’ paradigm shift in that he does not accept the premise that communicative action might not be the ultimate mode of action-coordination in some areas of social life. This is quite clear in Honneth’s critique of Habermas. The most serious problem with the distinction between system and lifeworld is not that it makes problematic the possibility of critiquing economic and administrative processes, but more fundamentally that with it: “Habermas loses … the communication-theoretic approach he had initially opened up: the potential for an understanding of the social order as an institutionally mediated communicative relation between culturally integrated groups”.12 Habermas is critiqued for not remaining faithful to his own breakthrough and for allowing himself to be seduced by functionalist and system-theoretical arguments. Honneth’s interpretation of the intersubjectivistic, or communicative-theoretical, paradigm can therefore be termed exclusivist. Again, this time from the perspective of the second axiom, Honneth is led to an uncompromising rejection of all forms of functionalism in social theory. Expressed positively, Honneth’s ‘system’ is characterised by a steadfast defence of action-theoretic premises and arguments.13 This action-theoretic stance in social philosophy is the specific application to Honneth’s special domain of interest of a more general pragmatist philosophical premise, which he also borrows from Habermas. Much of the systematic aspect of Honneth’s overall model stems from the isonomic relations linking his theory of rationality, his theory of society and his theory of ontogenesis. As is well known, Honneth argues in favour of a theory of subjectivation as structurally conditioned, and not simply limited, by socialisation. The core idea 10 â•‡ The word applies to the specific problem of intersubjectivity in social theory, in chapter 7 of The Struggle for Recognition: “traces of social-philosophical tradition”, but it also appropriately describes Honneth’s attitude towards general theories of intersubjectivity. 11 â•‡ This is the subtitle to one of Honneth’s latest books: Unsichtbarkeit: Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfrut am Main, Suhrkamp, 2003. 12 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Ma, MIT Press, 1991, p. 303. 13 â•‡ See his defence of the notion of ‘praxis philosophy’ against Habermas’ qualms, in the second postface to the German edition of Kritik der Mach, Honneth, The Critique of Power, pp. xxxi–xxxii.


originates in Fichte and was developed in different directions by Hegel, Feuerbach and Mead. Most famously, it was revisited systematically by Habermas in The Theory of Communicative Action.14 This idea states that subjects achieve their full identity only through developing epistemic and moral capacities all dependent on the ability to take a decentred perspective of the world, an ability that is acquired through interaction with others. Full identity means a full sense of self and therefore entails the two ideas of individual freedom and of individual flourishing. In other words, it conceives of autonomy, selfdetermination, as entailing self-realisation. Honneth has simply recast this structure in the language of recognition: by recognising and by being recognised, the individual progressively discovers and develops the features of self. Recognition therefore has a special ontogenetic and a more general anthropological meaning: it provides the key to a theory of individual development and at the same time to the structure of human subjectivity in general. The ontogenetic interpretation of recognition has its ‘social-Â� ontological’ pendant in Honneth’s fundamental view of social integration: societies comprise relations of mutual recognition because there can be a coordination of the actions between individuals in the conditions of post-traditional communities, only if they recognise each other as free agents. What we are interested in here are the ‘systematic’ implications that flow from Honneth’s central premises. First, it is worth noting that the interlocking of the ontogenetic and the socialontological theses bears heavily on the meaning of his action-theoretic stance: it is not only anti-atomistic, but also fundamentally anti-Â� utilitarian.15 Second, the strong Hegelian filiation of the double thesis is important: the notion of Sittlichkeit brings together the two mutually

â•‡ The previously quoted 1968 article had already identified the fundamental motto of ‘individuation through socialisation’ as a fundamental implication of the process of ‘detranscendentalisation’, together with its strong reliance on Durkheimian sociology. See Habermas, “Labour and Interaction” and the later article specifically devoted to this question: “Individuation through Socialisation: on George Herbert Mead’s Theory of Subjectivity”, in Postmetaphysical Thinking. Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, pp. 149–204. 15 â•‡Although he nowhere discusses contemporary theories of rational choice, his work is from the beginning conceived as an objection to utilitarian theories of society and sociality. See one of his earliest articles, A. Honneth, “War Marx ein Utilitarist? Für eine Gesellschaftstheorie jenseits des Utilitarismus” in Soziologie und Sozialpolitik. I Internationales Kolloquium zur Theorie und Geschichte der Soziologie, Berlin, Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, 1987. 14

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reinforcing perspectives, whether in the notion of ‘spirit of a people’ in the early Jena writings,16 or indeed in the mature form the notion takes in the Philosophy of Right.17 Third, the ‘individuation through socialisation’ thesis is also at the heart of Honneth’s critical strategy. Since individuals need interaction with others to achieve true subjective freedom understood as self-realisation, and since conversely society is a true ethical whole only when all individuals are fully realised in it, the ideal situation in which both society and the individual have developed to their full potential remains a teleological norm. What real existing societies present are instead negative figures of this ideal. With the structural interlocking of full individuation, socialisation and social integration, the critical theorist can then develop stringent and multifaceted criteria to analyse social pathologies. Some individual pathologies can be traced back to pathological social developments, and society as a whole can be diagnosed as more or less pathological depending on the flourishing, or lack thereof, of its individuals.18 This combination of a theory of social integration with the diagnostic of the social forms of individual pathology is in fact Honneth’s idiosyncratic definition of social philosophy.19 By adopting a substantial definition of freedom as unharmed autonomous existence, Honneth is committed to grounding his theory of society and social progress in what he terms a “weak, formal anthropology”20 or a “formal conception of ethical life”.21 In defiance of the consensus pervasive in contemporary political philosophy, Honneth has maintained the necessity of grounding normative inquiry in anthropological arguments.22 His first book (written with Hans Joas) â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 50. â•‡ See A. Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right”, trans. J. Ben-Levi, Assen, Van Gorcum, 2000. 18 â•‡The interconnection between social individuation and social integration for the establishment of critical norms is made particularly explicit in the reply to Fraser; see A. Honneth & N. Fraser, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram & C. Wilke, London, New York, Verso, 2003, pp. 204–206. 19 â•‡ See the seminal article “Pathologies of the Social” in A. Honneth, Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory Cambridge, Polity, 2007, pp. 3–48. 20 â•‡Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social”, pp. 42. 21 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 171–179. 22 â•‡‘Anthropological’ for Honneth refers to the German tradition of twentiethcentury ‘philosophical anthropology’, which is not dedicated to a comparison between modes of human social life, but to the comparison between animal and human forms of life. See his first book written with H. Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 1. 16 17


developed the anthropological theory of ‘practical intersubjectivity’, that is, the theory about the biological preconditions of human action in its essentially social determination. This is the anthropological pendant to the general philosophical theory of communicative action and the social-theoretical philosophy of recognition. The book brings an important clarification about the status of anthropological arguments in his ‘system’. Following Habermas once again, Honneth and Joas extract important conclusions from twentieth-century research into ontogenesis. Like Habermas, they intend to reconstruct a philosophy of praxis that is inspired by, and originates in, historical materialism, but one that also attempts to clarify its normative foundations’. For them, this task amounts to highlighting better than the unilateral productivist prejudice in Marx, the full range of normative interactions at play in social life, in light of what the intersubjectivistic turn has taught about the different types of coordinated actions. However, the recourse to anthropological data does not amount to a naive materialistic derivation whereby naturalistic, ‘scientific’ accounts of human nature would directly deliver substantive social-theoretical lessons. The relationship between anthropological theory and social theory is itself reciprocal, or even more accurately, social theory in fact bears theoretical primacy: anthropology is a reflective step in the scrutiny of the suitableness of social-scientific theoretical frameworks that has become autonomous. This radical self-examination requires the identification and the making explicit of the natural bases and the normative implications that are always assumed in the substantive work of the social sciences, in face of the findings of biology, palaeontology, and other natural sciences. Thus this process of self-reflection draws its questions from the problems of social and cultural sciences and returns to them with its theories clarified and internally differentiated by anthropology.23

We see that this process of self-reflective clarification and of confrontation to the current state of empirical knowledge is supposed to help refine theoretical work in different ways. First, social theory is required to make explicit its presupposed model of human nature. Not only is this a minimum requirement of any theoretical effort, but this simple step in self-reflection will clearly make contradictions and naiveties apparent and thus help to correct them immanently. Second, the

23

â•‡Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 8.

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confrontation with the special sciences also helps correct and construct theory from the outside. Importantly, however, the conceptual framework is developed independently of the empirical work, indeed the special sciences answer questions that the theory formulates. A number of important methodological features of Honneth’s thinking are systematically connected with this method. First, it is this specific methodology that is at the origin of the third set of critical arguments used against Adorno and Foucault (beside the rejection of their negativistic interpretations of modernity and of their functionalist premises). In both cases, Honneth’s discontent relates to their “coercive model of societal order”, which portrays subjects “behaviouristically, as formless, conditionable creatures”.24 Philosophical anthropology, by contrast, highlights the essential indeterminacy of human constitution and thus the capacity for praxis inherent in the human form. Additionally, by highlighting the intersubjective constitution of such praxis, it denounces as caricatural all coercive models of social integration. For Honneth, as soon as one makes explicit the model of socialisation and the model of social integration implied by Adorno and Foucault, they appear as naïve, as incoherent in places, and as incompatible with the most recent advances in the human sciences. This bi-directional link between anthropology and social philosophy constitutes in itself a substantial rebuttal of the criticisms levelled at Honneth’s use of anthropological arguments. As noted, it is mistaken to think that Honneth simply derives his theory of society from an anthropology of (inter)subjectivity. Indeed, in reply to these criticisms, Honneth’s reliance on advances in contemporary sciences throws down the gauntlet to other models of critical theory in that it asks them to make explicit and justify their implied vision of human nature. Furthermore, given the profound anthropological impact of contemporary neo-liberal policies, the reference to an elaborate anthropological theory of human sociality is in itself a theoretical gesture with direct critical import. Third, this reliance on philosophical anthropology reveals other interesting systematic links with other aspects of the model, most specifically a complicated relationship between anthropological and

24 â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 199. The differences that Honneth has highlighted between Adorno and Foucault need not be mentioned here as they arise out of a comparable vision of modern society and subjectivity.


ontogenetic arguments and Honneth’s view of the history of philosophy. On the one hand, the two histories appear to be, once more, isomorphic. By choosing to place Mead at the centre of the reconstruction, it is suggested that philosophical anthropology progressed in the same way philosophy did, namely that it gradually discovered and explicated the intersubjectivistic conditions of praxis. The philosophical genealogy Fichte-Hegel-Feuerbach-(Marx)-Habermas is paralleled by the anthropological line Gehlen-Plessner-Mead-Winnicott. On the other hand, the intersubjectivistic perspective enables the philosopher to correct the anthropologists (and genetic psychologists and psychoanalysts) when the latter operate with monological paradigms.25 The special sciences provide arguments against philosophy, and philosophy against the sciences, and both converge to support the intersubjectivistic thesis. In a further move, this mutual corroboration also provides the guiding thread in the reading and exegesis of those authors who provide the central references in the philosophical defence of intersubjectivism. Hegel is thus read along the Theunissen-Habermas line of interpretation whereby an early, radical intersubjectivism is later ‘repressed’, either in the theory of absolute Spirit (Habermas), or in the figure of the Monarch of the rational State (Theunissen). Equally, Marx is read as a thinker at first influenced by Feuerbach’s anthropology of intersubjectivity, but later renouncing the ‘altruistic’ insight as he attempts to apply the Hegelian logical categories in the dialectical presentation of Capital. Within the schools of Marx interpretation, the tradition emphasising the anthropological aspects of Marx’s writings is favoured against structuralist or dogmatic readings. 3. These first two axioms are not sufficient to fully characterise Honneth’s thinking. Both the historical and the social/ontogenetic accounts are connected with the idea of an ‘interest in emancipation’, a telos inscribed at the heart of intersubjectivity, that ‘transcendence within immanence’ whose postulation identifies the project of critical theory. This constitutes a third, political ‘axiom’ in Honneth’s ‘system’. The content of this ideal of social development has already been characterised in theoretical terms by the interlocking of individuation through socialisation and social inclusion: the telos of ever greater autonomy

25 â•‡Most importantly, Gehlen and Plessner provide key elements in Honneth’s theory, but reinterpreted in the light of Mead’s social psychology.

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for an ever greater number of people; in negative terms, the abolition of all forms of oppression for all. Honneth’s version of the ‘transcendence in social immanence’ is the surplus of recognition that any social order can always strive to achieve, because it always fails recognition in some respect (intensively or extensively). This ideal is not just a social fact known as such by theory, it also constitutes a political option. On the part of the social theorist, the political axiom is precisely the decision to accompany through one’s theoretical efforts the historical struggles for emancipation. Most obviously, this is primarily much more than a pure theoretical matter. Honneth fully endorses the political partiality of Critical Theory. The ‘interest in emancipation’ is therefore the practical interest of those who suffer from oppression, and also the shared practical interest, with specific theoretical implications, of the actual theorist. These two dimensions brought together redefine the third political axiom as a ‘critical-theoretical’ one, the critical-theoretical axiom that has defined Critical Theory from the beginning: theory needs to be developed and judged according to the viability of its link to its ultimate ground, social reality and its emancipatory impulse. The validity of this link must be tested in both theoretical and practical terms. Honneth places his theory squarely under the leftHegelian aegis of the inseparability of theory and practice. The first axiom was presented as the cornerstone of Honneth’s whole system since it describes recognition as an historical fact that always forces social theory into a determined framework with a specific set of theoretical premises. However, the second axiom could just as well be considered the fundamental one. Honneth’s insistence on using anthropological arguments despite unanimous condemnation indicates that the driving intuition inspiring his work is the interactionist principle of the intersubjective constitution of the human individual and the interconnected Durkheimian emphasis on social interaction. Bar the individuation/socialisation premise, modernisation can be read in a totally different way, for example as gradual system differentiation. It is highly questionable that the fact of modernity must selfevidently be interpreted as a fact of recognition. On the contrary, the historical thesis can very well be considered dependent on the intersubjectivistic premise. Interesting is the link between the first two axioms and the third. The ‘interest in emancipation’ arises first of all as an historical possibility that is unlocked by the emergence of post-traditional communities. In such communities, the interpretation through which societal values


are connected with societal goals is an open, contested one. The shift from hierarchically to horizontally organised societies opens the possibility for conflicts over the interpretation of social statuses, norms and values, and thereby the possibility for new forms of oppression, but equally, for much greater individual and communal emancipation. Second, this interest in emancipation can also be construed as being entailed in the intersubjectivistic premise: if individuals, as intersubjectively constituted, are intersubjectively vulnerable, it follows that the subjects’ interest in avoiding suffering entails the interest in freeing themselves from the social conditions causing their suffering. However, the relationship between the axioms can also be turned around and the third, critical-theoretical axiom can be seen logically to come first. This becomes evident if one focuses on the arguments that Honneth uses to advocate normativity in social theory. This insistence that social theory be ‘normative’ could be seen to derive from the first two, especially the second, axiom: if indeed society is possible only as a result of interaction among socialised individuals, then the question about the norms regulating interaction is a crucial one that arises as a theoretical implication. In fact, however, the normative imperative can be shown to supervene on, and not prime over, the political premise. Honneth’s constant argument is that if one does not explicitly place norms at the centre of social theory, then the move to critical diagnostics and positive assessments of social movements directed against the different types of social oppression is no longer permissible. Typically, he sees Foucault as perpetrating that kind of methodological inconsistency. This is also at the heart of his rejection of structuralist, systemic and functionalist arguments: they tend to deny the value of the hermeneutics of injustice and make conceptually unfathomable the possibility of social agency. In all this, it appears clearly that it is the political moment interpreted in the sense of Critical Theory that impacts on further theoretical decisions, and not the opposite. One can read the history of modernity in a number of different ways. To read it as a series of ‘struggles for recognition’ is not ultimately grounded in a detached vision of history, but in a theoretical decision (that individuals and groups ‘make history’), which follows from a vision of politics as active transformation of society by and/or in favour of those who suffer. Additionally, the relationship between personal political decision and theoretical decisions defining a system is not just the relationship of a premise to a logical requirement, but also a relation of performativity: by drawing

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attention to the constitutive role of social struggles in modern history, by choosing to follow E.P Thompson’s and Barrington Moore’s rather than other accounts of modernity, Honneth does not just defend an historical thesis, but to some extent, in the limit of a writer’s influence, performatively makes that history emerge as a reality. What is remarkable with this third axiom is that it serves most forcefully to show the inadequacy of previous models of Critical Theory. This becomes all the more obvious if we focus on the relationship between the third and the second axiom. How does the ‘criticaltheoretical’ requirement lead to the intersubjective one? Honneth justifies the abandonment of the paradigms of the exploitation of labour, the total administration of society through instrumental reason, and the colonisation of lifeworlds, always by the one exigency: to be true to the hermeneutics of injustice, that is, the full range of experiences of social suffering. It is not the conceptual deficiencies in Marx, Adorno/Horkheimer and Habermas that demand the establishment of a new paradigm, but their failure to respond accurately and Â�exhaustively to the full range of social suffering. By failing to do that, these past models have demonstrated that they misconstrued the core m Â� echanism of social integration and as a result, both their explanatory frameworks and their visions of potentials for emancipation have turned out to be inadequate. For Honneth the seeds of their subsequent abstractions were therefore planted in their approaches to the experiences of social suffering. The turn to recognition is a response to a problem immanent to critical theory: how to continue to develop a theory of society that is informed negatively by the experiences of injustice, and in turn responds in valid ways to the practical attempts at overcoming them.26 Habermas’ theory of communicative action is an undeniable progress in Critical Theory because it enables it to be more sensitive to the full gamut of social interactions in which subjects are exposed to moral injury. However, Habermas’ restriction of communicative interaction to language again produces an abstraction that must be overcome. As a result of their one-sided theories of social interaction, previous critical models have proffered inadequate visions of social and historical agency, visions that were theoretically flawed and practically unhelpful, theoretically flawed because they were practically unhelpful. A striking example of this type of theoretical diagnosis can already be â•‡For a clear exposition of this, see Honneth & Fraser, Redistribution or Recognition?

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found in Honneth’s first book. In it, Honneth used Habermas’ early reconstructions of historical materialism as the intersubjectivistic perspective from which the tradition of left Hegelianism, from Feuerbach to Marx and later Marxist authors, and the tradition of philosophical anthropology, could be reconstructed. In the last section of the book Habermas’ theory of social evolution is itself evaluated against the criteria entailed in the ‘critical-theoretical axiom’, which there receives a striking formulation: “the categories and concepts employed by the theory of socio-cultural evolution have become so remote from the experiential plexus of the real historical happening that they can hardly be translated back into the action perspectives of collective actors”. Therefore, this theory “relinquishes every possibility of providing explanatory interpretations of history that intervene instructively in a present-day situation of social confrontations”.27 2.â•‡ Systematicity, Circularity, Reflectivity Each of the three axioms taken separately may seem to be the result of a theoretical decision, and thus could have been otherwise. There are readings of modernity that do not consider it as normative progress. Indeed some, like Agamben, use the tradition of Critical Theory to propound a radically pessimistic vision of modernity. The intersubjectivistic turn, as is well known, is far from being universally accepted; and the critical-theoretical option is controversial both in its political dimension and regarding the theoretical implications that it draws from it. As we saw previously, the three axioms are supposed to support each other. However, this interconnection itself is not sufficient to justify them. In fact, these axioms are clearly seen by Honneth as necessary presuppositions once one sets out to engage in a critique of modern society with practical intent. This is where the real decision lies: whether or not one believes that such a project, a critical theory of society with practical intent, is worth pursuing and is realistic enough. Once one has decided to engage in a critical theory of society, then one is committed to the three axioms. The reasons for this have been 27 â•‡Honneth & Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, p. 166. In The Critique of Power and later articles, the same argument is applied against the theory of communicative action.

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outlined above. If one does not recognise the normative core of modernity, then where will one find the ‘normative surplus’ that guarantees the possibility (both conceptual and practical) of emancipation? Critical Theory is not just descriptive. If one does not accept the communicative turn, how does one conceptualise social reproduction and the possibility of social transformation predicated, as it seems to have to be, on the agency of individuals and groups? And finally, if the theory of society is disconnected from the negative experience of domination and the concurrent practical aspirations towards emancipation, then the descriptive part of the theory seems arbitrary. As a result of the circular interlocking of the three axioms, a systematic isonomy links the different parts of Honneth’s theory. The rejection of negativistic readings of modernity is fleshed out in the reading of modern politics with the expansion of individual rights, from formal to political and social rights. This accords with the critique of negativistic theories of post-modernity. It is also supported by the history of social movements, which in turn provides an exemplary illustration of the action-theoretic premise. The latter receives conceptual support from the critique of functionalist, system-theoretical arguments. This leads to a reading of classical sociology emphasising the functional and normative importance of sociality, a reading that parallels the reading of the history of philosophy as gradual emergence of an intersubjectivistic and pragmatic turn. Social philosophy can then be defined as the theory of the social character of reason and the critique of social pathologies of reason. This philosophical position leads to an alternative position in debates about the theory of justice and ethics, against individualistic and holistic stances. The new definition of social philosophy also provides a new perspective from which to reconstruct the stages in the tradition of Critical Theory, leading to the discovery of the communicative paradigm, and the rejection of monological and idealistic paradigms. This reading of the history of Critical Theory in turn is mirrored by the interpretation of Hegel’s development as a repression of intersubjectivity, and by the anti-structuralist, praxis-oriented reading of Marx. The teleological reference to practical intersubjectivity informs the reconstruction of philosophical anthropology. Even more specifically, as one contemporary equivalent to philosophical anthropology, the theory of individuation in modern psyschoanalysis and genetic psychology is approached along the same interactionist lines. Several serious reservations arise at this stage over the ultimate methodological grounding of Honneth’s theory. Both the circularity


interlocking the three fundamental premises and the strong isonomy between the different parts of his model might well provide it with inner consistency, but this consistency is no proof of its sound grounding. The model might well seem to be hanging in the air, so to speak. In a similar vein, in his constant references to “the latest empirical research”, or indeed in his use of contemporary philosophical exegesis, most notably of Hegel and Marx, the criticism could be made that only those results are used that tend to support Honneth’s views. Honneth does not seem to want to argue like Fichte or Heidegger that circularity is actually the only proper mode of justification for philosophy. His explicit rebuttal of the suspicion of arbitrariness is the reflectivity that characterises his thinking. Reflectivity, as we saw in the previous section, was already identified as a key methodological requirement of social theory as early as his first book on philosophical anthropology. Honneth’s second book, The Critique of Power, is described as a series of “reflective stages in a critical social theory”. The notion of ‘stages’, which we have already discussed, is thus closely linked to that of reflectivity. The reflective method involves the identification of ‘stages’ leading to the present stance of theory. As in Habermas, Honneth’s methodology is explicitly teleological. For Honneth, theoretical construction is thus inseparable from reflective reconstruction: by critically assessing the theories that, up to the present state of theory, have been involved in the definition of the problem and the attempt at its resolution, one does more than an historical task: one already engages with the subject matter itself. In other words, the first approach to any question of social theory involves the reconstruction of the theoretical attempts at solving it. This method is obviously Hegelian in spirit: it implies a definition of scientific truth as the history of the errors that have led to it. It is clear that critical, reconstructive reflectivity applies to the theorist’s own statements. By constructing a theoretical position through the critical reconstruction of past positions, one is committed to a series of important methodological consequences: one must acknowledge that one’s position is self-reflectively constructed, in other words, that one is not only aware of previous mistakes, but must attempt not to reiterate them by making one’s presuppositions explicit and consistent. One also recognises that one’s position, located as it is in the progress of truth, is itself the future object of critical reflective reconstructions, and therefore is essentially fallible. The reflective moment in reconstruction consists in the assessment of theory against relevant criteria. Reflectivity in Honneth points to

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two distinct modes of critical inquiry and conversely to two different types of justification in his own efforts at theoretical construction. Most of the time, Honneth’s reflective methodology is in fact a form of immanent critique because the criteria used in reconstruction are ones that the theorists studied would, or indeed, have themselves accepted. At rarer times, a theoretical position is critiqued simply by assuming that theory has progressed and has shown a specific type of conceptual apparatus to be irreparably flawed. A good example of this is the use of notions implying the existence of collective subjects, especially in the discussion of social and historical agency. For Honneth it is a fact of conceptual progress that the flawed nature of idealism in history has been demonstrated once and for all. This constitutes the backbone of his critique of Lukács, and, given the centrality of Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness for Adorno and Horkheimer, of the first generation of Critical Theory. The first set of criteria used in Honneth’s reflective reconstructions is empirical. For example, in reconstructing the historical stages of Critical Theory and in critically assessing new sociological theories, the structural complexity and normative depth of modern societies are held up as empirical facts against unilateral readings. Similarly, empirical data from special sciences are opposed to unrealistic theories of subjectivity (e.g. Freudian models of identity-formation or post-Â� modern theories of multiple personality). The second type of criteria is conceptual. For example, Foucault’s anti-normative theory of power is shown to contradict the project of a critique of modern disciplines. Habermas’ overly linguistic model of communicative action contradicts its own critical intent because it does not accurately address the hermeneutic component of injustice. Adorno’s theory of society uses an outdated model of rationality and history, and so on. In both the use of empirical and conceptual objections, Honneth’s reflective stance clearly rests on a definite kind of positivism. Honneth assumes that empirical sciences and conceptual research continue to progress and that contemporary theory must address both types of findings. This explains Honneth’s disdainful attitude towards the great classics of the very tradition he actually wants to pursue, Hegel, Marx and Lukács. For him, idealistic visions of history have been definitively proven to be conceptually flawed and consequently it is impossible to refer to them without some substantial work of translation and adaptation to contemporary empirical and conceptual standards.


It is this positivism, and therefore the constant empirical and conceptual reflective self-scrutiny of theory, that is supposed to prevent the isonomic circularity holding the system together from collapsing onto itself. If one were to question the positive nature of the empirical and conceptual facts referred to by Honneth as the ultimate ground of his model, then that model would not fall. Rather, its claim to validity depends on whether one shares the three basic assumptions that together form the backbone of the theory. In other words, the validity of his claims would appear a lot more contingent, as relying on the arbitrary decisions of the theorist. However, this might well be the fate of all theory. 3.â•‡ The Recent Writings The controversy with Nancy Fraser enabled Honneth to bring together the many strands making up his complex social theory. In the texts published since, Honneth has further explored these diverse but connected avenues. While he has retained the framework of his previous work and most importantly the systematic links that hold it together, two important shifts have changed the overall direction of his thinking. In this section, rather than explore at length the extent to which these recent texts pursue the earlier project, which I hope will be evident, I would like to highlight these two shifts and the way the new directions in Honneth’s thinking are themselves strongly interconnected. In a first series of recent texts Honneth has sharpened his sociological, critical diagnostic of contemporary capitalism. Until the debate with Fraser, he had not provided a detailed account of the latest developments in capitalistic modernisation.28 In “Paradoxes of Capitalism” (with Martin Hartmann)29 and “Organised Self-Realisation. The Paradoxes of Individualisation”30 the substantial link between socialisation and individuation, between social and individual flourishing,

28 â•‡ The texts gathered in Desintegration are the closest one gets to a fully fledged account of contemporary capitalism, but they only give an implicit image of Honneth’s diagnosis. 29 â•‡M. Hartmann & A. Honneth, “Paraodoxes of Capitalism”, Constellations, vol. 13, no. 1, 2006, p. 41–58. 30 â•‡A. Honneth, “Organised Self-Realisation. Some Paradoxes of Individualisation”, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 7, no. 4, 2004, 463–478.

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or negatively, between individual and social pathology, is confirmed and fleshed out via conceptual and systematic reconstructions of contemporary sociological research into post-Fordist capitalistic rationalisation and its effects on subjectivities, inter-individual relationships and communities. The starting point of these analyses still lies in the exploration of the shift between traditional and ‘post-traditional’ societies, in the ‘fact’ that “for the first time, the subject appears as an entity individuated through its life-history”. Beside the three usual spheres where subjective dimensions acquire a new normative potential (intimacy, equality in rights and the recognition of social contribution), individuality itself, taken as a normative fact, is explored more fully: with the emergence of modern subjectivity, individuals for the first time appear as unique beings with their own authenticity and unique life history to be constantly explored and self-constructed. The critical insight into capitalistic modernisation is gained with the next move: these normative advances that, according to Honneth and Hartmann, are cashed out in the “moral progresses of the social-democratic era”, are said to undergo an important change of meaning and function with the gradual winding back of the Welfare State under the pressure of neo-liberal policies.31 For them, the neo-liberal turn consists in the exploitation for the purpose of increased economic profit of the normative resources and personal potentials that have been made available by the rise of modern individualism. The extended possibilities for individual self-exploration and self-definition are used by the new economic organisation first of all as an ideological justification for transformations in management techniques and labour organisation leading to ever-increasing flexibility and atomisation, and second, simply as central factors in productivity gains. Extended individualism becomes a central ideological and production factor of the new ‘decentered capitalism’. The article’s central thesis and diagnostic are well summarised in the following lines: the neo-liberal restructuration of the capitalistic economic system exercises a pressure to conform which does not wind back the progressive developments [of the previous social-democratic era – JPD], but changes them in their function and meaning. What could previously undoubtedly be analysed as a broadening of the sphere of individual autonomy, takes the shape in the frame of the new type of organisation

â•‡M. Hartmann & A. Honneth, “Paraodoxes of Capitalism”, p. 43.

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reflective critical theory79 of capitalism, of demands, disciplining and an increase in uncertainty, which, taken together, have the effect of a social desolidarisation.32

The overall structural shift that occurs with neo-liberal policies has distinct effects in the four normative spheres highlighted by the theory of recognition. The emancipation of the individual from rigid cultural and social frameworks opens the door to a colonisation of the individual by the demands stemming from the world of work. This leads to an invasion not only of private but inner life, by the requests stemming from the workplace and to their remodelling according to the logics of commodification and marketisation. The social ties that were established through work, and created important support networks, are severed and individualisation produces social isolation. Alternatively, as just said, the remaining intimate and social relations themselves become governed by the economic imperative and are instrumentalised. In the legal sphere, social desolidarisation undermines the notions of collective risk and collective responsibility for individual welfare. As a result, individuals benefiting from welfare programs are more and more subjected to a ‘moralistic’ and ‘paternalistic’ discourse of responsibility. More generally, all individuals tend to view their own performances in strictly individual terms, without acknowledging the social context that plays a great part in their social destiny. Finally, the egalitarianism that seemed to be analytically embedded in the new individualism also suffers from the destruction of solidarity.33 With the emancipation of the individual came the emancipation of individual performance: the performance principle was operating as a normative constraint or as an ideal requiring that personal performance be judged as such, and not according to paternalistic prejudices attached to ideas of gender or class. However, with the unravelling of sociality and solidarity, individual performance tends to be assessed more and more in strictly individual terms as individual success, measured strictly in economic terms. In this new framework, privileges and unearned advantages, like birth and favourable social and economic positions, are no longer viewed as contradicting the normative meaning of the performance principle but simply as factual, ‘fair enough’ contributors to individual performance.

â•‡ ibid., pp. 48–49. â•‡To recall, ‘solidarity’ for Honneth is simply another word for the mechanism of social integration through recognition. 32 33

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While these critical analyses of contemporary capitalistic evolution exploit the framework of recognition and its critical potential established in the earlier writings, the interconnections are now sharply refined and strengthened by the introduction of the notion of a ‘paradox’ of modernisation, which Honneth is no longer afraid to refer to as a paradox of capitalistic modernisation. By ‘paradox’, Honneth and Hartmann understand a type of contradiction such that “it is precisely when an intention is realised that the likelihood of seeing that intention realised is reduced”.34 Post-Fordist capitalism, by inverting the meaning and function of the normative spheres of modernity, makes their ‘intention’ ever less likely to be realised. The theoretical and diagnostic implications of this methodological position show how much the central intuitions that inspired Honneth’s critical theory of society are maintained and strengthened. First, the notion of paradox enables the critical theorist to develop a critique of social pathologies without renouncing the idea of a normative progress in modernity. Paradoxical developments that invert the normative potential of modern institutions, do not by themselves demonstrate the nullity of these advances. Consequently, the radical critique of the pathological development of contemporary capitalism does not lead into a negativistic philosophy of reason or history. The rejection of negativistic diagnostics, for example Marxist or those of the first generation of Critical Theory, therefore does not need to be corrected. Second, the ‘struggle for recognition’ receives an important sociological clarification. By exploiting the discourse of individual freedom to its own advantage, modern capitalism manages to justify its current practices and make them appear as adhering to the ethical self-understanding of contemporary society. However, those criteria arose in most cases with the purpose of bringing limits to an economic logic that was propagating at the expense of other rights. Modern rights, for example, gradually came to include social and economic rights as a result of social struggles, and these rights put limits on purely economic considerations, for instance on the relationship between employer and employee. With the perverse economic exploitation of the normative potential contained in modern freedom, contemporary social struggles are deeply affected. On the one hand, those interested in expanding and intensifying valuation processes are able to use the â•‡Honneth & Hartmann, “Paradoxes of Capitalism”, pp. 47–48.

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discourse of individual freedom as a justificatory tool. On the other hand, the demise of social responsibility and the pressure on individuals to think of themselves as self-entrepreneurs, tend to undermine their capacity to argue and organise collectively, or even undermine their ability to conceive of their own difficulties as resulting from the social-economic organisation. The model of a paradoxical contradiction in late capitalism thus accounts for the depoliticisation of social life in Western countries, that is, for the absence of social resistance where it would be expected. However, uncovering the cause behind depoliticisation is obviously a first step towards a recovery of political intervention in the economic and social domains. We have here a typical critical-theoretical intervention. A remarkable trait of the conceptuality developed in the latest sociological writings is that it enables Honneth to maintain the tradition, and indeed, the language, of left-Hegelianism without renouncing the parameters he had defined as necessary conditions for a relevant contemporary critical theory of society. For instance, the logic of paradoxical contradiction allows enough diagnostic complexity to avoid the unilaterality of Lukács’ immensely influential diagnostic of commodification in History and Class Consciousness while continuing to employ its very language. The diagnostic of the rampant commodification of subjective capacities and intimate relationships can be made and supported by serious sociological research, without Â�resorting to the overly general, quasi-metaphysical theory of commodity-Â�fetishism. As a result, the link with the first generation of Critical Theory is also re-established since Adorno and Horkheimer relied so heavily on Lukács’ framework.35 A second major direction in Honneth’s recent work has been a further exploration of the interactionist paradigm in contemporary psychoanalysis. An important shift has occurred in the last few years regarding that particular aspect of his theory. Donald Winnicott’s object-relation theory was used in The Struggle for Recognition as a later, cross-disciplinary vindication of Mead’s interactionist social psychology. In “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On

35 â•‡See also the reinterpretation of the ideology category in A. Honneth, “Anerkennung als Ideologie” in WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, vol. 1, no. 1, 2004, pp. 51–70.

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the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis”,36 published in 1999, Honneth continued to use the parallelisms between the American behaviourist and the English psychoanalyst’s models of ontogenesis to underpin his intersubjectivistic subject-theory. However, in texts after 2000,37 the reliance on Mead has been abandoned. The rejoinder to Honneth’s critiques published as the postface to the third edition of The Struggle for Recognition explains this move very clearly.38 After developing the model that is presented in The Struggle for Recognition, one of Honneth’s main tasks has been to concentrate on articulating the precise conceptual and normative structure of recognition, what he calls the “moral epistemology of recognition”.39 This requires a precise analysis of the specificity of recognition as a form of behaviour. However, as Honneth now argues, Mead “reduces recognition to the act of reciprocal perspective-taking, without the character of the other’s action being of any crucial significance”.40 Moreover, despite his strong interactionist premises, Mead cannot teach us much about the specific normativity of recognition. While Mead is now abandoned, object-relations theory is more than ever a source of inspiration for Honneth’s social philosophy. In particular, Honneth now puts the notions of symbiosis and transitional object at the centre of his theory. Two key thoughts that now structure his reflections are related to the notion of symbiosis. Whether the notion can continue to be accepted as such, or whether it is in fact more accurate to talk about symbiotic states in which the young child experiences a dissolution of sense of self, these moments in which the borders of the self are dissolved are important, first of all, because they explain why recognition is primordially affective in nature. 36 â•‡A. Honneth, “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis”, Philosophical Explorations, vol. 2, no. 3, 1999, pp. 225–242. 37 â•‡A. Honneth, “Facetten des vorsozialen Selbst. Eine Erwiderung auf Joel Whitebook” in Psyche, 55, 2001, pp. 790–802; “The Work of Negativity. A Psychoanalytical Revision of the Theory of Recognition” in eds. J.-P. Deranty et al. Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory, Leiden, Brill, 2007, pp. 127–136; and also the second section of “Invisibility. On the Epistemology of Recognition,” Supplement to the Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, 2001, vol. 75, no. 1, pp. 111–126. 38 â•‡A. Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, Inquiry, 45, 2002, pp. 499–519. 39 â•‡ See the preface to Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen Einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2003, p. 7. 40 â•‡Honneth, “Grounding Recognition”, p. 502.


The first recognition, one so important that it colours the life of the subject until the end, makes the subject relate to the world via the affective mediation of the loved object. The ontogenetic story gives the clue to Honneth’s fundamental new axiom, that “recognition precedes cognition”.41 Second, however, the gradual realisation by the child of the independence of the loved object, and thus of the impossibility of fusional experiences, is also the root of antisocial behaviour. Accordingly, there is an ontogenetic reason for individuals failing to accept the independence of others. In several passages, Honneth intimates a structural link between the frustrating, painful experience of the other’s independence and the mechanisms of the struggles for recognition, but he still has not fully explained it. The bridging thought seems to be that denials of recognition are experiences in which the subject is reminded of those unbearable experiences in which the fusion with the other was realised. Struggles for recognition would then be rooted in the mnemic traces left by early traumatic experiences. These speculations on ontogenesis overlap in major ways with the sociological writings. They provide the ontogenetic counterpart to the socio-psychological and sociological studies, which emphasised the extension of individual autonomy and the pluralisation of individual identity in modern society. Again, a process of mutual validation is at play, between arguments developed in different but parallel fields. The sociological perspective on modern individualism highlighted its ambiguous effects: it undoubtedly opens the door for an increase in autonomy, but it also delivers the individual over to the damaging, desolidarising flexibility demanded by the new capitalistic economy. The very same ambiguity is detected in the corrected theory of ontogenesis. On the one hand, the reinterpretation of object-relation theory in terms of recognition highlights the changes in the personality structure, from a relatively rigid type of identity development, to the pluralised identity characteristic of the subjects of contemporary society. On the other hand, this shift has the ominous effect of divesting subjects from the strong defences that would be required to resist the attacks to psychical identity and wellbeing that stem from the changes in work management and the marketisation of self and sociality. Psychoanalysis offers the same diagnostic as social theory, and provides parallel 41

â•‡ This is the central thesis defended in “Invisibility”.

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accounts of individual pathology. The very plurality and flexibility that are the source of autonomous self-realisation can also be the cause of the lack of individual resistance against pathology-inducing modes of social organisation at and beyond work. The strong connection between social critique and psychoanalysis has naturally always been a hallmark of Critical Theory. In his latest texts, Honneth has revisited the heritage of Critical Theory and this is where a second shift has occurred. Already in “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism”42 the harsh judgement over Adorno’s methodology was revised and the Dialectic of Enlightenment was reconsidered in a more positive light. Honneth does not retract his criticism of the implausibility of Adorno’s negativistic interpretation of modernity, and indeed more generally the implausibility of his explicit social theory. However, he now defends the book against the critiques that have attacked it for its alleged theoretical naiveties, by shifting the perspective. A much more generous reading of the text is made possible once it is no longer taken as a proposal in philosophical anthropology or as a social-theoretical model, but rather as ‘world-disclosing critique’, as a form of ‘argumentation-through-narration’ that uses specific rhetorical strategies to challenge the perception of social reality and make the pathological aspects of the present visible. Two texts confirm this reappropriation of Adorno in Honneth’s recent work: “A Social Pathology of Reason. The Intellectual Heritage of Critical Theory”43 and “A Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform. Sketch of Adorno’s Social Theory”.44 In recent years, Honneth has insisted more than before on his affiliation with the first generation of Critical Theory, and he has attempted to recast his own enterprise in the terms of a continuous tradition of thought. In his earlier reflective reconstructions of Critical Theory, Honneth had emphasised the rupture between the first generation and Habermas. His own model of social philosophy was clearly presented as following the ‘communicative’ turn and as rejecting the outdated and unrealistic presuppositions of the first generation. In the latest texts, Honneth highlights much more willingly the shared theoretical premises that have made Critical â•‡Published in Constellations, vol. 7, no.1, 2000, pp. 116–127. â•‡In The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, ed. F. Rush, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336–360. 44 â•‡ Constellations, vol. 12, no.1, 2005. 42 43


Theory one continuous, coherent tradition of thought. It turns out that the three central points that Honneth sees as characterising this tradition are also definitional of his own model. The first defining feature of Critical Theory, according to Honneth, is that pathologies of the social arise as a result of the deformation of a rational potential that is historically achieved but perverted or undermined by social organisation. Furthermore, the rationality potential in question bears the mark of universality, such that the normative criterion for the self-realisation of subjects is not just that they should be able to develop according to the rationality immanent in their time, but also within non-pathological social contexts in which this rationality is embedded: The representatives of Critical Theory agree with Hegel that the selfrealisation of the individual can only succeed if it is tied up in its goals with the self-realisation of all other members of society via the mediation of universally accepted principles or goals.45

In other words, the good life, in Critical Theory’s Hegelian view, is the product of a solidarity grounded in reason. Autonomy in Critical Theory is, according to Honneth, best defined as ‘cooperative selfrealisation’. The second characteristic is that Critical Theory always attempts to explain the pathologisation of social reason by recourse to sociology. The social-philosophical is complemented by social theory. With the help of the critical sociology of capitalism, it tries to explain the apparent contradiction that contemporary subjects do not attempt to reject the pathological circumstances under which they live. The theory is requested to show how social organisation not only produces specific kinds of suffering, but also their invisibility. The third characteristic is that the critical theory of society must also contain a theory of subjectivity in order to demonstrate how subjects can still be made to see the structures responsible for their alienation, with the aim that this insight will provide the impetus for them to reject or change these structures. Critical Theory famously relies on the methodological principle according to which the theoretical relies on a practical interest and can in turn inform this interest towards its political realisation. A specific notion of ‘suffering’ is constantly used

45

â•‡Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason”, p. 342.

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by the tradition of Critical Theory to that effect: the suffering caused by the pathological dimensions of social organisation cannot be so deep that they would make impossible the reaction of subjects against the social causes of their suffering. This is because subjects and groups can always retrieve and expand the core of rationality that is not suppressed in alienation. The ‘interest in emancipation’, which is the ultimate ground of Critical Theory, means a rational core that remains at the heart of even the most alienated subjects and societies. It is not surprising that these three characteristics map out exactly the three axioms of Honneth’s early work: the first characteristic corresponds to both the historical and the social-ontological axioms and the third characteristic justifies the critical-theoretical one. The second characteristic establishes the strong interdisciplinary program of both former and Honneth’s versions of Critical Theory. As a consequence, the latest reconstructions of the heritage of Critical Theory read like late justifications for Honneth’s overall project. As noted, Honneth from the outset, and with great consistency, has always directed his research towards the realisation of the theoretical-practical program defined by the founders of Critical Theory. His initial discontent was precisely that he saw the theoretical tools they were using as incapable of achieving the program they had set for themselves. The two late shifts in Honneth’s theory, the fleshing out of the critique of capitalism and the changes in the theory of the subject, also correspond in their content to the new reading of the critical tradition. It is as though a newly found consciousness about the unity and coherence of the project of Critical Theory has had an impact on Honneth’s own theory. This is most obvious with the new notion of ‘paradox of capitalistic modernisation’. The notion of paradox is not supposed to replace, but to refine, the classical notion of contradiction. To say that contemporary capitalism is ‘paradoxical’ is to say that it is contradictory in a very specific sense: it develops in a way that makes impossible the realisation of what it normatively harbours. This corresponds to the reading of Critical Theory as a theory about the ‘social pathology of reason’. In both cases, a potentiality for further rationality is blocked, misshaped and repressed by the very social organisation that emerged with the new rationality potential. The thesis of the paradox of capitalistic modernisation can therefore be interpreted as the attempt to be true to the theoretical requirements entailed in the notion of ‘social pathology of reason’ while taking into account what contemporary sociological and psychological knowledge has to say. In other words, the ‘paradox of


capitalistic modernisation’ thesis is the necessary correction of earlier critical-theoretical theses (notably Habermas’ theory of colonisation), for the sake of a consistent pursuit of the program of Critical Theory. A second interesting overlap with the program of Critical Theory as Honneth now reconstructs it, relates to the theory of the subject. “A Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform”, the text that Honneth wrote for the 2003 Adorno conference, is quite amazing in that respect. In it, the three previous characteristics are given a specific Adornian Â�content. Adorno is shown to have propounded a Hegelian premise of a “direct parallel between social situation and the constitution of reason”.46 His take on the notion of ‘cooperative self-realisation’ and the rationality of solidarity is found in the theory of ‘mimetic reason’: Only through imitative behaviour, which for Adorno originally refers back to an affect of loving care, do we achieve a capacity for reason because we learn by gradually envisioning others’ intentions to relate to their perspectives on the world.47

Capitalism is viewed by Adorno as that social organisation, which, by expanding indefinitely the logic of marketisation and commodification, produces a ‘social pathology of reason’ by severing subjects from their capacity to take the perspective of the other (second characteristic). Finally, (third characteristic) modern subjects are not totally disconnected from their childhood memories and are therefore still potentially sensitive to the demands of mimetic reason. Even more pointedly, Adorno himself is now read by Honneth as propounding a theory of paradoxical contradiction: Adorno begins with the observation that today the “organisational overshadowing of ever more spheres of life” causes a feeling of powerlessness above all because it collides with the historically grown expectation of individual freedom.48

At this stage, the question arises: is this an Adornian take on the notion of paradoxical modernisation, or is there a rediscovery of an Adornian inspiration in Honneth’s critical theory? The latter would seem to be the case if we remember the shift in Honneth’s theory of ontogenesis. The shift to an affective theory of recognition corresponds exactly to

â•‡Honneth, “A Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform”, p. 54. â•‡Honneth, “A Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform”, p. 55. 48 â•‡ ibid., pp. 57–58. 46 47

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the re-evaluation of Adorno’s social philosophy and in particular of his theory of mimetic reason. There is now a strong link in Honneth’s recent texts between the moral epistemology of recognition and the focus on the affective dimension of primary intersubjectivity. The new axiom that ‘recognition comes before cognition’, that the primary relations of intersubjectivity, the affective relationship with significant others, is the origin of rationality is also a return to the founder of Critical Theory. The 2005 Tanner Lectures achieve the final unification of all the strands highlighted so far within the revised framework that Honneth has worked on in the last decade.49 Adorno’s theory of the mimetic origin of reason is supported by recent genetic psychology. From it, Honneth derives his new affective theory of recognition. This enables him to reread the analysis of reification famously propounded by Lukács in revised terms, which avoid the idealist and historically unsustainable assumptions of History and Class Consciousness. The theory of subjectivity, the theory of society, critical sociology, the history of left-Hegelianism and in particular the history of the Frankfurt School, are thus all made to systematically complement each other. The reflective awareness of the critical theorist about his historical location within his own tradition, the epistemological reflectivity of the social scientist witnessing the developments of social theory and social psychology, and the political reflectivity of the critique of contemporary society, are finally all made to cohere in one systematic theory open to new conceptual and empirical advances, but sufficiently strong in its present stance to offer substantial diagnostics, explanations and conceptual guidelines.

49 â•‡A. Honneth, Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Chapter three

Recognition and the Dynamics of Intersubjectivity Johanna Meehan A child forsaken, waking Suddenly Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove, And seeth only that it cannot see The meeting eyes of love. George Elliot From the very first day of the child’s development, his activities acquire a meaning of their own in a system of social behaviour and, being directed towards a definite purpose, are frequently refracted through the prism of the child’s environment. The path from object to child and from child to object passes through another person. This complex human structure is the product of a developmental process deeply rooted in the links between individual and social history. Vygotsky, 1978, p. 30

Axel Honneth’s political philosophy evolves from his insight that relations of recognition are fundamental to the formation of identity and to democratic practices. In Honneth’s view, human beings are dependent upon the social responsiveness of others; the nature of these responses crucially determines the structure of human subjectivity. It is, he argues, only specific sorts of relationships that promote the development of self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem, all necessary for fully individuated and autonomous subjectivity. These three crucial moments are achieved in the self ’s relationship to itself as it is mediated by its relationship to others. Joel Anderson describes the effect of these moments as follows: These are neither purely beliefs about oneself nor emotional states, but involve a dynamic process in which individuals come to experience themselves as having a certain status, be it as a focus of concern, a responsible agent, or a valued contributor to shared projects … One’s

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johanna meehan relationship to oneself, then, is not a matter of a solitary ego appraising itself, but an intersubjective process, in which one’s attitude towards oneself emerges in one’s encounter with another’s attitude toward oneself.1

The first of these moments, the focus of this essay, is expressed in what Honneth calls “basic self-confidence”.2 Honneth argues, rightly I think, that basic trust is first achieved in a loving relationship with another person during infancy. It is this relationship that first makes possible the experience and confirmation of shared dependence and neediness. In the reciprocal experience of loving care, both subjects know themselves to be united in their neediness, in their dependence on each other. Since, moreover, needs and emotions can, to a certain extent, only gain “confirmation” by being directly satisfied or reciprocated, recognition itself must possess the character of affective approval or encouragement.3

This approval and encouragement is “tied to the physical existence of others who show each other feelings of particular esteem”.4 Honneth offers a particular model of a relationship between a child and primary caregiver, one that, in his view, gives rise to the basic selfconfidence so important to the eventual development of ethical subjectivity. An ideal infant–caregiver relationship is one that successfully manages what Honneth describes as, on the one hand, the pull of symbiotic union and fusion, and on the other, recognition of distinction, separateness and self-assertion. Honneth’s account, indebted to the ethological research of Ainsworth and Bowlby and to the objectrelational theory developed by Winnicott, makes intense affective relationships in early infancy critical for later interactions. He views them as a relational space in which infants enjoy the recognition of subjectivity crucial for the development of a sense of self, and for the capacity for mutual engagement with others. In Winnicott’s view, one that Honneth seems to endorse, the young infant is unable to differentiate itself from its environment and requires another person to mediate their experience of the world. While for Winnicott the primary caregiver is always the biological mother, 1 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, MIT Press, 1996, pp. 95–100. 2 â•‡ ibid., p. 92. 3 â•‡ ibid., p. 95. 4 â•‡ ibid., p. 96.

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Honneth does not assume any biological connection to be necessary. It is an intense affective connection between caregiver and child that creates attachment. In addition, while Winnicott tends to view the intense experience of symbiosis to be fully and identically experienced by both mother and infant, Honneth seems to hesitate to ascribe quite the same degree of merging to the mother’s experience as he does to the child’s. Despite this hesitation, he too falls victim to a romantic vision of maternal–infant bonding, not fully recognising self/other distinctions made by both infants and caregivers (though to different degrees), even in the midst of intense emotional bonds. We can see this romanticism in Honneth’s description of the first weeks of a motherinfant relationship, when like Winnicott; he believes that a mother is totally absorbed in her infant. Indeed, in both Winnicott’s and Honneth’s accounts, infants first experience a self only in moments of the mothers’ failures to anticipate and respond perfectly to their needs and wants. In the early weeks after birth, a mother is able to anticipate and satisfy her infant’s needs; since gratification is immediate, the infant does not experience needs as needs, or grasp the role that the mother plays in filling them. Only an interruption in the symbiotic relationship, when for example, a child is forced to wait for the satisfaction of needs, is the distinction between self and other felt. The first moments of self-experience are likely to occur, Honneth claims, as a mother reorients herself to the world after weeks of symbiotic fusion. “The resumption of an everyday routine and the renewed openness to family and friends forces her to deny the child immediate gratification – which she spontaneously intuits – in that she increasingly leaves the child alone for long periods of time”.5 The symbiotic relationship between mother and child gradually gives way to the mother’s resumption of her previous identity and social commitments, and forces a gradually evolving self/other awareness necessary to the formation of a child’s identity. This account of the exclusivity and intensity of the infant–mother relationship is important because it sets up Honneth’s normative ideals of relational development. After all, if one thought that infants began life with a fully developed sense of themselves, or of their caregivers, grasping that they are distinct beings with unique physical and psychic boundaries, one might adopt a developmental aim that includes 5

â•‡ ibid., p. 100.

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building on that awareness while cultivating the capacity for an intense connection with others. An infant conceived along Cartesian lines would begin life with an awareness of itself as a distinct thinking, perceiving, willing entity, and theorists might argue that their developmental task should be to appreciate that caregivers are too. These babies would be quite different from Honneth’s and Winnicott’s babies, who first experience a powerfully felt attachment to others and only gradually discover their distinctiveness. Honneth’s insistence on the significance of early childhood relationships for the formation of a sense of self is an important contribution, indeed a crucial contribution, to Critical Theory. Honneth’s exploration of the earliest social relationships, and his awareness of the significance of recognition and the dynamic pull towards omnipotence on the one hand, and mutuality on the other, offers a powerful model of the integration of social/political analysis and psychoanalysis. While other critical theorists have offered psychoanalytic descriptions of ego development, especially those arising in relation to the Oedipal issues relevant to analyses of fascism, few have considered the significance of the earliest attachment relationships for the development of a sense of the self or of others. A project of the sort that Honneth offers can help us understand the relationships of the political and the psychic, the individual and the group, and the operations of power and resistance to those operations. That said, however, I am critical of some aspects of Honneth’s account, particularly of his description of the capacities of the young infant, and his description of the mother-infant relationship. I think these are importantly flawed and they lead to mistakes in his thinking about later stages of development. In the spirit of Honneth’s own project, and in the shared belief that understanding the earliest relationships of human life is politically very important, in what follows I offer an alternative account of the nature of the infant, of attachment and relationships, and of the development of the sense of self and others. 1.â•‡ Primary Intersubjectivity and Early Affective Experience More and more research makes clear that from birth infants make significant and regular perceptual, somatic and conceptual distinctions that indicate some grasp of the distinctiveness of self, the world and other human beings. The experience of being attuned to another


person does not arise only in the face of failed responsiveness; it is an evolutionarily developed ability to experience other people as people, one that develops over time, but is already present at birth. What this experience of others comes to include – the understanding of self and other, of minds and emotions, and the quality of the experience of the presence of being with another person – becomes more complex over time, but some elements are present in even very young, neurologically intact, loved infants. As primatologist and infant researcher Michael Tomasello suggests, we are born with an awareness of other human beings and a special responsiveness and need for them. Peter Hobson calls this original responsiveness to another person, the ability for “affective contact”.6 It is exercised not only when needs are experienced, but for the sheer pleasure of being with another person, and is evident even in interactions with newborns. Infants are biologically disposed to respond preferably to the human face, voice and touch. They notice and enjoy other people and the experience of being held, talked to and looked at. Very young babies are not only aware of other people, they are sensitively aware of them.7 Studies of infants four to five minutes after birth make clear that they respond “appropriately” to the emotional displays specific to human facial interaction. Colwyn Trevarthen uses the term “primary intersubjectivity”8 to describe this early form of relating to other human beings, a term that makes clear both the extent to which infants are oriented to affective interactions from the beginning of life and distinguishes early from later expanded forms of intersubjective interactions. Honneth is right, the ability to make distinctions between self and other, other and the world, and more importantly for his interests, the ability to psychologically negotiate identity and interactions with others, develops over time. However, the object-relations image of newborns as sunk in hazy symbiotic unions unable to distinguish 6 â•‡P. Hobson, The Cradle of Thought: Exploring the Origins of Thinking, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 10. 7 â•‡See an account of Giannis Kugiumutzzakis’ experiments with newborns in P. Hobson, The Cradle of Thought, pp. 29–31; also note Brazelton’s studies of the different response of four-week-old infants to a wind-up toy monkey and to their mothers. There were striking differences in the infants’ responses that support the claim that babies are aware of other human beings from birth onwards and hence are, on some level, distinguishing self from other from birth onwards. 8 â•‡ C. Trevarthen, “Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy: A Description of Primary Intersubjectivity in Before Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication, M. Bullowa, ed., New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989.

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themselves from others, one that Honneth accepts, conflicts with what is now known about babies and their responses to people. This image is empirically and experientially inaccurate and fails to recognise an infant’s capacity to make distinctions between self and others from birth onwards. Honneth’s, like other object-relations accounts, does not recognise the special evolutionary endowments that allow human infants to be aware of themselves and responsive to others from birth. The view that infants experience no distinction between themselves, their caregivers and their general environment has to be abandoned. It is true, as Honneth argues, that there is a progressive development of self/other awareness. The contents of this awareness and the intersubjective relating that they make possible, change as infants become increasingly aware of themselves and others. However, even from the first moments of life, neurologically intact infants are aware of the presence of others and respond affectively to them. This awareness is expressed in the pleasure of body contact visible in the way that babies responsively nestle themselves in someone’s arms, or in the way they scan a face for attention and respond to its expression. In moments of calm wakefulness even newborns, as Trevarthen, Kugiumutzakis, Brazelton and many others have made clear, engage in moments of obviously pleasurable social interactions. That certainly suggests that they experience and appreciate their distinctiveness. I am not, of course, claiming that infants have a reflective grasp of such distinctions. Reflective awareness of the self and an ability to think about others as other people with minds of their own will not be achieved for another four years, but from birth infants can feel the presence of another person, and they do so in experiences of both pleasure and displeasure. Honneth’s account of infants and their early relationships, like that of many other psychoanalytically inclined accounts, fails to recognise infants’ abilities to organise their experiences from birth onwards and the extent to which their responsiveness to the presence of another person counts as genuine, if somewhat incompetent, intersubjective relating.9 Early intersubjective relational capacities undercut the legitimacy of psychoanalytical claims that the sense of self originates in the experience of unfilled needs that it claims are not experienced until six 9 â•‡Drew Westen is an exception to this generalisation. His work reflects the insights of the empirical research on infants as well as a sensitive uptake of object-relations theory and psychoanalysis.


months after birth. The alternative account that I am suggesting, one supported by the empirical literature, recognises multiple dimensions of early self and other experiences, including those rooted in an awareness of shared, but not merged, experiences of touch, mood, attention and affect. Because infants always draw at least some distinctions between themselves and the people with whom they engage, it is arbitrary to focus on the experience of need as exclusively important, as both Winnicott and Honneth do. Infants experience themselves in many ways, in acts of physical agency, in moments of bodily pain and in the experiences of pleasure. If the early sense of self is not limited to moments when an infant experiences needs, as Honneth argues, the door opens to a model of the self founded not just on want, need, limit and negation, but also in the pleasure of sharing in the mood and delighting in the presence of another. This difference is important because it is more in tune with our experience of babies; it accords with the vast empirical literature about them, and also because it has implications for the normative psychological state that Honneth describes as “recognition.” We need to be very clear about what such an experience might include and what might motivate our desire to achieve it. Only if the experience of the self and of others can be pleasurable and not just negative, can recognition and our desire to achieve it be grounded in the positive account of desire, as a desire to be with the other and not just a desire for “the desire of the other”, a view that holds that relationships are motivated merely by the experience of lacking something. Selves always exist in relation to other selves. This is not because of some internal deficiency or the result of a loss; it is because to be a human self is to not just need others, but to want them. In addition to the shortcomings of Honneth’s description of the capacities of infants and their intersubjective experience of their caregivers, his description of a mother symbiotically connected to her infant also has to be rejected. Even when parents bond intensely with their newborns, the period of symbiotic intoxication that Honneth describes seems like a fantasy, to be criticised both for its anti-feminist implications (must women experience the loss of subjectivity that Honneth claims to value so highly in order to successfully relate to their infants?) and because it issues in a problematic account of self/ other relationships. Even if symbiotic unity were psychically possible and desirable, most people’s lives do not allow for the exclusive and intense union between child and caregiver that Winnicott and

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following him, Honneth, describe. In the United States, for example, the average hospital stay for childbirth is less than forty-eight hours. Childbirth has become a “drive-through” medical event. Most women return immediately to full lives, often to other children, to the demands of their own post-pregnancy bodies, to the needs of others, and, more than half, very quickly to paid employment. Honneth’s description of infant–maternal relationships does not recognise even the economic and political conditions of middle-class women, but even more dramatically, it does not recognise the reality of truly impoverished women’s lives where bonding with infants at all can be impossible. While many women, perhaps even most women, do experience powerful connections to their infants, even in conditions of war, famine, or other serious deprivations, the relationships of many women and infants in such situations and even more so in worse ones, bear no relation to those that Honneth describes. The character of some of these infant–mother relationships is suggested by the title of Nancy ScheperHughes book, Death Without Weeping,10 which makes clear that Honneth’s is not merely a descriptive account of the ‘natural’ motherinfant bond, but rather a prescriptive one that inscribes a relational ideal. Scheper-Hughes describes poverty so severe and mothers so desperate that a child’s death comes as a great relief for parents who cannot, and often, do not even try to feed their infants. Love is not ‘natural’ in any simple way. Economic and social circumstances can make maternal love unlikely or even impossible. That Honneth has a normative model of infant–caregiver relationships is not in itself problematic; it is after all part of his project to defend certain kinds of relationships, specifically those that encourage and allow for the experience of mutual recognition. What is a problem is that his description of early infancy moves unconsciously between the descriptive and the normative, including elements that are problematic from both perspectives. I have objections to both Honneth’s empirical and normative account. There are many empirically documented abilities that make it possible for infants to respond cognitively and affectively to other people and to the world – research that makes clear that infants, even newborns, are in fact not lost in a symbiotic mist. My normative objections

10 â•‡Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil, University of California Press, 1992.


reflect a rejection of symbiotic unity as a relational ideal; good relationships allow for the experience of connection, not merger, with another person. In addition, in even the most blissful moments of parenting, and the most intense feelings of emotional connection, adults only momentarily, if at all, lose some underlying sense of distinction from their infants. Most mothers distinguish themselves from their infants not only perceptually and cognitively, but also affectively. To be sure, there are, even in the best of circumstances, experiences of intense projection, as well as powerfully felt feelings of attunement to a baby’s presence and needs; but all parents, even ‘good enough’11 ones, experience themselves to be different beings than their infants. They may experience this as a frustrating inability to decipher what their babies are feeling, or to fathom their needs and respond appropriately to them. Feeling attached to infants, loving them and wanting to take care of them is not the same experience as being merged with them. Infants are separate beings and their feelings and needs are their own. Discovering what they are requires communication and interpretation as do all our relationships with others. Honneth, like Winnicott, and indeed most other object-relations theorists and psychoanalysts, from Freud to Lacan, fantasises mothers to be wholly absorbed with their children and magically powerful in relation to them. He describes the maternal-child relationship as one in which “both partners to interaction are entirely dependent on each other for the satisfaction of their needs and are incapable of individually demarcating themselves from each other”.12 This fantasy is perhaps a vestige of the child’s omnipotent denial of a mother’s separateness. Certainly confusion of our emotions with another person’s seems to be a psychological possibility in all relationships, but even in cases of dramatic “emotional contagion”, all but the truly psychotic continue to make distinctions between the self and the other. The collapse of such distinctions, even in extreme cases of severe trauma, are rarely so complete as to include the blurring of all cognitive, perceptual, bodily and affective boundaries. A more accurate account of early infancy and the crucially important relationships it involves would recognise the fairly fully developed sense of self that adults bring to their relationships with infants, as well 11 â•‡ Winnicott, D.W., The Ordinary Devoted Mother, In Boundary and Space, eds. M. Davis, and D. Wallbridge, New York: Brunner/Matzel, 1981, pp.125–130. 12 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 99.

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as infants’ abilities to distinguish themselves from their caregivers. Recognising the complex syntheses of various capacities that structure all our experiences, ranging from those of the body’s to perceptual schemata, cognitive understanding and affective engagement requires an appreciation of the available empirical research about infants, as well as our everyday experience of them. Such merging and confusion surely is not typical of new parents as they relate to their infants. Even emotionally confused relationships rest on somatic, perceptual and cognitive distinctions that mean they are not “symbiotic” in the way that Honneth describes. The notion of a symbiotic unity between a parent and infant does not capture the crucially important experience of ‘being with’ another. The experience of ‘being with another’ is one in which there is an experience of connection between two selves, not one in which two selves collapse into each other, even in intense moments of affectivity. This experience, at its most powerful moments, can include a fluidity of emotional and perhaps, at least momentarily, of bodily boundaries, but it critically includes a sense that we are with another person, a person that is not the self. Babies demonstrate that they recognise distinctions between themselves and their caregivers when they orient themselves to the people holding them, for example, or by rotating their heads toward parents’ voices or by moulding their bodies to those of their caregivers. Caregivers, of course, typically relate to a loved baby in ways that reflect their awareness of an infant’s particularity and distinctiveness as well. They too orient themselves to their infants, often speak in higher than normal tones, support their infants’ heads, and address their babies as unique beings with intentions, desires and feelings of their own. While I am critical of Honneth’s description of the young infant’s capacities for early intersubjective experience and of the infant– caregiver relationship, I share his belief that our anxiety, rage, love and the capacity to regulate affects in general, typically depends on the emotional legacy of early relationships. Like Honneth, I think understanding the dynamics of recognition and the struggle to recognise differences while sustaining relationships, is fundamentally important for ethics. Recognition, as Honneth argues, is “a constitutive element of love”13 and while love for others cannot be commanded, and not all â•‡ ibid., pp. 95–100.

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ethical relationships rest on love, the capacity to love is fundamental for ethical development in toto. The capacity for recognition is fundamental for democratic politics. As he puts it “… it is only this symbiotically nourished bond, which emerges through mutually desired demarcation, that produces the degree of basic self confidence indispensable for autonomous participation in public life”.14 Honneth’s insistence that Hegel was right to discern that love is at the core of all ethical life is extremely important and sets an important direction for Critical Theory. In what follows, I offer an account of early childhood relationships, one that differs significantly from Honneth’s. I describe the relational interactions of loved infants, integrating empirical research that documents the truly astonishing capacities that loved infants bring to their relationships with others. These are as significant for children’s development as the air they breathe, or the innate abilities that allow for their multiple physical, cognitive and affective capacities in the first place. While these capacities rest on evolutionarily achieved affective, cognitive and social abilities, their successful development requires loving relationships with other people. It is in early affective relationships that the first outlines of psychic identity are developed and from which a sense of self emerges as infants experience other people and others experience them. These experiences, in all their vicissitudes and permutations, establish the characteristic affective/psychic patterns that continue as a child moves towards language acquisition and competence, and an autobiographical and social identity. In order to make clear how crucial is the impact of these affective and psychological relationships on the development of socially and morally important relational abilities, I will turn to the literature on attachment disorder, and describe and reflect on what is known about attachment-disordered children. I think that it would be difficult to find more powerful evidence of the importance of early intersubjective relationships than the clinical symptoms and the obvious suffering of children who have not experienced emotionally adequate relationships in infancy. The spectrum of difficulties experienced by children diagnosed with attachment disorder or ‘RAD’, the acronym for reactive attachment disorder, powerfully underscores the significance of emotional relationships, and opens the door to thinking about the early 14

â•‡ ibid.

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formation of selves from a moral/political perspective. It offers compelling evidence of the importance of the trust in a loved other that Honneth views as foundational for ethical subjectivity. It is just this trust that is typically lacking in the most damaged, attachmentdisordered children. The psychic and social impairments from which they suffer lends support to Honneth’s central contention – that the development of the psychic abilities important for normative forms of intersubjectivity begin in infancy, and are shaped by children’s experience of relationships and the affective abilities developed in their context that are necessary for regulating, synthesising and negotiating affects, thoughts, and judgements. My primary aim in what follows is to illuminate and reconceptualise the affective dimensions of human development that make clear that Honneth is right, early relationships are psychologically, socially and morally important, while at the same time criticising his understanding of the nature of these relationships. The connection of infants’ affective relationships to political capacities has important implications. Understanding the role that affects play in human relationships helps to clarify why Honneth is right to view early forms of recognition to be so crucial to modernity’s emancipatory political aims. Creating a social world that supports the possibility of good early relationships is important, not just for the family, but for democratic politics as well. Before considering the moral and political implications of early relationships, the processes through which they are created and sustained must be described more fully than Honneth’s project has allowed him to do. In the following pages, I will reconceptualise the dynamics of early relationships, calling the normative ideals that Honneth finds embedded in them into question, while continuing to acknowledge their political importance. 2.â•‡ The Formation of the Psychic Self, Attachment and Attachment Disorder Freud, of course, recognised the significance of the relationships between infants and their mothers, though he was actually more interested in the consolidation of gender and sexual identities during the Oedipal stage. To some extent, driven by a mechanical model that viewed human motivation in terms of innate drives, Freud failed to recognise that the human need for relationship is inherent, distinctive


and not reducible to a more basic instinct. Melanie Klein, one of Freud’s contemporaries and successor, did fully recognise the inherent need for relationships and their developmental significance.15 She viewed an infant’s relationship with the mother to be the context in which the process of ego construction fraught by the pull of death and life instincts, expressed in real relationships and in fantasy, take place. While her work remains important for developmental theorists, it depends so heavily on the internal fantasy-driven drama of drives, that the role played by real people is eclipsed. Anna Freud and her research partner, Dorothy Burlingham, focused more directly on the impact of the emotional environment on children’s development. Anna Freud’s understanding of babies was greatly enhanced by her work in Hampstead Heath during World War II, caring for babies separated from their families because of bombings of English cities during the war. While she, like Klein, argued that infant development was significantly driven by instincts, she was also deeply struck by the power of the affective bonds between infants and their mothers, as well as the toll extracted by children’s separation from them. The impact on infants’ health, happiness and development underscored the primacy of love for development. By the time loved infants are two, A. Freud argued, they have typically developed relationships with their mothers that “acquire the strength and variety of adult human love as the attachment comes to its full development and all the child’s instinctual wishes are centered on the mother”. The importance of this love meant that the separation of a child from the mother resulted in emotional injury far greater than even those caused by other traumas experienced by older children, including fire-bombings, and actually witnessing destruction and death. Freud documented many symptoms produced by separation from caregivers including increased illness and violence (both to self and to others), developmental delays, depression, social withdrawal, motor delays, weight loss, cognitive delays, listlessness, rocking and head-banging. Her claims that attachment in infancy is crucial to successful development were powerfully supported by her empirical observations of the emotional suffering of the children in her care. 15 â•‡P. Tyson & R.L. Tyson, Psychoanalytic Theories of Development: An Integration, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 72. Klein postulated that the ego, unconscious fantasy, and the capacity to form object-relations, experience anxiety, and utilise defence mechanisms are all available at birth.

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In 1940 Rene Spitz added more support to the work on attachÂ� ment with the publication of his essay, “Hospitalism”.16 It described in wrenching detail the psychic and physical damage sustained by institutionalised infants who were cared for physically but deprived of emotionally intense on-going relationships with a caregiver. He, like Freud, described the costs of emotional isolation. He found that if emotional starvation continued for more than three months, eye and motor coordination deteriorated, a frozenness of expression developed, appetite decreased, rocking and head-banging began; these were followed by withdrawal and increasing listlessness, the eventual refusal or inability to eat, and much of the time, death. Developmental failures in physical health, measured by incidents of infection were shockingly higher than those in children outside institutions (despite highly sanitary conditions in the places studied). There were significant failures in developing “perception, body mastery, social relations, memory, relations to inanimate objects and intelligence”.17 Of the children Spitz observed, one third died by the end of the second year of institutionalisation. Of the children who did survive, few could sit, stand, walk or talk at age four. Spitz argued that what caused this profound developmental retardation was not just a lack of perceptual or tactile stimulation but the absence of loving relationships with specific others. He wrote: We believe that they suffer because their perceptual world is empty of human partners, that their isolation cuts them off from stimulation by any persons who could signify mother-representatives for the child at this age. The result … is a complete restriction of psychic capacity by the end of the first year.18

As these findings demonstrate, virtually all developmental markers were not met or were achieved much more slowly by the children Spitz studied due to their lack of significant affective relationships with others. That biologically rooted capacities require social, as well as physical environments, is supported not only by Spitz’s research but by many who followed him, who also claimed that without intense affective ties, not only infants’ physical survival but their cognitive/affective development, is gravely threatened. 16 â•‡R. Spitz, “Hospitalism: An Inquiry Into the Genesis of Psychiatric Condition in Early Childhood”, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, USA, International Universities Press, vol. 1, 1945, p. 68. 17 â•‡ ibid., pp. 55–56. 18 â•‡ ibid., p. 68.


John Bowlby’s magisterial three volume work on attachment and loss extended these arguments, clarifying the evolutionary origins of attachment relationships. He argued that normal infants instinctively attach to their primary caregivers, who are in turn biologically disposed to respond to them. What then happens, however, depends on how such distinctive needs are responded to in these relationships. Many infants deprived of continuous loving caregivers lose their originally instinctive interest in others and after a certain point, even if someone does try to interact with them remain apathetic and unresponsive.19 Bowlby’s work was supported by Mary Ainsworth’s research and also by Harlow’s experiments demonstrating the importance of maternal relationships to monkeys. This research formed the basis for what is now known as attachment theory; it includes research from a variety of fields, including ethnology, cognitive and social psychology, evolutionary biology, psychoanalysis and clinical psychology. Over the years many different kinds of evidence has confirmed its central claims, that an infant’s emotional attachment to a continuous caregiver is immensely important to development. It has also underscored the psychic and affective damage and suffering of children who never experienced such relationships, or who lose them, for one reason or another. Contrary to earlier speculations then, the social needs of infants, as Honneth rightly insists, are not derivative, they are as primary and fundamental as other needs; indeed, their importance undercuts any easy distinction between physical and psychic needs. Institutionalised infants suffer from a ‘failure to thrive’ and at the root of their physical ill health is a lack of love. For better or worse, soma and psyche function together. Even in cultures where the processes of separation and individuation are very different, infants invest deep emotions in their caregivers, usually their mothers. Thus, even Drew Westen, who has taken great pains to emphasise the dangers of using one model of development across different cultures, believes attachment relationships to be universal and writes, “Certain phenomena, such as attachment, separation anxiety and stranger-anxiety, do appear to be quite similar

19 â•‡Harlow, H.F., 1965, “Total Isolation: Effects on Macaque Monkey Behavior”, Science, pp. 148, 666

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across cultures and undoubtedly reflect instinctive patterns”.20 AttachÂ� ment takes many different forms, of course, and there are cultural differences in displays and development, but attachment failures produce similar psychic and social deformations visible in all cultures. The behaviours Spitz described as common in institutionalised infants in New York in the 1940s are identical to those still seen in contemporary orphanages across the globe. From China to Russia and Eastern Europe, the absence of an intense emotional connection to another person causes trauma, and trauma still produces the sorts of symptoms and deficits that Freud and Spitz described a half century ago. When does this vital bond between infants and their caregivers form? Because human infants are born unable to do many of the things many mammals can do at birth, a casual look might lead to the erroneous conclusion that since they don’t engage in obvious proximity-Â� seeking behaviour of other animals, that young human infants do not begin to attach to their caregivers and thus do not enter into profoundly important intersubjective relationships until they are older. This is not the case, but the manifestations of early human attachment are more subtle than the clinging and following behaviour of monkeys. Infants are born with a preference for their mother’s smell, voice, and breast milk, preferences that continue if the relationship continues. One might think of this as a kind of biological priming for relationship. By the third month, these continuing preferences are expressed by infants’ increased vocalisation, smiling, and longer periods of visual following when with primary caregivers. By this point, infants in families prefer primary caregivers to all others, though they may take pleasure and comfort in and from others as well. The period between the second and the sixth month is a period of dramatically developing sociability. While in the first two months body regulation is central, and after six months interest in manipulation of objects and motor activities dominate; between two and six months development revolves around social interaction, “the social smile is in place, vocalization directed at others comes about, mutual gaze is sought more avidly, predesigned preferences for the human face and voice are operating fully, and the infant undergoes that bio-behavioural transformation resulting in a highly social partner”.21 These social needs and abilities are 20 â•‡D. Westen, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 71, London, Routledge, 1990, pp. 661–693. 21 â•‡Stern, Daniel, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, 1985, p. 72.


very apparent by the eighth week of an infant’s life, which is viewed as a turning point by parents, siblings and researchers alike. It is at about this point that loved infants become less ‘zoned out’ and more ‘tuned in’; social smiling and responsive and engaging cooing develops, and from this point, if all goes well, infants become increasingly alert, socially engaged and interactively competent. Given these increased social needs and abilities, one would expect that infants languishing in institutions past eight weeks would develop symptoms as a result of their lack of such relationships. This is indeed the case; infants adopted from institutions after they are six months old are more likely to suffer physically and psychically. Spitz found, for example, that contrary to expectations, the older infants in his group (all less than a year) were more likely to succumb to infection than were younger infants, though all the children he studied were much less resistant to infection than children not in institutions.22 He comments on this: “In view of the damage sustained in all personality sectors of the children during their stay in this institution we believe it licit to assume their vitality (whatever that may be), their resistance to disease, was also progressively sapped”.23 Every month spent in an orphanage, without at least one caregiver to whom an infant can deeply attach, causes ever more delays and ever more significant damage across the whole physical and psychic spectrum. The cumulative impact of attachment deprivation can produce severe retardation in all areas ranging from motor development to cognitive and affective disturbances that impair intersubjective abilities across the board. Even newly institutionalised infants lack the relational capacities present in loved young babies. These include moulding, the way babies snuggle their body to fit that of their caregivers, who in turn adjust their body (as well as their baby’s) for a good fit; the visual scanning of caregivers’ faces, proximity seeking when danger arises, the enacting by older infants of the universally expressed gesture of lifting their arms when wanting to be held, and expressions of anxiety at the departure of a caregiver. Institutionalised, abused and neglected infants all demonstrate abnormal behaviours in most or all these aspects, holding â•‡Spitz, “Hospitalism”, p. 53–74 â•‡ ibid., p. 59. More recent studies of institutionalised children have indicated that if adequate physical and cognitive stimulation is provided … the negative impacts of orphanage life occur mainly in emotional development and in social relations, not in perception and formal reasoning. 22 23

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themselves either limply or rigidly when picked up, not making eye contact when held, not searching for a caregiver when something frightening happens, remaining expressionless when soothed, or screaming without cessation even when offered comfort. Infants can be remarkably resilient however, and although by four or five months the damage caused by the failure of attachment relationships is evident, good parenting can help infants recover. Enacting or failing to enact attachment behaviours offers observable evidence that human infants, like their primate relatives, have deep needs for affective bonds with caregivers. Even if the importance of these bonds is conceded, however, the nature of these bonds and the role they play in establishing a sense of self and of others remain to be examined. What internally developing, affect-laden schemas of self and of others develop as a result of affective relationships? Let us return to an account of the role of affect in development in order to answer this question. 3.â•‡ Self/Other Schemas Bowlby’s work established that attachment behaviours, many of which human infants share with primates, are biologically driven, but only continue to be demonstrated in normal ways by infants when they develop deep affective ties to a particular adult. In fact, even monkeys become deeply disturbed and incapable of normal sociability in the absence of such ties.24 Why are attachment relationships in early infancy so crucial and how do they affect our sense of ourselves, of others and even of the world generally? How does the eight-week-old baby in its interactions with a significant person, begin to establish a psychic/affective identity, a sense of self that ultimately can become an object of introspective analysis, and learn to engage in affectively mediated social interaction? At one level this happens because of the way the infant experiences his or her body, other bodies and other persons. This is driven in part by evolutionary accomplishments, some of which are peculiar to our species. At another level, at the level of feeling, the infant’s sense of self is constructed in relation to a caregiver, and is always being 24 â•‡Harlow, H.F., 1965, “Total Isolation: Effects on Macaque Monkey Behavior”, Science, p. 148.


reconstituted across perceptual, cognitive and affective fields, in a process that is never complete. For the loved child, this process takes place within an infant-caregiver matrix, characterised by satisfying, powerfully experienced moments of ‘being with’ each other. What does the experience of ‘being with’ another involve? What does it mean to be present to each other in a shared psychic or emotional dimension? Philosophers and psychologists have struggled to capture this dimension of human experience in language using terms like “recognition”,25 the experience of duality,26 primordial intersubjectivity,27 and attunement.28 Infants are cognitively able to distinguish themselves from others and from other people and objects much more effectively than was previously thought. In addition, as recent studies of empathy and emotional understandings demonstrate, infants distinguish their feelings from those of others, allowing them to respond to another person’s distress and beginning at about a year and a half, to do so more and more appropriately. As Ross Thompson notes, contrary to views that emphasise young children’s difficulty with maintaining self/other differentiation and their sharply curtailed role-taking capabilities, “the reports of these studies reveal that children can understand others’ emotional experiences by the time of their first birthday”.29 Daniel Stern argues that experiences of being with others are not achieved through “passive failures of differentiation” but through “active acts of integration”.30 Being with someone requires some awareness of difference – recognition that two selves are involved in a relational event and experience such events together. Empirical research makes clear that even very young infants experience themselves as distinct from others, even from those to whom they are powerfully

25 â•‡Hegel, G.W.F., “Lordship and Bondage,” in Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977, pp. 111–119. 26 â•‡Binswanger, Otto, Trauma and Existence, 1931. 27 â•‡Trevarthen, Colwyn, “Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy: A Description of Primary Intersubjectivity” in Before Speech: The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication, Bullowa, Margaret, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 321–347. 28 â•‡Winnicott, D.W., The Ordinary Devoted Mother, In Boundary and Space, M. Davis, and D. Wallbridge, eds., New York: Brunner/Matzel, 1981, pp.125–130. 29 â•‡Ross A. Thompson, “Empathy and Emotional Understanding” in Empathy and its Development, eds. N. Eisenberg & J. Strayer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 135. 30 â•‡Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant, p. 101.

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emotionally connected, though obviously an infant’s sense of self is much less developed than that of the caregiver’s. To not feel a connection with another person is to not be in a relationship; to collapse the difference between each other is to collapse the relationship. Research indicates that in the middle months of the first year, loved infants are experiencing an early form of what Trevarthen calls “primary intersubjectivity”. That is, they are developing not just a sense of themselves and other selves, but of a social relationship created by two selves as they mutually relate to one other. As an example of such a shared social experience, Stern points out the extent to which the game of “peek-a-boo” creates a “feeling” event between two people that cannot happen without: the commingling of behaviors from each other … this feeling state, which cycles and crescendos several times over, could never be achieved by the infant alone at this age, neither in its cyclicity, in its intensity, nor in its unique qualities. Objectively, it is a mutual creation, a “we” or a self/ other phenomenon.31

A baby playing a game with a loved caregiver experiences not just the game they play together, but the person with whom they play. If that person is someone known over hours, weeks and months, the experience of being with them is one laden with familiar affects, schemas of interactions, patterns of vocalising, familiar ways of moving, and familiar smells and facial expressions. How do more competent caregivers sustain the experience of relationships with much less competent relational partners? While parent and child experience the presence of the other in a mutual engagement, the child is not an equal partner in the task of intersubjective relating, despite some inherent skills that help make mutuality possible. Parents, often unconsciously, adjust their interactions so that babies will be more successfully engaged. For example, ‘baby-talk’ is not, as many might think, a symptom of caregiver infantalisation; its high-pitched, repetitive and simple phrasing is intended to elicit and then to hold infants’ attention; “infant directed speech is slower and adjusted for intelligibility (Broen 1972), its vocabulary is restricted and concrete (Phillips 1970, Remick 1973), its pitch higher and more variable than in adult-to-adult dialogues … It is astonishing how quickly a mother may alternate two strikingly different forms of speech â•‡ ibid., p. 102.

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when talking alternatively to her baby and to another adult”.32 This kind of speech is most effective for engaging an infant’s attention, its high pitch, repetition and other characteristic features are important. As loving adults interact with infants they not only adjust their modes of interacting, they also monitor their infants’ responses to them; if a child begins to look away, a caregiver might switch to a different intonation, introducing a new pitch, physically moving, or switching to another game. If that fails, the adult may moderate the interaction once again, and continue to do so until the infant produces a new response, or the interaction is terminated. Infants do have some abilities that contribute to the success of the social interactions even when these are sustained primarily by caregivers. These include selective attunement to human faces, effectively using gaze to find a parent’s face, the ability to match vocalisation intensities and turning away when stimulation is too great. Even with these skills, social relations between infants and adults are lop-sided; adults have more resources that can be used to make intersubjective relating possible. Good caregivers, however, do more than supply the skills that infants lack, they also engage with infants in ways to help them develop a repertoire of interactional abilities. Loving caregivers seem instinctively to respond to their infants in ways that not only support an infant’s current state of development, but that make demands that work to push a child further along on a developmental trajectory. Attuned caregivers not only respond to an infant but ‘read’ the subtle signs of an incipient change of state: the lip flutters that indicate an incipient smile that can be coaxed, or a cry that can be averted. The Papouseks’ research on such interactions makes clear how sensitive parents unconsciously moderate their behaviours when interacting with infants to accommodate limited abilities, but always at a degree of sophistication just beyond that of the child. Caregivers operate, as Vygotsky would say, in the infants’ “zone of proximal development”;33 this educational stance continues through toddlerhood and early childhood. By changing the way they interact with infants and anticipating the future, caregivers bootstrap on the capacities an infant already has, helping them to develop further.

â•‡ ibid. â•‡Vygotsky, Mind in Society, the Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Harvard University Press, 1978. 32 33

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One feature of parent-child interactions that supports a child’s maturation is the turn-taking structure. Colwyn Trevarthen has ascribed the proto-conversation behaviours of even newborns. “Infants’ facial and body movements are not random but highly specific ‘objects’, which are themselves responsive in fashion: exhibiting, that is, patterns of sound and movement with that particular climactic periodicity which is the characteristic of most mammals”.34 While there is debate about whether this turn-taking pattern arises from innate pre-social predispositions, or whether it is fully dependent upon social experience of social engagement; adult–child interaction seems to take this form cross-culturally, although it has also been shown that there are fewer face-to-face infant–caregiver interactions in some cultures than is typical in Western countries. Despite these differences, a universal form of interaction between infants and caregivers involves responding to the other’s actions. Newson describes these parent-child patterns of relating as follows, “Typically, the infant and his regular adult caretaker come to operate according to an alternating or turn taking sequence, in which each partner first acts and then attends to the activity of the other”.35 The infant’s burst of energy expressed in movement is responded to by another set of movements by the caregiver. The caregiver, already fully communicatively competent, responds to the infant as if “the baby is like any other communicating person”.36 Caregivers impute meaning to their children’s actions and responses selectively. That is, they interpret some as meaningful and some not, the criteria are those of the human community of which they are a part. It is in part this imputing of meaning to behaviours and in part cognitive abilities that lead infants to find interactions meaningful. In a complex orchestration of intersubjectivity, the caregiver selects from the baby’s movements those that resemble those that are significant in their community. Thus, as Newson points out, a baby’s facial expressions are interpreted to mean that the baby is experiencing one state or another, a state to which the caregiver then responds. The loved infant’s experience of his or her body, feelings and objects is thus mediated by the interpreting and meaning-constructing caregiver: “It is thus only because mothers impute meanings to ‘behaviors’ elicited â•‡Trevarthen, “Communication and Cooperation in Early Infancy”, pp. 321–347. â•‡Newson, J., “Dialogue and Development”, in Action, Gesture and Symbol, Lock, Andrew, ed., Academic Press, 1978, p. 34. 36 â•‡ ibid. 34 35


from infants that these eventually do come to constitute meaningful actions so far as the child is concerned”.37 Infants’ actions and reactions are read through a prism of social meanings and responses that are selective. It is only from the perspective of participants in shared interaction, Newson argues, that responses between a caregiver and a baby can become meaningful. What does it mean to produce meaning? It means being able to respond to appropriate social cues: Actions achieve this status to the extent that they are capable of being used as communicative gestures which he [the infant] knows himself how to produce, on cue, in the context of a social exchange between himself and someone else. In a real sense gestures only acquire their significance in so far as they can be utilized as currency within social dialogues.38

Young infants depend on the interpretive abilities of caregivers, but as they understand more about what their own responses will mean to their interaction partners, and as their partner’s responses reflect their own feelings, they become more interpretively competent. While there are universal expressions of a half dozen or so emotions, what elicits them and their social meanings are not universal. They are embedded in the specific cultures that provide their context. A child’s ability to express the right social response, or to read the response of another, is tied to (not determined by, but affected by) the interpretations supplied by their more competent partners. It is only when a child can take a turn in an interaction, and he or she can counter with a socially intelligible response, that we see social competence. As Newson writes, “The meaning of a smile as a social gesture, is inseparably bound up with the infant’s ability to use it in a socially appropriate manner, i.e., at precisely the right moment within a dialogue of social interaction”.39 This can occur only in the context of a pre-established communication community that interprets what is recognisable, desirable or even meaningful. It should be clear from this description of social interaction that the learning processes necessary for intersubjective meaningmaking and interpretation are enculturated as they are constructed. Social interaction in infancy, is, as Honneth, following Habermas, has

â•‡ ibid. â•‡ ibid. 39 â•‡ ibid. 37 38

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argued, a process in which socialisation and individuation occur at a single stroke.40 Caregivers are not the only powerbrokers in the relationship, however; anyone who has ever interacted with an infant knows that an infant can “reject” a caregiver’s interpretation. While they may not be able to raise a literal ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’ of the kind that both Habermas and Honneth link with moral autonomy, this later ability originates in the earlier and often louder version of it – that is, an infant’s screaming or behavioural refusal to respond in a desired way. An infant spitting out a spoonful of baby food or being completely uninterested in the gift brought by their insistent grandmother, is asserting oneself in the coconstruction of a relational event. Over time and many, many interactions with others, a child’s sense of self, others and objects takes shape. Steven Mitchell comments on the intersubjective process of the formation of the self, writing: From the earliest days of infancy the individual is in continual interaction with others; his very experience is in fact built up out of these interactions. The representations of self which each of us forms is a secondary construction superimposed upon this more fundamental and fluid interactional reality.41

Self/other representations cannot be traced to a single relationship, children generally are involved in many relationships, and in any case, any one person is experienced differently at different times, so even relationships with the same people produce different representations in a child. Steven Mitchell explains: Early relationships, like later relationships, are multiple and complex. They are not simply registered, but experienced through psychological response patterns, constitutional features of temperament, sensitivities, and talents, and worked over, digested, broken down, recombined and designed into new, unique patterns which comprise the individual life.42

The relational account that Honneth and I both favour, holds that the self is developed over time as our experiences are mediated by others’ experiences of us. Those people with whom we are engaged

40 â•‡Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourses of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Frederic Lawrence, trans., MIT, 1990 41 â•‡Steven S. A. Mitchell, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Harvard University, 1988, p. 149. 42 â•‡ ibid. p. 20.


in intense affective relationships play an especially important role in this process. One of the difficulties facing any account that does not appeal to an essential self that endures from birth to death is being able to describe the self as constantly in flux and changing in relation to other people, while still remaining unified. While some of the self ’s unity is provided by consciousness itself, as it integrates various experiences of the self, others and the world, a coherent self also arises from the experience of the subjective states that are felt and interpreted by others and reexperienced by us. These feelings of unified subjectivity are crucial for developing capacities necessary for successful social interaction, empathy for other people and moral sensibility. Winnicott, whose work has been so influential, particularly for Honneth, claimed that the feeling that one was an enduring self was possible only if parenting had been ‘good enough’. The ability to feel real to ourselves, he argued, arose only because we were first made to feel real by a parent (in his descriptions always a mother). To not feel real, to lack a cohesive sense of identity, to experience oneself to be splintered – these are signs of failed parenting and mental illness. In recognising and responding to their infants, parents interpret what infants feel and in doing so help infants become self-aware and “emotionally intelligent”. Winnicott describes this process as one of mirroring – a mother reflects to an infant what the infant is, wants, and is like. This description is echoed by many object-relations and psychoanalytic theorists. It suggests that “it is as if the child’s experience comes to take on a subjective sense of reality only when it is mediated through the mother’s consciousness”.43 It leads Honneth to his version of the Hegelian argument that human beings require recognition from another person in order to experience themselves as unique, continuously existing selves. Recognition requires not just a sense of being with another person, but the ability to distinguish oneself from another while at the same time affectively relating to them. Winnicott and Honneth are right; without significant emotional attachments infants cannot develop a secure sense of self, persevere as subjects, or develop socially desirable relational abilities. All of an infant’s interactions are accompanied by affects, and these will come to make up an infant’s characteristic responses to the world

43 â•‡ Winnicott, D.W., The Maturation Process and the Facilitation Environment, New York, International University Press, 1965.

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and to other people. They gradually come to constitute the dimension of self-identity that we might designate as the ‘psychic’, though it is important to recognise that this dimension of the self is inseparable from the affective, cognitive and somatic self. The interactions between infants and caregivers are highly complex as all attempts to map them have found; they are motivated by both relational needs and parents’ and infants’ efforts to regulate infants’ levels of arousal and excitement. One of the primary tasks of a young infant’s caregivers, in addition to mediating the impact of the physical world, is precisely this moderating of an infant’s affective experiences. Parents must soothe the upset baby, stimulate the bored baby, rock and sing to the anxious baby. The belief that mothers mirror their infants, has recently been reevaluated and has given way to an understanding that what parents do is not mirror their infants, but respond to them with expressions that acknowledge what children feel and distinguish the child’s from the parent’s feelings. Parents’ responses and their expressive commentary make children aware of their own feelings while moderating, amplifying, approving or criticising them. They can encode what a child actually feels, or misinterpret or deny those feelings by suggesting that a child instead feels quite differently. Parents whose responses are not “marked” as their own and hence different from their children’s (though elicited by them) leave no room for negotiating feelings; they pre-empt children’s feelings, substituting their own. What happens if caregivers respond to children’s experiences through the lens of their own emotions? While unlike Honneth, I believe that babies always are aware of some distinction of self and other and I would even suggest that it is only in the case of mental disturbance that there is a literal confusion between self and other, I do believe that emotions can be very powerful, as are the fantasies that express them. While perceptual, somatic and cognitive capacities enable even infants to make some preliminary distinctions between themselves and others, the intensity of our affective responses can blur these distinctions, and the inevitable fantasies about the self and others can undermine the capacity for sustaining the felt distinction between the self and the other. When this happens, there is no possibility of real relationship, as relationships unlike fantasies, require that a distinction between the self and another person be maintained. As Jessica Benjamin describes it, there is always a tension between the self ’s need to recognise the other and simultaneously deny the existence of


the other. To recognise others fully, the self must first view them as what Benjamin calls an equivalent centre of destruction.44 This requires distinguishing between the intra-psychic other, that is, the fantasised other, and the actual other. When another person is only intrapsychically experienced, the experience is properly understood as the relationship of the self to its own projections and identifications. Only when the other is experienced as external to the self, as what Benjamin calls a “like subject”, and not just as the self ’s object, can there be relationship, because only then are there two selves each experiencing the other as distinct while at the same time relating to the other in a fully intersubjective way.45 As Benjamin makes clear, the experience that the other is independent of the self is both threatening and satisfying; threatening because it means that the self and its desire are not successfully omnipotent, there are other selves with other desires. If the self asserts its will, denying that the other has a right to exist, and the other capitulates to this bid for omnipotence, the self is left alone in its wilful rage. The self experiences a temporary sense of power, but destroys the possibility of a relationship to the other. Without others we are condemned to intra-psychic aloneness. We can be recognised by others, even if their presence means that there are limits to the reach of our will and the imposition of our desires. The presence of another self is deeply satisfying precisely because it makes us feel that we are not alone. Infants need the presence of another person seeing them, feeling them, ‘being with’ them and recognising them as beings with intentions, desires and affects. It is my contention that the experience of children who exhibit the disturbing symptoms of attachment disorder is precisely this affective alienation and isolation. There is much clinical evidence that the lack of opportunity for developing the ability to regulate affects through interaction with loving caregivers often results in desperate attempts at self-regulation. These efforts can be seen in the rhythmic rocking, head-banging and relentless screaming of neglected infants. In the most extreme cases, attachment-disordered children seem unable to feel the recognising presence of a caregiver at all, or are able to feel that presence only

44 â•‡J. Benjamin, “Recognition and Destruction: An Outline of Intersubjectivity” in Like Subjects, Love Objects, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1995. 45 â•‡ Ibid., p. 30.

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within the emotional dynamics of rage, when the caregiver is experienced as present but annihilating. These children move from terror or defensive manipulation using charm, lies, or rage. Clinicians comment on the prevalence of rage, the most easily and commonly accessed and expressed emotion of these children. Other emotions are either not present at all or are limited in range or expression. Attachment-disordered children often seem unable to express or interpret a full range of emotions, move abruptly from one emotion to another or become stuck in negative responses, defiance or selfdestructiveness toward themselves or belongings to which they are deeply attached. When other people are being experienced as threats, their presence is blocked by a child’s intense anger. To the extent a child has established a sense of self, the self is most fully experienced in pain and rage, the need to experience relation to others requires provoking those around them until they become the angry obliterating selves that such a child experiences them to be. When these attacked caregivers, too psychically overburdened and too late to the scene, do retaliate by becoming angry, they become the legitimatised targets of anger that is as frightening to see, as it is heartrending to feel. This rage is the result of not having a parent who can effectively absorb, redirect, mitigate, and otherwise moderate infants’ distress and attendant anger. There are other symptoms of attachment-disordered children as well. Though some children suffering from this disorder can initially seem to be appealing and even delightful, those who live with them often discover that they are frighteningly superficial, motivated by a strategic desire for goods and services, without any underlying affective commitment to anyone. Others are so defensively withdrawn and hostile that even such superficial relating can be difficult. Another common symptom of attachment-disordered children is the telling of wildly unbelievable and hence, ineffective lies. It seems reasonable to interpret this behaviour from an intersubjective perspective, indicating a failure to consider what might seem plausible to another person and thus being unable to construct a believable story. This springs less from being unable to think from the perspective of another person – an ability that develops only at about age four – than it does from the lack of empathetic connection, related to what Honneth refers to as “basic trust”. Such trust springs from the experience of safety and emotional security. Children (and primates) who are deprived of the emotional connection with another person in infancy, have a difficult time caring about another person’s feelings and maintaining affiliative bonds.


Perhaps the telling of plausible lies by loved children is not only good strategy but, in an odd way, a sign of caring about another person. Some degree of affection is indicated by being unwilling to at least not tell a believable lie. For some attachment-disordered children this is more than they can muster. Even more disturbing than such fantastic lying, is the common inability of severely attachment disordered children to empathetically relate to their own pain, that of other people or to that of animals. This failure to empathise with pain, whether human or animal, or the willingness and desire to inflict pain is not at all uncommon in these children. While the loved infant experiences a caregiver’s care and learns to feel care for them in return, without this experience empathy seems not to develop at all, or to do so inadequately. As a result, it is not experienced or it cannot be sustained, especially under stress. Finally, the world may be experienced as utterly threatening to these children, inhibiting creative play and exploration. Such children may also be oblivious to the dangers inherent in the physical world, throwing themselves about without appropriate caution reflecting distortions in their experiences of their own bodies. They may also be extraordinarily sensorially sensitive, irritated by seams or tags on clothing, by ordinary food textures or tastes; they may become terribly upset at insignificant injuries, but remain completely expressionless when seriously hurt; they may use physical pain to ward off emotional emptiness, through the rocking and head-banging Freud and Spitz described, or they may suffer from frequent and inexplicable infections, or growth retardation. It is in their relationships with other people, however, that these children seem most damaged. Honneth follows Habermas in claiming that in order to produce human beings capable of exercising moral agency the life world must meet the social/political institutions that embody communicative rationality halfway. The attachment-disordered child’s affective damage and the social problems it results in demonstrate that moral forms of life are vulnerable even in early infancy. Without empathy or whatever we might call the caring orientation to another person that a loved child “naturally” brings to relationships throughout life, the intersubjective bonds required for moral engagement cannot be formed, or are not formed strongly enough. If a child’s life-world does not include relationships that foster empathetic responses to others, Honneth and Habermas are right, it will not meet the project of communicative ethics or recognition half-way, as both claim it must.

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Infants’ uptakes of experience are modified by caregivers who, in turn, are affected by infants’; this process begins in infancy but continues over everyone’s lifetime. Over time, characteristic patterns of affects, responses, desires and self-representations develop; we come to later interactions with the baggage of all our past interactions and the patterns of relating, feeling and thinking developed as a result of them. One of the dangers of any account that holds that early attachment relationships are extremely important for creating a coherent sense of self is that they seem to suggest that infants lucky in love have an underlying core self that remains stable and unchanged no matter what future relationships or events may bring. Conversely, such accounts might be taken to suggest that the failure to enjoy such relationships in early childhood is fatal to the development of a stable sense of self at all. There is much evidence that neither of these claims is true, particularly the former. While a sense of coherence may be achieved over time, maintaining it is as active an achievement as developing it in the first place. In the right circumstances, though some people may be more resilient than others, even people with a coherent and stable sense of self-identity will experience some threat to their integrated sense of self. Assaults to that coherence, whether cognitive, affective, or intersubjective, causes trauma, and extreme trauma can lead to the disintegration of the self and to relational difficulties. One hundred days of continuous battle experience, for example, is thought to cause such damage to anyone.46 Other traumas, rape and torture, two that Honneth mentions, can also lead to devastating disintegration of a coherent sense of self. This is because the image of a self as an established core at the centre of one’s being is misleading. The self is never a ‘thing’; it is a relationship between the experience of subjectivity and what is reflected back through the prism of other people. There is no core self if by this it is meant an identity unchanged through time, and there is no one period of time, whether infancy, childhood, adolescence or adulthood, in which the self is established once and for all. Daniel Stern describes the way that we bring our past into the present and yet are transformed by experiences of new people and 46 â•‡Glover, Jonathan, Humanity, A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Yale University Press, 1999, “Close Combat”, pp. 47–57.


new feelings. “Who we are is not a matter of who we were; it is the temporary accomplishment of an intersubjective process of experience mediated by others and by characteristic patterns of affective responsiveness”.47 The account of the self that I am proposing does not mean that even when children suffer from severe pathologies, including the most extreme forms of attachment disorder, healing is impossible. While children with serious attachment issues bring what they have made of the past into their current and future relationships, it is as oneyear-olds or five-year-olds, or whatever age they happen to be, that they enter into new relationships. As psychoanalyst Steven Mitchell put it: the severity of pathology reflects not so much the earliness of the problems, but their rigidity and pervasiveness – not so much parental failure to provide early nurturance, but failure to relate and to allow room for growth across the whole cycle from infancy to adulthood.48

He goes on to note that while our experience of the past has an impact on who we are at any given moment, it does not stand in any simple causal relationship to our present sense of self: Understanding the past is crucial, not because the past lies concealed within or beneath the present, but because understanding the past provides clues to deciphering how and why the present is being approached and shaped the way it is … The residues of the past do not close out the present; they provide blueprints for negotiating the present.49

Piaget’s criticism of Freud is instructive here; he argued that Freud held a substantialist conception of the self. Freud described affect as originating in an instinctual energy that transfers itself to new objects and people over time. An ‘affective load’ is built up that determines feelings and responses in ways that preserves continuity with the past. Piaget suggests that this essentialist account be replaced with one that can recognise that: When there is a transfer of feeling through the integration of the old feeling in a new schema different from the previous one, and that affective continuity merely results from the mutual assimilation of the two

â•‡Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant. â•‡Steven S. A. Mitchell, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Harvard University, 1988, p. 149. 49 â•‡ Ibid., p. 149 47 48

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This understanding of the hold that the past has on us suggests that interventions in the affective life of attachment-disordered children should be directed at helping them construct new schemas of affect, of action and reaction. This, of course, is a very difficult task, accomplished only in relationships that help children recreate new ways to respond to their own feelings and to those of others. Popular culture ideas of an ‘inner-child’ that can be reached through some exorcising intervention, or of deeply buried feelings that can be dramatically provoked and then tamed, rest on essentialist conceptions of the self, like Freud’s, and cannot acknowledge that present problems are not just the result of a wounded past-self that might be healed by some dramatic intervention. The self ’s problem lies in the way that it brings destructive interactional schemas into play in its current responses and relationships, its inability to moderate or control its current affects, and in the tendency to experience negative affects, like anger, with disproportionate frequency and intensity. These patterns can be changed, though such change comes only with great effort by those who suffer from such relational problems as well as by the people who care for them. It should be remembered that while attachment-disorder represents an extreme on a continuum of affective and social dysfunction, the kind of damage so vividly displayed by this population of children is also seen among non-institutionalised children who – because of war, extreme social dysfunction brought about by poverty, or some other form of early and severe trauma – never experience the caring relationships needed to develop affective capacities necessary for social perspective-taking and empathetic moral responsiveness. The street children of Brazil, the gangs of semi-socialised and violent slum children in India, children condemned to violence by abusive families, children subjected to inner city violence, children of war and rape, children raised in hatred and chaos in displaced persons camps, the tragedy of child armies in the Philippines and Africa, children caught in the poverty and violence of American cities – these are all children whose capacities for intersubjectivity are blighted by social and political conditions and for whom establishing psychologically stable and morally capable identities is difficult, if not impossible. Without â•‡Piaget, Jean, Play, Dream and Imitation in Childhood, Norton, 1962.

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meaningful and timely interventions, the lack of love from which they suffer will have effects on society that reverberate for generations to come. Bowlby was aware of the social implications that are caused by relational failures in infancy. In 1951 he wrote: “Thus it is seen how children who suffer deprivation grow up to become parents deficient in the capacity to care for their children and how adults deficient in this capacity are commonly those who suffered deprivation in childhood”.51 Creating new forms of caregiver-child relating can help us make it possible for children to be able to engage in the recognition that affective trust makes possible. Without this trust, the more developed forms of communicatively negotiated and psychically realised recognition, that Honneth sets as a normative ideal, cannot be fulfilled. Achievement rests not only on relational abilities, but also specific forms of life and the political relationships that make them possible. As Honneth has argued, “The experience of love, whatever historical form it takes, represents the innermost core of all forms of life that qualify as ‘ethical’ (sittlich)”.52 Early experience is important, but the past does not have to haunt us. With help, any of us can become more aware of our own relational failings and better able to engage in more fully intersubjective relationships with others. What is truly important about Honneth’s position is his recognition of the affective grounds of intersubjective engagement. Reason, especially communicative reason, can never be achieved strictly by cognitive development. While there are many details to be worked out before we can offer a full account of the relationship of attachment and love to ethical subjectivity Honneth’s exploration of the earliest social relationships, and his awareness of the significance of recognition and the dynamic pull towards omnipotence on the one hand, and mutuality on the other, is important for psychoanalysis and for social/political analysis. A project like his can help us understand how political practices and social development are related. Honneth’s insistence that the capacities for social interaction require affective competence and that this competence requires the experience of a certain kind of relationship with caregivers is a critical insight,

51 â•‡Bowlby, John, “Maternal Care and Mental Health”, Geneva, Switzerland, 1951, World Health Organization as cited in Attachment in Adulthood, Structure Dynamics and Change, Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver, Guilford Press, 2007, p. 7. 52 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 176.

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but a full explanation of what kind of relationships and exactly their impact still remains to be developed. Honneth, unlike many social theorists, recognises the political importance of affects and emotions, but I believe that there are three serious problems with his account. The first is the description of prelinguistic caregiver-infant relationships as ones in which infants (and perhaps mothers too) experience themselves to be blissfully merged. This description, as I have argued, is not accurate because infants make all sorts of distinctions between themselves and others from birth. Babies are simply never as merged or unaware as Honneth thinks they are. The second problem with Honneth’s argument is that he characterises the mother-child relationship as fully mutual. Parents “recognise” their infants, but their children cannot reciprocate this acknowledgement. While parents take great pleasure in loving and caring for infants, infants do not have the social and psychological tools to appreciate the full subjectivity of their parents. A relationship in which only one person’s needs are being “read” and responded to, and in which there is plenty of guess work that cannot be checked out using some form of language whether spoken, signed or pictorial, is not the normative paradigm of human communication, no matter how evocative of contentment the blissfully gorged and sleeping baby might seem. The third error Honneth makes, springs from the second. Infantparent relationships are not mutual because parents not only have more social skills but also have far more power than their infants and children have. While love may not lend itself to democratic analyses, we surely must recognise that when power is very unevenly exercised, full mutuality is very difficult. The emotional attunement of a parent and child is hardly a democratic one, even when we insist that fusion is more metaphoric than literal, and thus there are two selves present in such relationships. Recognition can be more difficult to achieve in the context of a relationship with one’s parents than anywhere else, surely power in ideal relationships must be more balanced. Virginia Woolf once described the need for “a room of one’s own”.53 What is critical for moral relationships is that we all have “a life of our own”, while knowing that all our lives require relationships with others. It is only in a relationship between two distinct but emotionally related selves that this is possible. Models of relationships in which â•‡ Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, Harcourt, 1929.

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women fill the needs of children and in doing so are supposed to have filled their own are not models of mutual care, or psychic or social recognition. In order to fully understand the relationships that make the trust so necessary for democratic relationships, we need an account of infantparent relationships that takes them seriously, as Honneth does, but does not idealise them as he tends to. Honneth’s argument that the development of ethical subjectivity and the capacities for mutual recognition rest on achievements that begin with, but do not end with early attachment relationships, seems persuasive. What do not are his account of those relationships and the normative model of recognition he extracts from them. While a certain kind of attachment relationship is a precondition for our capacities for recognition, surely it takes more than a relationally successful childhood to be able to maintain a sense of coherent identity and to engage in normatively adequate social relationships.

Chapter four

Social Solidarity and Intersubjective Recognition: On Axel Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition Max Pensky 1. Axel Honneth’s recognition-theoretical philosophy, from The Struggle for Recognition through to his contemporary re-appropriation and reinterpretation of the canonical writings of Fichte, Lukács and Sartre, is a multi-dimensional, complex and enormously productive enterprise. But at its core, its basic ambition and driving purpose – making a theory of intersubjective recognition into a productive social theory – was already announced with admirable concision at the very opening of The Struggle for Recognition. There, Honneth evoked the dilemma Hegel had confronted in the early Jena lectures and of course ultimately in the Philosophy of Right. If a critical social theory wants to gain any normative currency, it will have to be prepared to identify what would count as a reasonable arrangement of social institutions, such that individuals would be able to justify placing severe restrictions on their own and one another’s personal freedoms in order to inhabit such institutions. But such justifications, to be reasonable both to those involved and to us, the readers and writers of social theory, cannot be derived from premises in which ‘reasonable’ is conflated with a calculation of the maximisation of self-interest by persons construed as isolated rational agents. A higher and more complete – more fully reasonable – form of social existence cannot be made reasonable to a race of devils, as Kant famously put it. Even though such devils are perfectly capable of arriving at a concept of political right from purely atomistic premises, they cannot solve for themselves the basic problem of how their social life together, beyond accommodation or a modus vivendi, can itself be the foundation of institutions that are rational; that is, how their social lives can reconcile personal and collective freedoms. Modern societies, in short, require a mode of social solidarity

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that binds members to one another in a network of mutual relationships, strong enough to sustain the various strains and challenges of accommodation and mutual self-limitation. Conversely, as modern societies, these networks of solidarity cannot be expected to arise from out of the traditional resources of familial relations, personal friendship or its correlates, common faith, or indeed from any strongly substantive and shared set of ethical values. Hence the tension of modern solidarity, for a critical social theory, is describing, in theoretically sophisticated terms and with an empirical application, how modern societies actually succeed in sustaining relations of solidarity – and how solidarity can rest on grounds that are more substantial than the rationality of self-interest or the purely abstract norms of deontic morality (which must include all rational beings), but less substantial than the concrete ethical values of a given community (whose forms of exclusion are ultimately incompatible with morality and its requirements of respect for personal autonomy). It is a tall order. Honneth, who for various reasons has remained relatively uninterested in Rousseau’s attempt to solve this problem of individual freedom and the higher-level freedom of a solidary social existence, turns instead to Hegel, who of course was the direct heir of the Kantian version of the dilemma that has plagued modern social theory from its inception. Honneth identifies the philosophy of recognition (Anerk ennung) in Hegel’s early philosophy as the most powerful attempt to show how a “higher-level form of social community” can (in fact must) be made explicable by philosophical concepts, albeit concepts unfamiliar to the Enlightenment tradition that Hegel inherited: If indeed it turned out that modern social philosophy is not in a position to account for such a higher-level form of social community owing to the fact that it remains trapped within atomistic premises, then the first implication of this for political theory is that a new and different system of basic concepts must be developed. Hegel thus faces the question of what these categorical tools must be like, if they are to make it possible to explain philosophically the development of an organization of society whose ethical cohesion would lie in a form of solidarity based on the recognition of the individual freedom of all citizens.1

1 â•‡A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1996, p. 14.

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The philosophy of recognition that Honneth recovers from Hegel’s early writings, developing a logical and phenomenological reconstruction of stages of intersubjective recognition, is the core of Honneth’s own theory. The ambition Honneth ascribes to the young Hegel here is one he shares, even if Hegel himself did not ultimately pursue it. Insofar as this is true, then the challenge Hegel faces is also one that Honneth has to address: once the “atomistic premises” of modern social philosophy are abandoned, Honneth, like Hegel, must solve two very difficult problems in presenting a social theory of modern solidarity. The first problem is methodological. What set of concepts, what terminologies and interpretive approaches, can explicate modern social collectives no longer as aggregates of self-interested utility-maximisers, no longer as merely functional systems for the maintenance of stability and the reproduction of institutions, but as ethical wholes? How can complex modern societies be explained as embodiments of a normative conception of ethical life precisely through, rather than despite, the complexity and diversity characteristic of modern societies? Further, how would a social theory able to solve these problems reconcile the methodological differences between micro-sociological and macro-sociological perspectives and approaches? What methodological perspective will account for the disparities between micro- and macro-sociological perspectives, between the ground-level view of persons inhabiting intersubjective relations or mutual recognition, and the bird’s-eye view of large and complex institutions developing their own internal procedures for stability, maintenance and selfreproduction? Where will the theory locate the agency in the formation and maintenance of solidarity – in the everyday accomplishments of social members, whose solidary work is then transmitted to social institutions, or conversely, by the institutions themselves, which replicate themselves by creating social members with the requisite value orientations? The second problem is normative. What would count as the normative core of a social theory that had reconciled the tension between social cohesion and individual freedom? How would a social theory that takes the idea of ethical life seriously solve the evident ‘Goldilocks problem’ between the overly exclusive, substantive norms of a given community and the abstract norms of practical reason as the basis for social solidarity? From what position is a social theorist capable of articulating norms of solidarity that ought to be effective, independent

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of the description of their functional efficiency? What is the required moment of normative self-reflexivity of a social theory of modern solidarity itself? This normative tension refers back to the very concept of solidarity itself, which has both a normative and a functional-descriptive significance. Solidarity can refer simply to successful social integration, where ‘social integration’ means the inclusion of new members into existing social institutions, by numerous means but predominantly by permitting them to adopt the values and attitudes requisite for the institutions in question, and participation in them, to be justified. ‘Successful’ here can be taken in a normatively neutral sense, in which success is simply whatever mechanism or level of social integration of new members is minimally necessary for the continued function of a social institution. Integration is thus a function of inclusion, and inclusion implies the production of individuals with the aptitudes, orientations and desires appropriate for a given institution’s purposes and function. For instance, insofar as modern democratic governance entails periodic elections, solidarity refers to the successful integration of new individuals into the existing institutions of electoral politics, such that they have the competences, aptitudes, and – crucially – values requisite for such institutions to remain functional. Citizenship, broadly construed, is a range of institutions whose continued existence requires solidarity – here taken only as the ongoing production and inclusion of new members. Some elaboration is required to move from this detached, observerperspective, functionalist and descriptive definition of solidarity to the warmer and more appealing notion of bonding that we often associate with solidarity in an explicitly normative sense. The sense of bonding – of an interconnected network of recognition and obligation that binds a collective together into a communal, ethical whole – cannot simply be a quantitative increase in scope and number of the forms of bonding, whether via kinship or any other purely ascriptive features, familiar from smaller-scale intersubjective relationships. In other words, it is not plausible that modern solidarity is merely the quantitative expansion of sub-social or premodern relations of familiarity, filiation and obligation that operate beneath or prior to it. To be sure, such a view is perennially tempting, and even prior to the advent of the term ‘solidarity’ over the course of the nineteenth century ‘fraternity’ was already taken as the third and supplementary moment of the revolutionary tricoleur. This implied that the twin values of modern


republicanism – individual liberty and social equality – ultimately could not be made compatible with one another unless and until social members also had access to what was in principle a premodern, affective source of bonding and binding that would provide a kind of backdrop or safety-net against which the inevitable conflicts arising from the rival claims of equality and liberty could be peacefully settled.2 This attractive but theoretically inadequate idea of modern solidarity as rooted in affect, friendship, national character or some other amplified feature of smaller groups still seems common if not endemic. In its most popular version from the 1980s and 1990s, in the work of Richard Rorty, solidarity was presented virtually entirely as the selfreferential self-reassurance of those particular values or “final vocabularies” constitutive for belonging in liberal western societies. Rorty never shied from regarding solidarity as a (fairly) straightforward matter of increasing the scope, density and effectiveness of ties of familiarity and recognition that thus bore quantitative but no real qualitative distinctions from older filiative bonds.3 This idea of solidarity seems to require that we forget Durkheim had ever written The Division of Labor in Society, and that modernity could be defined precisely by a crucial shift in the very mode in which differentiated societies manage to maintain the loyalties and normative consensus required for their institutions. Premodern mechanical solidarity according to similarity and familiarity had to be replaced by an organic mode of social solidarity in which persons were capable of recognising one another as co-members of the same social project precisely insofar as the differences between them arising from the division of labour could be construed as integrated parts of a single social whole.4 In fact, Hegel had already registered very clearly that the kind of Sittlichkeit experienced by persons, which linked them together via a strongly ascriptive and as it were unrevisable value consensus, could 2 â•‡For a conceptual history of the concept of solidarity see A. Wildt, “Solidarity: Its History and Contemporary Definition” in Solidarity, ed. K. Bayerz, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. 3 â•‡See R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, and his famous definition of solidarity as “not a matter of sharing a common truth or common goal but of sharing a common selfish hope, the hope that one’s world – the little things around which one has woven into one’s final vocabulary – will not be destroyed”, p. 92. 4 â•‡E. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, New York, The Free Press, 1984, especially “The Increasing Preponderance of Organic Solidarity and its Consequences”, pp. 101–125.

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not simply be translated on a vastly greater scale to modern social conditions. Hegel was a dialectician, and also did not deny that premodern social institutions had a crucial influence on the possibility of modern relations of solidarity, unlike his predecessors, who attempted to locate the grounding moment of specifically modern social solidarity in reconstructions of an original social contract. But dialectics as a methodology in social science permitted Hegel an option beyond the either/ or of affirming or denying that modern forms of social solidarity in the Sittlichkeit of the modern state were an expanded version of the filial bonds of lower or earlier solidary attachments, whether genealogically and historically in the form of communal ethical life ideally pictured in the Greek polis or dialectically-institutionally in the immediate emotional bonds of the nuclear family. In both dimensions, the development of the concrete reality of freedom, in and through relations between individuals and their institutions and structured via conflict, relates earlier and modern forms of social-political solidarity in the modern state in a dialectical rather than a progressive or genealogical fashion. This implies that the social scientist must be prepared to discover premodern modes of social solidarity as both enabling and constraining, as both antiquated impediments and essential resources to modern institutions, at the same time. Beyond the still romantic political enthusiasm of the early writings, in Hegel’s mature political philosophy, the dialectics of solidarity takes the form of a theory of institutions and not predominantly as the theory of intersubjective recognition that interests Honneth. But Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, as his mature theory of social solidarity, is crucial for Honneth’s project in other ways: it explores how an ethical conception of bourgeois civil society – the modern condition of political existence – generates problems of solidarity that at least for Hegel cannot be solved at the level of civil society itself. In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel argued that civil society, as a moment of ethical life, comprises a set of institutions in which individuals satisfy their own demands for individual freedom only insofar as they become increasingly determined by institutionalised groups which, while limiting the scope of the person’s freedom of action, nevertheless actualise and make concrete the otherwise abstract possibility of personal self-determination. In his description of civil society, Hegel depicts this development of freedom-through-relation according to the logic of political economy. Self-interested individuals


immediately encounter a ‘system of needs’ in which their private needs can only be fulfilled via the satisfaction of the needs of others. The adoption of the attitude of others’ needs as intertwined with one’s own, and the impossibility of a consistently rational and egocentric point of view, are thus rooted in civil society, not as a political virtue but as the micro-level effect of institutional facts concerning economic life. For Hegel the system of needs thus generates forms of proto-solidarity, insights into the binding effect of intertwined needs, through the mediating mode of work and via the invisible hand of markets.5 And work, as a mediating mechanism between mutually dependent persons and the various means that are at their disposal in their shared social space is, for Hegel, characterised in market-based civil society above all in terms of the division of labour. Like Durkheim after him, Hegel was clearly aware of the paradoxical binding effect of the modern form of the division of labour: as work becomes more ‘abstract’ – that is, simpler and more repetitive and mechanical, less integrated with other alternative modes of work, more ‘individualised’ – so the dependence of each differentiated form of labour on all others, and the reciprocity between different modes of work, become increasingly important.6 Hence individuals in Hegel’s civil society bind together, via differentiated labour, into estates, and it is the corporate structure of the estate that constitutes the primary sphere for the recognition of mutual interdependence within civil society. But the binding effect of relations of symmetry and reciprocity between members of the same economic estate (agriculture, trade and industry, civil service, and so on) or the relations of estates to one another, cannot for Hegel actualise these 5 â•‡ “Needs and means, as existing in reality, become a being for others by whose needs and work their satisfaction is mutually conditioned. That abstraction, which becomes a quality of both needs and means … also becomes a determination of the mutual relations between individuals. This universality, as the quality of being recognized, is the moment which makes isolated and abstract needs, means, and modes of satisfaction into concrete, i.e. social ones”. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para 192, p. 229. 6 â•‡“The universal and objective aspect of work consists … in that [process of] abstraction which confers a specific character on means and needs and hence also on production, so giving rise to the division of labour. Through this division, the work of the individual becomes simpler, so that his skill at his abstract work becomes greater, as does the volume of his output. At the same time, this abstraction of skill and means makes the dependence and reciprocity of human beings in the satisfaction of their other needs complete and entirely necessary”. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para 198, pp. 232–233.

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relations of recognition on the terms of civil society alone.7 The institutionalisation of modern positive law and its schedule of subjective basic and political rights, the administration of justice and the idea of a rule of law as the expression of the ethical concept of the individual person and not merely the protection of property – all these normative institutions arise, so Hegel argues, only once a system of needs has constructed an ethical sphere for the recognition of unity through difference. As a system of needs, civil society is also something like a total institution and the irreducible context and horizon for all modern relations of solidarity. As Hegel describes it, civil society is: the immense power which draws people to itself and requires them to work for it, owe everything to it, and do everything by its means. Thus, if a human being is to be a member of civil society, he has rights and claims in relation to it, just as he had in relation to his family. Civil society must protect its members and defend their rights, just as the individual owes a duty to the rights of civil society.8

But this status as an all-embracing panoply of institutions and modes of recognition includes civil society’s incompleteness, its inability to actualise the possibility of self-determination that lies, as Hegel puts it, in its concept. The corporate structure of association that civil society requires still makes possible only a differentiated, highly mediated mode of social solidarity amongst citizens as citizens. Even as civil society obliges individuals to mediate their personal needs in an everthicker network of social relationships, that network retains to the end its character as merely need-based. The ethical core of civil society retains a consequentialist element, in which the common good is good precisely because the individual good can be realised in no other way than through it. In this sense, Hegel writes famously that civil society constitutes ethical life “lost in its extremes”: the particularity of the individual set of needs and desires, even when it is highly mediated via institutions, nevertheless remains at the core of the concept of civil society. On its own, civil society cannot bring about that unity of the particular and the universal that is the ultimate goal for political institutions for Hegel, and indeed the very essence of rationality in political life.9 7 â•‡For an excellent account of how institutions ‘actualise’ subjective and objective freedom see F. Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000, pp. 82â•›ff. 8 â•‡Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para 238, p. 263. 9 â•‡Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para 184, p. 221.


Hegel thus saw solidarity transmitted through the dialectical unfolding of social institutions, a story made intelligible by the guiding thread of the idea of freedom. The story of civil society from the seventeenth century to Hegel’s own present is the narrative of an everexpanding basis for differentiated solidarity that, in its extremity, contradicts its own concept and therefore justifies the transmission of social solidarity beyond itself, and to the institutions of the contemporary nation state. In contrast to Hegel, Jürgen Habermas’ social theory of communicative action locates the foundations of solidarity in a mode of communicative reason that transmits itself through modern social institutions, but does not establish a dialectical relationship with them. Habermas argues that the structures of communicative competence – the capacity to become a competent speaker and hearer, to evaluate validity claims independent of the contingent location of the speaker, to grasp the reversibility requirements of speakers and hearers in discourses about need and desert, to distinguish between conviction and persuasion, to grasp the necessity of granting discourse participants certain symmetrical and reciprocal statuses in practice – are all, under conditions of social modernity, prerequisites for the normativity of modern social institutions. In this sense (which of course I am only sketching here in crude form) solidarity via communicative reason is a mode of social integration that arises from and is sustained by the everyday communicative action of persons in a modern lifeworld. Communication binds people together into a network of discursive relations characterised by requirements for intersubjectivity that are, from the point of view of participants, inescapable. For this reason, the bonding force of communicative action is also a vital motor for social integration in modern discursive institutions, and Habermas argues that here we find a unique instance of modern lifeworld energies “transmitting” social integration from lifeworld to social system, such that lifeworld integration forms a distinct mode of social integration complementary to, and often in conflict with, the systemic “steering media” of the bureaucratic coordination of complex societies (“power”) and integration via lightly regulated capitalist market structures (“money”).10

10 â•‡J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols., Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1985.

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This theory of social solidarity as essentially a heterogenous and competing mode of social integration compared with bureaucratic and economic institutions was possible for Habermas only through a remarkable synthetic achievement, in which he overcame the dual viewpoint of micro-sociological and macro-sociological perspectives. Habermas brought about a synthesis of ‘system’ and ‘lifeworld’ analyses through a broad re-reading of the origins and development of social theory from the nineteenth century to the present. That reconstruction – which I won’t even try to summarise here – compels Habermas’ theory of solidarity to assume a distinctive posture, however. The bonding force of intersubjective recognition via communication is a lifeworld resource whose transmission into modern deliberative institutions does not ultimately change the basic normative core of communication itself. Thus Habermas, unlike Hegel, interprets civil society as a sphere of discursive practices that are institutionalised below or between, state and economic institutions. In large part due to the constitutive status of deliberative civil society as lightly institutionalised, the power of solidarity transmitted from lifeworld to system is capable of exerting systemic steering only indirectly (and weakly) via the formation of public opinion and the influencing of parliamentary bodies and market structures, by presenting them with problems that state and economy can’t afford to ignore. Social solidarity is and remains a stranger in a strange land, a pilgrim in systemic institutions. It retains its heterogeneity, its essential difference from the strategic logic of institutional function, through its long march through state and economy, influencing them (one hopes), being among them, but not of them. For this same reason – to turn from the methodological to the normative – the norms that can be appealed to in order to justify the bonding effect of communicative solidarity within modern social institutions are themselves, certainly, far too general and abstract to be the exclusive property of any concrete historical society. They are just those ‘super-norms’ that are constitutive of the status of human beings as reasonable. For this reason, Habermas has to explain how the supernorms of communicative competence are able to translate into the articulable and effective norms of deliberative practice that could actually motivate democratic citizens. And here ‘solidarity’ must mean the bonding effect that arises in and through deliberating citizens, not in view of the contingent ethical bonds that obtain insofar as such citizens happen to be members of this particular society, but insofar as


they have internalised and continually approve of just those norms constitutive for practice in any modern constitutional democratic society. In this sense, the basic problem of solidarity that Habermas’ social theory has to solve – is not essentially different from that of John Rawls: do commitments to the impersonal and abstract norms of public reason constitute resources strong and substantial enough for citizens to be able to keep going in their political lives, through diversity and conflict? Or do citizens in diverse and agonistic societies find themselves obliged to go over to entirely strategic modes of dealing with the demands that social membership places on them? 2. At the opening of this essay I remarked that Honneth’s demand of Hegel in the Jena writings holds even more true for Honneth himself: a new and different system of basic concepts must be developed. Hegel thus faces the question of what these categorical tools must be like, if they are to make it possible to explain philosophically the development of an organization of society whose ethical cohesion would lie in a form of solidarity based on the recognition of the individual freedom of all citizens.

I have tried to sketch out the interlocking and recurring problems that I believe a revised conception of solidarity would have to resolve. To recapitulate, these problems encompass (a) a methodological and (b) a normative dimension. In the former, a sociologically adequate conception of solidarity requires that an explanation of the mechanism of social integration in modern, complex societies would have to situate solidarity as a phenomenon between the phenomenological level of intersubjective interaction and the functional replication of large-scale institutions and systems. This requires some account of the mechanism that transmits the bonding effects of interpersonal relationships, mutatis mutandis, from the realm of everyday interactions to those of social institutions requiring hierarchical organisation, the division of labour and the coordination of many sorts of anonymous interactions. Like Hegel, Durkheim and Habermas (in their very different ways), Honneth acknowledges that this requirement implies much more than just a quantitative increase of solidary relationships based on familiarity. Instead, social theory must take particular account of features of specifically modern solidarity. Whether in terms of Hegel’s vision of

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subjective and objective freedom mutually fulfilling one another only in the form of a state institution that supercedes that of civil society, or Durkheim’s conception of a fundamental replacement of mechanical solidarity for organic solidarity based on differences via the division of labour, or Habermas’ notion of civil society institutions conveying communicative bonds into the political system via deliberative institutions, the specifically modern form of social solidarity has to be explained in terms of the basic features of social modernity: the collapse of traditional resources for social integration, and the corresponding rise of cultural pluralism, social complexity and individualism. In terms of normativity, a social science with normative intent will need to identify solidarity as social integration, and social integration as normative integration. It cannot remain content with a functionalist account of the integrating effects of institutions alone – in Habermas’ terms, system integration and integration via the lifeworld must remain significantly different if the latter is to be ascribed any normative significance. And in this case, we confront the normative tension that had already surfaced in Habermas’ work. Norms of inclusion or recognition are those that ascribe membership status on some persons and not others. If such norms are modern moral or legal norms, such ascriptions abstract from the morally or legally arbitrary features of persons and assign membership status on the basis of universal and hence abstract characteristics, and do so (in theory) according to a logic of equivalence. Deriving solidarity from the application of universal moral or legal norms supposes that people are capable of forming relationships of intersubjective interdependence and mutual support, even care, from precisely those features of one another that are most abstract and that they share in principle with all other human beings, and this is indeed a significant explanatory burden. Habermas’ theory of solidarity as the direct correlate of procedural justice has been criticised as implausible and empirically unsupportable for precisely these reasons.11 Conversely, the price of seeing social solidarity arising from the concrete ethical features of a given community solves this problem all too well. The value horizon of a particular community, its 11 â•‡For a friendly and particularly interesting version of this criticism see C. Calhoun, “Constitutional Patriotism and the Public Sphere: Interests, Identity, and Solidarity in the Integration of Europe” in eds. P. De Greiff & C. Cronin, Global Justice and Transnational Politics, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002, pp. 275–312.


non-universalisable conception of what constitutes a good life, of “who we are and who we want to be” in Habermas’ terms retains a highly anachronistic and politically suspect aura for the same reason.12 It’s just not very plausible that modern societies are culturally in any position to articulate and enforce a value horizon anywhere near concrete enough to provide the foundation for solidary relationships without the kinds of exclusions and marginalisations that are intolerable on the very moral and political grounds just described. For even if we explain how solidarity is accorded via substantive ethical values – values we may not share – we may well find ourselves as normative social theorists needing to explain why it is that very often such values generate or withhold solidary relationships were they ought not to do so, where relations of solidarity obtain that ought not to, or where they are lacking in places they ought to arise. Our Goldilocks problem ensues. Attempts such as those of Habermas and Rawls to explain the bonding effects of modern solidarity on the basis of thin conceptions of public reasoning or deliberative commitments run the risk of failing to provide a plausible account of what it is actually like to bear allegiance to other social members on the basis of important, reciprocal commitments. They are normative enough to become cumbersome when dealing with empirical data. On the other side, explaining strong social commitments on the basis of thick, substantive cultural values may be more empirically explanatory but the norms it identifies descriptively cannot be squared with the inclusiveness, equality and abstractness of those modern political and moral norms whose role in modern societies are not really up for discussion. Would a third option between liberal and communitarian theories find some mediating position between them and thereby counteract the weaknesses of each? This is precisely what Honneth’s account of solidarity as a sphere of recognition in modern societies attempts. 3. Axel Honneth’s theory of social solidarity is presented in the central fifth chapter of The Struggle for Recognition: “Patterns of Recognition: Love, Rights, and Solidarity”. The general goal of the chapter is to

12

â•‡Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action.

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present an empirically verifiable model of spheres of recognition within complex societies, with the assumption that the contents of these spheres, and the boundaries of each, are illuminated negatively by experiences of failed or frustrated demands for recognition by subordinated individuals and social groups – social pathologies and corresponding political crises. While Honneth’s tripartite division of love, rights and solidarity corresponds to Hegel’s familiar triune of family, civil society and state as the stages of ethical life, Honneth must perform a careful act of separation in order to excise Hegel’s theory of the state from a contemporary appropriation. This is a deeply difficult interpretive manoeuvre, as Honneth recognises, and I will discuss it in some detail below. For the present it is important to recognise that Honneth’s ‘spheres’ of recognition are meant to refer to patterns for inter-subjective interaction based on standardised forms of mutual acknowledgement, and insofar as this is the case then the recognition spheres are of course ‘always already’ normative. Each sphere contains its own specific logic and dynamic of recognition; each has come to develop its own internal criteria for successful or failed socialisation and individualisation processes, and each exhibits its own history of institutionalisation. In this sense, Honneth like Habermas demonstrates his extreme indebtedness to the tradition of German philosophical sociology from Weber to Luhmann, wherein modernity is to be taken primarily as a process of differentiation as a response to the demands of growing social complexity, producing heteronomous value-spheres that increasingly show “autopoeitic” tendencies, walling themselves off from one another and subtly transforming external spheres into mere “background environments”.13 In The Struggle for Recognition, a notable difference from earlier theories of value spheres and their interdependence (or lack of it) is the work’s strongly genealogical account of the second and third spheres, those of legal rights and of solidarity, in sharp contrast to the generally

13 â•‡ This becomes particularly clear in Honneth’s discussion of the ‘differentiation’ of the spheres of recognition in Recognition or Redistribution?, pp. 142–144. In the case of Luhmann’s system theory, certainly, the systemic mechanisms overseeing the maintenance of social integration take over from lifeworld resources entirely, and Luhmann ultimately abandoned the very idea of social solidarity as a ghost in the machine. See N. Luhmann, “Die Differnzierung von Interaktion und Gesellschaft. Probleme der sozialen Solidarität” in ed. R. Kopp, Solidarität in der Welt der 80er Jahre: Leistungsgesellschaft und Sozialstaat, Basel, Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1984, pp. 79–96.


non-genetic and largely ahistorical account of the status of the sphere of love.14 Legal relations are the specific achievements of (Western) rational modernity, and entail the rise of a sphere wherein subjects become able to symmetrically and equally ascribe to one another the status as rightsbearing subjects. Here Honneth emphasises the work of abstraction required to master this form of recognition: one’s status as a rightsbearing subject, as citoyen of the state under the rule of law or as a moral person in a universal moral community, entails adopting as a tool for recognition a set of highly institutionalised norms so general and extensive in their applicability that they operate as recognitional tools only insofar as they abstract from all specific differences. To recognise via the sphere of legal relations – to grant moral or legal respect as a basic principle of social inclusion – requires the recognition of difference, certainly, but difference can only be registered as that which is to be bracketed as legally or morally irrelevant. Honneth thus assumes a certain historical parity in the emergence of modern positive law, on the one side, and modern deontic, universalistic moral theories, on the other. Rights claims and social inclusion or membership claims are completely reciprocal regardless of what the contents or implications of such rights claims or membership claims are concretely held to be. Underlying the rise of abstract moral-legal recognition, certainly, is not just the historical dynamic of the collapse of traditional, ethical substance as the concrete content of membership criteria, but also the concomitant rise of a doctrine of rational selfdetermination as the underlying justification for how membership and rights can be so completely mutually constituting. In the social contract tradition, social membership and its corresponding rights are justified by the status of all members, despite differences in goals, motives, desires and concrete norms, by a supervening norm of autonomy. We ascribe to each other membership and rights by a prior, if implicit, ascription of rational consent to the limitations and obligations that membership and rights imply. Legal recognition, rights, respect and the whole panoply of quintessentially modern social relationships therefore arise only from a modernisation process in which older, hierarchically ordered corporatist social arrangements are shattered, and the old rules for granting respect according to group membership no longer pertain. 14

â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 96.

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Hegel, recall, had seen just this mode of mutual moral and legal recognition as consisting external to (that is, dialectically prior to) the sphere of ethical life for just these reasons. The indeterminacy of positive legal rights and abstract moral obligations, their status as rigorously ‘post-conventional’, is precisely what excludes this form of recognition from the substantive dimension of ethical life, and Hegel’s criticisms of Kant’s empty moral formalism takes aim at the impossibil ity of endowing the category of duty with any content, any socially embedded conception of the shared ethical good.15 Honneth too wants to retain Hegel’s objection to the evacuation of substantive ethical content from the modern regime of abstract rights. Modern liberal rights regimes cannot provide the normative resources for citizens’ basic commitments to one another on the basis of individual self-interest – the ‘race of devils’ problem, as an absence of mutual ascriptions of respect, and obedience to law as a matter of rational calculation undercuts the possibility of a sustained rule of positive law.16 But by the same token mere relations of mutual legal respect demand such a rigorous abstractive process that they leave citizens without the resources for recognising one another as different. For Honneth, it is thus precisely the modern solidarity problem that the natural law tradition from Kant through Rawls, and indeed through Habermas as well, cannot resolve. By subordinating ethical life to the universal form of modern morality and law, solidarity must remain a mere by-product of social processes of abstraction. The recovery of Hegel’s conception of ethical life as spheres of recognition cannot, for Honneth, follow Hegel’s own dialectical logic, since Honneth is convinced that the recognition spheres maintain mutually sustaining and limiting relationships with one another, rather than a hierarchical relationship in which crises in a ‘lower’ sphere can only be resolved at a ‘higher’ one.17 15 â•‡ “However essential it may be to emphasize the pure and unconditional self-determination of the will as the root of duty … to cling on to a merely moral point of view without making the transition to the concept of ethics reduces this gain to an empty formalism, and moral science to an empty rhetoric of duty for duty’s sake.” Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, para 137, p. 162. 16 â•‡For more on this point see A. Honneth, Suffering From Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Two Lectures, Amsterdam, Van Gorcum, 2000, especially pp. 46â•›ff. 17 â•‡See N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, London, Verso, 2003, pp. 144–145, where Honneth distinguishes Hegel’s dialectical hierarchy of spheres of ethical life from the specific status of recognition spheres. In the third sphere – which now is no longer referred to as


Honneth’s own account of solidarity as a third sphere of recognition alongside love and legal respect via universal rights emerges from a genealogy, part Hegelian and part Durkheimian, of the diremptions of social recognition characteristic of modern societies. Premodern patterns of recognition, essentially corporatist, rested on the more or less durable aggregation of persons into traditionally secured social subgroups – estates – with more or less stable and perspicuous criteria for according honour or worth. Group membership, with its corresponding conceptions of honour or worth, its specific cultural norms regarding the ideal pattern of life, accomplish much of the work of social integration and individuation at the institutional level. Social subgroups thus incorporate mechanisms for mutual and symmetrical recognition based on ascribed characteristics internally, while maintaining sharply defined boundaries and exclusionary practices to maintain highly asymmetrical relations between members and non-members. For individual group members, honour or esteem, as a recognition act, is the affirmation of membership, the acknowledgement that the individual is embodying an ideal type of behavioural norms, values or aspirations that are definitive for the group’s self-understanding. Hence, in an implicit nod to Durkheim, Honneth sees relations of similarity between group members balanced by relations of solidary dis similarity between members and non-members, what Honneth describes as “internally symmetrical yet externally asymmetrical relationships between culturally typified members of an estate”.18 Relations of esteem or honour between asymmetrically placed groups depend on an intact cultural consensus on overarching and unifying social goals. And a cultural consensus substantive enough to support these kinds of recognition of honour or worth is just what is lost in the advent of social modernity. Hence modernity’s introduction of new modes of recognition, such as legal status, undermines the functional role of corporate bodies by individualising the bases for recognition while rendering the cognitive dimension of norms of recognition increasingly universalistic, abstract and formalised. The indiÂ�vidualisation of bases for esteem, the universalisation of norms of ‘solidarity’ but one of esteem arising from ‘loose’ – that is, lightly institutionalised – social relations, “individuals or social groups generally bring forth hitherto neglected or underappreciated activities and capacities by appeal to the achievement principle in order to demand greater social esteem and at the same time a redistribution of (material) resources”. 18 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 123.

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recognition, and the emptying of substantive cultural consensuses on shared social goals in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century all made it increasingly difficult for modern societies to find a way to recognise individuals as valued social members on the basis of their differences – on the basis of their differentiated social roles. A sphere of mutual recognition in which individuals accord one another esteem based on their individual differences – on their differently allocated and realised aptitudes, traits, accomplishments, motives, life-histories, and so on – of course presupposes some correlate for a now-absent overarching cultural consensus, according to which such individual differences can be recognised as diverse contributions to an overarching, if also contested, set of shared social goals. As a kind of grandchild of the premodern notion of honour or ‘standing’, esteemthrough-difference “signifies only the degree of social recognition the individual earns for his or her form of self-realization by thus contributing, to a certain extent, to the practical realization of society’s abstractly defined goals”.19 In this sense, for Honneth social solidarity retains a distinctly premodern, even nostalgic tinge. Unlike legal respect, with its levelling of differences and its flat ascription of equal status, solidarity still seems to require the very substantive value consensus to whose absence the modern regime of universal legal rights attests so powerfully. Honneth writes: With regard to this new, individualized system of recognition relations, everything now depends, therefore, on the definition of this general value-horizon, which is supposed to be open to various forms of selfrealization and yet, at the same time, must also be able to serve as an overarching system of esteem.20

To the extent that modernisation renders all substantive value-horizons increasingly formal and procedural, it might be tempting to conclude that the ‘opening’ of a previously parochial value consensus to the possibility of diversity and pluralism in different projects of selfrealisation was in and of itself the only consensus that a modern society could support. This at any rate would seem to capture the Rawlsian conception of an overlapping consensus, presupposing the inability of any single metaphysical worldview to command assent, given the fact â•‡ ibid., p. 126. â•‡ ibid., p. 126.

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of pluralism. Honneth cannot be content with political liberalism’s answer here, however. The Hegelian goal of The Struggle for Recognition, after all, is to demonstrate how the features of a modern conception of ethical life realise themselves precisely through the kinds of social crises that illustrate the failures of liberal value-neutralism, and liberal preferences for formal and procedural accounts of public reason. Honneth’s ambition in the re-introduction of Hegel’s conception of Sittlichkeit therefore challenges the very idea that contemporary ‘valuehorizons’ can only be those that mildly affirm the supposed value-freedom of the public use of reason. But if this is so, it is then up to Honneth to describe what sort of value consensus, or value-horizon, would be substantive enough to support mutual ascriptions of esteem based on individual differences – but not so strong as to repeat Hegel’s oversubstantialisation of a cultural consensus in the glorification of the state institution in which all individual differences are dialectically sublated. The goals that form the horizon against which we esteem one another must remain ‘abstract’ – even as we, and our specific traits and aptitudes, are meant to be stubbornly ethical, and fully alive. It is not at all easy to see how this feat can be carried off. Honneth ascribes the difficulty that arises at this point less to the structure of the argument than to the “tension … in the modern organisation of social esteem” itself; a tension that arises precisely due to the distance, both conceptual and institutional, that separates the level of lived experience in which people work, interact, compete and either accord with or deny esteem to one another, on one side, and the abstract set of supervening norms regarding collective social goals on the other. However such goals are defined, Honneth argues, some sorts of “secondary interpretive practice” is required in order to determine what sorts of behaviours, accomplishments or traits further them, and these secondary practices are what in fact get fought over: The abstract guiding ideas of modern societies provide so little in the way of a universally valid system of reference with which to measure the social worth of particular traits and abilities that they must always be made concrete through supplemental cultural interpretations before they can be applied to the sphere of recognition. For this reason, the worth accorded to the various forms of self-realization and even the manner in which the relevant traits and abilities are defined fundamentally depend on the dominant interpretations of societal goods in each historical case. But since the content of such interpretations depends in turn on which social groups succeed in publicly interpreting their own

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Secondary interpretations are sites of permanent struggle insofar as they mediate between the lifeworld level of individual projects of selfrealisation and modern, abstract commitments to the social good. In this sense, such interpretations express a current constellation of power, we might say: the power to form the cultural vocabulary that will be used to describe the good life. This permanently contested “symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld” is, for Honneth, clearly to be understood as a public, that is, a political phenomenon, since the temporary advantage of various social subgroups to dominate the language of social esteem is due not only to the contingent advantages of the group itself, but also (indeed probably predominantly) to the group’s ability to draw and maintain the attention and approval of differently situated social members within an open public sphere.22 While esteem, unlike moral or legal respect, persists as a differential recognitional pattern (people must have more or less of it), like respect it undergoes the same modern transition from an aggregate form derived from group-specific differences to an individualised form. Honneth suggests, however, that the decorporatising of modern solidarity is far less complete and far more ambivalent than in the case of legal respect. Individualised solidarity still retains a strongly corporatist dimension in the individual’s capacity to expect and receive symmetrical esteem from co-members, on the basis of shared traits that are definitive for membership. Differentiation in this sense still directly implies exclusionary practices that map on to membership criteria. Honneth implies that individualisation here is, roughly, equivalent to the loss of corporate ties in society as such, and the shift in the work of social integration from group membership to other mechanisms. We expect to be accorded esteem now for our individualised ‘projects of self-realisation’ independent of group ties, and such projects of selfrealisation, in late modernity, are now no longer tied so tightly to the division of labour. Given a hazy and insubstantial set of ethical values, an agonistic field of civil society in which the practical meaning of those values is constantly contested, and persons whose projects of

â•‡ ibid., pp. 126–127. â•‡ ibid., p. 127.

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individual self-realisation depend in large measure on winning the esteem of others, then, solidarity is indeed a struggle, with constantly shifting goalposts, rules, players and umpires. The only thing that remains constant – and here in fact Honneth hits on something very close to the disheartening heart of the matter – is the feeling of low self-esteem, of being denigrated or invisible, marginalised and worthless, in cases where one’s project of self-realisation, however modest, or conventional, or odd, or grandiose, fails to win the recognition one needs and expects it to. In this way Honneth introduces the individualised accomplishment of ‘self-esteem’ as the counterpart of the basic confidence arising from the recognitional pattern of love, and self-respect from that of legal recognition according to rights. And it is this mutual ascription of esteem and its corresponding internalisation that Honneth appeals to in order to re-introduce the notion of bonding or affective ties that has heretofore been associated with solidarity: [T]o esteem one another symmetrically means to view one another in light of values that allow the abilities and traits of the other to appear significant for shared praxis. Relationships of this sort can be said to be cases of “solidarity”, because they inspire not just passive tolerance but felt concern for what is individual and particular about the other person. For only to the degree to which I actively care about the development of the other’s characteristics (which seem foreign to me) can our shared goals be realized.23

Honneth is quick to add that relations of symmetrical solidarity should by no means imply equal solidarity (as in the case of legal respect), an outcome he ascribes less to ongoing competition for esteem than to the abstractness and indeterminacy of the values constituting shared social goals: The fact that “symmetrical” cannot mean here that we esteem each other to the same degree is already clear from the essential openness to interpretation of every societal value-horizon. It is simply impossible to imagine a set of collective goals that could be fixed quantitatively in such a way that it would allow for an exact comparison of the value of individual contributions; “symmetrical” must mean instead that every subject is free from being collectively denigrated, so that one is given the chance to experience oneself to be recognized, in light of one’s own accomplishments and abilities, as valuable for society.24 23 24

â•‡ ibid., p. 129. â•‡ ibid., pp. 129–130.

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The tension between the equality demand of legal respect and its opposite in terms of solidary esteem is perhaps greater than Honneth is willing to acknowledge. Certainly in the normative sense, the actual recognitional act required of subjects for the former is, in comparison to solidary recognition, disarmingly simple: all that is required to carry out a successful act of legal recognition is the correct abduction of a minor premise – even if the general acceptability of this premise (“â•›‘X’ is fully a person”) has taken centuries of bloody struggle. Moreover, legal respect via mutual ascription of basic and political rights is heavily and completely institutionalised, with all manner of state institutions reaching down into the lifeworld and civil society to provide mandates and controls, and specific kinds of remedies, for the lapses of legal respect that will inevitably occur given our proclivities for forgetting our minor premises. Not so in the case of solidarity. Here, according esteem for one’s project of self-realisation (as opposed to one’s basic capacity for self-determination) places heavy interpretive demands on each social member. It is also so lightly institutionalised (if unlike Hegel we persist in identifying civil society as the sphere par excellence of solidarity) that we should not be surprised that here the interesting problems are not only cases where projects of self-realisation do not receive the full measure of esteem from others that they apparently deserve. It is also a matter of forms of self-realisation receiving esteem they are not worthy of, and many mixed cases where no system integration mechanism, no institutional support, will intervene in tough cases to decide the struggle for recognition one way or another. These are culture wars. They have become more significant in light of what Honneth calls the “achievement principle”; the older consensus that evaluated social worth according to individual economic achievement via career, has waned and opened up the agonistic field to broader conceptions of self-realisation. In his dialogue with Nancy Fraser, Redistribution or Recognition?, Honneth describes the earlier hegemony of this achievement principle in the language of first-generation Critical Theory: With the institutionalization of the normative idea of legal equality, “individual achievement” emerged as a leading cultural idea under the influence of the religious valorization of paid work. With the gradual establishment of the new value model asserted by the economically rising bourgeoisie against the nobility, the estate-based principle of honor conversely lost its validity, so that the individual’s social standing now

social solidarity and intersubjective recognition147 became normatively independent of origin and possessions. The esteem the individual legitimately deserved within society was no longer decided by membership in an estate with corresponding codes of honor, but rather by individual achievement within the structure of the industrially organized division of labor. The entire process of transformation triggered by the normative reorganization of legal status and the prestige order can thus be vividly described as a splitting of the pre-modern concept of honor into two opposed ideas: one part of the honor assured by hierarchy was in a sense democratized by according all members of society equal respect for their dignity and autonomy as legal persons, while the other part was in a sense “meritocratized”: each was to enjoy social esteem according to his or her achievement as a “productive citizen”.25

It is the hegemonic function of the achievement principle, Honneth suggests, that tends to withdraw esteem-recognition from all those projects of individual self-realisation that do not conform to it. ‘Achievement’ still clings to the entrepreneurial model of accumulation of capital. Professionalisation and the advent of the career, in Weber’s sense, refashion earlier collective social goals into an abstract and formal test of personal virtue according to regimented and predictable economic activity, a rule that requires increasingly stringent policing of its boundaries.26 Denigration of ways of life via the individual achievement principle must apply in the first instance to people or groups either unable or unwilling to accommodate themselves to the requirements of a capitalist market economy in their formation of projects of self-realisation. In this sense, denigration – the withholding or refusal of esteem – is not just an indication of the failure of a life project to conform to an achievement principle, but in fact the actual mechanism for exclusion itself. For Honneth, the genealogy of solidarity also is the story of the waning hegemony of the achievement principle and ensuing cultural struggle over what counts, for us, as a life well lived, and thus as a contribution to “overall social goals”. Clearly the displacement of the achievement principle is an example of the agonistic struggle over “secondary interpretations” that he had mentioned earlier. But it is also clear that this displacement is not simply a replacement of a single principle of bourgeois discipline with another one. For Honneth, what is important is â•‡Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 140–141. â•‡ “The hegemonic, thoroughly one-sided valuation of achievement … represents an institutional framework in which the criteria or principles for distributing resources in bourgeois-capitalist society can meet with normative agreement”. Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 141. 25 26

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the phenomenon, from the rise of feminism, gay and lesbian rights, environmentalism and even contemporary anti-globalisation movements, of the expansion and pluralisation of numerous and not-always compatible secondary interpretations. This surely raises the question of what our cultural ‘value horizon’ must be like, to be capacious enough to accommodate them all, without simply admitting, like Rawls, that it must consist simply of an overlapping consensus regarding the right and the wrong ways of disagreeing how to live, or like Habermas, that it can consist of nothing more than the bonding effects of successful communicative rationality to remain true to itself. How, for example, can the evangelical Christian Midwesterners and the urban lesbian mums esteem each other’s projects of self-realisation, rather than simply find a modus vivendi or, better, a common ground to settle their inevitable legal and economic struggles? Would solidarity here be anything other than the purely negative ability to refrain from denigrating one another? And if so, is that really the same as the bonding effects of solidary relationships? Would a shared conception of the good life broad enough to allow such different secondary interpretations even to contest each other be anything other than the broadest commitments to procedures and forms of reason? It is not entirely clear in The Struggle for Recognition what Honneth would suggest as a remedy to a situation of widespread denigration of ways of life, the psychological pathologies of low self-esteem arising from it, and the crises of recognition that seem to be generated, in turn, by such pathologies. Honneth can here do little more than identify the Goldilocks problem as an ineluctable tension: has the arena of supplemental interpretations become so capacious and inclusive that the overall social goals they interpret become completely insubstantial, purely abstract and procedural assurances of the value of public reason, diversity and tolerance? And would such a success in the liberalisation of cultural models of self-realisation projects not then precisely undermine the possibility of solidarity by making any form of life valuable, simply by definition? 4. Honneth’s theory is caught in (or perhaps, as he claims, merely describes) the horns of a dilemma: social goals defined broadly enough to include all those who have a prima facie justified expectation to be


included – not to be denigrated merely for how they live – are, also by definition, too abstract and formal to succeed in generating social solidarity, since esteem (unlike legal recognition) must be accorded for forms of an ethical life, a Sittlichkeit. Conversely, if those basic norms defining a common good are defined substantially enough to comprise our ethical life, then they will inevitably function to exclude various options for living that, and this exclusion will, on Honneth’s analysis, take the form of denigration. I think the less than satisfactory solution to this dilemma in Honneth’s work in The Struggle for Recognition can be seen in terms of the methodological and normative challenges I have referred to throughout the paper. In methodological terms, Honneth’s understandable desire to counter the late Hegel’s overweening trust in institutions, and his corresponding commitment to an extraordinary form of macro-sociology in The Philosophy of Right, may well have led to a certain overcompensation. The Struggle for Recognition is not entirely clear in its explanation of how cultural struggles over ‘secondary interpretations’ of esteem correspond to social and political institutions. Such struggles after all become visible as moments in a story of the changing modes of social integration in modern societies only insofar as they are resolved, and such resolutions are invariably institutional ones. Clearly the Hegelian solution, to recast this macro-story in terms of an absolute commitment to the sovereign nation-state in which conflicts arising at the level of civil society are simply sublated, is not going to be adequate as an explanation of culture wars.27 But Honneth’s focus on the micro-sociological level of interactions of individuals and groups does not offer any compelling alternative account of how experiences of recognition are transmitted from interpersonal to institutionalised levels. Moreover, for Honneth, it is in fact the psychological experience of withheld or failed recognition – chronic lack of confidence, lack of self-respect and an absence of self-esteem – that does the theoretical work of explaining how such a transmission from lifeworld to system occurs, in terms of motivational forces for social struggles. But it is not clear whether this reference to individual psychologies and their pathological expressions can succeed in explaining how solidary relationships find, or fail to find, an institutional form adequate to 27 â•‡For a comprehensive work on this problem see S. Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002.

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them. For that, a theory would require an explanation of how attitudes of esteem interact with the internal dynamics of social institutions in a complex manner, with the causality running in both directions. It is not clear that the model of intersubjective recognition is suited to handle tasks of this magnitude. The second, normative problem is if anything more of a challenge. Honneth’s account of solidarity carefully refrains from defining what the overall value-horizon of modern societies might be. There is more than one possible motivation for this omission. The better possibility is simply that Honneth believes, like his liberal and discourse-theoretical counterparts, that modern societies, insofar as they are modern, simply do not exhibit the substance and concreteness of ‘overall social goals’ that would rise to the level of any plausible description of ethical life. Insofar as different modern societies do have different overall social goals, and insofar as these goals are culturally thick (as opposed, say, to functional goals – to the maintenance of social institutions, the realisation of formal goals of justice and equality, personal autonomy, and so on) then such differences have very real implications for a theory of solidarity. The norms whose realisation is estimable in one modern society may be incommensurable with those of another. Presumably, however, the norms of one and the same society cannot be incommensurable with one another, and here it would be a matter of political struggle between competing secondary interpretations. If this is an accurate interpretation of Honneth’s theory, it sets the stage for the kind of protracted and in-principle insoluble international conflicts that Samuel Huntington and other neo-realist political theorists have described.28 If, however, this is not the case, and different national societies simply share very different versions of the same modern ethos, then this ethos would have to be so thin and universalistic as to cease qualifying as especially ethical, that is, to stop qualifying as the Sittlichkeit of a community of value, and simply be a commitment to the common principles of public reason and procedural justice. And if that is the case, then secondary interpretations have a very clear criterion by which they should be favoured or criticised insofar as some of them further and others hinder the full and expansive realisation of these principles.

28 â•‡ S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1998.


Ought we to accord esteem to our religiously conservative fellow citizens due to their choice of religious orthodoxy as a project of selfrealisation? The answer to this question may not be a matter of shifting secondary interpretations, but rather a direct challenge to the compatibility of religious orthodoxy and the demands of democratic citizenship. And while there is certainly no simple answer to this question – in fact it is currently wrenching modern societies apart – it is not a matter of secondary interpretation (so I would claim) but one concerning the most basic normative principles. Individuals and groups could thus be mistaken in their beliefs that their modes of self-realisation warrant the esteem of their fellow citizens, if those modes conflict with principles of justice. This raises the distinct possibility that we could esteem people wrongly, an uncomfortable fact indeed, and one on which Honneth’s theory would once again have to remain agnostic. Honneth himself understands this problem to the extent that he sees modern solidarity-as-esteem as a narrative of increasing expansion of the possibilities for personal self-realisation and its corresponding demands for recognition – an increasing irrelevance, in other words, of substantial ethical values. Legal rights and respect here serve as a kind of narrative-free check on how far such an expansion of the bases of social solidarity can go. Honneth’s own definition of “formal ethical life” is simply that set of structural conditions in which people are capable of achieving that degree of recognition necessary for them to pursue their projects of self-realisation, a definition that remains neutral on what such projects might be. Indeed the very notion of a formal ethical life, for Honneth, should not be conceived as the substantive values that constitute the ethos of a concrete tradition-based community. Rather, it has to do with the structural elements of ethical life, which, from the general point of view of the communicative enabling of self-realization, can be normatively extracted from the plurality of all particular forms of life.29

This points to Honneth’s attempt to solve the Goldilocks problem head on, as a methodological challenge consisting of finding ways of describing overall social goals that are: formal and abstract enough not to raise the suspicion of representing merely the deposits of concrete interpretations of the good life; on the other hand, they must also have sufficient substantive content to be of 29


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max pensky more help than Kantian references to individual autonomy in discovering the conditions for self realization.30

If this is the case, however, Honneth has successfully equated his own conception of formal ethical life with the ‘overall social goals’ of any modern society, since this conception is, so far as I can tell, exactly isomorphic with the very set of proceduralist, universalistic principles constituting the pre-Hegelian Enlightenment norms of political life, the sterility and emptiness of which it was Hegel’s and Honneth’s goal to correct. If formal ethical life is in fact nothing other than the patterns of recognition themselves, and if, further, these patterns consist in “the intersubjective protection that safeguards the conditions for external and internal freedom, upon which the process of articulating and realizing individual life goals without coercion depends”, then it is not clear how formal ethical life is to be taken as ethical, in the sense of describing a sphere of interpretations of the kind of life desirable for us.31 The Goldilocks problem, then, at least in the ways I’ve described it, may not be soluble by splitting the difference, a fact Hegel had understood all too well. Social norms cannot be somewhat universal. Either they maintain a universalistic core – and then generate fiercely contested moral controversies and political struggles in their best, fullest and most consistent applications – or they do not – and then abide in at least some, at least potential, unbridgeable differences between societies, the solutions to which simply can never be found by any appeal to common principles. If the former scenario holds, and if Honneth is correct that esteem for our projects from others is a necessary albeit insufficient condition for our success, then it is not at all clear why we are entitled to differential solidarity amongst social members – we would in fact have an obligation to esteem one another just the same insofar as our self-realising projects (mergers and acquisitions or Oxfam, triathlons or slacking, SUV’s or Earth First, death metal or Mozart) conform to the principles of modern justice, or at least do not harm them. But if the latter scenario is the case, if there is anything in our shared social goals beyond the mere formalism of recognition spheres and their institutional protections, then the historical expansion of the â•‡ ibid., p. 173. â•‡ ibid., p. 174.

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bases of social solidarity should also not be described as the welcome outcome of contingent historical processes but rather as the legible progress of a set of normative ideals – as Honneth himself does. Indeed the historical index Honneth finds in the expansion of the range of individual self-realisation projects that are estimable in the waning of the achievement principle is, as Honneth writes, itself the illustration of a norm. The capacity to register the expansion of possible modes of life as a fulfilment of a justified normative expectation is itself more fully constitutive of a ‘shared set of social goals’ than any number of efforts, well intentioned or not, to reanimate older ethical bonds. Once again, this does not seem to be much of an argument for differential solidarity based on the coincidence of life projects with social goals, since the norm at work even here – the historical expansion of solidarity, projected (as Mead did) into the proximate normative future so that the entire history makes sense – places enormous justificatory burdens, in the here and now, on differential levels of solidarity for forms of life that conform with principles of justice.

Chapter five

Recognition, Pluralism and the Expectation of Harmony: Against the Ideal of an Ethical Life ‘Free from Pain’1 Bert van den Brink 1.â•‡Introduction In this paper, I focus on a key notion of the normative social theory that Axel Honneth first presented in The Struggle for Recognition2 and developed in subsequent articles and books, notably in Redistribution or Recognition?3 The element at stake is the notion of a “provisional end-state” of social struggles that captures the “normative point of view” from “the perspective of which it would be possible to classify and evaluate particular events”, especially social struggles for recognition.4 The provisional end-state is captured by a “formal conception of ethical life” from which the theorist can come to the required classifications and evaluations. Tied to the notion of a provisional end-state is the assumption that it would include a horizon of solidarity or ethical life “within which individual competition for social esteem can acquire a form free from pain, that is, a form not marred by experiences of disrespect”.5 My aim in this chapter is to ask to what extent this expectation of freedom from experiences of disrespect is warranted and desirable in 1 â•‡ Work on this article was made possible by a research fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. I thank Rainer Forst, Axel Honneth, David Owen, Morten Raffnsoe-Moeller and Joel Anderson for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2 â•‡ A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995. 3 â•‡ N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, London/New York, Verso, 2003. However, the foundations of this key notion were laid in The Struggle for Recognition, so I will concentrate mainly on that book. Regarding the issue at stake, Honneth has elaborated on but not changed the contours of this element of his theory in more recent work. 4 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 171. 5 â•‡ ibid., p. 130, (emphasis added).

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post-traditional, pluralistic societies. I confront Honneth’s theory with the possibility that, even in the most civilised and just pluralistic societies, some experiences of (mental) pain and disrespect caused by misrecognition are likely to continue to exist. I see two main reasons why this possibility will have to be taken seriously. First, it seems unlikely that even the most inclusive “post-traditional”6 conception of ethical life will be able to categorise and evaluate all struggles for recognition in an uncontroversial way. Assuming that controversial categorisations and evaluations can lead to feelings of disrespect, and assuming that a pluralistic, autonomy-enhancing, just and good society will be hospitable to ethical-political controversies over the nature and requirements of justice and the good, experiences of disrespect are likely to be found in even the most ideal societies. Subsequently, on a moralpsychological note, I argue that suffering from the misrecognition of one’s concrete traits and abilities is often an unavoidable and irreparable cost of standing up for one’s ideas about what is valuable in life in a genuinely pluralistic society. I conclude with a proposal of a conception of ethical life that incorporates my criticism of Honneth’s account. 2.â•‡ Ethical Life and the ‘Moral Point of View’ Honneth’s formal conception of ethical life starts from the posttraditional view that “subjects are to be recognized as both autonomous and individualized beings”.7 This view is underpinned by a notion of self-realisation, according to which human beings have the potential to flourish as emotional, cognitive, and communal beings, by virtue of recognition-dependent forms of social cooperation. As Honneth states:

â•‡ ibid., p. 176–177. â•‡ ibid., p. 171; A. Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser” in N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, London/New York, Verso, p. 178. Following, among others, Hegel and Joseph Raz, Honneth here opts for a teleological strategy of justification of his social and political theory. He ties his justification of his conception of social justice to “an ethical theory that defines the socially influenced preconditions that must be available for individual subjects to realize their autonomy … The advantage I see in such a conception is that it tries to spell out and justify what for the most part only ashamedly forms the hidden basis of procedural versions of liberalism: a normative idea of the goals for whose sake the establishment and realization of social justice represent a political task that we consider ethically well-grounded”. 6 7

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 157 The only way in which individuals are constituted as persons is by learning to refer to themselves, from the perspective of an approving or encouraging other, as beings with certain positive traits and abilities. The scope of such traits – and hence the extent of one’s positive relation-toself – increases with each new form of recognition that individuals are able to apply to themselves as subjects. In this way, the prospect of basic self-confidence is inherent in the experience of love; the prospect of selfrespect, in the experience of legal recognition; and finally the prospect of self-esteem, in the experience of solidarity.8

It is important to note that, although Honneth goes beyond the Kantian focus on a cognitivistic account of morality alone toward a more comprehensive and teleological focus on the conditions of self-realisation, he does not aim to present a fully spelt-out picture of “the ethos of a concrete tradition-based community”.9 Rather, his sketch of a provisional end-state of social struggles aims to depict “the structural elements of ethical life, which, from the general point of view of the communicative enabling of self-realization, can be normatively extracted from the plurality of all particular life forms”.10 Honneth’s theory claims to be formal and universalistic in its grounding of the normative concept of social cooperation. Yet, contrary to most universalistic theories with normative content, the focus is on self-realisation, not on self-determination – autonomous self-legislation – of the subject alone. The theory does not remain agnostic with respect to “the general structures of a successful life” and understands a person’s autonomy as much in terms of competence in affective and concrete social relations as in terms of cognitive and moral competencies.11 As to primary and intimate relationships of love and friendship, the focus of Honneth’s conception of ethical life is on physical, emotional and – later in life – communicative conditions that help “defend the radical egalitarianism of love against external forces and influences”.12 What is to be defended here is the fundamental need of every infant to attain a relation-to-self that enables it to both articulate its own needs and be alone with itself in a care-free manner (that is, a manner that exhibits self-confidence as well as confidence in significant others who â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 173. â•‡ ibid., p. 172. 10 â•‡ ibid., p. 172. 11 â•‡ ibid., p. 174. Compare the discussion on this issue with Nancy Fraser in RedisÂ� tribution or Recognition? pp. 177–180. 12 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 176. â•›â•›â•›â•›8 â•›â•›â•›â•›9

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are not always present).13 Here, the focus is not just on the wellbeing of the infant, but on the fundamental prerequisites for individual selfrealisation in later life.14 As to legal and moral relations, their substance is given with their task of defending the conditions of individual autonomy of selfrespecting members of society; that is, their status as self-determining actors who have an inalienable authority in the shaping of their individual lives as well as the life of the communities they are members of. Honneth stresses that the substance of rights can only be included in the formal conception of ethical life at the highest level of universality and deformalisation or context-sensitivity: rights should apply to all members of society and guarantee much more than just a formal status of freedom and equality, that is, they must guarantee that all members of society can make effective social claims based on them.15 Finally, regarding social relationships of solidarity, Honneth follows Hegel and G.H. Mead in pointing to a model that “contains the possibility of further equalization and individualization” in social relations.16 The restricting effect that legal relations have on relationships of solidarity implies that a post-traditional conception of solidarity should be compatible with the “moral conditions of modern law, that is, with the individual autonomy of every individual”.17 Here, Honneth explicitly delimits his account from conservative communitarian ones. Ultimately, Honneth aims to circumscribe the basic characteristics of a “new, open value-system, within the horizon of which subjects learn to esteem each other mutually with regard to their freely chosen lifegoals”18 and their individual “achievement as ‘productive citizen[s]’â•›”.19 â•‡See the discussion of the work of Winnicott in Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 98â•›ff. 14 â•‡ See for a more recent articulation of this aspect of the theory Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 138â•›ff., 144, 192n35. Note that Honneth has corrected his earlier thesis from The Struggle for Recognition (p. 282), which was criticised by many, that love “does not admit of the potential for normative development”. 15 â•‡ See for a more recent articulation, “Redistribution as Recognition”, pp. 139â•›ff. 16 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 178. 17 â•‡ ibid., p. 178. 18 â•‡ ibid., p. 178. 19 â•‡ See “Redistribution as Recognition”, pp. 140â•›ff. In “Redistribution as Recognition” Honneth ties the notions of solidarity and esteem primarily to the economic mechanisms of “bourgeois-capitalist society” (ibid., p. 142). His focus seems slightly less on modes of esteem based on criteria of successful community membership than it was in The Struggle for Recognition. This may have to do with the circumstances that The Struggle for Recognition was written at the time that the liberal-communitarian debate 13

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 159 Leaving the dichotomy between “morality” and “ethics” behind,20 Honneth straightforwardly claims that, “morality is the quintessence of attitudes we are mutually obligated to adopt in order to secure jointly the conditions of our personal integrity”.21 These conditions, which are conditions for sound intersubjective relationships of love, respect and esteem, cannot be adequately captured in terms of Kantian morality, as distinguished from an ethics of the good life. ‘Ethical’ questions concerning the basic requirements of primary relationships and of social relations of solidarity can, of course, become the subject of Kantian moral deliberations.22 But from that perspective they can be understood neither as conditions for self-realisation that must always already be internal to our best account of the moral point of view, nor – consequently – as representing genuine moral obligations that might conflict with the narrow understanding of morality in terms of selfdetermination. But it is exactly that double possibility that Honneth wants to save when he thinks about a comprehensive yet formal conception of ethical life understood as the moral point of view. Here, Honneth draws “the paradoxical conclusion that the moral point of view describes a perspective that obligates the subjects to actions that differ according to the kind of intersubjective relationship”.23 If I understand Honneth correctly, then his account of morality implies that a moral attitude that is appropriate for one form of recognition cannot in itself conflict with an attitude that is appropriate for another. For example, a moral attitude appropriate for legal integrity can – within the realm of law – never be replaced by an attitude appropriate for friendship. At the same time, however, claims that spring from one of the three basic modes of recognition may conflict with one another in concrete situations, for example a situation in which loyalty

had just reached Europe and that Honneth’s discussions with Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? concern the role of socio-economic categories and forms of analysis in critical social theory. 20 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Recognition and Moral Obligation”, Social Research, 64, 1, 1997, pp. 16–35. The approach sketched in this article signals a strong departure from Habermas’ discourse ethics. See J. Habermas, “On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments of Practical Reason” in Justification and Application, trans. C. Cronin, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993, pp. 1–17. 21 â•‡ Honneth, “Recognition and Moral Obligation”, p. 28. 22 â•‡ See J. Habermas, “Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel’s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt & S. Weber Nicholson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990, pp. 195–215. 23 â•‡ Honneth, “Recognition and Moral Obligation”, p. 30.

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to a friend one wants to protect from trouble with the law, conflicts with obedience to the law. Here, Honneth refuses to define a “superior vantage point”. Although he remains faithful to the idea that (legal) respect for the moral accountability (autonomy) of all subjects sets normative limits to all modes of recognition, he now stresses that “there has to obtain a relation of constant tension” between the three modes of recognition.24 3.â•‡ Why the Conception of Ethical Life is not Formal I have no problem with introducing a conception of ethical life as an evaluative and guiding standard for social struggles for recognition. Indeed, I am convinced that moral emotional reactions to instances of injustice and forms of misrecognition can only be understood in terms of the disappointment of implicit expectations toward relationships of recognition.25 Furthermore, I see no way in which we could evaluate and guide our own actions without having recourse to a hierarchy of values that explains their point.26 Moreover, there most certainly is no prima facie reason why social theorists should refrain from collecting and systematising such implicit expectations and develop a conception of ideal relationships of recognition based on them. Yet there is an important difference between, on the one hand, a rudimentary ideal of ethical life that explains why all moral subjects would like to see basic needs for love, rights and solidarity (selfconfidence, self-respect, self-esteem) be answered in a better society and, on the other hand, more substantive accounts of this ideal that are likely to co-exist in pluralistic societies. Honneth claims that his formal conception of ethical life articulates a rudimentary ideal. My main argument in the remainder of this chapter is that it might be more correct and more fruitful to think of the conception of ethical life as one substantive account of ethical life among several, rather than the formal account of ethical life for post-traditional societies.

â•‡ ibid., pp. 33 and 32 respectively. â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 136–139. 26 â•‡ See H. Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1996, pp. 252–293. See also Charles Taylor’s reflections on our ‘best account’ of moral deliberation and action in his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 68–75. 24 25

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 161 If we were to think about Honneth’s conception of ethical life as both substantive and ethically controversial, then it would be unproblematic to state that it promotes at least two post-traditional values that cannot be “abstracted from the plurality of all particular forms of life” in Western societies.27 The first of these is the value of personal autonomy; the second is the value of freedom of choice within a pluralistic social context.28 That the first of these is important to Honneth is clear. The point of a post-traditional conception of solidarity, Honneth claims, is that members of society recognise each other as persons who value “freely chosen life-goals”.29 More recently, Honneth has claimed that the justification of any defensible theory of justice turns on a satisfactory account of the conditions of the autonomy of persons.30 The second value, which I will label a pluralism of options, Honneth mostly refers to as a condition of both personal autonomy and sound relationships of recognition.31 However, since it is clear that the pluralism he talks about is not just a “fact” about the social world (Rawls), but must in some way or other be carefully protected as a valuable aspect of sound patterns of expectation and evaluation,32 this condition of autonomy and of sound patterns of recognition should indeed be seen as a value. It is the value of seeing good in a plurality of social practices that articulates different conceptions of the good.33 Of course, Honneth’s positive evaluation of the idea of posttraditional, autonomy-enhancing relationships of recognition is not just based on his personal preference for it. Rather, he makes the very strong claim that the: idealized path along which [struggles for recognition] have been able to unleash the normative potential of modern law and esteem … lets an objective-intentional context emerge, in which historical processes no longer appear as mere events but rather as stages in a conflictual process of formation, leading to a gradual expansion of relationships of recognition.34 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 175. â•‡ Another candidate would be the value of equality insofar as it is understood as a social and not just a legal ideal. 29 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 178. 30 â•‡ See note 7, supra. 31 â•‡ See, for instance, Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 125, 178. 32 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 125. 33 â•‡ See for a similar understanding of autonomy and pluralism, J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986. 34 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 170. 27 28

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The idea is that, although concrete struggles for recognition usually aim at the release of very specific “potentials for subjectivity” – for instance, further deformalisation of social rights or greater esteem for the social contribution of cultural minorities – a comprehensive analysis of the history of struggles for recognition shows that objective “normative structures” are built into the forms of mutual recognition that the analysis unearths.35 To be straightforward, I have not found in Honneth’s work an argument that has convinced me that his conception of ethical life is based on an interpretation of historical social struggles that can be genuinely abstracted from all conceptions of the good life that are validated or at least tolerated by modern law and modern conceptions of esteem. His arguments concerning the potential for further generalisation and deformalisation in legal relations and for greater individualisation and equalisation do seem to follow from an analysis of the aims of labour movements and, for instance, the civil rights movement. Furthermore, a phenomenological argument is possible that shows that the results of successful struggles for recognition will often become embedded in our life-world in such a way that we cannot make sense of our normative expectations without recurring to our second nature as social beings who stand in a row of generations who have fought for justice and trust on the patterns of expectation that have developed in that history.36 Yet what happens when we think of counter-examples? For instance, will Honneth’s ideas concerning the centrality of autonomy, pluralism and egalitarianism be reinforced by aboriginal peoples and non-Western immigrants in modern societies who struggle for the recognition of their cultural identity as opposed to their identity as workers and equal citizens?37 Their second nature as social beings seems to be split between Western and non-Western life-worlds. Inclusion in bourgeois-capitalist Western culture may mean alienation from their cultural background and, therefore, loss of the moral frameworks with which they have grown up. Here, it becomes difficult to determine which intuition stemming from our second nature as social â•‡ ibid, pp. 169–170. â•‡ See A. Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology” in eds. B. van den Brink & D. Owen, Recognition and Power, Cambridge & New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 323–347. 37 â•‡See for this issue the conflict of types of recognition that Charles Taylor famousÂ�ly identifies in his essay “The Politics of Recognition” in Multiculturalism, ed. A. Gutmann, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 25–73. 35 36

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 163 beings to trust. It is at least remarkable that Honneth hardly sees any real conflict in such issues of multiculturalism that would lead him to consider the question how we might know about the overall soundness of post-traditional morality compared to other moral schemes that abound in our era of immigration.38 What we see in debates over multiculturalism and group-based rights is an attempt by those in favour of group-based rights to make it clear that the value of freely choosing one’s own life-goals does not necessarily trump the interest that members of cultural minorities have in the survival of the cultural framework that is constitutive of their identity. The introduction of the values of personal autonomy and pluralism – and thus of a citizenship based on individual rights – to minority groups has had devastating effects on the individual and collective wellbeing of members of such groups in the past. Some groups, such as the Pueblo Indians and the Old Order Amish in the United States, have been granted group-based rights.39 Although it is true that from within and outside these groups this policy has been severely criticised, I do not think that we are at an historical point where it is possible to claim that the social struggles over these issues point to a general acceptability of a post-traditional conception of ethical life. Or, to put it more carefully, I do not see how we might abstract posttraditional core values of ethical life from traditional frameworks of value. For the realm of legal recognition, this circumstance suggests that a developmental potential in the direction of further legal responsiveness in terms of special rights or even group-based rights may be important.40 But this seems to conflict with Honneth’s description of the developmental potential of legal relations. For the realm of social esteem, it suggests that not only greater individualisation and equalisation but also sensitivity to group identity and non-egalitarian

38 â•‡ See Honneth’s reflections on cultural rights in “Redistribution as Recognition”, pp. 160–170. 39 â•‡ For an influential account of some of the consequences of such policies, see W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford/New York, Oxford University Press, 1995. For the controversial status of the value of personal autonomy in this debate, see W. Kymlicka, “Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance”, Analyse und Kritik, 14, 1992, pp. 33–56. 40 â•‡ See for a reflection on the legal possibility of such responsiveness W. van den Burg, “Reflections on Collective Rights and State Sovereignty”, in Nation, State, and the Co-existence of Different Communities, eds. T. van Willigenburg, F.R. Heeger & W. van der Burg, Kampen, Kok Pharos, 1995, pp. 226–246.

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standards of belonging may be of importance for relationships of solidarity. Again, this seems to conflict with Honneth’s account. Of course, Honneth may react here that he has always stressed that legal relations and relations of solidarity are open to historical change, and that the cultural struggles I refer to here may indeed change our understanding of the necessary conditions for a post-traditional ethical life. This historical sensitivity should certainly be applauded. Yet the question remains why this sensitivity has not resulted in greater reservations concerning both the purportedly formal status of the conception and the description of the developmental potential of the different forms of recognition. The problem here is not that classifications and evaluations based on Honneth’s post-traditional conception of ethical life might not always remain uncontested. Rather, the problem is that the post-traditional conception mistakenly claims that it can be “abstracted from the plurality of all particular forms of life”.41 Regarding the formal status of the conception, a solution to the problem may be to admit that the conception is not formal but substantive. With respect to the description of the developmental potential of the different forms of recognition, a solution might be to ask whether other substantive conceptions of ethical life – for instance, more traditional ones – see other developmental potentials in them. Seen in that way, our thoughts about ideals of ethical life would take on the form of a public dialogue among several substantive positions rather than a method of reconstruction that aims at a truly general and formal conception of ethical life.42 Of course, the two steps I have suggested would make it much harder to reach a consensus regarding evaluative and guiding values for concrete struggles for recognition in our complex and pluralistic world. Yet we may have to pay that price. For we may conclude that the formal conception of ethical life cannot be called formal after all. It builds on the substantive values of personal autonomy, pluralism and individual self-realisation. Therefore, it does not pass the test that Honneth himself confronts it with, that is, that it be abstracted from all specific social practices and reasonable ethical beliefs in society. I will come 41 â•‡See for a similar point David Owen, “Self-government and ‘Democracy as Reflexive Co-operation’: Reflections on Honneth’s Social and Political Ideal”, in Van den Brink and Owen, eds., Recognition and Power, pp. 290–322. 42 â•‡ See also J. Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 53–56.

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 165 back to my proposal of deformalising the post-traditional conception of ethical life in the direction of it being understood as a substantive contribution to public deliberations of ethical-political questions of identity in the final section.43 4.â•‡ Personal Identity and Disrespect Remember that my aim in this article is to ask to what extent the expectation of freedom from experiences of disrespect in a horizon of solidarity is justified for pluralistic societies. The previous section cast doubt on that expectation by asking how formal Honneth’s conception of ethical life really is. It pointed in the direction of another, more pluralistic way of thinking about the ideal(s) of ethical life in society. Before I return to that line in the final section, let me introduce another doubt that I have regarding the attainability of a form of solidarity that is free from experiences of disrespect. This time, it does not concern the complex pluralism of society but rather the formation of personal identity within pluralistic societies. My argument will be that suffering from misrecognition of one’s concrete traits and abilities is sometimes an unavoidable and irreparable cost of standing up for one’s ideas about what is valuable in life. This is not just a claim from an a priori belief in the tragic unattainability of social harmony. Rather, it is inspired by an argument from an insight into the constitutive importance of struggle and resistance for identity formation that Honneth himself embraces. On this issue, Honneth’s central claim is that our everyday language use shows that there is “an indissoluble connection between, on the one hand, the unassailability and integrity of human beings and, on the other hand, the approval of others”.44 This insight leads him to the methodological step of tracing different forms of disrespect by way of investigating “the various degrees to which they are able to disrupt a

43 â•‡Given the hierarchy of evaluative and guiding values that every conception of ethical life necessarily implies, I think that the notion of a formal account of ethical life is incoherent. Whether the account is formulated in ‘thin’ or in ‘thick’ terms does not really make a difference; in both cases its prestructuring of options for action and deliberation necessarily constitutes a substantive ethical position. I cannot develop a complete argument that shows this here, but see my Tragedy of Liberalism, pp. 15–26, 135â•›ff, 146â•›ff. 44 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 131.

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person’s practical relation-to-self by denying him or her recognition for particular claims to identity”.45 The result of this investigation is a typology of forms of disrespect that show what we might call a ‘negative’ or ‘inverted’ image of the basic forms of recognition. This step is convincing because it delivers the message of our dependency on forms of recognition at the level where we are most likely to experience and understand it, that is, in situations in which we feel that our own or others’ wellbeing is under threat because of certain pathologies of the intersubjective relations in which we stand.46 At least this particular reader of Honneth’s work found access to it by immediately recognising – at a highly intuitive level at first – the potential dangers inherent in misrecognition. Honneth distinguishes three basic forms of disrespect. The first, which concerns violations of the physical and emotional integrity at stake in primary relationships, is the most fundamental: “[E]very attempt to gain control of a person’s body against his or her will – irrespective of the intention behind it – causes a degree of humiliation that impacts more destructively than other forms of respect on a person’s practical relation-to-self ”.47 Honneth mentions abuse, rape and torture as examples. What is so fundamental about this form of disrespect is “the feeling of being defencelessly at the mercy of another subject”.48 The confidence in oneself and in the world that was acquired through physical and emotional interaction with significant others, in which one learned to trust oneself and others despite one’s constitutive physical and emotional vulnerability, is “lastingly destroy[ed]” by actions from others that do not respect one’s “autonomous control of one’s own body”.49 Honneth understands the moral self-respect of a person largely in terms of the person’s effective freedom to participate as a full member of society. His deeply intersubjectivistic theory suggests that this freedom is largely determined by “those individual claims that a person can legitimately expect to have socially met because he or she participates, with equal rights, in the institutional order as a full-fledged

â•‡ ibid., p. 132. â•‡ See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 135, for a reflection on ‘medical’ metaphors for various social pathologies. 47 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 132. 48 â•‡ ibid., p. 132. 49 â•‡ ibid., p. 132. 45 46

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 167 member of a community”.50 In this field, disrespect has two sides. First, it consists in the legal restriction of one’s personal autonomy and moral responsibility. Second, and perhaps even more fundamentally, it consists in comparative inequality with other citizens who do not have their personal autonomy restricted. This form of disrespect, that is, legal exclusion, Honneth claims, “deprives one … of the cognitive regard for the status of moral responsibility that had to be so painstakingly acquired in the interactive process of socialization”.51 Finally, Honneth identifies types of disrespect that correspond to his notion of solidarity. Here, one should think of insults and social discrimination, which Honneth labels “evaluative forms of disrespect” because they concern “the denigration of individual or collective ways of life”.52 The background against which this form of disrespect can appear is that of a society in which a person’s concrete traits and abilities regarding work, way of life, cultural belonging, and so on, are evaluated in terms of their contribution to a shared social and cultural horizon.53 Here, Honneth makes the far-reaching claim that: [i]f this hierarchy of values is so constituted as to downgrade individual forms of life and manners of belief as inferior or deficient, then it robs the subjects in question of every opportunity to attribute social value to their abilities. For those engaged in them, the result of the evaluative degradation of certain patterns of self-realization is that they cannot relate to their mode of life as something of positive significance within their community.54

In other words, without the “encouragement of group solidarity”, it is not possible to acquire a positive form of self-esteem. This account of the relation between personal identity and disrespect has a strong intuitive appeal. The account makes it clear that the quality of the intersubjective relations in which we stand largely determines to what extent we can flourish in our individual and collective lives. It also makes it equally clear that their quality largely determines to what extent our individual and collective lives will be frustrated or even destroyed. Furthermore, by looking at the logics of our emotional â•‡ ibid., p. 133. â•‡ ibid., p. 134. 52 â•‡ ibid., p. 134. 53 â•‡ ibid., p. 134. See also A. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today”, Political Theory, 26, 6, 1998, pp. 763–783. 54 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 134. 50 51

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reactions to the quality of given intersubjective relationships, Honneth is able to explain how the experience of disrespect “can motivate a subject to enter a practical struggle or conflict”.55 Put briefly, Honneth claims, following John Dewey, that each experience of social humiliation is accompanied by negative moral emotions such as indignation, shame and guilt. For humiliated persons, these emotions can function as a bridge to knowledge about their being humiliated: “[E]ach of the negative emotional reactions that accompany the experience of having one’s claims to recognition disregarded holds out the possibility that the injustice done to one will cognitively disclose itself and become a motive for political resistance”.56 Here, Honneth is very cautious and rightly stresses that struggles for recognition only stand a real chance of being successful if the political culture of society is conducive to articulating experiences of disrespect and if victims of disrespect can organise themselves in social movements that effectively put the need to fight disrespect on the social and political agenda. Finally, besides this ‘external’ social and political purpose of social movements, there is an important ‘internal’ quality to them: through the formation and activities of such groups, in which victims organise themselves with other victims, individuals can gradually gain the sense of selfconfidence, self-respect and self-esteem that larger society withholds from them.57 Instead of discussing each of the three forms of disrespect in detail, in the following I will present a general critique of Honneth’s overall argument. I will then look in detail at personal identity and relations of solidarity to make my critique more specific. The general critique concerns Honneth’s implicit suggestion that the successful development of personal identity can be adequately understood in terms of the soundness of the intersubjective relations of recognition in which a person stands. This presupposes, I think, that it must be correct – at the level of ideal-typical thought at least – to think of personal identity as a basis for self-realisation within a world characterised by sound relationships of recognition, rather than as a basis for relating, as a self-realising being, to a social world that is and always â•‡ ibid., p. 135. â•‡ ibid., p. 138. 57 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 164; think of slogans such as ‘black and proud’, ‘gay pride’, and the slogan of the Dutch feminist movement in the abortion debate of the 1960s and 1970s: ‘baas in eigen buik’ – ‘boss in one’s own belly’. 55 56

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 169 will be full of both sound and unsound relationships. The first view must understand experiences of disrespect as in principle avoidable threats to sound conditions of achieving an integrated personal identity. The second view, however, understands such experiences as often unavoidable and irreparable occurrences in the social world that a sufficiently firm identity enables persons to deal with. The dominance of the first way of thinking in Honneth’s reflection on personal identity is illustrated by his claim that in cases of emotional disrespect “[t]he successful integration of physical and emotional qualities of behavior is, as it were, subsequently broken up from the outside, thus lastingly destroying … one’s underlying trust in oneself ”;58 and that evaluative degradation “robs the subjects in question of every opportunity to attribute social value to their own abilities”.59 The use of the word ‘subsequently’ in the first quotation illustrates Honneth’s tendency to think in terms of a dynamics of already acquired aspects of personal identity through sound recognition and their subsequent destruction ‘from outside’ sound relationships of recognition. In other words, in principle, we can acquire a firm personal identity without having experienced disrespect. The qualification ‘every opportunity’ in the second quotation illustrates Honneth’s tendency to suggest that experiences of disrespect must by definition have devastating effects on already acquired personal identity. In other words, personal identity is relatively helpless in the face of experiences of misrecognition. I want to contest both assumptions. As to the first, in his reflections in developmental psychology Honneth seems to defend another view. Here, he makes it sufficiently clear that early identity-formation – already at the level of gaining trust in oneself and in the love of one’s parents – is a painful and conflictual process through which the child learns to be “alone with itself ” (Winnicott) without losing faith in the social world (that is, parents), on which it depends for the satisfaction of its basic needs.60 Although experiences such as torture and abuse can, of course, never be part of non-pathological relationships of recognition, the developing child at least seems to ‘need’, in a way, subjective experiences of being left alone, of being at the mercy of the world, and so on. As long as such experiences are time and again sufficiently

â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 133 (emphasis added). â•‡ ibid., p. 134 (emphasis added). 60 â•‡ ibid., pp. 95–107. 58 59

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‘repaired’, the child will develop an integrated personality. Now surprisingly, when thinking about disrespect and personal identity, it seems that Honneth disregards his own point about the extent to which minor subjective experiences of misrecognition gradually ‘teach’ children to deal adequately with more grave and, in a way, more ‘real’ experiences of disrespect. Indeed, Honneth’s talk of the subsequent destruction from the outside of an already acquired sense of selfconfidence might suggest too strongly that the experience of disrespect is only contingently connected to the development of personal identity. Here, I prefer the developmental-psychological view because it helps explain people’s fundamental ability to react in the process of identity formation to (assumed) experiences of disrespect in self-assertive ways. Indeed, only this ability makes struggles for recognition in later life possible in the first place. What I think this suggests is that a theory of recognition should not account for identity-formation in terms of sound and supportive relationships of recognition exclusively, but should acknowledge that, from the start, identity formation is a way of learning to relate to a social world that, because of the fact that a subject can never fully control the intersubjective relationships in which they stand, will always confront persons with experiences of disrespect.61 Let me continue this discussion with respect to the third form of recognition in the light of Honneth’s second suggestion, that personal identity is relatively helpless in the face of experiences of misrecognition. To be fair, this ‘suggestion’ has to be balanced with Honneth’s thoughts on the role of social movements in struggles for recognition. The claim that devaluation of concrete traits and abilities in light of dominant standards of expectation and evaluation deprives persons of “every opportunity to attribute social value to their own abilities”62 is relativised by the realisation that this form of disrespect can be counteracted from within a social movement, understood as a “subcultural 61 â•‡ Of course, I do not want to suggest that rape, torture and abuse are not so bad after all. Rather, the point I am trying to get across is that our constitutive familiarity with experiences of feeling disrespected helps us to both recognise and fight threats to our identity. We would not be able to do so successfully if we were not already acquainted with at least the basic trait of such experiences (“being defenselessly at the mercy of another”, ibid., p. 132). This conjecture is reinforced by the popular belief that too much protection against the dangers inherent in the disappointments of social interaction weakens rather than strengthens the development of an integrated personality. 62 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 134.

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 171 horizon of interpretation within which experiences of disrespect that, previously, had been fragmented and had been coped with privately can then become the moral motives for a collective ‘struggle for recognition’â•›”.63 As we have already seen, one of the advantages of membership of a social movement for disrespected individuals is that the solidarity among the members may help them regain (part of) their lost sense of self-respect. What is most important about this aspect of Honneth’s theory is that it opens up a horizon of ‘local’ or ‘particularistic’ solidarity that, however, does not play a role in the formal conception of ethical life. Indeed, the internal and external social and political purposes of social movements are always understood as being directed at “future expansion of patterns of recognition” by virtue of which previously disrespected persons will receive due recognition.64 Again, Honneth’s tendency to think of individual and collective wellbeing in terms of full and unrestricted recognition – in this case: esteem – reveals itself. Where the recognition of concrete traits and abilities of persons is at stake, this is especially problematic. Think, by way of example, of the gradual acceptance in Western societies of homosexuality. As a matter of personal identity, one’s sexual identity is, of course, of great importance. In a society in which heterosexual standards are dominant, becoming aware of one’s homosexual sexual needs and fantasies is a painful process that inescapably involves experiences of disrespect. In order to deal with the vulnerability of aspects of their developing identity, people may organise themselves in associations of peers and in social movements. The acceptance and solidarity they experience there can help people develop positive self-images, in which pride and self-esteem, not confusion and selfhatred, are dominant. Eventually, people may reach a point at which they confidently express identity claims that they used to be ashamed of. And if the circumstances are right – that is, if social movements are well organised and the political culture of society is sufficiently open to recognise ‘new’ identity claims – the previously disrespected sexual identity of people may come to be seen by a majority in society as an acceptable ‘alternative’ for self-realisation.65 â•‡ ibid., p. 164. â•‡ ibid., p. 164. 65 â•‡ See also R. Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit: Politische Philosophie jenseits von Liberalismus und Kommunitarismus, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1994, p. 423. 63 64

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Up until this point, Honneth’s theory can explain the logic of identity-formation that is at work here. And this is no small achievement. I am more sceptical, however, about Honneth’s stress on the importance of what I will call full esteem for the concrete traits and abilities for successful identity-formation in members of posttraditional societies. The reason for this is relatively simple. As we have seen above, the value of personal autonomy and that of pluralism are central to Honneth’s conception of ethical life. In a pluralistic world, in which people, insofar as this is possible, autonomously decide to embrace certain life-goals and life-practices and therefore reject others, the aim for full esteem of one’s concrete traits and abilities is inconsistent. It is inconsistent because a social world that fosters the values of autonomy and pluralism will almost inevitably harbour mutually exclusive ideals of the good life. Here, we may think of the familiar oppositions between orthodox religious and secular views, between traditional and post-traditional views, between individualism and collectivism, between liberalism and communitarianism and their consequences for ‘ethical issues’ in social, moral, legal and political debates. In a truly pluralistic world, these oppositions cannot be expected to wither away in the course of our progress along an “objective-intentional”66 path through history that will eventually lead us to esteem fully each other’s concrete traits and abilities. On the contrary, in a pluralistic world, the best we can hope for is that we will mutually respect each other’s life-choices even if we cannot really set ourselves to granting them our full esteem. As long as the mutual respect that is implicit in our recognising valid legal relations is warranted, the lack of full esteem and, at times, even the mutual devaluation of each other’s convictions need not be a constant threat to our wellbeing. And as long as the liberty to form associations in which people can experience the full esteem and solidarity of their peers is guaranteed and fairly distributed, the lack of full recognition seems to me a condition rather than a hindrance for a flourishing personal identity in a pluralistic environment. In a pluralistic world, we make ourselves needlessly vulnerable to the impossibility of social harmony if we conceive of ethical life as presupposing undistorted and unrestricted relationships of recognition.


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recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 173 5.â•‡ Toward a Pluralistic Conception of Ethical Life Taken together, I think that the arguments from the previous sections show that, as an ethical goal for pluralistic societies, the vision of freedom from experiences of disrespect in an ultimate horizon of “undistorted and unrestricted recognition” is not justified. Even if one were to argue that this vision is not so much an attainable goal as an unattainable guiding ideal,67 sufficient reason would remain to be sceptical with respect to the proposed understanding of the ideal. After all, ethical ideals inspire ethical goals. A social theory that sketches a horizon of solidarity in which (against Honneth’s own better developmentalpsychological judgement) relations of unrestricted mutual esteem take pride of place should be able to explain why it does not fall into the trap of legitimising collectivist goals that will necessarily override the pluralism of social life. Knowing that Honneth definitely wants to avoid that trap, I hope I have made it clear why I think that he has not given us that explanation yet. Instead of ending with this critical conclusion, I want to end on a more constructive, and thus more vulnerable note. I will give a sketch of a conception of ethical life that is both substantive and pluralistic, and that is meant to repair some of the shortcomings of Honneth’s theory that I have identified. It explicitly starts from those theoretical foundations of Honneth’s conception that I find most convincing: first, his developmental-psychological insights into the formation of identity in a conflictual field of experiences of both respect and disrespect and, second, his account of the internal conflictuality of the moral point of view. Let me briefly discuss the contours of such a pluralistic conception of ethical life in five steps.68 1.â•‡ The pluralistic conception that I envisage accepts Honneth’s posttraditional description of the three forms of recognition as well as the account of the internal conflictuality of the moral point of view based on it. With respect to the dominant forms of recognition and their developmental potential, however, the conception does not â•‡ But see Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 171. â•‡ The account further develops an argument about democratic deliberation in a pluralistic society in my Tragedy of Liberalism, pp. 163–171. It was influenced by the much more complete accounts of James Tully in Strange Multiplicity and David Owen in Nietzsche, Politics & Modernity: A Critique of Liberal Reason, London & Thousand Oaks, Sage, 1995, pp. 132–169 especially. 67 68

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claim that these can be abstracted from all reasonable ethical ideals and practices in society. It recognises the limits to articulating a conception of ethical life identified in section 3 above. 2.â•‡ The pluralistic conception stresses from the start that it presupposes substantive values that, in practice, are controversial: personal autonomy, affirmation of pluralism and political equality. It argues against the possibility of a formal account because it acknowledges that even if all members of society were to agree that autonomy, affirmation of pluralism and political equality should be considered core values of social cooperation, they would most probably do so from different normative-practical worldviews in which these contested concepts take on different meanings.69 As a consequence, the pluralistic conception deformalises and, at the same time, pluralises our ethical thought about future relationships of recognition by taking a step back to the level where Honneth would start abstracting a formal conception from given ethical ideals and practices in society. At this level, representatives of these ideals and practices are not invited to agree on formal essentials, but rather to articulate ‘thick’ and possibly mutually exclusive visions of a comprehensive morality of recognition. This invitation, of course, comes from a ‘meta-perspective’ on the guiding and evaluative role that conceptions of ethical life play in all complete worldviews. This perspective, however, does not hover over all the parties. Rather, it is part of the post-traditional pluralistic conception itself. In that sense, it is just a suggestion for shaping the discussion, that is, an invitation to other worldviews to articulate their (meta-perspective on the role of) ideal conceptions of ethical life, so that in the debate it does not get lost in overly thin, ‘formal’ languages of moral abstraction. 3.â•‡ The post-traditional pluralistic conception admits that, as a substantive conception, it runs the risk of articulating patterns of expectation and evaluation that may seem to downgrade certain morally motivated citizens in society. Moreover, it equally recognises that other substantive conceptions run the same risk. Now, the most important requirement for handling this risk intelligently is that all parties to debates over conceptions of ethical life act from the moral virtues of justice and benevolence. Here, justice is 69 â•‡ See W.B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57, 1956. See for a convincing argument concerning the contestedness of social values and beliefs J. Donald Moon, Constructing Community: Moral Pluralism and Tragic Conflicts, Princeton, N.L., Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 76â•›ff.

recognition, pluralism and the expectation of harmony 175 understood in the minimal sense of “hearing the other side”70 and benevolence in the minimal sense of generously aiming to give everyone what they are due (which often implies a lenient attitude of accommodating others even before the ultimate rational ‘proof ’ for the validity of their claims for recognition has been given). Of course, it is true that semantic conflicts may occur over our more substantive understandings of justice, but in practice we know what it means to be listened to and to listen to what others have to say.71 The idea of recognition at work here is weaker than Honneth’s; it concerns the legal recognition of individual and collective perspectives that are articulated and continue to exist on their own,72 rather than recognising perspectives that have clearly identifiable value for a shared notion of social cooperation. Since unrestricted esteem for each other’s points of view is – in the realm of cultural claims for recognition especially – not a goal of the pluralistic conception, it has the advantage that, in cases of discord, it can much more easily live with practical compromises than can accounts that aim at comprehensive consensus or, indeed, unrestricted mutual esteem. The 4.â•‡ pluralistic conception does not just recognise an internal conflictuality in the threefold moral point of view with respect to the ‘vantage point’ from which concrete moral problems should be assessed. It also recognises that in pluralistic societies conflicts of interpretation will occur over the exact understanding of the different obligations of recognition and their delimitation with respect to each other. After all, in a pluralistic world the moral obligations inherent in different views of, for example, marital love, parental love, friendship, legal obligation, civic obligation, social membership and solidarity are not taken to be the same by everybody. Here, the strongest indication that such conflicts of interpretation should be taken seriously is perhaps that there are many peaceful traditional groups in society that have not yet accepted the firm separation of legal autonomy and equality from categories of social status or honour. Here, we may as well point to North-African immigrant groups such as Moroccan Berbers in Europe and to aboriginal peoples in North America and Australia. â•‡ See S. Hampshire, Justice Is Conflict, London, Duckworth, 1999. â•‡ For strong suggestions that there is something such as a shared basic understanding of rules of justice or fairness in this minimal sense, see Hampshire, Justice Is Conflict, and Joas, Entstehung der Werte, pp. 271â•›f. 72 â•‡ See Tully, Strange Multiplicity, pp. 124–129. 70 71

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So there is potential for a double tension in attempts to reach the moral point of view. First, such attempts oblige us (all of us, that is, every subject who aims to act morally) to decide in specific situations what type(s) of moral obligation is (are) at stake. Is it an obligation of love, moral accountability or solidarity or care?73 Or are there, according to some parties, still other obligations at stake? Second, it obliges us to remain sceptical with respect to the general acceptability of our own understanding of the obligations inherent in a morality of recognition. Since the pluralistic conception of ethical life does not unearth an “objective-intentional context”74 from which claims for recognition can be assessed, it cannot trust in the authority of the answers we actually live by. 5.â•‡In conclusion, the full respect conception of recognition, which makes possible an open and self-reflexive practice – without an ‘end-stage’ – of normative deliberation is more central to this conception of ethical life than the unrestricted esteem conception is. Not social harmony but the fair shaping of conflicts of pluralism is its highest aim. Not full esteem for all the different worldviews and practices in society but full respect for those worldviews and practices that can live up to the minimal virtues of justice and benevolence – of hearing the other side and of reacting to it with a certain generosity – in cases where this is necessary. Of course, this is not in any way an ideal solution. It has the practical advantage that it does not aim for full recognition; that is, at the end of the day it understands a legally guaranteed, respect-based, live-and-let-live attitude among ‘particular’ communities of value as a good-enough answer to most struggles for recognition. But, of course, it has to accept that in pluralistic contexts, even some worldviews and practices that are tolerable in themselves, are simply incompatible, and that in these contexts, experiences of disrespect are an irreparable fact of life. Here, the incomplete pluralistic account that I have outlined above cannot offer a horizon of reconciliation that Honneth’s ideal conception of ethical life promises. My argument has been that if Honneth were to follow up on my suggestions, he would have to become less enthusiastic about that horizon of reconciliation for pluralistic societies. 73 â•‡ See Honneth’s well-taken point in “Recognition and Moral Obligation” that his conceptualisation of the moral point of view can explain the moral appeal of the ethics of care, moral duty and communitarian belonging. 74 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 170.

Chapter six

Power, Recognition, and Care: Honneth’s Critique of Poststructuralist Social Philosophy Robert Sinnerbrink Honneth’s seminal 1985 work, The Critique of Power, is well known for its immanent critique of Foucault’s social philosophy. Yet it also suggested the possibility of a critical dialogue between critical theory and poststructuralism.1 This tantalising possibility – suggested by Habermas’ critique of Foucault, Manfred Frank’s lectures on neostructuralism, as well as Foucault’s remarks shortly before his death – has remained, however, largely unfulfilled, both from the perspective of poststructuralist social philosophy and that of Honneth’s own theoretical trajectory.2 While some important work has been done to further the dialogue between French poststructuralism and critical theory, to date this fascinating critical encounter is yet to be developed.3 Against Habermas’ more hostile reception, Honneth’s work during the 1990s evinced a critical yet sympathetic engagement with important French thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida. In what follows, I argue that Honneth’s critique of poststructuralist social philosophy offers a productive perspective for further developing the ethics of recognition, but also that the latter could benefit from a critical appropriation of certain aspects of poststructuralist thought. I would like to thank my colleague Jean-Philippe Deranty for many illuminating conversations on these topics and for generously sharing his most recent work on Honneth’s critical theory. 1 â•‡ A. Honneth, The Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. K. Baynes, Cambridge, MA/London, 1985. 2 â•‡ See J. Habermas, The Philosophical Critique of Modernity, trans. F. G. Lawrence, Cambridge, MA/London, 1987; M. Frank, What is Neostructuralism?, trans. S. Wilke & R. Gray, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989; M. Foucault, “The Subject and Power” in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed., Chicago, University of Chicago, 1982, pp. 208–226. 3 â•‡ See P. Dews, Logics of Disintegration. Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory, London, Verso, 1987; S. Critchley, Very Little – Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature, London/New York, Routledge, 1997; B. Hanssen, Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory, London, Routledge, 2000.

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I begin with an examination of Honneth’s critique of Foucault’s analysis of power, in particular the tension between action-theoretic and system-theoretic perspectives that Honneth identifies as the crucial impasse in Foucault’s theory of society. I then turn to Honneth’s critical confrontation with poststructuralist critiques of the modern subject, in particular his criticism of the Nietzschean-aestheticist concept of freedom. Finally, I consider Honneth’s critical engagement with poststructuralist approaches to ethics, in particular his claim that Derrida’s Levinasian ethics of care for the singular other presents a moral perspective that challenges Habermasian discourse ethics. I conclude that a renewed dialogue with the poststructuralist critique of instrumental rationality and of monological autonomy, which in turn suggests a return to the thought of Adorno, would provide a timely contribution to Honneth’s recent questioning of the future of critical theory.4 1.â•‡ Honneth’s Critical Confrontation with Foucault Honneth’s relationship with recent French philosophy is deep and longstanding, beginning with an extended study of Foucault in his 1980 book co-authored with Hans Joas.5 This interpretation was developed further in Honneth’s critical reconstruction of Foucault’s analysis of power in The Critique of Power, and extended into numerous essays in the 1990s on the poststructuralist critique of reason, the postmodernist subject, and deconstructive ethics.6 In the context of Honneth’s 4 â•‡ See A. Honneth, “On the Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory” in ed. F. Rush, The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336–360. 5 â•‡ See A. Honneth & H. Joas, Social Action and Human Nature, trans. R. Meyer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 129–150. 6 â•‡ The main texts dealing with poststructuralism are A. Honneth, Kritik der Macht. Reflexionstufen einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1985; English trans. The Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. K. Baynes, Cambridge Ma./London, The MIT Press, 1991. “Foucault und Adorno. Zwei Formen einer Kritik der Moderne”, originally in French in Critique, 471–472, 1986, pp. 800â•›ff.; trans. in ed. P. Kemper “Postmoderne” oder der Kampf um die Zukunft, Frankfurt/M., 1988, pp. 127â•›ff., reprinted in Die zerrisene Welt des Sozialen. Sozialphilosophischen Aufsätze, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1990, pp. 73–92; English trans. “Foucault and Adorno: Two Forms of the Critique of Modernity” in ed. C. W. White, The Fragmented World of the Social, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 121–131. “Pluralisierung und Anerkennung. Zum Selbstmisverständnis postmoderner Sozialtheorien”, Merkur, 508, January 1991, pp. 624–629; English trans. “Pluralisation and Recognition: On the Self-Misrecognition of Postmodern Social

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presentation of the ‘reflective stages’ of a critical theory of society, Foucault’s importance lies in conceptualising the organisation of the social field as a site of antagonistic struggle. At the same time, Foucault ends up accounting for the operation of social power relations from a system-theoretic perspective to resolve difficulties arising from treating power as a function of strategic action. Honneth’s thesis is succinctly summarised in his claim that Foucault’s mature social theory can be represented as “a ‘systems-theoretic’ solution to the Dialectic of Enlightenment”, one that fails to reconcile the important account of the social as a space of strategic action with the system-theoretic account of power operating through ‘total institutions’. It is against this theoretical backdrop that Honneth not only presents his critical reconstruction of Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality, but also begins to develop the neo-Hegelian theory of recognition as an alternative to poststructuralist critiques of the subject. In what follows, I shall foreground Honneth’s critique of Foucault’s analysis of power and theory of society, arguing that this critique contributes significantly to the development of Honneth’s theory of recognition. 1.1.â•‡ Struggle as a Paradigm of the Social Foucault’s turn during the 1970s towards an analysis of social power relations was not only the result of abandoning his earlier structuralist framework of a historical analysis of discourse. It was also a response to the unexpected events of May 1968 – to the experience of “the strategically perfected reaction of an established system of power to social uprisings”.7 With this turn towards a monistic conception of power, Theories” in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 220–230. “Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Habermas und die Herausforderung der poststrukturalistischen Ethik”, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 42., Jg., 2/1994, pp. 195–220; reprinted in Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Aufsätze zur praktischen Philosophie, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2000, pp. 133–170; English trans. “The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism” in ed. S. K. White, The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 289–323. 7 â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 152. Honneth emphasises the grounding of Foucault’s social philosophy in the historical and personal experiences of artistic avant-gardism, social struggles, and ‘subcultural’ resistance. This is what lends Foucault his unique philosophical character: “the unusual combination of the knowledge of the scholar, the art of the narrator, the obsessions of the monomaniac and the sensitivity of the injured – a synthesis mirrored in the physiognomy of Foucault’s combination of analytical coldness and sympathetic sensibility”. Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno. Two Forms of the Critique of Modernity”, The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 123–124.

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Foucault’s theory of knowledge-discourse became a theory of powerknowledge – a shift that brought Foucault closer to the critical theory tradition of the Frankfurt School. For Honneth, this new conception of power represented Foucault’s most important contribution to social philosophy: to conceptualise power not as fixable property belonging to an individual or social group, but rather as “the in principle fragile and open-ended product of strategic conflicts between subjects”.8 Honneth identifies with precision the “action-theoretic” strand of Foucault’s analysis of power as an effect of the strategic action of social agents with conflicting aims and objectives.9 For Honneth, the advantage of Foucault’s action-theoretic conception of power is that the social field is thus reconceptualised as an “uninterrupted process of conflicting strategic actions”; the social becomes a site of permanent ‘battle’, as Foucault states in his 1976 Collège de France lectures.10 Honneth encapsulates Foucault’s ‘action-theoretic’ model of power, describing it as the “strategic intersubjectivity of struggle”.11 This suggestive formulation states that power is an intersubjective relationship between strategically acting agents, but also points to the strategic character of these intersubjective relations. This is a point that HaberÂ� mas famously rejects in his sharp distinction between system and lifeworld, which Honneth criticises for its implausible opposition between strategic and communicative action.12 As Honneth argues, however, the difficulty this formulation of power presents us with is to decide whether power is to be conceived as strategic action between individual agents or collective agents. Moreover, Foucault leaves unclear whether we are to understand the conflicting self-interest of individuals or groups as the causal factor generating social power relations, or whether these conflicting interests are themselves the products of established power relations (for example, the unequal distribution of wealth). More pressingly, Foucault’s analysis of power encounters a similar problem as his theory of discourse: that of explaining how “a â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, pp. 154–155. â•‡ ibid., p. 156. 10 â•‡ ibid., p. 156. See M. Foucault, ‘Society Must be Defended’: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, trans. D. Macey, London, Penguin, 2003, pp. 23–64. 11 â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 157. 12 â•‡ See Honneth’s critique of Habermas’ system/lifeworld dualism, which posits an implausible opposition between a norm-free domain of strategic action and a powerfree domain of communicative action. The Critique of Power, pp. 288â•›ff. â•›â•›â•›â•›8 â•›â•›â•›â•›9


system of mutually interconnected positions of power, i.e. an order of domination, can emerge out of the perpetual process of strategic conflict among actors”.13 Honneth’s question, in short, is how to reconcile systemic and strategic action dimensions of power relations? As is well known, Foucault rejects Marxist notions of class struggle and the ideological state apparatus, as well as liberalist notions of equality of rights or principles of justice. Instead, he presents the constitution of an order of power relations on the basis of a model of strategic action, as the result of “the ‘decentred’ activities of various actors in diverse situations of struggles”.14 From an historical perspective, this means that a system of power relations gains permanence through the stabilisation of repeatable patterns of conflict into an institutionally anchored network of positions. With this move, Foucault’s analysis of power as strategic action mutates into a theory of institutions with system-theoretic resonances. Honneth’s critique becomes sharpest in his analysis of this shift from an action-theoretic to a system-theoretic model of power in Foucault’s theory of society. The problem of explaining how the stabilisation and institutional anchoring of power relations can occur prompts the implicit shift in Foucault’s conceptual frame of reference from a theory of action to an analysis of institutions.15 The subjects of power are no longer strategically acting agents but social institutions, now taken to be power-wielding formations whose own establishment remains unexplained. Social institutions may account for the systemic ordering of intersubjective power relations, but Foucault does not explain how these social institutions are ordered, maintained, or transformed. The result, Honneth argues, is the disappearance of the theoretical problem at issue: namely the “stabilisation of practically secured positions of power in the form of their social institutionalisation”.16 As Honneth observes, each stabilisation of strategic struggles presupposes the interruption of conflict in one of three ways: normatively motivated agreement, pragmatic compromise, or the sustained use of force.17 Normative agreement and pragmatic compromise, as two-sided stabilisations of power, would conform better with Foucault’s

â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 157. â•‡ ibid., p. 158. 15 â•‡ ibid., p. 173. 16 â•‡ ibid., p. 173. 17 â•‡ ibid., p. 174. 13 14

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basic model of the strategic intersubjectivity of struggle. Yet Foucault eschews these alternatives in favour of the third approach, a quasipermanent use of force that represents “a merely one-sided stabilisation of a position of social power”.18 Foucault’s reduction of social action to strategic action thus tends to foreclose the possibility of intersubjective recognition that could stabilise power relations via normative agreement or pragmatic compromise. Instead, Honneth argues, Foucault opts for a theory of institutions that impose a one-sided interruption of power relations through the coercive use of force or manipulative bodily discipline. The result is a schism between the action-theoretic dimension of strategic struggle and the systemtheoretic dimension of domination via ‘normalising’ institutional practices. As Honneth remarks, the agonistic model of power as a ‘perpetual battle’ is juxtaposed with the systemic model of institutions of compulsion, the development of which presupposes precisely an interruption of the ‘perpetual battle’.19 Indeed, defenders of Foucault who point to the ‘productive’ aspect of power, its connection with the possibility of social agency, ignore the fact that this aspect conflicts with Foucault’s account of ‘total institutions’, whose smooth functioning is predicated on the successful control of social struggle.20 Honneth concludes that this tension – between power as intersubjective social struggle and power as a system of institutional ordering of bodies – remains unresolved in Foucault’s analytic of power. 1.2.â•‡ Power as Social Struggle or Social Control? Honneth’s basic criticism of Foucault’s theory of society is that it represents a “systems-theoretic dissolution” of the aporia between subject and system evident in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of EnlightÂ� enment.21 As we have seen, Foucault’s action-theoretic model of power relations presupposes some form of normative consensus that would explain the stabilisation of power relations into an institutional order. Any notion of normative consensus, however, is excluded as itself a function of power relations. Consequently, this leaves only the option â•‡ ibid., p. 174. â•‡ ibid., p. 175. 20 â•‡ See Patton for a defence of Foucault’s theory of power along these lines. P. Patton, “Taylor and Foucault on Power and Freedom”, Political Studies, 37, 1989, pp. 260–276. 21 â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, pp. 173â•›ff. 18 19


of force or coercive manipulation to explain the stabilisation of power in society. Foucault is thus forced to turn to a system-theoretic model of power and a theory of total institutions, a move that explains the institutional ordering of power but also contradicts the actiontheoretic conception of power as strategic action. Foucault attempts to circumvent this difficulty by turning to a more critical historical method of analysing the institutional articulations of power-knowledge. The thesis governing Foucault’s genealogical analyses is that of an indissoluble link between power and knowledge: the cognitive production and institutionalisation of knowledge always works in tandem with the social production and domination of subjects. Foucault’s method of genealogy thus attempts to capture the mutually supporting processes of institutionalisation of disciplinary knowledge, and the exercise of social power through disciplinary techniques exercised upon the body. The question, however, is how to explain historical changes in the exercise of power and techniques of social control. Are these relative to a particular institutional form of society? Or are they part of a general process of augmenting social control independent of particular social formations? Honneth argues that Foucault tends to explain the historical shift from sovereign to disciplinary regimes of power according to the ‘functionalist’ account of a general optimisation of social control. Such a move of course leaves unexplained the historical causes of this movement; we are left only with the general process of “the augmentation of social power carried out according to the logic of periodic adaptations to the environment”.22 The genealogical demand for immanent historical reconstruction of the transformation in practical techniques and forms of discourse thus gives way to a systems-theoretic model of the functionalist adaptation to invariant environmental stimuli (such as demographic growth and economic reproduction) through the optimisation of social control.23 Foucault’s shift towards a systems-theoretic model, for Honneth, has numerous implications. First, it explains the background role of the economic sphere in the transformation of social power relations. Second, it involves the diminution of the dimension of strategic action; social classes thereby become the effect of systemic processes of

22 23

â•‡ ibid., p. 195. â•‡ ibid., pp. 193–194.

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adaptation rather than of the institutionalisation of social domination. Finally, this functionalist vision of power diminishes the role of social struggle in favour of the systemic operation of institutional processes; consequently, the motives of social actors engaging in social and political conflict become irrelevant.24 The model total institution is the prison, taken as the paradigm of disciplinary institutions (school, hospital, asylum, workplace, clinic, and so on). The result is a theory of society in which modern social institutions are reduced to the panoptic network of disciplinary apparatuses serving the same functional end of an optimisation of social control. Some critics have raised questions concerning this aspect of Honneth’s interpretation, questioning whether it is true that Foucault’s theory of power “became reductive, even deterministic, eliminating the playing field of social struggle and, with it, freedom”.25 Honneth’s critique, however, argues that the action-theoretic and systems-theoretic perspectives conflict with each other, with the systems-theoretic perspective gaining dominance in Foucault’s theory of modern disciplinary society. In any event, my concern here is less with the correctness of Honneth’s critique of Foucault than with its significance for the development of his theory of recognition. My thesis is that Honneth appropriates elements of Foucault’s action-theoretic conception of the social, understood as a domain of strategic and communicative actions, but rejects Foucault’s tendency to reduce social action to strategic action, as well as his one-sided account of the stabilisation of power in institutions through the exercise of force or techniques of manipulation. As an alternative, Honneth will replace Foucault’s analysis with an intersubjective and normative account of both social interaction and of institutional practice – an account developed further in The Struggle for Recognition. 2.â•‡ Foucault and Adorno: The Sufferings of the Body In addition to an action-theoretic conception of the social, Honneth shares with Foucault (and Adorno) a moral and theoretical sensitivity towards the experience of bodily suffering. This emphasis on bodily â•‡ ibid., p. 195. â•‡B. Hanssen, Critique of Violence, p. 99. See Hanssen’s excellent summary of Honneth’s interpretation, and her defence of the normative aspects of Foucault’s analytic of power: Critique of Violence, pp. 97â•›ff. 24 25


pathos – on the “silent acts of the enslavement and mutilation of the human body” – remains a powerful element in Honneth’s mature theory of recognition.26 Indeed, this acknowledgement of bodily suffering enables Honneth to steer a course between Foucault’s reduction of docile bodies to the functional vicissitudes of power, and Habermas’ elision of the sufferings of the body in favour of an idealised linguisticcommunicative interaction. To this end, Honneth draws an illuminating parallel between Foucault and Adorno, emphasising their shared critique of instrumental and functionalist rationality, but also their differing accounts of the dissolution of the autonomous subject.27 Both thinkers present the pernicious techniques of social control as becoming perfected under the dual masks of moral emancipation and historical progress. Indeed, many of Foucault’s remarks in Discipline and Punish, as Honneth observes, could have been quoted from the Dialectic of Enlightenment.28 Both regard the vital impulses of the human body, the living expression of subjectivity that is progressively disciplined and repressed, as “the real victim of the overall process of instrumental rationalisation”.29 Their common theme, despite apparent differences, is “the destruction of the open spaces of bodily freedom”, a theme that presents, albeit vaguely, the counter concept to the social domination wrought by instrumental rationalisation.30 It is also a theme that continues in the championing of ‘the body’ in contemporary poststructuralist critiques of the hegemony of Western rationality and autonomous subjectivity.31

â•‡ Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno”, The Fragmented World of the Social, p. 121. â•‡See The Critique of Power, pp. 198–202, and “Foucault and Adorno” in The FragÂ� mented World of the Social”, pp. 121–131. The latter essay was first Â�published in the French journal Critique, thus representing a clear intervention in the post-structuralist/ critical theory debate. 28 â•‡ Compare Foucault’s remark: “The ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines” in Discipline and Punish, trans. A. Sheridan, New York, Pantheon, 1977, p. 222. Quoted in Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 198. 29 â•‡ Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno” in The Fragmented World of the Social”, p. 127. One should also mention the importance of Merleau-Ponty in this respect, both for poststructuralism and for a theory of intersubjectivity sensitive to bodily experience. See Honneth’s essay, “Embodied Reason: On the Rediscovery of Merleau-Ponty” in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 150–157. 30 â•‡ Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno” in The Fragmented World of the Social”, p. 127. 31 â•‡ See, for example, J. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997; E. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1994. 26 27

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For all these affinities, however, we should also be attentive to the differences between Foucault and Adorno. Whereas Foucault regards the social control of bodies as operating primarily through institutionalised techniques of power (training, drilling, surveillance, examination, and so on), Adorno understands social control to emanate “from the centralised organisations of administration as a force of psychic influence”.32 In other words, Adorno points to the ideological role of the ‘culture industries’ in the psychic colonisation of subjectivity, a process of cultural manipulation contributing to the end of the autonomous individual in ‘totally administered’ societies. Foucault certainly could have presented “the psychic suffering of individuals” as the social manifestation of the disciplining of the body; yet he eschewed any such Adornian vision of bodily and psychic suffering as “a last individual impulse to reconciliation”.33 For Foucault explicitly rejected any such ‘humanist’ model of reconciliation between suffering life and the damaged core of human nature. The major difference, for Honneth, concerns Adorno’s more historically grounded account of the ‘docility’ of the modern subject. For Adorno, social control becomes an entrenched effect of instrumental rationality in the post-liberal era of capitalism because ‘reified’ modern subjects have increasingly lost the psychic strength for practical self-determination.34 Foucault, by contrast, appears to assume the ‘conditionability’ of subjects as a quasi-ontological condition of subjectformation within modern systems of power-knowledge. Whereas Adorno placed his hope in a possible reconciliation between the postenlightenment subject and their repressed drives and imagination, Foucault unmasks the enlightenment concept of the autonomous subject as a pernicious fiction. Adorno’s philosophical-historical thesis concerning the historical weakening of the autonomous individual under conditions of administered society thus contrasts sharply with Foucault’s genealogical analysis of the disciplinary manipulation of the subject under the functional pressure of optimising social control. As Honneth argues, however, both theorists of modernity ignore the fact that social control cannot be understood simply as a matter of â•‡ Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno”, p. 129. â•‡ ibid., p. 131. 34 â•‡ Compare the following remark: “the techniques of manipulation are only able to dispose over individuals as if over objectified natural processes because subjects are beginning to lose the ego-capacities acquired in the course of the history of civilisation at the expense of aesthetic capacities”. Honneth, “Foucault and Adorno”, p. 129. 32 33


totalising manipulation of docile subjects. Indeed, as demonstrated by Hegel, both forget that even domination presupposes (unequal) recognition: “that in normal cases social groups support or endure the process of maintaining relations of social power through their normative convictions and cultural orientations – thus, to put it sharply, they participate in the exercise of domination”.35 Again, Honneth points to the normative insufficiency of Foucault and Adorno’s critiques of instrumental rationalisation, the excessively one-sided character of the social control allegedly exercised upon manipulated subjects. Indeed, social subjects, despite the systemic effects of power, still engage in struggles over the normative claims and institutionalised power relations endemic to social existence. Honneth will nonetheless apply the lessons taken from his critique of Foucault – including his appropriation of the theme of bodily suffering – in the development of his own theory of intersubjective recognition. 3.â•‡ Hegel contra Nietzsche: Self-Creation versus Recognition The core elements of Honneth’s critical confrontation with poststructuralist social philosophy are most clearly articulated in his 1991 essay, “Pluralisation and Misrecognition: On the Self-Misrecognition of Postmodern Social Theories”.36 Here we find his most explicit criticisms of “postmodern social theory” (by which Honneth means chiefly Lyotard, Rorty, and Baudrillard), above all its assumption of a Nietzschean-aestheticist conception of freedom.37 And we also find a clear defence of the neo-Hegelian theory of recognition and social freedom developed further in The Struggle for Recognition.38 Honneth’s â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 199. â•‡“Pluralisierung und Anerkennung. Zum Selbstmisverständnis postmoderner Sozialtheorien”, Merkur, 508, January 1991, pp. 624–629; English trans. “Pluralisation and Recognition: On the Self-Misrecognition of Postmodern Social Theories” in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 220–230. 37 â•‡ Honneth refers to the work of J. Baudrillard, Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition; R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, and F. Jameson’s famous critical essay, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, New Left Review, 146, July–August, 1984, pp. 53–92. See also Honneth’s critique of Lyotard’s incoherent combination of relativism and crypto-universalism. “An Aversion Against the Universal: A Commentary on Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition”, Theory, Culture & Society, 2.3, 1985, pp. 147–157. 38 â•‡Honneth introduces this research program on the theory of recognition as grounding morality in his inaugural lecture at the University of Frankfurt in June 1990. 35 36

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central claim is that the ‘postmodern’ diagnosis of the present has an ideologically inflected theoretical framework presupposing “a NietzsÂ� chean tinged concept of aesthetic freedom”.39 While Lyotard’s ‘postmodernist’ celebration of the end of the ‘grand narratives’ correctly identifies developmental tendencies in modernity, these historical and cultural tendencies ought to be reinterpreted, rather, from the perspective of a crisis in social relations of recognition.40 Honneth’s critique of postmodernist social theories thus represents an ideology critique of the postmodernist ‘naturalisation’ of the loss of autonomous subjectivity and “exhaustion of Utopian energies”, to use Habermas’ phrase, characteristic of contemporary neoliberalism. According to Honneth’s account, the cultural upheavals of the 1980s, whose roots are to be found in the economic and social changes of post-war capitalism, are manifestations of developmental tendencies that point to a disintegration of the social lifeworld and atomisation of individuals well captured in the postmodernist slogan of the ‘end of the social’.41 Drawing on Jameson and Habermas, Honneth identifies three factors in this process: (1) the dissolution of the aesthetic-cultural medium of the lifeworld thanks to the rise of the mass media and informational ‘culture industries’; (2) the erosion of the normative force of shared communicative traditions and forms of social solidarity; and (3) the withering of social subjects’ capacities for intersubjective communication, with the subsequent threat of a fragmentation of the social and atomisation of individuals.42 Hence what Lyotard celebrates as the ‘end of the grand narratives’ is, for Honneth, an ‘ideological’ version of the destruction of narratively constituted traditions that supplied a measure of historical continuity capable of generating forms of communicative understanding.43 This loss of normative substance belonging to the social lifeworld results in a withering of social subjects’ capacities for communicative action, a process that accelerates the fragmentation of the social community.

See Honneth, “Integrität und Mißachtung. Grundmotive einer anerkennungstheoretischen Moralkonzeption”, Merkur, 501, 1990, pp. 1043–1054. English trans. “Integrity and Disrespect. Principles of a Conception of Morality based upon a Theory of Recognition”, in The Fragmented World of the Social, pp. 247–260. 39 â•‡ Honneth, “Pluralisation and Misrecognition”, p. 221. 40 â•‡ ibid., p. 221. 41 â•‡ ibid., p. 221. 42 â•‡ ibid., p. 221â•›ff. 43 â•‡ ibid., p. 223.


These tendencies toward a “fictionalisation” of social reality prompt the atomised individual, bereft of a shared cultural praxis, to imitate media-prefabricated lifestyles; on a more collective level, they lead to “an artificial pluralisation of aesthetically shaped lifeworlds” – the pseudo-utopias of lifestyle consumerism.44 Such is the ambiguous picture of a mediatised world of simulation portrayed by Baudrillard, and well dramatised by certain contemporary novelists.45 Postmodern social theories correctly reflect these changes in the cultural-aesthetic medium of the social lifeworld, repeating the diagnoses offered already by Horkheimer and Adorno; but they assign the dissolution of sociality and subjectivity in question a positive, even affirmative character. Honneth’s thesis is that the postmodernist “dedramatisation” of the dissolution of social normativity is the result of the application of a Nietzschean-inspired concept of freedom as individual self-creation untethered from social normativity. This concept of freedom has both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ dimensions: a ‘negative freedom’ in the sense of distance from tradition, and a ‘positive’ freedom in the sense of the capacity for experimental selfcreation.46 Such a conception of freedom must therefore regard the social lifeworld “primarily as a shackle to the individualising power of aesthetic self-invention”.47 This idea of aesthetic self-creation transfigures the dissolution of the social – the loss of communicative infrastructure and forms of social normativity – as inaugurating a new space for “the playful unfolding of individual differences”.48 Honneth’s critical question concerns the validity of this aesthetic model of freedom. Can subjects really achieve self-realisation independently of normative and social bonds? This question points to a crucial turning point in Honneth’s trajectory: the development of a neo-Hegelian theory of intersubjective recognition as an alternative to the Foucaultian model of power, to the postmodernist conception of freedom, and as a corrective to Habermas’ model of communicative action. Indeed, once 44 â•‡ Honneth, “Pluralisation and Misrecognition”, p. 223. The strongly Jamesonian tenor of Honneth’s critique of postmodernism should be noted here; also significant for his analysis is the dialectical critique of postmodernism and defence of a radicalised Enlightenment presented by A. Wellmer, Zur Dialektik der Moderne und Postmoderne, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1985, esp. pp. 48–114. 45 â•‡See Baudrillard, Simulations, and the novels of Bret Easton Ellis and Michel Houellebecq. 46 â•‡ Honneth, “Pluralisation and Misrecognition”, p. 225. 47 â•‡ ibid., p. 225. 48 â•‡ ibid., p. 226.

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we question the assumption that subjects can solipsistically achieve self-realisation independently of normative bonds, the postmodernist affirmation of self-creation as a response to the dissolution of the social begins to collapse. The dissolution of the social lifeworld can no longer be regarded as an opportunity for creative self-expression, but as a loss of the forms of social normativity necessary for intersubjective freedom. Ever since Hegel, it has been the concept of recognition that has enabled the critique of solipsistic models of self-realisation. Indeed, the concept of recognition implies that “human subjects constitutively depend on the normative approval of others in forming their identity”.49 Intersubjective recognition is not only a constitutive presupposition of identity formation but a necessary condition for the practical realisation of freedom. As Honneth explains: Subjects are really only capable of realising the possibilities of freedom when they can, without constraint, positively identify, from the perspective of assenting others, with their own objectives; the realisation of freedom presupposes the experience of recognition because I can be in true and complete accord with my goals of action only to the extent that I can be sure of the normative agreement of a communicative community which, if not a concrete one, is at least an idealised one.50

The related levels for the practical realisation of this (neo-Hegelian) conception of freedom are as follows: (a) there is the natural freedom of expressing needs (the experience of recognition in love, family, sexual relationships, and friendship); (b) there is the social freedom of individual self-determination (the experience of the legal recognition of equality and basic rights); (c) finally, there is the freedom of personal self-realisation (the ethical [sittlich] recognition of one’s contribution to social life, the experience of solidarity).51 Hegelian freedom, in short, is constituted through the related dimensions of reciprocal recognition in the three distinct normative spheres of love and intimacy, self-respect, and social esteem. This intersubjectivist account of “ethical life” [Sittlichkeit] provides a necessary context for the Â�reciprocal recognition that serves as a precondition for individual self-realisation in the social world. Thus, Honneth concludes, the postmodernist affirmation of our cultural situation is in fact a diagnosis of the crisis in structures of recognition characterising contemporary modernity. â•‡ ibid., p. 226. â•‡ ibid., p. 226. 51 â•‡ ibid., pp. 226–227. 49 50


With this argument, Honneth paves the way for a neo-Hegelian theory of recognition that would counteract both the Foucaultian reduction of subjectivity to an effect of systems of power, and the postÂ�modÂ�ernist conception of Nietzschean freedom as aesthetic selfcreation – positions that, taken together, are in fact quite contradictory. Honneth’s presentation of ‘postmodernism’, however, can be criticised for being overly reductive, focusing too narrowly on the inflated conception of self-realising freedom that is in fact the target of other poststructuralist critiques of subjectivity and morality.52 Honneth thus corrects this apparent deficiency in his critique of poststructuralist thought by turning to deconstructive ethics, notably Derrida’s Levinasian-inspired ethics of care for the other. 4.â•‡ ‘The Other of Justice’: Honneth and the Ethics of Deconstruction Honneth’s 1994 essay, “The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism”, marks a more sympathetic engagement with the ‘ethical turn’ in poststructuralist thought, particularly in the work of Derrida.53 It also serves as a correction of his largely negativistic critique of Foucault, Lyotard, and postmodern Nietzscheanism. What Honneth retains from this critique, however, is an acknowledgment of the questioning of the limitations of the Kantian tradition of universalist morality. Habermas of course responded to just these aspects of the poststructuralist critique, developing a form of discourse ethics that transformed the monological assumptions of Kantian morality in an intersubjective-theoretic direction.54 Indeed, Honneth â•‡ Compare Critchley’s critical remark: “Should it surprise us to learn that that ‘horizon’ of deconstruction is ethico-political? Only, I would claim, is we were working with a fatally impoverished and prejudicial account of ‘postmodernity’â•›”. S. Critchley, “Habermas and Derrida Get Married”, Appendix 2 in The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, 2nd ed., Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, p. 279. 53 â•‡ “Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Habermas und die Herausforderung der poststrukturalistischen Ethik”, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 42, Jg., 2/1994, pp. 195–220; English trans. “The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism” in ed. S. K. White, The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 289–323. See J. Derrida, “The Politics of Friendship”, trans. G. Motzkin, Journal of Philosophy 85, 1988, pp. 632–645; and “Force of Law: the ‘Mystical Foundations of Authority’,” Cardozo Law Review 11, 1990, pp. 919–1045. 54 â•‡See J. Habermas, “Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel’s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?” in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C. Lenhardt & S. Weber Nicholsen, Cambridge Ma., MIT Press, 1990, pp. 195–215. 52

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argues that Habermasian discourse ethics provides a more plausible ethical model than Lyotardian and post-Heideggerian attempts to embrace the unique particularity of the singular individual. Yet it is only what Honneth calls Levinas’ and Derrida’s ethics of care – a perspecÂ�tive concerned with responding to the particularity of the singular other – that genuinely moves beyond the horizons of Habermasian discourse ethics. As Simon Critchley observes, Honneth’s acknowledgment of the deconstructivist ethics of care thus “opens the possibility of a reciprocal rectification of the two philosophical currents that could be said to define the conflictual space of European philosophy today,” namely Critical Theory and Deconstruction.55 The poststructuralist ‘ethical turn’ can be regarded as an immanent response to the criticism, made for example by Habermas, that the poststructuralist critique of reason culminates in an ethical and political nihilism.56 As Honneth remarks, the poststructuralist languagetheoretic subversion of metaphysics seems to lead to indeterminacy in ethics and politics, even though it is clear that this critique of metaphysics, like that of Adorno, always suggested certain normativepolitical consequences.57 The ‘other’ excluded from metaphysical systems of identity thinking also points to the human ‘others’ excluded from social systems and forms of discourse. Hence the motivation for poststructuralist ethics, Honneth notes, is to do justice to these forms of otherness or heterogeneity sacrificed for the sake of “uniform thinking”.58 In the spirit of Adorno, Levinas and Derrida strive to acknowledge the “unmistakable particularity of concrete persons or social groups” that must be reckoned with by every theory of morality or justice; for it is only by embracing the nonidentical, to speak in Adorno’s idiom, that we can redeem the claim to human justice.59 Where deconstructivist ethics presents a real challenge to the Kantian tradition of morality is in its model of an asymmetrical obligation between individuals, grasped in their unique singularity rather than in their formal equality. Honneth’s central argument will be that 55 â•‡ S. Critchley, “Habermas and Derrida Get Married”, in Critchley’s The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas, p. 268. 56 â•‡ See Habermas’ critique of the Nietzschean and Heideggerian presuppositions of poststructuralist thought, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp.83–105 and pp. 131–160. 57 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, pp. 289–290. 58 â•‡ ibid., p. 290. 59 â•‡ ibid., p. 290.


while both the Lyotardian ethics and White’s post-Heideggerian ethics can be better justified within the framework of Habermasian discourse ethics, the asymmetrical ethics of care developed by Levinas and Derrida “remains conceptually intractable” for Habermas’ model. Indeed, Honneth will criticise Habermas’ attempts to accommodate the perspective of care – via the notion of solidarity with our fellow human beings as sharing a communicative form of life – within a modified universalist framework of morality. Contra Habermas, Honneth claims, the moral point of view of equal treatment “requires continuous correction and supplementation by a viewpoint indebted to our concrete obligation to individual subjects in need of help”.60 HaberÂ� masian discourse ethics should be supplemented by the LevinasianDerridian ethics of care, which implies asymmetrical responsibility towards the singular other rather than affective solidarity with our human communicative community. 4.1.â•‡ Différend, Releasement, and Discourse Ethics Honneth’s critique of Lyotardian ethics attempts to show how, for all its focus on the incommensurability of language games, it presupposes a dimension of universalist morality that remains suppressed within its theoretical framework. In Lyotard’s The Différend: Phrases in Dispute, the post-metaphysical condition of modernity – value pluralism and loss of historical ‘grand narratives’ – demands an ethical thinking sensitive to the conflicting plurality of value and knowledge claims. Lyotard, much like Rorty, adopts a pragmatist epistemic relativism predicated on the radical incommensurability of forms of knowledge given the alleged crisis in the legitimating function of reason.61 Lyotard adapts the Wittgensteinian model of language games to argue that genres of discourse function through the interlinking of sentences governed by systems of rules that make genres incommensurable; hence there can be no rationally grounded transition between different genres. Instead, the clash between conflicting genres of discourse generates an irresolvable différend or dispute in which, so Lyotard contends, â•‡ ibid., p. 291. â•‡An account that is criticised by Benhabib and Honneth: See S. Benhabib, “Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean-Francois Lyotard”, New German Critique 33, 1984, pp. 103–126 and Honneth, “An Aversion Against the Universal: A Commentary on Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition”, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 2, no. 3, 1985, pp. 147–157. 60 61

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one phrase can ‘obliterate’ another, since there is no commensurable discursive framework enabling meaningful dialogue. This model of anonymous conflict between genres of discourse is then mapped, somewhat implausibly, onto the social field of linguistic subjects, with the result that this formerly ‘subjectless’ model of orders of discourse now takes on a broader moral-ethical character.62 Indeed, Lyotard’s examples (the speech of Holocaust survivors and claims of exploited workers) are chosen to show how the speech of one social group can be silenced if it fails to conform to the rules governing dominant genres of discourse. Institutionally dominant discourses – such as those of positive law and economic rationality – effectively silence the speech of the socially excluded from ever gaining societal expression.63 Lyotard’s ethics of the différend is thus designed to rescue this ‘silent’ dispute from obliteration and thereby give voice to the socially repressed. Lyotard’s ethics, the spirit of which is not in question, could therefore have taken one of two paths: a vaguely ‘Adornian’ path of bearing witness to the mute suffering of the socially excluded, or a more ‘Habermasian’ path of criticising the injustice of certain language games being excluded from the possibility of societal communication.64 Honneth suggests that while Lyotard remains ambiguous between these possibilities, his emphasis on the practical realisation of ‘justice’ tends to favour the latter alternative.65 If that is the case, however, it raises the question of the extent to which Lyotard’s ethics of the différend inadvertently parallels Habermasian discourse ethics. As Honneth observes, both Lyotard and Habermas are responding to modern conditions of value pluralism; and both are concerned about the institutional and discursive barriers that prevent full participation in social communication.66 Lyotard’s ethics of the différend, however, oscillates between a ‘Nietzschean’ agonism of conflicting discourses vying for dominance, and an ‘Adornian’ memorialisation of the suffering of those whose speech has been repressed. Habermas, on the other hand, develops a normative theory of discourse that provides a procedure for ensuring the rational resolution of conflicts in validity â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 293. â•‡ ibid., pp. 293–294. 64 â•‡ ibid., p. 294. 65 â•‡ ibid., pp. 294–295. 66 â•‡ ibid., p. 295. 62 63


claims, one that rests upon the universalist principle of recognising the right of every subject to the unconstrained expression of their interests. Since Lyotard rejects such a principle, at least explicitly, he is forced into the incoherent position of reducing truth claims to the de facto dominance of certain discourses, while at the same time valorising the moral truth claims of those subjects excluded from participation in societal communication. Lyotard’s ethics of the différend must therefore implicitly assume the universalist norm that such silencing violates the communicative freedom of the subject, which in turn presupposes the normative principle of a discourse free of domination.67 This universalist aspect of discourse ethics is, ironically, precisely what is ‘silenced’ within Lyotard’s ethics of the différend. Honneth then turns to Stephen K. White’s version of postmodernist ethics, a model inspired by the Heideggerian attitude of releasement [Gelassenheit], an attitude sharing affinities with Adorno’s “mimetic relation”.68 The emphasis here is on counteracting the insensitivity to the unique particularity of the other that derives from the prevailing action-orientation characteristic of modern theories of morality. White points to the influence on moral thinking of a modern social ontology that privileges active intervention in reality at the expense of passive, non-interventionist forms of engagement.69 In the case of modern morality, this has resulted in the foregrounding of human action leading to perceptible changes in the world and a corresponding neglect of forms of action that do not generate such changes. White’s claim is that a generalisation of the Heideggerian attitude of Gelassenheit, a disengagement of compulsion to act, will open a space for more sensitive awareness of the particularity of the other. White’s proposal is thus tantamount to a postmodern virtue ethics of care [Fürsorge] oriented towards the cultivation of modes of conduct – “the ability to listen, willingness to become emotionally involved”, the capacity to affirm individual particularities – that would sensitise us to the perception of individual particularities and thus enrich our capacity for moral sensitivity more generally.70

â•‡ ibid., pp. 295–296. â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 298â•›ff. See S. K. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, 1991, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 69 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 298. 70 â•‡ ibid., p. 300. 67 68

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Honneth argues, however, that these virtues are also among those most required for successful participation in discourse ethics. Indeed, for the latter to be successful, there must be a disengagement from the activity orientation of morality to ensure that all relevant parties are able effectively to communicate their particular interests and be recognised in their unique personality. This sensitivity to the particularity of the individual through ethical releasement thus provides an important supplement to the universalist dimension of discourse ethics. At the same time, however, White’s ethics of releasement does not really displace the horizon of Kantian universality represented by Habermasian discourse ethics. Indeed, both Lyotardian ethics and the ethics of releasement must assume a version of the Habermasian principle that every subject must have an equal opportunity to articulate their claims freely in a moral-practical discourse guided by the norm of reaching mutual understanding.71 Without assuming this principle, Honneth concludes, the ethics of the différend and ethics of releasement both lose their moral coherence. 4.2.â•‡ Levinas, Derrida, and the Ethics of Care The ethics of care proposed by Levinas and Derrida, however, does effect a displacement of this Kantian horizon of equal treatment. Indeed, Honneth will argue that Derrida’s Levinasian-inspired ethics, with its model of asymmetrical obligations to the singular other, genuinely moves beyond the horizon of Habermasian discourse ethics. Again, it is the category of ‘individual particularity’ that unites Derrida with the other versions of postmodernist ethics; but Derrida challenges the morality of equal treatment, putting it into productive tension with an asymmetrical relationship of care, thereby opening up a genuine alternative to universalist morality and theories of justice.72 For Derrida, the relevant moral experience is to be found in the phenomenon of friendship, where the friend appears to me in the role of unrepresentable individual, and in the role of generalised other.73 Unlike other moral relationships, friendship displays the coexistence of these two intersubjective attitudes: the asymmetrical, affective obligation to other as a unique singular individual, along with my â•‡ ibid., p. 306. â•‡ ibid., pp. 307–308. 73 â•‡ See Derrida, “The Politics of Friendship”. 71 72


respectful treatment of the other as equal to all other persons. The question is whether these two attitudes merely co-exist within friendship, or whether they remain within an irreducible opposition that determines “the entire experiential field of the moral”.74 Derrida answers this question more directly in his essay on law and justice.75 Like the phenomenon of friendship, Derrida maintains that the application of the law involves a similar tension between two different, equally legitimate, principles of moral responsibility. On the one hand, modern law is grounded in the application of the principle of equality, namely that all subjects are equal before the law and entitled to equality of opportunity in exercising their legal freedoms.76 The practical application of this principle requires that, in each individual case of a concrete legal dispute, a judgement of what counts as equal and unequal must be made based upon all relevant aspects and circumstances of the individual case.77 Derrida radicalises this hermeneutic insight, arguing that it is not the principle of equality that orients such judgements, but the principle of “a justice that considers the ‘infinity’ of the concrete other”.78 This then generates a tension between justice as the absolute obligation to the singularity of the other (asymmetrical, incalculable, infinite obligation), and the exercise of justice as formal equality of law or right (the symmetrical, calculable system of finite normative prescriptions). Justice, for Derrida, could even be regarded as the equivalent of love or friendship within the social realm of formal rights. To understand these striking claims, Honneth indicates the degree to which Derrida remains indebted to Levinas’ ethics of an absolute obligation to the other. For Levinas, the other human being always faces me as a person for whom I am responsible, who is in need of care in an unconditionally binding manner, overwhelming my finite possibilities to act to such an extent that I “concurrently become aware of a dimension of infinity”.79 Levinas thus not only gives primacy to the ethical relation to the other; he also undertakes a reversal of the relation between ontology and ethics, giving an “existential priority of the

â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 309. â•‡ See Derrida, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundations of Authority’â•›”. 76 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 310. 77 â•‡ ibid., p. 310. 78 â•‡ ibid., p. 310. 79 â•‡ ibid., p. 311. 74 75

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interpersonal encounter over all realms of being”.80 This means that the relationship with the other involves an encounter with an innerworldly transcendence that renders other objective occurrences and forms of knowledge secondary, derivative or reified.81 The face-to-face encounter with the other is the phenomenal experience of the idea of infinity; the other is the inner-worldly representative of an infinity that always exceeds my comprehension. And this experience compels me to restrict my autonomy in accordance with my unconditional responsibility for the other’s wellbeing.82 This Levinasian idea of the ethical basis of the intersubjective encounter with the other clearly influences Derrida’s account of the aporetic character of justice.83 Levinas, however, supplements his account of morality with another perspective that introduces the dimension of (Kantian) universality. This is the perspective of the ‘third’; of a generalised observer who must decide between competing claims to duties of care for the sake of acting justly.84 Levinas, like Derrida, readily associates this perspective of impartial justice – which we adopt once we direct our actions in accordance with the universalisability of normative claims – with the order of formal law and right.85 The latter, however, remains an abstraction from the more basic form of intersubjective encounter, the face-to-face relation, and thus reduces the unconditional obligation to care for the singular other to the formal principle of treating all persons equally. The result, in Derrida’s reading of Levinas, is a tension between equality and justice that pervades both universalist morality and the system of formal rights. Moral conflicts are always pervaded by this tension between justice and equality, since there is no overarching principle to which we can appeal in concrete cases of conflict over duties of care and equality of treatment.86 Indeed, for Derrida, these â•‡ ibid., p. 311. â•‡ ibid., p. 311–312. 82 â•‡ As Critchley argues, Honneth’s reading of Levinas emphasises the visual rather than the linguistic, epistemic, and phenomenological aspects of the face-to-face encounter, namely that the face is a phenomenon that discloses how the encounter with the other always exceeds the idea of the other in me. Critchley, “Habermas and Derrida Get Married”, p. 272. 83 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 314. 84 â•‡ ibid., p. 313. See E. Levinas, “The Other and Others” in Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis, Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1969, pp. 212–215. 85 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 313. 86 â•‡ ibid., pp. 313–314. 80 81


two different sources of moral orientation remain in a relation of irreducible but productive tension that defines the field of moral experience. This conflict is irresolvable because bestowing unconditional care to a singular individual would mean neglecting moral duties implied by recognition of other human beings as equals. This conflict is productive because the care perspective provides a corrective to the perspective of equality; a moral standard specific to the individual particularity of the other that can be used, in a reflexive manner, to orient the practical attempt to realise equal treatment.87 This mutually transforming supplementation is tantamount to a kind of ‘negative dialectic’ between the perspectives of equality and care that Derrida elsewhere calls the movement of deconstructive justice.88 With this claim, Honneth concludes, Derrida goes “way beyond” the Kantian tradition of justice, since he is attempting to bring together the moral perspectives of care and equality within a more comprehensive thought of justice.89 Honneth’s discussion of deconstructive ethics concludes with a surprising criticism of Habermas’ attempt to accommodate the care perspective into discourse ethics. Indeed, Honneth remarks that Habermas’ attempt to mediate between equality and care has “the features of a precipitate and inappropriate reconciliation” – a strong criticism indeed.90 Instead of asymmetrical care, Habermas proposes the principle of “solidarity” as the existential concern for the “welfare of one’s fellow man”.91 Solidarity, as the “other of justice”, must be built into practical discourse because others are not only taken to be equal persons but must also be considered as unrepresentable individuals.92 Habermasian solidarity is thus an attempt to extend the attitude of care equally to all human beings as participating in a shared communicative form of life. Habermasian affective solidarity, however, implies that we must abstract from our experience of solidarity within a particular social â•‡ ibid., p. 315. â•‡ See the provocative remark: “Justice is Deconstruction” in Derrida, “Force of Law”, p. 945. 89 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 315. 90 â•‡ ibid., p. 317. This is particularly so given Habermas’ staunch opposition to the poststructuralist critique of reason and the subject in all its contemporary variants. 91 â•‡ ibid., p. 317. 92 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 317. See Habermas, “Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning Stage 6” in ed. T. E. Wren, The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion between Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Cambridge Ma., MIT Press, 1990, p. 244. 87 88

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and cultural community. As Honneth points out, the feeling of social membership is formed through shared experiences, particularly of adversity, experiences that must assume shared goals, hence shared communal values. The feeling of social membership therefore remains bound to the presupposition of membership in a value community, which includes the irreducible element of particularism inherent in every social and cultural community.93 Honneth thus concludes that Habermasian solidarity remains “abstractly utopian” in abstracting from the particularistic aspects of the experience of social and cultural community: it implausibly assumes that all human beings have a shared goal as members of the human communicative form of life.94 In contrast to Habermas’ affective solidarity, Derrida’s Levinasianinspired account of ‘caring justice’ presents us with a unilateral, nonreciprocal form of concern and responsibility.95 Indeed, Derridian unconditional responsibility for the other implies a considerable restriction of one’s autonomy, which means that it cannot be expected universally of all human beings in the way that we can expect universal observance of the principle of equal respect for all individuals.96 Moreover, from a genetic perspective, the experience of care precedes equality; the phenomenon of care, in the experience of early childhood, precedes the acquisition of other moral perspectives. Honneth, however, then abruptly claims that they are mutually exclusive.97 The asymmetrical obligation to care for the singular other only applies when the individual cannot be subjected to equal treatment.98 Conversely, equal treatment excludes asymmetrical obligation to care for the other; once a person can be recognised as equal being among all others – which means capable of participating in communicative discourse – the attitude of care must cease.99

â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, pp. 317–318. â•‡ ibid., p. 318. 95 â•‡ ibid., p. 318. 96 â•‡ ibid., p. 318. 97 â•‡ ibid., p. 318. 98 â•‡ See Honneth’s remark: “An obligation to care and to be benevolent can only exist where a person is in a state of such extreme need or hardship that the moral principle of equal treatment can no longer be applied to him or her in a balanced manner”. Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 318. 99 â•‡ See Honneth’s remark: “an attitude of benevolence is not permissible toward subjects who are able to articulate their beliefs and views publicly”. Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 319. 93 94


But as Critchley asks, why should we assume the reciprocal exclusivity of care and equality?100 Why not their mutual supplementarity? Indeed, this is what Honneth has argued is the virtue of Derrida’s deconstructivist ethics: that Derrida maintains both perspectives in an irreducible tension such that the care perspective provides a reflective corrective to the principle of equality. Now, however, Honneth claims that there is in fact an exclusive opposition between care and equality: where we have one, we cannot have the other, and hence there can be no mutual supplementation between them. This contradicts Honneth’s earlier claim that the perspective of care provides a “continuous correction and supplementation” of the principle of equality.101 Moreover, this tension raises the question whether Honneth’s own ethics of recognition might be subject to the same criticism as Habermasian discourse ethics. On the one hand, the care perspective would seem congruent with the unconditional acknowledgement of one’s needs through loving care in early childhood.102 As Honneth argues, this primary intersubjectivity provides an affective, intercorporeal foundation for the more reflexive forms of recognition in the family; for the selfrespect derived in the sphere of legal recognition and formal rights; and for the self-esteem derived from the sphere of personal achievement and social solidarity.103 On the other hand, Honneth’s normative model of mutual recognition also assumes a subject capable of either bestowing or withholding recognition, which would seem to exclude cases of an asymmetrical obligation to the singular other, unless we presuppose that the other in question, as in Habermasian discourse ethics, is “recognised as an equal being among all others – in that he or she can participate in practical discourses”.104 But in that case we cannot speak of an asymmetrical relationship of caring recognition. Indeed, in this respect there can be no mutual recognition between infant and parent, although there is certainly affective care and intercorporeal

100 â•‡ As Critchley pointedly remarks, “Is the ethics of care only operative in relation to ‘children and idiots,’ as Locke would have said?” Critchley, “Habermas and Derrida Get Married”, p. 277. 101 â•‡ See Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 291. 102 â•‡ As suggested by Honneth’s reliance on psychological theories of the primary role of care in the intersubjective development of identity. See, for example, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 95–107. 103 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, esp. Chapters 4–6. 104 â•‡ Honneth, “The Other of Justice”, p. 319.

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engagement. What, then, of the relationship between care and equality in the theory of recognition? While I cannot pursue this question here, I want to suggest that we can read this ‘tension’ between the care perspective and mutual recognition as supporting Derrida’s contention that there is an irreducible yet productive tension between care and equality. This suggests that we could read Honneth’s criticism of Habermasian solidarity and defence of Derridian ethics as an implicit self-criticism – an acknowledgment that there is in the perspective of ‘caring justice’ – something that also exceeds the horizon of the ethics of recognition. For if the latter presupposes a relationship between mutually recognising subjects, we can either exclude the case of asymmetrical care as falling outside the domain of recognition proper, or admit the possibility of a caring recognition of the other as a needy being (as between parent and infant), which represents the special case of an asymmetrical, yet morally just recognition. Honneth would clearly favour this second alternative, given his emphasis on psychoanalytic and developmental psychology accounts of the primary experience of affective care, of unconditional acknowledgment of needs in early infancy, and his related discussion of “the love relationship as a process of mutual recognition”.105 Certainly Honneth’s abrupt assertion, then, of an exclusive opposition between care and equality in “The Other of Justice” runs counter to the thrust of his argument that care and equality remain in a tense relationship of mutual supplementation. This ambiguity between care and recognition in Honneth’s account, I would claim, suggests that the perspective of asymmetrical care, as the “other of justice”, might also pose an ethical challenge to the theory of recognition. 5.â•‡ Honneth contra Poststructuralism: Critical Questions In conclusion I want to pose some critical questions concerning Honneth’s critique of poststructuralist social philosophy, suggesting that these point to unresolved issues in the theory of recognition. At the same time, they suggest that the dialogue between critical theory and poststructuralist thought remains an unfinished project, one 105 â•‡ See, for example, Honneth’s use of D. W. Winnicott’s and Jessica Benjamin’s work in his account of love in The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 95–107.


that returns us to issues already raised by Adorno, a perspective that Honneth appears to be reconsidering in his most recent work. 1.â•‡ Power and Recognition: Does Honneth overlook, in his recent work on the morality of recognition, the moment of social antagonism that was so important in his earlier critique of Foucault? This action-theoretic model of the social as a field of social struggles was a crucial inspiration for Honneth’s intersubjectivist theory of recognition; yet it seems to recede somewhat in his subsequent foregrounding of the morality, rather than the politics, of recognition.106 Here one could suggest a potential rapprochement between Honnethian recognition and Foucault’s analytic of power. As Honneth argues, power relations presuppose intersubjective recognition, a point also implicitly acknowledged by the later Foucault.107 In this respect, the theory of recognition could serve as a potential solution to the crucial problem of a normative deficit in Foucault’s analytic of power. As Kojève famously argued, however, and contemporary social movements also demonstrate, the demand for, and achievement of, social recognition can also be an element in strategic power relations. At the same time, as Foucault discovered, the operations of power cannot be understood solely from an action-theoretic perspective. Indeed, perhaps Foucault was right to articulate, albeit incoherently, the dual perspectives of subject and system in his analysis of power. How to deal with the systemic, institutional dimensions of power in the theory of recognition?108 2.â•‡ Significance of the Body: Honneth acknowledges the importance of the emphasis that Foucault and Adorno place on the sufferings of the body, while criticising their respective theories of subjectivity 106 â•‡ As J-P. Deranty points out (p. 82 in this volume), Honneth has recently described his theoretical task as the “moral epistemology of recognition”, an analysis of the precise conceptual and normative structure of recognition. See the Preface to Â� Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen Einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2003. 107 â•‡ As Foucault remarks, “Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free”. The corollary to this claim is that participants in power relations must mutually recognise the freedom of the other in order to engage in strategic interactions. M. Foucault, “The Subject and Power” in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, p. 221. 108 â•‡E. Renault’s recent work on a theory of institutions within the recognition-theoretic framework points the way here to a comprehensive extension of the theory of recognition to economic and political domains. See E. Renault, Mépris social. Éthique et politique de la reconnaissance, Paris, Éditions du Passsant, 2000; See also Chapter 7 in this volume.

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and society. For the effects of social misrecognition involve not only distorted forms of communication but the real corporeal experience of suffering; this remains a fundamental experience essential to any account of misrecognition as a moral injury to the integrity, and hence freedom and dignity, of the autonomous subject. How to include the Foucaultian and Adornian emphasis on bodily suffering within the theory of recognition? Here J. M. Bernstein’s discussion of the corporeal sources of the idea of moral injury in the experience of social misrecognition opens up an important line of thought, deeply indebted to Adorno.109 From a related perspective, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology might provide a deeper way of acknowledging the intercorporeal basis of intersubjective recognition in a manner that would be fruitful for both critical theory and poststructuralism.110 3.â•‡ Aesthetic Critique of Modernity: One of the essential elements of Nietzschean poststructuralism is the aesthetic critique of modernity. What of the aesthetic dimension in Honneth’s theory of recognition? His critique of the deficiencies of the Nietzscheanaestheticist conception of freedom, for all its virtues, remains silent on this aspect of freedom implicit in aesthetic modernism, and in the postmodernist critique of rationality from Lyotard to Derrida. Is there a role for the aesthetic critique of modernity in the theory of recognition? This perspective is lacking in Honneth’s critique of poststructuralism and, indeed, in his account of the cultural dimensions of intersubjective recognition more generally. Given the importance for Hegel of art – especially the ‘end of art’ in modernity – one would think that neo-Hegelian recognition theory ought to be more concerned with this dimension. A recognition-theoretic account of the aesthetic critique of modernity, I suggest, would thus add an important dimension to Honneth’s account of the cultural responses to distorted forms of social intersubjectivity. â•‡See J. M. Bernstein, “Suffering Injustice: Misrecognition as Moral Injury in Critical Theory”, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, September 2005, vol. 13, pp. 303–324. For a critical discussion of this approach, see R. Sinnerbrink, “Misrecognition and Moral Injury: Reflections on Honneth and Bernstein”, in M. Sharpe, M. Noonan, and J. Freddi (eds.), Trauma, Historicity, Philosophy, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 282–301. 110 â•‡ See J-P. Deranty’s critique of the “loss of nature” in Honneth’s theory of recognition, a loss that Deranty argues could be reversed by integrating Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology into the theory of recognition. J-P. Deranty, “The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy. Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty”, Critical Horizons, vol. 6, 2005, pp. 153–181. 109


4.â•‡ Back to Adorno? The remarks above suggest that Honneth’s encounter with poststructuralism raises significant issues not yet fully resolved within his work. It further suggests that the critical dialogue between critical theory and poststructuralism remains an unfinished project, still theoretically pertinent rather than historically passé. On this point, it also raises the significance of a reconsideration of Adorno’s thought for mediating this critical dialogue. While Honneth today regards poststructuralism as a superseded theoretical position – citing its inadequate account of intersubjective conditions of normative agreement, its implausibly subjectivist conception of freedom, and inadequate model of subjectivity – he nonetheless acknowledges elements of the poststructuralist critique of instrumental rationality and of monological subjectivity, particularly in the asymmetrical ethics of care in Levinas and Derrida. In doing so, however, Honneth’s critique of poststructuralist social philosophy also revives the spirit of Adorno’s “disclosing critique of modernity” from a recognition-theoretic perspective.111 The philosophical themes relevant here, among others, include Adorno’s critique of instrumental rationality and its obliteration of non-identity; his acknowledgment of our embodied being through the ‘mimetic’ relationship with nature and with the singularity of others; and his synthetic “argument through narrative” method for “the diagnosis of pathology in the form of world-disclosing critique”.112 From the perspective of the ‘learning process’ at issue in a reflective critical theory, Honneth’s critical encounter with poststructuralism reveals the importance of a contemporary retrieval of Adorno’s disclosing critique of the “paradoxes of capitalist modernity”.113 Such a rethinking of Adorno, I suggest, could contribute to the renewal of contemporary critical theory by relaunching its interrupted dialogue with poststructuralism and its own critical origins.

111 â•‡ See Honneth “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism”, Constellations, vol. 7, no. 1, 2000, pp. 116–127. 112 â•‡ Honneth, “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society”, pp. 122–123. 113 â•‡See Honneth, “A Physiognomy of the Capitalist Form of Life: A Sketch of Adorno’s Social Theory”, Constellations, vol. 12, no. 1, 2005, pp. 50–64; and Honneth, “Organisierte Selbstverwirklichung. Paradoxien der Individualisierung”, in A. Honneth (ed.), Befreiung aus der Mündigkeit. Paradoxien der gegenwertigen Kapitalismus, Frankfurt/M., Campus, 2002, pp. 141–158.

Chapter seven

The Theory of Recognition and Critique of Institutions1 Emmanuel Renault In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth states that the various forms of social injustice correspond to different types of social denial of recognition.2 But what precisely is social in recognition and denials of recognition? To answer this question, one has to describe the relationship between recognition understood as a fundamental expectation of individuals, and recognition produced by institutions. If Honneth fails to offer such a description, it is mainly because he understands his own theory of recognition as a moral and social philosophy focusing on the normative presuppositions of social life. However, his theory of recognition is also intended to be a political and social theory, that is, a theory of the struggle against social injustice and a theory that identifies the social processes and structures responsible for such injustices. On the one hand, as political theory, it has to describe the various types of injustice produced by institutions, because it is always in given institutional frameworks that negative experiences occur that provide the incentives for struggles against social injustices. On the other hand, as social theory, it has to elaborate on intermediary concepts to mediate philosophy and the social sciences in order to describe the various ways recognition and denial of recognition are socially constructed. Hence, it is from a political and sociological point of view that a shift to institutional analysis seems necessary. 1 â•‡ I wish to record my gratitude to the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University (Sydney) who invited me as a Visiting Scholar (July–August 2004) and to the Institut für Sozialforschung where I stayed as a Humboldt Fellow (September 2004–August 2005). At both places I had the opportunity to present this paper and submit it to intensive discussions. I wish particularly to thank A. Honneth, N. Smith, H. Kocyba, F. Sütterluty, S. Voswinkel, H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, M. LöwBeer, I. Somm, B. Heitzmann, C. Zurn, H. Ikäheimo and J.-P. Deranty for their suggestions. 2 â•‡ A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge UK, Polity Press, 1995.

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Firstly, I will oppose two conceptions of recognition: Honneth’s theory of institutions as expressions of recognition, and a conception of recognition where institutions play a constitutive role. Secondly, I will try and define what institutions are and, thirdly, I will propose a definition of institutional effects of recognition. In conclusion, I will ask whether this conception of recognition has to be understood as complementing Honneth’s theory, or competing with it. 1.â•‡ Expressivist versus Constitutive Concept of Recognition If the theory of recognition intends to characterise social justice, its object must be social. However, it is not easy to determine what is social in recognition. To spell out the nature of the problem, let us begin with a formal definition of the recognition relationship. The notion of the recognition relationship presupposes a complex interplay of identifications, expectations and attitudes. On the one hand, it presupposes the attribution of a propriety A to an individual B by another individual C (cognitive identification) and that a given evaluation is associated with A and embodied in the attitude of C toward B (practical evaluation). On the other hand, it presupposes that B expects given cognitive identifications as well as given practical evaluations according to which B can interpret the attitude of C either as a worthy recognition or as a denial of recognition. For a given individual (C), the experience of recognition and denial of recognition not only presupposes a recognitive attitude of another individual (B) toward C (a cognitive identification and practical evaluation of one aspect of C’s existence); it also presupposes that this recognitive attitude matters to C, that C understands and accepts its implicit or explicit identification (otherwise C will feel misrecognised) and evaluation (otherwise C will feel disrespected).3 The recognitive relationship therefore seems to denote a simple relationship between I and Thou, and it is hard to see how this kind of 3 â•‡ Compare with H. Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Inquiry, 45, 2002. My definition of recognition differs from that of Ikäheimo because I advance the notion that recognition presupposes an expectation rather than an attitude of B, and because it seems to me that recognition has to be understood in terms of evaluative identification if it is to take into account (a) the distinction between misrecognition and disrespect and (b) the link between social classifications and struggles for recognition analysed for example by P. Bourdieu (see Méditations Pascaliennes, Paris, Seuil, 1997, p. 223).

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relationship could be termed ‘social’. It is not social if we define the social as Durkheim does as the general facts that impose themselves on all living individuals in a given society.4 By contrast, the recognitive relationship links two particular individuals and not the individual to the social totality. The recognitive relationship is not social either if we define social like Weber through the ‘social relation’, that is, in the sense of anticipating the behaviour of the partners in interaction.5 In fact, expectations of recognition sometimes aim at a particular response by the other rather than a social regularity, and a social situation can be experienced as a denial of recognition whether or not the behaviour of others meets our anticipations. Honneth has developed two strategies to solve this general problem, both of which give a key role to an expressivistic conception of institutions. (a) The first may be termed the ‘anthropological strategy’. The challenge of a theory of recognition understood as a philosophical anthropology is to interpret recognitive relationships through a moral psychology, which determines the normative presuppositions of social life. Recognitive relationships are part of moral psychology because they define the relational conditions under which an unharmed psychic life, as well as the moral life in general, is possible. However, they also constitute the normative presuppositions of social life because the expectations aimed at confirmation of a positive relationship to oneself are necessary conditions for social integration, the latter being considered pars constituens of all non-pathological social orders. Honneth, therefore, does not just assert that these normative expectations intersect with social interactions and that while immanent to social life, they also transcend it. Beyond that and more importantly, he argues that no true social order can sustain itself if it does not in one way or another satisfy fundamental recognitive expectations. Equally, he argues that societies are caught up in a process of moral rationalisation consisting of the ever greater recognition granted to an ever greater number of individuals.6

4 â•‡E. Durkheim, The Rules of the Sociological Method, New York, The Free Press, 1966, chap. 1. 5 â•‡M. Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster Press, 1968, par. 3, pp. 26–28. 6 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Die Pointe der Anerkennung. Eine Entgegnung auf die Entgegnung” in N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Umverteilung oder Anerkennung?, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 2003.

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This theoretical strategy relies totally on what I would term an expressivist concept of recognition.7 On the one hand, the recognitive relationship is conceived of as being made up of relations between the I and the Thou, which are themselves not social. On the other hand, the recognitive relationship allows an evaluation of those social relations that condition the relations of I and Thou, depending on the extent to which these social relations further or prevent recognition. It is in this sense that social relations and institutions express more or less recognitive relationships. This expressivist conception of recognition is in perfect accord with the conception of institution Honneth developed in his book The Critique of Power,8 where he interprets institutions as the result of a struggle for recognition. Honneth believes the social world must be considered the result of a struggle for recognition and it can express either a happy resolution of this struggle or its perpetuation. ‘Express’ here means that institutions must not be conceived of as arrangements that produce recognition or denial of recognition by themselves, but rather as the institutionalisation of recognitive relationships that belong to a pre-institutional level. The merit of this expressivist conception is to emphasise the fact that the institutional context cannot by itself ensure the satisfaction of recognitive expectations and that, in questions of recognition, the logic of individual relations always doubles up institutional logics. 7 â•‡Some scholars have distinguished expressivistic (Taylor), anthropological (Honneth) and hermeneutical (Ricoeur) models of recognition; see for example M. P. Lara, Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere, Cambridge UK, Polity Press, 1998, p. 120 sq. I use the notion of an expressivist conception of recognition in another sense in connection with the definition of institutions. Honneth has never used the words ‘expressivist concept of recognition’ that I use here to reconstruct the logic of its theory. Nevertheless, he has written that institutions “express” more or less recognition (A. Honneth, “Anerkennung als Ideologie,” West End, 1 Jg., Heft. 1, 2004, p. 59). In connection with the epistemology of recognition, Honneth has also said that the distinction between cognition and recognition depends on the ‘expressivist’ dimension of action: to interpret a behaviour as a recognition would be to interpret it as the expression of a motivation; see A. Honneth, Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 11–15. A Wittgensteinian critique of the ‘interiority myth’ could lead to an epistemological critique of this ‘expressivistic model’ and ground the thesis that recognition is nowhere else than in acts, rather than in motivations of acts. Although the critique of the ‘interiority myth’ might be necessary to argue that institutions by themselves produce effects of recognition (and not only individuals’ actions as an expression of individual motivations), the aim of this paper is not to discuss this use of the notion of ‘expression’. 8 â•‡ A. Honneth, The Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, Cambridge Mass./London, The MIT Press, 1991.


However, this conception of recognition must also answer the classical objections that have been raised against attempts to construct a social theory on the basis of a concept of presocial intersubjectivity. First, it is doubtful that the notion of presocial intersubjectivity is tenable and that the social world can be considered the simple objectification of an intersubjectivity that would be constituted before it. Husserl, in the fifth Cartesian Meditation, provides the most characteristic example of an approach basing the social on an intersubjectivity of this type. In Sociology and the Theory of Language,9 Habermas found in Wittgenstein an alternative to this way of thinking of the social and several authors today try to elaborate a social philosophy in the same spirit by referring to the Wittgensteinian concept of rule. Such approaches highlight the fact that interaction presupposes rules that are imposed on individuals, like the grammar of language games, in other words, constraints that pre-exist the use made of them. Significations themselves and the whole of intentional life appear to be dependent on the social efficiency of rules. Subjectivity itself seems to be socially instituted, and therefore any attempt to derive the social from a presocial intersubjectivity is in vain. This type of argument could be raised against the theory of recognition, even if the latter has emerged from an internal critique of the Habermasian theory of communicative action. In a way similar to Habermas, who claims that social interaction is underpinned by the normative principles of linguistic understanding, Honneth argues that social interaction is underpinned by the normative principles of a nonlinguistic communication that is conducted in relationships of recognition. However, while for Habermas the normative demands of mutual understanding can be effectuated only within the background convictions sedimented within ordinary language, which constitute the moment of institution (in the sense of social usages), Honneth’s critique of Habermas’ theory of institutions leads him to interpret the conditions of recognition as normative expectations that structure the institutions from outside. On the contrary, it seems to me, the insufficiencies of the notion of pre-social intersubjectivity and the fact that subjectivity and the whole of existence are instituted, should imply that the relations of recognition can only ever occur within social games that are under the rule of instituted principles, in the same way that 9 â•‡J. Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergänzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1995.

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linguistic acts can occur solely within the language games structured by instituted rules. Two consequences derive immediately from this: 1) the relations of recognition should no longer be understood as normative presuppositions of social life; 2) the concept of recognition should no longer be conceived of as expressivist. I will now develop these two consequences. If demands for recognition do not exist outside the social parameters defined by the rules of social interaction and the normative principles that preside over different types of justification in institutions, then they can no longer be considered normative presuppositions of social life. The fundamental point here is that expectations of recognition never exist in pure form, but are always conditioned by social rules. The idea that a social order is not pathological only if it satisfies such expectations underestimates the fact that the way social forms are expressed can impact on these expectations in infinite number of ways. It seems quite difficult to define exactly what distinguishes social interaction and social integration. Even if we admit this conceptual distinction, it might be that recognition expectations can be satisfied even in forms of disintegrated society so that, properly speaking, they could not be considered presuppositions of social integration. Therefore, neither could they be considered as constraints imposing such a process of moral rationalisation on societies. However, it remains a fact that these expectations can be dissatisfied. Here, the anthropological strategy has to face one of the classical problems of all philosophical anthropology: on the one hand, human nature never exists as such but always as a socially constructed second nature; on the other hand, if societies are able to transform this nature into second natures, they can also destroy this nature. The normative expectations are plastic because they are themselves quite underdetermined as to the modality of their satisfaction. Nevertheless, they are not infinitely malleable and can therefore still provide the point of reference for a critique of society. In this case, the critical point of view is rooted in social situations in which the incompatibility of given normative principles and social institutions with these fundamental expectations is experienced. Criticism is rooted in the experience of a denial of recognition, which can be explained neither by the fact that institutions are not fulfilling the recognition they promise, nor that some institutional identifications or evaluations are in contradiction, but by the dissatisfaction of fundamental expectations that are


irreducible to social constructions. Grounded in such negative experiences,10 a social critique of this type does not try to justify the promise of a better world contained in expectations that are disappointed. It solely tries to find in the need for recognition the lever that destabilises prevailing normative principles of the social order and what makes social progress possible, in quantitative terms, in terms of amelioration, and also in qualitative terms, in terms of transformation. If recognitive relations depend on the social in the sense that they depend on rules that structure social interaction and normative principles that regulate institutions, then the concept of recognition is not just an expressivist concept, but a constitutive one: institutions do not just express relations of recognition, they produce them. The problem with the expressivist concept of social recognition is that it only considers the problem of normative expectations addressed to institutions, and does not take into account the fact that subjectivities only ever address demands of recognition to institutions within the frame of an institutional predetermination. So the question is: What is the effect of institutions on subjectivities? How are they articulated to demands of recognition? To answer these questions, one has to try and define more precisely the notion of institution. Before dealing with this issue, however, I will describe the second strategy, the historical one. (b) The core of this second strategy, recently developed by Honneth, is a theory of modernity. The shift from philosophical anthropology to theory of modern history is apparent in his recent works.11 This second â•‡ The following objection could be raised: am I sure these experiences of denial of recognition exist, which can be explained only by a dissatisfaction of fundamental expectations, and not only by the dissatisfaction of socially constructed expectations? My answer would be that in some extreme social experiences, no adaptation is possible to identifications and evaluations produced by the social context without mobilising subjective defences that are psychologically destroying. In these situations, the recognition expectations can no longer be considered internalisation of a social model of recognition, but rather as what resists the recognitive logic of the social situation, or as what requires psychological defences. Social experiences of homeless people give an example of such destruction of human nature, rather than transformation of second nature; see E. Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et clinique de l’injustice, Paris, La découverte, 2004, chaps. 6 & 7. 11 â•‡ A. Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser” in N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 138: “subjective expectations of recognition cannot simply be derived from an anthropological theory of the person. To the contrary, it is the most highly differentiated recognition spheres that provide the key for retrospective speculation on the peculiarity of the intersubjective ‘nature’ of human beings”. 10

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strategy could be understood as a self-criticism of the first. Recognition expectations are now conceived of along a sociological model. They no longer appear as a set of unhistorical expectations, but as a set of promises produced by the modern differentiation of the social spheres of family, market and law. In this second strategy, the notion of normative presuppositions of social life still plays a role, but its meaning has changed. It no longer denotes the normative constraints that individuals impose on societies, but the normative promises by which institutions are able to coordinate individual actions and sustain themselves, that is, the conditions of a social integration that enable individuals to recognise themselves as members of the same normative order and that enable social structures to rely on agreement rather violence.12 Normative presuppositions of social life are now conceived of along the model of social justifications needed by institutions in order to coordinate actions. At first glance, it could seem that this second strategy loses what was essential in the first, that is, the link between institutions and struggles; but this is not the case. Honneth highlights the fact that institutions are not always able to achieve what they promise (in that sense, modern promises can be understood as a new immanent transcendence), and that social conflicts arise from this discrepancy. Following this argument, one could point out, with Thévenot, Bolstanki and Chiapello,13 that each given institutional realm has its own normative principles so that there is no general normative point of view on social injustices and social conflicts. On the contrary, Honneth defends the idea that recognition provides norms of justice for all institutions. Therefore, he distinguishes two kinds of institutional levels and gives a new meaning to his expressivist model and new room for social conflicts. According to his new model, the fundamental recognition expectations are rooted in the deep institutional level of what he terms “the kernel-institutions of the capitalist social form”.14 The anthropological effect of the deep institutional level is the constitution of a ‘second nature’, which corresponds not only to the general customs and usages in a given society,

12 â•‡A. Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, Inquiry, 45, 2002, pp. 499–519. 13 â•‡L. Boltanski & L. Thévenot, De la justification, Paris, Gallimard, 1991; L. Boltanski & E. Chiapello, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme, Paris, Gallimard, 1999. 14 â•‡A. Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser”, p. 134.


but also to the socially valid norms through which individuals learn to recognise the value of others (a second nature conceived of as nature mediated by a ‘space of reasons’ rather than as social transformation of human nature). However, Honneth also distinguishes between the level of the basic institutional framework and that of the various institutions of capitalist societies, and he states that these second-level institutions (school, firms, associations, and so on) are characterised by a set of social features that produce new effects of recognition on individuals. Honneth’s hypothesis is that the modern differentiation of the three spheres of family, market and law is responsible for universal promises incorporated in a second nature, and that given social features of the second institutional level are responsible for modern promises remaining partially disappointed. It is precisely the aim of social and political struggles to reduce this discrepancy so that this second institutional level could express more adequately universal recognition expectations. Hence, in this new model, one still may say that ‘institutions’ express more or less recognition,15 but without considering recognition as a pre-institutional phenomenon. Despite its theoretical sophistication, this second strategy16 raises new problems. On the political level, the issue at stake is that of the shift to the theory of modernity. It might be suspected that this shift implies a loss of critical power. Instead of assuming that the recognition expectations provide a lever for critique of the social order as a whole (of the various institutions and institutionalised normative principles), the theory of modernity assumes that our society is rational 15 â•‡ See A. Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in B. Van den Brink and D. Owen (eds), Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 355, where the notion of expression is used to describe the relation between the two institutional levels: “we have to distinguish between those institutions in which patterns of recognition find social expression, and those institutional rules and practices that articulate particular forms of recognition in merely indirect ways or as mere side- effects.” 16 â•‡ I will not discuss here the connection of these two strategies. It can be said that the second strategy completes rather than supersedes the first (see “Grounding Recognition”). However, it has also been said that his theory of recognition has to choose between communicative, historical and anthropological strategies that are not compatible (see Ch. Zurn, “Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life’,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, vol. 26, no. 1, 2000, pp. 115–124). This paper does not intend to solve this problem but to sketch out the logic of each strategy (as an ideal-type for theories of recognition dealing with institutions) and to show that the concepts of ‘normative presuppositions of social life’, ‘normative expectations’, ‘second nature’, ‘social struggles’, ‘expression’ and ‘institutions’ find different meanings in each of them.

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in its general structures and its main normative principles, so that political struggles have to restrict themselves to the achievement of what the actual social order promises us.17 Social progress can no longer be understood in qualitative terms, in terms of social transformation, but only in quantitative terms, in terms of amelioration. On a sociological level, two problems deserve consideration both of which are related to the fact that the distinction between ‘second nature’ and ‘institutions’ calls for further justification. Understood as the effect of the modern differentiation of the spheres of family, law and market, the second nature appears as a social construction, but Honneth does not provide the theory of institutional effects that is called for by such a conception of second nature. Due to the lack of this theory, a second problem is that one cannot see clearly what the difference is between second nature, as a set of effects of the deep institutional level, and the other institutional effects (effects produced by ‘institutions’ of the second level). This problem finds illustration in Honneth’s critique of Hegel’s concept of Sittlichkeit.18 Honneth denounces an ‘over-institutionalisation’ in the confusion of ‘Sittlichkeit’ with the given institutions of the social historical world. On the normative level (that of Hegel’s theory as political philosophy), it is clear that the notion of Sittlichkeit, as realisation of universal moral claims (Moralität), is irreducible to historical given institutions. However, on the descriptive level (that of Hegel’s theory as social theory), it remains dubious that the very notion of Sittlichkeit could denote something other than the various institutional settings and their effects on the ‘free will’, effects that are parts of what Hegel himself termed “second nature”. On the normative level, a critique of the over-institutionalisation would mean a classical critique of the Hegelian assumption that reconciliation between the rational and the real has already occurred, but it would then be a critique of overrationalisation rather than over-institutionalisation. The grounds for such a critique on the descriptive level, where Honneth seems to be urging arguments against Hegel, seems less convincing. How is it possible to understand Sittlichkeit, as second nature, other than as the whole set of institutional effects on human will in a given society? In the 17 â•‡ Compare with “Brève conversation avec Axel Honneth” in Le nouvel observateur hors-série, dec 2004–janv 2005, p. 69. See also “Reconstructive Social Criticism with a Genealogical Proviso: On the Idea of ‘Critique’ in the Frankfurt School”, in A. Honneth, Pathologies of Reason, pp. 43–53. 18 â•‡ A. Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Stuttgart, Reclam, 2001.


second model as in the first, problems seem to lie in the very definition of institutions and institutional effects. To retain its critical power and to face the above difficulty of all philosophical anthropology, the theory of recognition has to keep on understanding normative expectations according the first model, that is, not only as socially constructed but as fundamental expectations. On the other hand, to posit recognition and denial of recognition as social phenomena, it also has to retain from the second model the idea of an institutionally constructed recognition. Given that it remains unclear, even in the second model, how institutions produce such a construction, I will now try to clarify the notion of institution and show that a recognition theory can offer an original account in the debate on institutions. 2.â•‡ Defining Institutions What is the link between individual action and social settings? Is a theory of social action sufficient to explain social evolution, or it is also necessary to refer to a functional theory of macro-social constraints? Answering these fundamental questions means assuming a given definition of institution. Nevertheless, the very notion of institution usually remains quite vague and problematic in political and social philosophy. (a) In attempting to characterise the concept of institution in social philosophy one immediately comes across the debate between individualism and holism. The individualist position relies on two main theses: the ultimate components of social life are individual behaviours; all social phenomena can be modified if the individuals concerned decide so. Primary social phenomena are therefore individual ones and collective phenomena are derived phenomena. By contrast, the holistic position is about presupposing the existence of an irreducibly collective dimension of social life, a dimension instituted independently of individual behaviours that is sometimes called ‘institution’. In this case, the concept is taken in a wide sense. To illustrate the debate, we can refer to the definition given by Max Weber to the specifically social dimension of social phenomena. In EconÂ�omy and Society, social action is defined as “the actor’s behaviour … meaningfully oriented to that of others”.19 Weber further 19

â•‡ M. Weber, Economy and Society, par. 1-B, p. 23.

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argues that the social world is made up of actions whose meaning depends on taking into account the actions of others. This definition is not strictly speaking individualistic since it does not specify the origin of meaning given by the individual to their actions. However, it makes it possible to understand how an individualistic approach can try to reduce the social to the modalities according to which individuals attempt to coordinate their actions within their understanding of the context of action. Moreover, this definition clarifies how collective phenomena can be conceived of as a simple aggregation of individual behaviours. The Weberian definition is also interesting for clearly showing the limits of the individualistic perspective. To orient oneself meaningfully on the basis of others’ actions, one must be able to presuppose rules of action that are common to the different partners of interaction. However, if these rules enable the anticipation of the other’s behaviour, it is because they are imposed upon the agents as rules that are socially valid, as rules that are always already instituted before the agents can acknowledge them as valid. Therefore, social activity presupposes forms of understanding with others, which in turn presuppose the existence of a common language through which we grant common meaning to the rules that govern interaction and to the specific objects we strive for. Social activity entails a communicative dimension and it seems obvious that communication can occur only if there are common meanings, in other words, socially instituted meanings. It is tempting to develop this holistic argument by following Wittgenstein in whom we find the argument that “the speaking of a language is part of an activity, or of a form of life”,20 or that meanings are defined by “customs (usages, institutions)”.21 In the latter quote, the term institution designates only one kind of custom, but it is possible to interpret it as pointing more to a principle than an example; in other words, to mean that all meaning is instituted in that it is inscribed within an institutional context. This interpretation is, for example, the one made by Vincent Descombes22 when he argues that the question of meaning leads back to the question of institution, if we understand institution in a Durkheimian sense as “the totality of fully instituted behaviours or ideas which individuals find before them and that 20 â•‡L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, #23, G.E. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, p. 11. 21 â•‡Wittgenstein, Philosophical Explorations, #199, p. 80–81. 22 â•‡ V. Descombes, Les institutions du sens, Paris, Minuit, 1997, pp. 291–298.


impose themselves more or less on them”.23 Common meanings would impose themselves on individuals because they are immanent to the modes of social action through which individuals are socialised and enter into relationships with each other. These modes of social action should be called institutions because, following Wittgenstein, linguistic acts presuppose institutions and conversely, institutions must be understood on the model of grammatical rules and shared meanings. Usages are thus understood as the use of rules. (b) The very notion of institutions, however, calls for conceptual distinctions. The generic features of institutions are surely socially valid and durable, according to the Durkheimian definition. However, other social features need to be taken into account in order to specify the various species of institutions. A first species is still to be defined by these generic features: institutions in the sense of customs, or stabilised usages (for instance the use of forks rather than chopsticks). However, generic features are no longer sufficient for defining institutions in the sense of specific modes of organisation of social life, like the market, families, school, firms, hospitals, and so on. These institutions are different from simple habitual practices (what Weber terms “usage” in Economy and Society)24 for two reasons: first, because they are supported by normative principles (conventions and laws, justification principles and norms) that regulate and constitute them as “legitimate orders” in the Weberian sense of the term25; second, because they are not only constituted by ways of being and behaving towards others, but also by procedures of coordinating action that exist independently from actions. In this narrower sense, the notion of institution comprises two species of institutions that should be distinguished: the simple modes of coordination of action like the market, and the modes of action coordination that also define specific social spheres (‘closed’ or ‘limited’) like the family, school, firm, prison, army barrack, what Weber terms “organisation” (Verband).26 Either organisation is based on understanding like family, or organisation is organised by rules like ‘associations’, ‘firms’ and ‘administration’.27 This last type of institution, one 23 â•‡ M. Mauss & V. Fauconnet, article “Sociology” in M. Mauss, Œuvres, Paris, Minuit, 1968, vol. 3, p. 150. 24 â•‡ M. Weber, Economy and Society, par. 4. 25 â•‡ Ibid., par. 5. 26 â•‡ Ibid., par. 12. 27 â•‡ Ibid., par. 14–15 (organisation in the usual sociological sense of the term).

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that defines specific social spheres, simultaneously presupposes techniques for ordering actions and a complex institutionalisation of a normative model: rules of interaction defining the value of the partners of interaction, principles of justification able to solve their conflicts, norms defining how individuals should behave and identities defining what they have to be. The Wittgensteinian model seems relevant only if we take institution in the less determined sense of the term (definition of the genus or institution species of customs). We can accept that individuals submit to customs in a way similar to their obedience to the rules of language, that is, by interpreting rules in light of the uses that are associated with them and with regard to sanctions. We can also accept that institutions, as specific modes of organisation of social life, presuppose the existence of specific rules for the coordination of action and that the rule model is sufficient as long as institutions are understood as a complex of roles associated with sanctions (according to a Parsonian definition of institutions).28 However, such institutions also anchor the rules of interaction in the mechanisms that constitute specific contexts of action. Furthermore, they support them with normative principles and by specific kinds of subjectivation processes, so that the objectivity of the rules of interaction can no longer be conceived solely along the model of the use of a rule. Neither the procedures ordering the conditions of action (for example, the circulation of information and commodities, the mechanisms for linking supply and demand on the market), nor the processes shaping expectations and acting bodies (for example, the bodily disciplining of the schoolchild at their desk or the orientation of their interests towards the subjects taught), nor the identification to the norms within these social spaces have to do with the simple application of a rule according to its use and sanctions (even if rules are also followed according to given social roles and norms). This problem leads back to the question of the place that power occupies within social life. Institutions, as specific modes of organisation of social life, do indeed rely on mechanisms of ordering that are irreducible to the application of a rule, as the functional logic of the division of labour that is specific to the market and public administration attest, or as the fact that the different institutions themselves form a system and so constitute a material foundation for action that at least â•‡T. Parsons, The Social System, Glencoe, Ill., 1951, pp. 38–39.

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partially escapes our perception of it in our context of interaction. These institutions are underpinned by mechanisms of ordering, as Foucault has shown in the case of the prison, when he argued that the juridical and administrative rules that justify them are only the visible part of the institution and that normative principles have social efficacy only thanks to the complex relationships of power that anchor them in practices: “The institution of the prison is for many an iceberg. The visible part, that is justification. The hidden part, that’s what is really important, the most fearsome part”.29 This ordering of actions at play beneath the rules is precisely what power is. It is made up of mechanisms that put things and bodies in place by distributing, serialising and combining them. To conceive the institution only through the rule and the justification is to miss the fact that relations of power that play across institutions can give very different meaning to rules and justifications. It is also missing the specific effects of action coordination and subjectivation produced by power relations. The descriptive insufficiency of the Wittgensteinian model also harbours a threefold political insufficiency. First, by defining the use of the institution as the use of a rule, this Wittgensteinian model grounds the value of institutions in ‘thoughts that have authority’ rather than in the satisfaction of practical expectations, and it therefore tends to reduce the question of the satisfactory functioning of an institution to the question of its normal functioning, producing a conservative image of the social. Second, conceiving institutions along the model of shared thoughts overlooks the fact that within institutions, diverging projects of existence can be conflicting as can contradictory models of organisation of social life. Overlooking conflict is all the more damaging since the organisation of social life can be modified only to the extent that it is structured by institutions that, by definition, can be transformed. Third, to consider institutions along the model of the inscription of rules within the positivity of usages overlooks the possibility of a situation in which institutional rules lose their meaning and value because their use is practically unbearable for individuals. These political insufficiencies have normative insufficiencies as a counterpart: the Wittgensteinian model cannot account for the different forms of the experience of injustice. In institutions, the experience of injustice can take three different forms. It can be the violation of 29

â•‡ M. Foucault, Dits et Ecrits, Paris, Gallimard, 1994, t. 2, p. 179.

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principles that were explicitly formulated; it can be the violation of implicit principles of justice; or it can be an experience of what is compatible with these two types of principles. The first form relates to the incompatibility of actions, or rules of interaction, with explicitly formulated normative principles (either in juridical or regulated form), within or beyond the institution. The violation of fundamental rights that takes place when new students are mistreated by older students in old university traditions is an example of incompatibility between the rules of interaction and normative principles instituted outside the institution. Institutions, as specific social spaces, also have their own principles of justification that enable them to resolve conflicts between individuals. The kinds of normative principles instituted in them could be explicitly formulated – as is the case with deontological principles. However, they can also be solely implicit and nevertheless used by individuals to solve their conflicts in institutions. This is the case with the principles used by employees to decide who is a good or a bad colleague. These two types of principles are also able to identify unjust behaviour, and in both cases, injustice can be described as the inadequacy of a situation with principles. Even if all these principles are not strictly rules, they function as rules in so far as the application of these principles to particular situations is still comparable to the logic of the application of a rule, and that the Wittgensteinian model, therefore, retains some relevance. However, it is obvious that the experience of injustice can also relate to another type of injustice. There are types of experiences of injustice in which individuals experience their own situation as unjust without being able to express it as unjust in the normative grammar of institutional principles. In this case, it is the social order as it is framed by principles that produce injustice and this type of injustice is the worst because it cannot be described as such through principles (it corresponds to what Lyotard calls a “wrong”),30 but only felt as disappointment of fundamental normative expectations. In this case the point of view of institutionalised principles leads into political dead-ends, and it is more appropriate to take sides with the victims of injustice by showing that their normative expectations are legitimate. The theory of recognition makes this approach possible only if it understands itself as a procedure that

30 â•‡J. L. Lyotard, The Differend. Phrases in Dispute, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988, p. 5.


measures the value of institutions to fundamental expectations that are irreducible to rules of social life and instituted principles of justification. I will now explain how this is compatible with a theory of effects of institutions in conformity with the Weberian and Foucaultian conception that I have just advocated. 3.â•‡ Effects of Recognition As Fraser plainly states, institutions produce effects of recognition because they incarnate normative schemes: they discriminate against individuals according to the normative assumptions of their functioning.31 Each kind of institution, however, incarnates various kinds of normative principles in a different way. Institution, in the sense of customs and rules, plays a specific role (even if the relation of individuals to rules is conditioned by norms and identities), whereas in the Weberian sense of ‘organisations’, rules can no longer be considered the main normative principles, in so far as identities (prescriptions of self-definition) and norms (prescriptions of how individuals should behave) play a crucial role. Each of these normative principles has a distinct effect on social action. Rules act mainly on action coordination. However, norms also produce effects on the subjective involvement in actions. Identities, as subjective results of socialisation, act mainly on the collective dimension of social action (on the collective projects underpinning the action of groups) and on the arbitrage between the different spheres of life (private/public, intimate/professional, and so on). Each type of institutional effect corresponds to a given recognition effect. (a) Rules and evaluations. In so far as the rules of interaction condition the way others behave towards me, they have a direct influence over their recognition or lack thereof of my individual value. This can be said of all social relations, and so of institutions in the broader meaning of the term: my actions are embedded in relations of recognition not only because they are, as Weber writes, “meaningfully oriented to that of others”, but also in the sense that others evaluate them, and I orient myself in relation to those evaluations. Contrary to technical rules of action, the rules of interaction require the attribution of a 31 â•‡N. Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation”, in Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 7–109.

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social role to an agent, a qualification of the action and a context of action in which others intervene. They therefore operate under a “threefold logic” (two roles and one action)32 and have an evaluative component. A good example is the structure teacher–student–lesson in school and university institutions, which presupposes a reciprocal evaluation of an individual as able to teach and of others as needing and deserving more knowledge or skills than they already have, knowledge and skills that define the object of the interaction. Clearly with this example, the attribution of the social role implies the possibility of a differentiated evaluation of the partners of interaction. These evaluations of the agent and agent’s partners through the rules of interaction produce effects of recognition and possible denials of recognition. The type of denial of recognition specifically linked to this first type of institutional effect could be termed depreciating recognition, and here, depreciation can take three forms: 1.â•‡ devaluation or recognition as inferior; recognition of an individual as a subordinate partner in a hierarchical context of action; for example, worker versus foreman. 2.â•‡ disqualification or recognition of an individual as not fulfilling the criteria defining a partner of interaction, whatever the context of action; for example a young immigrant refused entry to a night-club. 3.â•‡ stigmatisation, the recognition of an individual as agent of noxious, or condemnable actions, a typical experience for Romani people. (b) Norms and identifications. A second type of institutional effect concerns the mobilisation of subjectivities by norms. The institutional coordination of actions depends on rules whose efficiency is sometimes reinforced by the orientation of expectations towards the aims of the institution. For example, the market orientation of desires by the mechanisms of commodity valorisation, or the orientation of desires towards the success of the firm and personal promotion through salaries recompensing merit and the mechanisms of career development. This institutional coordination also depends on mechanisms of identification to the particular roles that individuals must play within institutions. I am referring to the valorisation of self-presentation and a â•‡ V. Descombes, Les institutions du sens, pp. 297–298.

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specific knowing ‘how to be’ within school institutions and workplaces.33 The coordination through rules is reinforced here by the intervention of norms to which individuals attempt to conform and through specific mechanisms that aim to have individuals adjust their behaviours to these norms. The resulting effects of subjectivation can bring about a new type of denial of recognition. In institutions offering recognition only to those who strive to stick as closely as possible to a predetermined role, the denial of recognition takes the form of misrecognition and not only of depreciative recognition. Here, the denial of recognition is produced by social identification itself, and no longer by the social evaluation associated with the social identification. 1.â•‡ A first type of misrecognition is inadequate recognition, when individuals within institutions are forced to embrace roles with which they cannot identify. A typical example is that of employees who have to fit in completely with the ‘culture’ of their firm even if they cannot identify themselves with their job. 2.â•‡ A second type of misrecognition is social invisibility34 or social death for those who do not exist for the institutions because they do not seem to be acting within them and do not correspond to any socially identifiable function. A typical example is that of homeless people who remain invisible for most institutions and ordinary people, even when they interact with them. In France, homeless people remain invisible even in their death in so far as they are buried without engraved inscriptions in cemeteries.35 (c) Identity and the constitution of recognitive expectations. A third type of institutional effect has to do with the constitution of identity. Throughout socialisation, the different institutional spaces grant each individual a representation of the specificity and value of their existence. In that sense, they are spaces in which the different components of personal identity are constituted. These components result from the internalisation of normative principles, including the principles of 33 â•‡ For a critical study of the demand and evaluation of the ‘how-to-be’ in the new management, see F. Neyrat, “Les chômeurs à l’épreuve de la compétence. Justifications et usages du nouveau ROME (Répertoire opérationnel des métiers et des emplois)”, in Les Cahiers du Laboratoire Georges Friedmann, no. 9, 2001. 34 â•‡See A. Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition’, The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXXV, Bristol, 2001, pp. 111–126. 35 â•‡ See D. Zeneidi-Henry, Les SDF et la ville. Géographie du savoir survivre, Paris, Bréal, 2002, pp. 265–268.

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justification internal to institutions, and the internalisation of roles through the identification with significant others. Since the behaviour of significant others depends on institutional rules and mechanisms, once again institutions have a specific effect of recognition. In fact, in this case, the recognitive effect is twofold since socialisation and the constitution of identities must not be considered as the imposition of social norms on an uninformed subjectivity, but as a process in which a subjective transaction, the unification by the individual of the different components of their identity, parallels a process of objective transaction between their own expectations and those of the institution. The action of an individual within a particular context of action is never determined solely by this context, but always also by the weight of the individual’s past and the different forms of their social existence.36 For example, a child tries to have the school institution recognise the image they have forged within the family. Conversely, the child will try to have the family recognise the image they have forged in the spaces linked to school life. This process that is characteristic of the first phase of socialisation continues in the second phase where the relationship to different institutions outside the family is at stake. The different phases of socialisation can therefore be interpreted as a process in which the individual appropriates new identities, while demanding of institutions that they recognise the specificity of one’s personal identity. In such a process of subjectivation, recognition relates to identity as something that conditions it and that is conditioned by it. The specific function played by recognition within this process leads to a third type of denial of recognition I would call unsatisfactory recognition. The social world is made up in such a way that the different institutions produce effects of subjectivation that are unsatisfactory because they do not allow individuals to identify fully with the different roles they attempt to have recognised by society. The problem here is not that one fails to have the manner in which one embraces these roles recognised, which would be misrecognition, but that these different roles pile up on the individual without the individual being able to achieve a personal unification that would give the feeling of being recognised through them. The problem is no longer that social identification contradicts recognitive expectation, but that it is a contradiction â•‡ B. Lahire, L’homme pluriel, Paris, Nathan, 1998, p. 54 sq.

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in recognitive expectation itself. Such a situation leads to an experience of denial of recognition, which can take two forms. 1.â•‡The first type is that of unstable recognition: this is the situation where one drifts between social roles without being able to unify them in a coherent narrative so one cannot give one’s existence a satisfying meaning. This is the situation described by Richard Sennett in his book The Corrosion of Character, in reference to the new workers of flexible capitalism: The conditions of the new economy feed instead on experience which drifts in time, from place to place from job to job … Short-term capitalism threatens to corrode … character, particularly those qualities of character which bind human beings to one another and furnish each with a sense of sustainable self.37

He continues: The conditions of time in the new capitalism have created a conflict between character and experience, the experience of disjointed times threatening the ability of people to form their characters into sustained narratives.38

2.â•‡Unsatisfactory recognition can also take the shape of a recognition splitting or tearing apart subjectivity, when an institutional context makes strong identifications possible but also incompatible. In his Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu argued that individuals being torn between incompatible types of habitus was a form of social suffering that was not to be neglected: the habitus is not necessarily adapted nor necessarily coherent. It has degrees of integration (which in particular correspond to degrees of crystallisation of the status in question). One thus observes frequently that contradictory positions that can exert structural forms of a doublebind upon the individuals occupying these positions, often lead to forms of habitus that are torn apart, exposed to contradiction and internal selfdivision, and producing of suffering.39

Recognition splits or tears apart the subject when it is incorporated within such forms of habitus. In the case, for example, of declassification upwards or downwards, as early as primary 37 â•‡ R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New-York/London, W. W. Norton and Company, 1998, pp. 26–27. 38 â•‡ Ibid., p. 31. 39 â•‡ P. Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes, p. 190.

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emmanuel renault socialisation, individuals are caught up in institutional mechanisms that are barely compatible. A good example is the situation of second or third-generation immigrants who find it difficult to unify cultural codes from the family sphere and the codes of school and other spaces of social life.

Institutional Identification â•…mechanisms â•… of partner â•… in action

Mobilisation of Identity â•…subjectivities â•…construction â•… in socialisation â•…processes

Genres of â•… denial of â•…recognition

Depreciative â•…recognition

Misrecognition Unsatisfactory â•…recognition

Sub-genres of â•… denial of â•…recognition

– devaluing – Inadequate – unstable – disqualifying â•…recognition – splitting or – stigmatising – Invisibilisation â•… tearing apart

To take seriously the institutional dimension of existence therefore makes it possible to move from a theory of institutions as expressive of recognition, to a theory of institutions as constitutive of recognitive relations. I believe such a constitutive concept of recognition is crucial for a critical theory of society, because it is the only way to take into account, first, the various normative expectations that can lead to an experience of injustice; second, the complexity of struggles for recognition, and third, the role of struggles for recognition in social evolution. A first essential point is that institutions are always evaluated by people according to the demand of recognition of their own value, which is not just the demand that the three forms of self-relationship (self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem) on which Honneth bases his theory of recognition be confirmed. Individuals always demand at the same time that their value be recognised as it is defined through their already constituted identities, which are produced in and by institutions.40 If a theory of recognition wants to focus on the normative problems linked with institutions, it must also deal with the question of social and professional identities, as well as the problems 40 â•‡ See E. Renault, “What is at Stake in Identity” in A. Al-Azmehh et al., Identity, New Delhi, Vistaar, 2004.


posed by the different forms of social suffering resulting from stigmatisation, misrecognition and fragmented recognition. It is only if it is able to relate to questions of identity and social suffering that a theory of recognition can pretend to sweep across the whole spectrum of social injustice. Second, the constitutive conception is also able to accommodate the complexity of struggles for recognition.41 The complexity relies, firstly, on the fact that institutionalised normative schemes framing recognition expectations, can either be made explicit in recognition claims, or remain part of a tacit knowledge. As a result, a discrepancy can occur between what is explicitly claimed and what is really sought in struggles for recognition. This complexity relies secondly on the fact that groups struggling for recognition often endure various kinds of disrespect and that these institutional effects are not necessarily struggled against according to the same political logic. It relies thirdly on the fact that in political conflicts, groups can use institutional recognition models either as a central claim (for instance when minorities struggle for alleged universal rights), or as merely strategic means (for example, when a group calls for more cultural recognition as the only way to benefit from more economical integration). If the theory of recognition wants to be not only a normative philosophy dealing with justice and injustice, but also a critical theory dealing with the political dynamics of social transformation, it has to make explicit the various institutional conditions responsible for the complexity of struggles for recognition. A third essential point is that a Foucaultian-Weberian understanding of institutions, which permits this analysis of institutional effects of recognition, also leads to a relativisation of the importance of social action for social evolution. When Foucault stresses the fact that different institutions form a system, he also suggests that social evolution can be explained only by a model of social action. The existence of institutions not only relies on the acknowledgment of their justification by individual and social groups, but also on functional and structural macro-social constraints. It might be the case that systemic

41 â•‡ A complexity that has been highlighted by Honneth; see “An Interview with Axel Honneth (by Anders Petersen and Rasmus Willig). The Role of Sociology in the Theory of Recognition”, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 5, no. 2, 2002; and “Gespräch mit Axel Honneth: die Schwierigkeit, den Kampf um Anerkennung in all seinen Dimensionen zu erfassen”, Sozialismus, Heft 3, 5 März 2001, p. 28.

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models or theories of social rationalisation are not sufficient to account for historical changes, as Honneth puts it in The Critique of Power. Conversely, neither a theory of struggle for recognition, nor a theory of social justification, suffice to explain social evolution. Institutions should not be understood only in relation to social action, but also from the macro-social point of view in which notions like the social system or capitalism can play a role. 4.â•‡ One or Two Concepts of Recognition? One of the main interests of Honneth’s theory of recognition is that it brings to the fore the question of the normative principles of institutions. In attempting to set up principles of justice, it not only describes the three kinds of recognition that define the realm of justice, but also shows their link with institutions. It shows that normative expectations related to self-confidence are mainly oriented towards the institutions of intimacy, whereas normative expectations related to self-respect and self-esteem are respectively oriented towards legal and social institutions. This theory highlights the fact that the various dimensions of our moral experiences are connected with institutions, and it is able to distinguish which are the normative expectations that, in a given institution, play a dominant or a secondary role. For instance, in the family, the dominant role is played by the intersubjective confirmation of selfconfidence, even if self-confidence can also be produced in the social institution of work, and if what is often at stake in the family is also the intersubjective confirmation of our self-respect (recognition of the value of our freedom) and of our self-esteem (recognition of the value of our social existence, for instance the value of domestic work). It might seem that by focusing on the link between institutions and recognition, all I am doing is giving a sociological complement to only one of the main principles of Honneth’s social philosophy. Is this the case or not? Should the constitutive conception of recognition be considered only as a complement to Honneth’s conception of recognition, or does it lead to another conception of recognition? On the one hand, it is indisputable that Honneth’s conception of recognition always presupposes a conception of institutional effects of recognition. The critical power of the theory of recognition rests on the fact that recognition is understood as a claim (normative expectation) as well as a social fact (recognition as effect). It is only because


recognition, as a social phenomenon, can disappoint claims of recognition that the theory of recognition leads to social critique.42 In Honneth’s theory, however, neither the nature of recognition as effect, nor the link between recognition as a claim and as a social fact, is made explicit. In my opinion, making it explicit implies a different conception of recognition in so far as it compels us to renounce the idea of normative presuppositions of social life, as well as to develop a theory of recognition as a theory of justice. The basic recognition expectations are too indeterminate to define principles of justice and to be understood as presuppositions of social life. Nevertheless, this indeterminacy does not exclude a possible conflict between claims and effects of recognition. Social effects of recognition can be unbearable for individuals, as is the case when claims of recognition lead to experiences of injustice, and these kinds of negative experiences provide the lever for a critique of the various institutions and institutionalised normative principles of our modern capitalist world. Having renounced the idea of the normative presupposition of social life, the theory of recognition must be understood as a theory of the normative content of negative experiences in everyday social life. Having renounced a positive definition of fundamental recognition expectations, the theory of recognition must be grounded in a negative anthropology. Having renounced the principles of justice, the theory of recognition must be considered as a theory of the experience of injustice.

42 â•‡ See for example, A. Honneth, “Zur Zukunft des Instituts für Sozialforschung” in Institut für Sozialforschung. Mitteilungen, Heft 12, 2001.

Chapter eight

Recognition: A Theory of the Middle? Carl-Göran Heidegren Some theories in social philosophy and in the social sciences can be aptly characterised as theories of the middle.* Probably the most wellknown and famous theory of the middle is Aristotle’s doctrine of the ethical virtues as a middle between two extremes, or as a mean situated between “two vices, one of excess and the other of defect”.1 Concerning his two most important ethical virtues Aristotle says: “Thus Temperance and Courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency, and preserved by the observance of the mean”.2 Another example of a theory of the middle is the sociology of Émile Durkheim. In his famous book on suicide he lays down: “In the order of existence, no good is measureless”; an “excessive individuation” is detrimental to both the individual and society, just as an “insufficient individuation” is.3 Whereas the one, too much individualism, gives rise to the type of suicide that Durkheim calls egoistic, the other, too little individualism, gives rise to the type that he calls altruistic. Furthermore, too little social regulation gives rise to anomic suicide, and too much social regulation gives rise – only hinted at in the book – to the type of suicide that he calls fatalistic. In fact, moderation and measure are key themes permeating the whole atmosphere of Durkheim’s sociology.4 Taking my point of departure from Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, in the following I will discuss to what extent and in what sense *â•‡ Thanks to Heikki Ikäheimo for several valuable comments on an earlier version of the text. For what is still confused or arguably wrong in the text, he of course bears no responsibility whatsoever. 1 â•‡Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge, Mass., The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard UP & London, Heinemann, 1982 [1934], p. 111. 2 â•‡ ibid., p. 77. 3 â•‡ É. Durkheim, Suicide. A Study in Sociology, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1987 [1897], p. 217. 4 â•‡ Compare for example M. Schroer, Das Individuum der Gesellschaft. Synchrone und diachrone Theorieperspektiven, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2001, ch. II.1, pp. 137–184.

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a theory of recognition might also be aptly characterised as a theory of the middle. Such an argument presupposes that due recognition is opposed not only to overt disrespect, but also to forms of excess and deficiency. If this is the case there are different ways of missing the mark, and due recognition is a middle or a mean. This said, one should remember the words of Aristotle, that “in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme”.5 However, before taking up this thread, I will first touch on Honneth’s theoretical project as it has developed since the publication of The Struggle for Recognition. In an article in the journal Inquiry some years ago he talked of having reached “a whole new stage of my own endeavours, well beyond what I initially had in mind in Struggle for Recognition”.6 A detailed exposition here is of course neither intended nor possible. Instead I will draw attention to some revisions, new orientations and open questions, as observed from the perspective of an interested and sympathetic reader (1). Secondly, I will distinguish between three levels of analysis, including an intermediate level at which the theme of recognition can and, in my view, should be conceptualised as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship (2). This section paves the way for the following section, in the sense that it is at this intermediate level of analysis, so my argument that a theory of recognition takes the form of a theory of the middle (3). The text ends with a short summary and a concluding remark (4). 1. In this section I will briefly point out seven lines of development in Honneth’s thought on recognition since the publication of The Struggle for Recognition. A first line of development that immediately strikes the eye, is that Honneth has backed away considerably from the two philosophers, which in a history of theory perspective, from the start were his

â•‡Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, p. 95. â•‡A. Honneth, “Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions”, Inquiry. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, vol. 45, no. 4, 2002, p. 499. See also A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995 [1992]. 5 6

recognition235 main sources of inspiration: Hegel and Mead.7 Honneth would today probably say that he was somewhat blinded by the still valid distinction he found clearly developed in Hegel between three forms or spheres of recognition, and which led him to overestimate the extent to which Hegel also had clarified systematic issues pertaining to the concept of recognition, or at least the potential for such a clarification found by Hegel. The social psychology of Mead, on the other hand, to begin with provided a translation of Hegel’s original insight into naturalistic terms. However, Honneth now seems to consider Mead’s notion of recognition as the act of reciprocal perspective-taking, too unspecific to clarify what really takes place in an act of recognition. In the context of Mead’s work, any perspective-taking seems to do, without the specific character or quality of the other’s action being of any crucial significance. As a consequence, Mead is of little help in terms of pinning down the specific kind of normatively saturated attitude or action that deserves the name of recognition. An important consequence of these distantiations, and a second line of development, is the favouring of a more direct systematic approach in order to clarify the concept of recognition. One question of key importance here can be stated as the optional choice between, what Honneth calls a “model of attribution”, according to which the act of recognition attributes to persons certain normative properties that they did not possess before, and a “model of perception or receptivity”, according to which an act of recognition confirms the normative status that a person already had.8 Here Honneth has opted for the second alternative in the form of a “moderate value-realism”: recognition is a behavioural reaction to evaluative qualities of other persons that we have learned to perceive in the process of socialisation. A third line of development also involves a backing away from Mead’s notion of the ‘I’ as the rebellious instance in human beings that again and again triggers struggles for recognition. Instead Honneth has turned more fully to psychoanalytic theory, which emphasises that the early experience of symbiosis with the ‘mother’ lives on in the grown-up individual in the form of antisocial impulses that transcend 7 â•‡ In the following I confine the references to a minimum. Honneth himself takes a look back at his initial motivations and theoretical development for example in “Grounding Recognition”, pp. 500–504, and “Antworten auf die Beiträge der Kolloquiumsteilnehmer”, Axel Honneth: Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, eds. C. Halbig & M. Quante, Münster, LIT, 2004, pp. 100–109. 8 â•‡On this issue, see especially Honneth, “Grounding Recognition”, pp. 505–512.

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every institutionalised form of recognition. However, it remains an open question how these antisocial impulses are related to the specific moral experience of refused recognition or disrespect. This is the difficult question of how to connect philosophical anthropology and moral theory. A fourth line of development moves in the direction of what might be called a pluralistic moral theory, emphasising not only the several different moral duties we have, stemming from the different social relations we have to others, but also the potential conflict and collision between them. Morality does not consist so much of the coherent application of a moral principle, but of the integration of and sometimes the choice between various moral obligations. A fifth line of development is the introduction of an historical developmental dimension into the form of recognition characterised as ‘love’ or ‘care’. Honneth now relates this form of recognition to the modern institutionalisation of childhood as a specific phase in life as well as to the gradual liberation of the relations between the sexes from socio-economic motives and pressures in favour of mutual attraction and affection (the ‘bourgeois’ love-marriage). This completes the picture of a specific modern bourgeois-capitalist recognition order as an historical achievement (the other key development being the differentiation of ‘honour’ into ‘rights’ and ‘achievement’). A sixth line of development consists in raising the question of the relevance of distinguishing a fourth principle or form of recognition in relation to the more recently discussed issues of cultural identity and identity politics, as an expression of cultural esteem. The forms of life and practices of certain cultural minority groups are then taken as something valuable in themselves, as forms that in themselves represent a social good. However, as his work currently stands, Honneth does not seem to give any particularly high priority to this question.9 Finally, a seventh and absolutely crucial line of development is that Honneth has wholeheartedly embraced an interpretation of distribution conflicts as morally motivated struggles for recognition “in which dispute is about the appropriate evaluation of individuals’ or groups’ social contributions”.10 In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth still â•‡9 â•‡ Compare A. Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser”, N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, London & New York, Verso, 2003, ch. III.1, pp. 161–170. 10 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Recognition and Justice: Outline of a Plural Theory of Justice”, Acta Sociologica, vol. 47, no. 4, 2004, p. 353.

recognition237 distinguished between conflicts and struggles over material interests, on the one hand, and morally motivated conflicts and struggles, on the other hand. Furthermore, the interpretation of distribution conflicts as struggles for recognition has pushed Honneth in the direction of the much broader issues of how best to conceptualise contemporary capitalist society, and how the concept of recognition can form the basis for a theory of societal rationalisation.11 2. In this section, I will argue that the theme of recognition can and should be analysed on at least three different levels. My impression is that in much of the recent literature, two of these levels have been the main focus. Recognition can and should be analysed, on the one hand, on a basic interpersonal level, in terms of attitudes, gestures and actions, in order to conceptualise as clearly as possible what are the genus and species of recognition. On the other hand, recognition can and should also be analysed on an historical-societal level, in terms of institutionalised recognition orders, making up a kind of normative societal infrastructure, defining for the members of any given society what their legitimate expectations concerning recognition are. However, between the above-mentioned micro and macro levels of analyses an intermediate level can be situated. This is the level of interpersonal relationships – in our case relations of recognition – sÂ� tretching out or unfolding over time, which are to be analysed in terms of constant or changing attitude-, gesture- and action-patterns, that is, in terms of the constant or shifting quality of the relation in hand. Consequently, my suggestion is that we distinguish between the following three levels of analysis: (a)â•‡The micro level: recognition as recognitive attitudes, gestures and actions. (b)â•‡The intermediate level: recognition as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship. (c)â•‡ The macro level: recognition as institutionalised recognition orders. 11 â•‡ Compare Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 164â•›ff., “Redistribution as Recognition”, ch. II.2, pp. 150–159, “Antworten”, pp. 105–109, and M. Hartmann & A. Honneth, “Paradoxien des Kapitalismus. Ein Untersuchungsprogramm”, Berliner Debatte Initial, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004, pp. 4–17.

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Let us take a brief look at (a) and (c) before elaborating on (b). (a) Recognition, in a basic sense, is an action-theoretical concept: there are acts of recognition (a friendly word or an inviting gesture) and there are acts of disrespect (to take a drastic example: a spit in the face).12 There no doubt also exist differences in how active the recognising (or disrespecting) subject is in the act of recognition (or disrespect). Here a gradation seems possible spanning from very active down to a level of activity that approaches zero. As a key to an appropriate understanding of the concept of recognition and what is involved in the very act of recognition, Honneth focuses on the distinction between ‘cognising’ (Erkennen) and ‘recognising’ (Anerkennen). In an article entitled “Invisibility” he proposes beginning with the question: What must be added to the perception of a person – to take cognisance of him – in order to make it into an act of recognition?13 However, by the end of the article the question has taken a significant turn: the act of recognition is now rather the original act, based on an evaluative perception of the other person. Through an evaluative perception we are immediately aware of the moral worth of the other person, an awareness that is publicly expressed in the act of recognition, which by way of gestures (a smile, a greeting, a friendly word) signals benevolent actions to come. Conversely, gestures signaling that no benevolent actions are to be expected, rather the opposite, convey an act of disrespect, demonstrating a kind of blindness for the moral worth of the other person. Acts of recognition are thus moral acts determined by the value or worth of other persons and oriented towards the evaluative qualities of others. To be more precise, Honneth talks of expressive gestures of recognition as actions that themselves possess “the character of a meta-action insofar as they symbolically signal a type of behaviour that the addressee legitimately may expect”.14 12 â•‡By translating Honneth’s term Mißachtung as ‘disrespect’, I follow the praxis established by Joel Anderson in his translation of The Struggle for Recognition (see ‘Translator’s Note’, p. viii). 13 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition’,” The Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. LXXV, 2001, p. 111. 14 â•‡ ibid., p. 120. Honneth also elaborates on the distinction between cognising and recognising in the article “Erkennen und Anerkennen. Zu Sartres Theorie der Intersubjektivität”, A. Honneth, Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 71–105. A related distinction is rudimentarily developed by Erving Goffman, namely between what is called cognitive and social recognition, of which “cognitive recognition is simply an act of perception, while social recognition is one individual’s part in a communication

recognition239 Instead of analysing recognition in terms of actions and gestures, Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen prefer to analyse recognition at the most basic level in terms of recognitive attitudes. Acts of recognition are performed to express recognitive attitudes, and gestures signaling recognition are expressions of recognitive attitudes. As a definition of the genus recognitive attitude they suggest beginning with the formulation “taking someone as a person”.15 The three specific forms of the recognitive attitude – love, respect and esteem – are consequently seen as three different ways of taking someone as a person. Furthermore, Ikäheimo and Laitinen distinguish between a monological and a dialogical conception of recognition, the latter insisting that it takes the attitudes of two to constitute recognition: not only person A recognising another person B, that is, A taking B as a person, but, B understanding the judgemental content of A’s attitude and recognising A as a competent judge in the matter in hand (what they call the “acceptanceclause”). In this way they arrive at a definition of genuine recognition or recognition as such as “taking someone as a person, the content of which is understood and which is accepted by the other person”.16 This is the genus of recognition, which is differentiated into the three species of recognition: love, respect and esteem.

ceremony”; to the latter belongs “the right and the obligation of exchanging a nod, a greeting, or a chat.” (Stigma. Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, London & New York & Victoria & Toronto & Auckland, Penguin Books, 1990 [1963], p. 87.) The same distinction is elaborated on by Goffman in Behavior in Public Places. Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings, New York, The Free Press, 1966 [1963], ch.7, pp. 112–123. 15 â•‡H. Ikäheimo & A. Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons”, Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, eds. B. van den Brink & D. Owen, New York, Cambridge UP, 2007, p. 40. 16 â•‡ ibid., p. 42. On the acceptance-clause see pp. 47–49. An immediate consequence of this definition seems to be that there can be no genuine recognition of infants or small children nor of mentally retarded persons. Here the acceptance-clause is not fulfilled, because of the very unequal levels of cognitive autonomy. However, arguing, probably with good reasons, that small children and even infants are already rational creatures in some minimal degree (not only potentially), one at least has to take into account very different degrees of genuine recognition: minimal versus full understanding and acceptance. Moreover, at the intermediate level of analysis – recognition as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship – it is, in my view, not appropriate to demand the kind of two-way character that the acceptance-clause involves, because it would exclude too many relevant phenomena of recognition (and disrespect). It should be pointed out that Ikäheimo and Laitinen make no claim that their way of conceptualising recognition is the only way (ibid., p. 33).

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(c) Honneth suggests an interpretation of modern bourgeoiscapitalist society in terms of the historical genesis and institutionalisation of a specific recognition order.17 In an historical process of differentiation, three distinct social spheres of recognition have become institutionalised as a normative societal infrastructure: intimate relationships with ‘love’ or ‘care’ as a guiding idea, legal relations with ‘equality’ as a guiding principle, and loose-knit social relations with ‘achievement’ as a normative standard. With the rise of modern bourgeois-capitalist society childhood has become institutionalised as a phase in its own right in the individual’s life cycle as well as the lovemarriage between adults (although gradually and with many setbacks). Furthermore, what previously went together in the honour or social status of an individual is now differentiated into, on the one hand, the respect we owe to each person for their human dignity, the institutionalisation of the idea of equal rights, and, on the other hand, the social esteem we owe to an individual according to their achievements within the social division of labour, the institutionalisation of the achievementprinciple. In each of these three spheres, an individual or a group can raise legitimate claims to recognition according to its guiding principle. Moreover, in each of these spheres Honneth localises what he calls a normative surplus or surplus of validity, with the potential to trigger struggles for recognition and a moral progression in the direction of further individualisation possibilities and a growth in social inclusion. In certain contrast to Honneth’s normative approach, attempts have been made to trace at a more descriptive-analytic sociological level recent changes within the late modern bourgeois-capitalist recognition order. In the sphere of the family and intimate relations in general, and in the sphere of gainful employment, a tendency to a shift has been diagnosed from an ‘old’ to a ‘new’ recognition order. For example, a shift in the recognition order of the family is taking place from an “harmonic inequality” between the sexes to an “ambivalent equality”; a shift in the recognition order of gainful employment is under way from “appreciation” for hard work over long years, as the expression of gratitude and transmitting a sense of belonging, to “admiration” for spectacular achievements in work, as the expression of prestige and of being successful.18 â•‡ Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition”, ch. II.1, pp. 138–150. â•‡Compare G. Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, Konstanz, UVK, 2004, ch. 3, and S. Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation. Die Dramaturgie industrieller Beziehungen. Mit einer Fallstudie zum ‘Bündnis für Arbeit’, Konstanz, UVK, 2001, 17 18

recognition241 In an attempt to bridge the potential gap between a normative approach and a descriptive-analytic approach, the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt am Main, under the direction of Honneth, has initiated an ambitious interdisciplinary research program focusing on what are called “paradoxes of capitalist modernisation”. The key hypothesis of this research program is that several developments, which in past decades could be interpreted as representing normative progress, are today in “neo-liberal” or “network capitalism”, increasingly having the effect of weakening social solidarity and diminishing individual autonomy.19 (b) For the analytical level of relations between persons stretching out over time, I propose a somewhat different way to conceptualise the phenomenon of recognition, namely as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship. The focus here is on constant or changing attitude-, gesture- and action-patterns giving structure to the ongoing interaction between persons, that is, the focus is on the temporal dimension of intersubjective relations of recognition. Take for example the case of the love of parents for their newborn child. The very first look and happy smile directed towards the little, and thus far wholly helpless creature, stand as a preliminary guarantee, a kind of silent oath, for the quality of the relationship that is about to unfold between the parents and the child. It is a promise of due love and care in the future, which of course does not in any way guarantee that the relation will actually unfold in that way. In an analogous way, the initial smile or greeting gesture between two persons (being new acquaintances or old colleagues), as an expression of respect or appreciation or both, stands as a preliminary guarantee for the quality of the relationship that is about to unfold, or whose unfolding is about to continue. Whether an initial gesture or act of recognition is honestly or just strategically meant, becomes evident as the relation unfolds; if it is just strategic it will not stand the test of time, and especially not the test of hard times. What properly speaking is friendship, if not the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship; an attitude of recognition stretching out indefinitely over time, again and again confirmed by ch. 3.1, especially pp. 281–321. For a collection of articles on recognition and the sociology of work, see also Anerkennung und Arbeit, eds. U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel & G. Wagner, Konstanz, UVK, 2000. 19 â•‡ Befreiung aus der Mündigkeit. Paradoxien des gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus, ed. A. Honneth, Frankfurt am Main & New York, Campus, 2002, and for further elaboration on that research program, Hartmann & Honneth, “Paradoxien des Kapitalismus”.

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expressive gestures and acts of recognition. A friend, it is said, is someone you can trust and count on, and friendship is an interpersonal relationship that every now and then is put to a test, a test in which it will show itself if the other person is a ‘true’ friend or not. Thus, the often-felt need to symbolically and ritually seal the relation: to put the stamp of eternity on it (‘forever friends’). On the other hand, friendships and relations of recognition more generally are, to make a perhaps odd Kuhn-inspired comparison, like scientific theories: they are normally not given up because of single falsifying instances, because of single gestures and acts of indifference or disrespect (although this might of course sometimes be the case). Recognition, as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship, normally stands the test of several single gestures and acts of indifference or disrespect. This means that confession, forgiveness and reconciliation belong essentially to the picture: we can all go wrong, but the door remains open, it must always be possible to repent and start anew.20 Whereas respect is something you pay, that you ought to pay, other people because they are (at least potentially) autonomous human beings, love as the emotional attachment to a particular person or esteem as the special appreciation of another person, is a relationship that normally takes time, and often quite a long time, to build up and establish. (Parental love is usually there from the very beginning, and sometimes indeed there is love at first sight.) A well-known theme in literature is, for example, relations of friendship that are preceded by mutual animosity and struggles for prestige (think of the first meeting of Robin Hood and Little John). Perhaps friendship is even something that must be put to a test in order to become ‘true’, that is, 20 â•‡ It is, in my view, no coincidence that in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit the terminology of recognition is most frequent in the chapter “Conscience. The ‘beautiful soul’, evil and its forgiveness” (VI.C.c). The key sentence: “The wounds of the Spirit heal, and leave no scars behind” in my interpretation, should be read not as a statement of fact, but as a requirement or demand (Aufforderung). Do not be a “hard heart,” keep the door open, be ready to forgive: “Spirit … is lord and master over every deed and actuality, and can cast them off …” No one is forever banned from the human community, the possibility to change your way of life and start anew is always there, must always be there. The word of forgiveness is “the word of reconciliation … a reciprocal recognition which is absolute Spirit”. (G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, New York, Oxford UP, 1977 [1807], pp. 406–408.) Here I see certain similarities between Hegel’s argument and the more recent argumentation found by Avishai Margalit, when he proposes radical freedom – the ability to repent and change your way of life – as the human property that makes every man worthy of respect (see The Decent Society, Cambridge Mass., Harvard UP, 1996, ch. 4).

recognition243 lasting friendship. It must be said, a relation of friendship that has been put to a test and has stood the test adds recognitive quality to the relationship in hand. On the other hand, you can add respect to yourself by acting in a way that actually shows you to be a reasonable and responsible human being, which is something different from being loved, but perhaps comes close to or turns into being esteemed for the particular kind of person you are. This would also be a way of adding recognitive quality to the relationship at hand. The deterioration of the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship begins when experiences and feelings of shame, frustration and anger become common, and it continues and accelerates when experiences and feelings of actually being disrespected become dominant. That the recognitive quality of an interpersonal relationship radically deteriorates as the relation unfolds means that recognition ultimately gives way to – an intended or unintended – disrespect. This may be due to repeated acts of overt disrespect, but also paradoxically, as I will argue in the next section, to acts of misguided recognition. It should be stressed that, in my view, experiences and feelings of disrespect are normally not idiosyncratic reactions to the behaviour of other persons (except in clear-cut pathological cases), but usually more or less in tune with socially accepted standards (prevailing rules and norms) of what counts as disrespect. Thus, I see no reason to overdramatise the potential difference between only feeling and actually being disrespected.21 Feelings and experiences are of course not authoritative as such, but especially when in a familiar social milieu, it is not difficult to distinguish between gestures and acts of recognition, and gestures and acts of disrespect. It is at the level of interpersonal relationships that most experiences of recognition and of disrespect are made, and it is also at this level that most of the everyday struggles for recognition take place: between parents and children (not the least grown-up children), within intimate relationships of all kinds, between comrades in the schoolyard, between neighbours, colleagues, friends and rivals of any kind. These experiences and struggles are an essential part of the dramaturgy of everyday life. Here we come close to what Erving Goffman has termed the

21 â•‡For a discussion of this issue that pulls in a more ‘objectivist’ direction, see Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition”, pp. 51–56.

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interaction order, “a substantive domain in its own right”.22 In our case, however, the focus is not on more or less random face-to-face encounters and passing scenes, but rather on relations between persons stretching out over time, in many cases long-standing or even lifelong interpersonal relationships. These relationships have a dynamic of their own, and analysing recognition as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship is part of the analysis of this dynamic.23 3. In his article “Invisibility”, Honneth emphasises that the moral worth of another person is confirmed or affirmed through a specific act of recognition, and this is the shared moral core of all direct forms of social recognition.24 However, there obviously exists a whole spectrum of different gestures through which an act of recognition can be expressed. Correspondingly there are different assessments of the moral worth of the other person. The other person may be worthy of love, respect or solidarity, and furthermore might be deemed worthy of more or less love or solidarity, depending on the way they biographically cope with life, or on the nature of their practical commitment. Here Honneth introduces a language of quantitative differences, but with a significant asymmetry. The respect that we owe to every other person, due to their basic human worth, allows for no further “gradation”, whereas the love or solidarity we deem another person worthy of “may be increased to various degrees”.25 All these cases have to do with the recognition of the other person as autonomous, as a human being endowed with the capacity to lead their life in rational self-determination. In a footnote added to the German version of the article, Honneth writes that today he is inclined to develop the original partition into three distinct forms of recognition that he took over from Hegel in The Struggle for Recognition, by relating it to different

22 â•‡E. Goffman, “The Interaction Order”, American Sociological Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 1983, p. 2. 23 â•‡ Voswinkel argues for the relevance of Goffman for a sociology of recognition; see Anerkennung und Reputation, pp. 36–42. He refers especially to “rituals of deference” – avoidance rituals and presentational rituals – as described by Goffman in Interaction Ritual. Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior, Chicago, Aldine, 1974 [1967]. 24 â•‡ Honneth, “Invisibility”, p. 122. 25 â•‡ ibid., p. 123.

recognition245 aspects of the Kantian notion of an intelligible freedom, that is, to different aspects of the human being’s rational self-determination.26 Having seen that a language of quantitative differences is not foreign to Honneth’s approach, let us pick up the thread from the previous section. If recognition at an intermediate level of analysis can and should be conceived of as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship, then there also seems to be different ways of missing the mark: the quality of due recognition. The relationship can be characterised by too much recognition, just as well as by too little recognition. Or the mark can be missed intentionally (cases of overt disrespect), just as well as unintentionally (cases of disrespect as an unintended consequence). In a preliminary overview it is possible to distinguish between the following cases: 1.â•‡Too much recognition taking the form of unintended disrespect 2.â•‡ Due recognition 3.â•‡Too little recognition taking the form of unintended disrespect 4.â•‡No recognition at all in the form of intended or unintended disrespect 5.â•‡ Refused recognition or overt/intended disrespect Especially in case 1, to a lesser degree in case 3 and possibly also in case 4, we are dealing with something akin to a tragic conflict, a kind of blind fate, in the form of a non-transparent connection that is beyond the intentions of the persons involved. In what follows, I will take a closer look at the above-mentioned possibilities. However, the use of a language of quantitative differences should not cover up the basic fact that recognition, as discussed here, is essentially about the quality of an interpersonal relationship. Furthermore, the above-mentioned gradations mainly seem to pertain to the forms of recognition called love (or care) and solidarity (or social esteem).27

26 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Unsichtbarkeit. Über die moralische Epistemologie der AnerkÂ� ennung”, A. Honneth, Unsichtbarkeit, p. 23. 27 â•‡ The language of quantitative differences takes another form as concerns rights. Having no legal rights obviously involves being granted too few rights, in fact, none at all (not being respected as a legal person at all). Being granted basic subjective and political rights, but refused certain social rights, for example the right to an adequate school education (as a prerequisite for being able to make use of one’s political rights), is also a case of having too few rights. However, to talk of having too many rights seems to make no sense here.

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1.â•‡ Too much recognition as a way of missing the mark of due recÂ� ognition, giving rise to an unintended disrespect Here we have interpersonal relationships characterised by one party being overprotective, not letting go, constantly interfering, being too engaged, and so on. The very best intentions turn into the opposite, the intended recognition into disrespect. The recognising person is well meaning, indeed all too well meaning, being perfectly honest when saying: ‘Everything I have done, I have done out of love for you, because I appreciate you so much’. These are the kind of recognitive attitudes, gestures and acts of recognition that miss their mark, well represented in everyday life and experience. What takes place here might be characterised as an inverted mephistopheleanism. I am thinking of the lines by Goethe, when Mephisto presents himself to Faust as ein Teil von jener Kraft, / die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.28 In our case the very gestures and acts of intended recognition bring forth experiences of disrespect, give rise to strong feelings of disrespect, and ultimately turn into an unintended disrespect. When does recognition pass the threshold of too much? My suggestion is, in line with my previous argument, that the phenomenon of too much recognition must be analysed in terms of the deteriorating quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship: as love that turns into a bond, as care that becomes too engaged, as appreciation that gets interfering, as solidarity that becomes obtrusive, or in more general terms, as a loss of that distance that sets free.29 Any single experience of disrespect normally does not ruin a relationship, but over time, through repeated experiences of disrespect, a shadow is cast over the relation, giving rise by one party to the feeling of actually being disrespected. The struggle for recognition here primarily takes the form of a struggle to establish or resurrect the distance that sets free.

28 â•‡ J.W. Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1986 [1808], lines 1335–1336. 29 â•‡ A similar argument was developed by Helmuth Plessner in his defence of the basic moments of societal life over the proponents of the ideal of community: society protects human dignity by providing social forms that regulate the distance between its members, whereas the ideal of community does not allow for any distance, but demands that everyone should be an open book to the other (see The Limits of Community. A Critique of Social Radicalism, New York, Humanity Books, 1999 [1924]).

recognition247 2.â•‡ Due recognition as the middle between too much and too little The position as a mean or middle implies that there exists an art of recognition – as the art of hitting the mark or of not going astray in the direction of either extreme. Due recognition is not just something that happens or that can be conveyed in any way. In the words of the sociologist Richard Sennett: “to convey respect means finding the words and gestures which make it felt and convincing”.30 For Sennett, tracing the mutual in mutual respect and mutual recognition, it is also a question of character formation, of what he calls forming a character turned outward. Turning outward means to open up to the influence of new people or events, to open up to new experiences. For Sennett this amounts to a rather peculiar concept of autonomy and respect of the other: “autonomy means accepting in others what one does not understand about them. In so doing, the fact of their autonomy is treated as equal to your own”.31 Furthermore, through accepting this opaque equality, the fact that the other is not fully transparent to me, I learn something about myself and thereby strengthen my own character. A similar argument is developed by Michael Carrithers, based on his experiences in ethnographic fieldwork: “both the intellectual practice of ethnographic interpretation and the embodied practice of fieldwork carry with them necessarily the first sketch of a moral position, namely, the recognition of the worth of others”.32 Moreover, to bridge the divide between differing views and cultural differences, Carrithers suggests the exercise of “social aesthetic standards”, a phrase that is meant to capture both “the moral character of human relations” and “the flexibility of a feel” for interpersonal relationships that allows one to handle unexpected encounters and situations, and to establish mutual recognition, trust and forbearance.

30 â•‡ R. Sennett, Respect in a World of Inequality, London & New York, Norton, 2004 [2003], p. 207. Starting out from the thesis that modern society lacks “positive expressions of respect and recognition for others” (p. xv), Sennett’s book poses the question of how mutual respect and recognition are possible in the face of inequalities in terms of wealth, status, talent and opportunities. 31 â•‡ ibid., p. 262; see also pp. 120â•›ff. 32 â•‡M. Carrithers, “Anthropology as a Moral Science of Possibilities”, Current Anthropology, Volume 46, Number 3, June, 2005, p. 437. The following quotes are from ibid., p. 438.

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3.â•‡ Too little recognition as a way of missing the mark of due recognition, eventually giving rise to experiences and feelings of disrespect Here we have cases of meaning well, but not doing enough: ‘I now realise, I could have done more for you, that I should have cared more or shown more appreciation’. Perhaps feelings of disappointment are the most common reaction here, rather than feelings of shame or anger. The flowers on Mother’s Day, intended as an act of recognition, but not being enough, not enough to undo all the other days of, let us say, neglect and taken for granted housework. Colourful flowers as the wretched symbol of an interpersonal relationship that has turned grey, a relation whose quality has deteriorated below due recognition. When does recognition fall short of due recognition? Here too, I would suggest, the answer is: When single experiences of indifference or disrespect have added up to giving the relationship another quality, as love that has become merely routine, as friendship consisting of no more than shared memories, as appreciation or solidarity that has become nothing but words and empty gestures. The struggle for recognition here, I presume, primarily takes the form of a struggle to raise one’s degree of social visibility. In case 1 and to a lesser degree in case 3, the recogniser does not master the art of recognition. Instead of hitting the mark of due recognition, the recogniser misses it and drifts away into too much or too little, with the unintended consequence of the other party not only feeling but actually being humiliated and disrespected. Looked on in this way, the art of recognition consists in successfully bridging the potential gap between recognitive attitudes, on the one hand, and gestures and acts of recognition, on the other. Moreover, it is here, in this potential gap, that the too much or too little slips into the relation of recognition in hand, as an excess or a deficiency that brings about its deterioration. As a case of too much care or possibly too much solidarity, I interpret the compassion that wounds. The compassionate eye no doubt sees the concrete other and their need, but the gestures and acts of recognition that are supposed to transmit the recognitive attitudes, miss their intended goal, because they are experienced as expressions of disrespect and arouse feelings of shame as well as anger. The recognitive offer is, so to speak, not accepted. This risk seems to increase in cases when compassion tries to surmount the barriers of inequality.

recognition249 Sennett describes different ways to cope with that risk when he tells the story of the Nun and the Socialist.33 Frances Xavier Cabrini was an Italian nun who migrated to Chicago in the United States in 1889, where she was active in Catholic charitable organisations. Jane Addams grew up in Chicago and became the legendary founder of Hull House, a place where immigrant workers could further their education, eat, and deal with local problems, in short, a place for social participation. The problem Mother Cabrini and Jane Addams had to cope with was: How to establish mutual respect and recognition among unequals? The two adopted radically different strategies: “Addams made a politics out of reserve, out of learning to keep silent about her own compassion. To Mother Cabrini, that silence was anathema”.34 Whereas Addams, in order to avoid the compassion that wounds by all means, depersonalised her own compassion, Mother Cabrini made no reserve at all of her own compassion, which however was given social shape through the hierarchic organisation of the Catholic Church. To care and to show solidarity among unequals is always problematic and runs the risk of turning into the kind of compassion that wounds. “Submission of the Catholic sort advocated by Mother Cabrini made for solidarity of an explicit sort –‘we are all God’s subjects’ – and care could therefore be freely expressed. More democratic forms of solidarity tend to be more hesitant, less spontaneous; questions of inequality intrude”.35 Jane Addams, in her fear of passing the threshold of too much recognition, exposed herself to the risk of giving too little recognition. As Sennett presents her case, Mother Cabrini successfully handled the risk of giving too much recognition tuning down her compassion through the social setting in which she worked. Hitting the mark of due recognition is always a difficult thing. It is an art that you can master well or less well, just as there are different ways of missing the mark, different ways to handle the problems involved, and different ways to make progress in the mastery of the art of recognition.36

â•‡Sennett, Respect, ch. 5, pp. 127–150. â•‡ ibid., p. 127. 35 â•‡ ibid., p. 134. 36 â•‡An example of mastering less well the art of recognition is expressed by Goethe’s words, quoted by Plessner: “One observes the intention and becomes annoyed.” (The Limits of Community, p. 164.) 33 34

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4.â•‡ No recognition at all taking the form of an intended or unintended disrespect Here we have cases of non-consideration and social invisibility: ‘I now realise that I have not seen you, have not paid you any attention, but that was in no way my intention’. Spelled out in this way we are dealing with cases of unintended disrespect. For example, not noticing that someone (a friend or colleague) has made a significant change in hairstyle seems to be a clear case of unintended disrespect (although it can of course also be a case of an intentional act of disrespect). In this example the hairstyle stands for the whole person; not noticing the change is thus experienced as a disrespect of the whole person: being treated as someone who is socially invisible, who is not worth being taken notice of. Obviously there are fleeting transitions between cases 3 and 4. The frustrated ‘Sometimes you do not listen to me’ turns slowly into the having had enough of ‘You never listen to me’, as the expression of a radical deterioration of the quality of the relationship in hand. Another example is the classic case of unrecognised housework. Here it is not so much the person doing the housework, as the activity itself that has become socially invisible, in the sense of being taken for granted (not the presence of the activity but its eventual absence makes it socially visible). However, the outcome is the same: disrespect for the other person. 5.â•‡ Finally, refused recognition or overt disrespect Here we have all cases of intentional disrespect: ‘I despise you’, ‘I have no respect for you at all’, ‘You are worthless’. This was what Honneth primarily had in mind in The Struggle for Recognition when he talked about acts and experiences of disrespect: overt acts of disrespect – the violation of the body, the denial of rights, the denigration of ways of life – and strong negative feelings of shame or anger, which eventually give rise to struggles for recognition.37 As far as cases 4 and 5 are concerned, there obviously exist many different routes along which the quality of an interpersonal relationship might improve or deteriorate, add or lose recognitive quality. In the following a few hints are given at some of these often winding paths. To begin with there seem to be good reasons to insist on cases 4 â•‡ Compare Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, ch. 6, pp. 131–139.

37

recognition251 and 5 being different forms of disrespect, as for example Stephan Voswinkel does when he distinguishes between a passive and an active negation of recognition, calling the one “nonrecognition” and the other “disrespect”.38 Whereas nonrecognition is the absence of recognition – something expected, demanded, hoped for that does not take place – disrespect is the active expression of nonrecognition, implying that the opposite occurs to that which was expected, demanded or hoped for. Accordingly, Voswinkel criticises Honneth for not having paid attention to this distinction in his early writings on recognition: the phenomena of non-consideration and social invisibility there never entered the picture. Honneth’s article “Invisibility”, in which he discusses the phenomenon of social invisibility, can be read as an implicit answer to such a critique. By focusing on different degrees of disregard for another person, Honneth is attentive to forms of disrespect that come closer to case 4. On the other hand, he seems hesitant to speak of a passive or non-active negation of recognition, at least in the sense of an unintended form of disrespect. Instead he differentiates between different degrees of injury according to “how active the perceiving subject is in the act of non-perception”: harmless inattention, absent-minded ignorance and demonstratively looking through someone are different degrees of being active.39 Perhaps it is possible to talk of a level of activity, at one end of the spectrum, that is, approaching zero. Then a case of no recognition at all is always an intentional act of disrespect – although at times at a minimum level of activity. Furthermore, an interpretation close at hand is to consider case 5 as an intensification of case 4. The disrespect that you are the object of in being looked through, in not being noticed, is intensified when you are actually looked upon as ridiculous,40 worthless, being a disgrace to humankind (as for example in severe forms of racism), and treated accordingly. You might then entertain a strong desire to return again into anonymity, into the safe room of relative social invisibility. For example, managing to hide a certain otherwise visual stigma can be

38 â•‡Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation, pp. 42–44. The German words used are Nichtanerkennung and Mißachtung. Ikäheimo and Laitinen prefer to use the term “misrecognition” for Mißachtung (see “Analyzing Recognition”, pp. 51â•›ff.). 39 â•‡ Honneth, “Invisibility”, p. 112. 40 â•‡ Plessner interpreted the risk of becoming the object of ridicule as a constant threat to human dignity in The Limits of Community, especially ch. 4, pp. 103–127.

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experienced for the stigmatised person as a return to being a member of the human community.41 However, it might also be argued that social invisibility actually is the more harmful form of disrespect. An active negation of recognition, an act of overt disrespect, is possibly – in the long run – less emotionally painful and humiliating than nonrecognition, because it implies that you still belong to the community of socially visible humans (even when your very humanity is explicitly denied as in extreme cases of racism). The main character in the Swedish novel Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg, expresses exactly this in a succinct reflection: “You want to be loved, for want of that admired, for want of that feared, for want of that detested and despised. You want to convey to others some kind of human feeling. The soul shudders back before the void and wants to have contact at any price whatsoever”.42 The struggle for recognition in case 4 can therefore, to begin with, take the form of a struggle to become socially visible, to be someone who counts, someone who is taken into consideration (as loved, admired, feared or, eventually, detested and despised), in short, to be someone who arouses some kind of human feeling in other people. Gabriele Wagner talks of this struggle to become socially visible in terms of a Kampf um Beachtung, a struggle to become noticed, to be taken into consideration, and distinguishes it from the struggle against being despised.43 Both recognition and overt disrespect presuppose that you are taken into consideration, that you are not socially invisible. In the case of overt disrespect you are at least implicitly recognised as a human subject, whereas not being taken into consideration means the lack of any social resonance at all. To become despised then can, in some cases, actually be a step forward into social visibility. Thus, the path from social invisibility to recognition may sometimes lead via becoming socially visible as detested and despised. This can be a position from which it is possible to reach other people under certain circumstances, a kind of platform from which you can start to work on converting overt disrespect into love, friendship, respect, appreciation or solidarity, in short, into recognition. 41 â•‡This is of course a central theme in E. Goffman, Stigma, especially ch. 2, pp. 57–128. It is also possible to try to adapt to stigmatisation by normalising it, that is, by not taking it into any particular consideration. 42 â•‡ H. Söderberg, Doktor Glas, Stockholm, Bonniers, 2002, p. 80 (my translation). The novel was first published in 1905. 43 â•‡Wagner, Anerkennung und Individualisierung, p. 127.

recognition253 Finally, to be prominent, to have a reputation, no doubt means to be taken notice of, but not necessarily to be recognised (neither loved, respected nor socially esteemed).44 On the other hand, having reached prominence, for example as being the ‘bad guy’ in the football team, can be interpreted as a kind of recognition. The ‘meanest’ footballer in the team is often ‘loved’ or highly appreciated by the fans and respected by the opponents. In this case, however, there obviously is not much moral content in the kind of recognition that is gained. 4. In conclusion, this article has followed two principal objectives. First, to suggest three levels of analysis concerning phenomena of recognition, and especially to point out an intermediate level, currently somewhat neglected in the literature, at which recognition is to be analysed as the quality of an unfolding interpersonal relationship. Second, to suggest that on this intermediate level of analysis recognition can and, in my view, should be analysed as a theory of the middle, where due recognition is situated between too much recognition, on the one hand, and too little recognition, none at all and overt disrespect, on the other hand. Moreover, due recognition being a middle or mean between extremes implies that there exists an art of recognition – the art of successfully bridging the potential gap between recognitive attitudes and expressions of recognition (gestures and acts). It might be argued that recognition theory as a theory of the middle is more of a social psychological and sociological theory of recognition than a normative one. If this is the case, it no doubt distances itself from Honneth’s theoretical endeavour, because for the latter the very point of the category of recognition is the revelation of social reality “guided by normative criteria, which for their part must already have ‘sociological’ or ‘social-theoretical’ content”.45

â•‡ Compare Voswinkel, Anerkennung und Reputation, pp. 52–55. â•‡ A. Honneth, “The Point of Recognition: A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder”, N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 265. 44 45

Chapter nine

The Social Dimension of Autonomy Antti Kauppinen The ideology of atomistic individualism is a pervasive and familiar feature of late capitalist modernity. The following quote from a bestselling self-help book may serve as a graphic illustration: You must recognize that you alone are the source of all the conditions and situations in your life. You must recognize that whatever your world looks like right now, you alone have caused it to look that way. The state of your health, your finances, your personal relationships – all of it is your doing, yours and no one else’s.1

There is a kind of appeal to this sort of thinking. We take pride in being independent thinkers and doers, and we want to feel we are in control of our lives. We believe in personal responsibility, in blaming and praising people for actions that are up to them. Yet the injunction to shoulder all responsibility for everything is manifestly absurd. Surely our powers of controlling our lives are not magical. It is common sense that we acquire and exercise our capacities for self-determination and autonomy in interaction with others. The kind of animals we are do not spring out of the earth like mushrooms; it is ridiculous to suggest that there are no social conditions for autonomous lives. This is no doubt a truism. However, it gives rise to a real challenge: just what kind of social relationships are compatible with – or perhaps even necessary for – autonomous agency? If and when we value autonomy and wish to promote it, what should we do, beyond granting people rights against interference? Traditional philosophical accounts of autonomy have focused on the capacities and characteristics of individuals that are required for them to count as self-determining and responsible, paying little heed to social conditions that might be harmful or conducive to acquiring 1 â•‡ M. Hernancki, The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want, New York, Berkley, 2001, xii, 47. Quoted in B. Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed. On (Not) Getting By in America, New York, Henry Holt, 2005, pp. 81–82.

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or exercising these capacities. Recoiling from such views, those who emphasise how social power relations shape our very identities and how unconscious drives guide our behaviour have sometimes claimed that autonomy is just a harmful fiction: there is no real self, and even if there were one, it would not be in control. Nonetheless, even these radicals sign their works and speak of resistance, suggesting that their real beef is not with autonomy itself but more likely particular, individualistic conceptions of it. Perhaps it is not necessary, however, to conceive autonomy like that. Perhaps we can think of authentic selfdetermination as an intersubjective achievement, and thus avoid both unrealistic atomism and social determinism. This alternative has become a central starting point in recent debates in political philosophy around communitarianism, feminism and critical theory. In this essay, I will examine systematically what a social or relational or intersubjectivist conception of autonomy might look like, what it would add to individualist theories, and what normative consequences it would have for liberal political philosophy. I begin with a brief look at the concept of autonomy and leading contemporary individualist theories (1). I then distinguish three respects in which autonomous agency depends on a sufficiently conducive social environment. First, as communitarians, feminists and psychoanalytically inspired philosophers have convincingly shown, acquiring the evaluative and motivational capacities needed for authentic self-determination is a result of a socialisation process that enables the child to grasp distinctions in value, challenge prevailing conventions, and order its first-order desires accordingly (2). As this literature is already well known and much discussed, I will be content with a brief overview. However, the second kind of intersubjective condition for autonomy, the psychological conditions for exercising these capacities and skills to shape an authentic self and lead an autonomous life, are less familiar. As Axel Honneth, above all, has argued, without a positive set of attitudes toward oneself – self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem – one will not be able to make use of one’s autonomy-constituting capacities. The development of these second-order capacities for autonomy, as they might be called, requires interpersonal recognition as a matter of empirical fact (3). I argue, however, that Honneth’s view, as it stands, suffers from two basic weaknesses. First, it is premised on a problematic conception of the role of desire in autonomous agency, and needs to be supplemented by a normative competence account of individual autonomy capacities (4). Second, since the significance of recognition for autonomy is mediated through subjective experience, it cannot

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account for cases in which the exercise of autonomy-constituting capacities is hindered by objective relations of domination that are not experienced as such. Thus I argue for adding a third kind of intersubjective condition for autonomy, according to which having a social standing that makes available participation in valuable activities – a standing defined by the absence of domination, marginalisation and emotional exclusion – is directly constitutive of being autonomous, since it is, together with competitive material resources, the external condition of exercising effective autonomous control over one’s life (5). In short, I argue that the exercise of autonomy-constituting individual capacities requires what Hegel calls ‘being at home’ in the social world, a condition that involves both the subjective experience of recognition and the objective fact of recognition. Such a strongly intersubjective view has potentially wide-ranging implications for a political theory like liberalism that takes individual autonomy as a central focus (6). 1.â•‡ The Concept and Conceptions of Autonomy Autonomy is a theoretical concept, though it has by now acquired some everyday resonance. Still, unlike the case of an ordinary language concept like knowledge, there is no point comparing theoretical proposals with ordinary use or linguistic intuitions. We can assess whether one or another way to understand it is better only in terms of a fixed theoretical purpose. In other words, we must fix the theoretical role of autonomy to pass judgement on different accounts of what it takes to fulfil that role. My topic in this essay is personal autonomy, which is, in the first instance, a characteristic of some persons or agents, rather than particular choices, actions or motives – even if the best way to approach what makes agents autonomous may be through investigating conditions for autonomous choice or action. Though it is intimately related to moral autonomy – roughly, the ability to govern oneself according to moral principles – and political autonomy – the ability to take part in collective-will formation – it is conceptually distinct. I will approach the distinctive theoretical role of autonomy in terms of three widely accepted main contrasts that define what philosophers in general talk about when they talk about (personal) autonomy.2 First, autonomy contrasts with mechanism; an autonomous action does not 2 â•‡In arguing that there is a unitary, commonly accepted core to the concept of (personal) autonomy (as opposed to conceptions of it), I am rejecting the view that there is

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follow from earlier states of affairs like clockwork or a pre-programmed reaction. If there is causal determination, it must be of a distinctive kind that allows for conscious, goal-seeking behaviour. Second, autonomy contrasts with lack of self-control due to volitional or motivational disorders. Autonomous agents are not constantly driven by random urges, desires or rash judgements, but are in some sense in charge of themselves. And finally, autonomy contrasts with heteronomy, by which I mean here that one’s conception of what is worth doing does not result from undue influence by others (or physiological failure) but is rather a response to considerations bearing on the issue. These contrasts highlight, respectively, the elements of purposive agency, self-determination and authenticity that are essential to any recognisable notion of autonomy.3 Agents whose actions are not governed by simple mechanism, alien motives or heteronomous influence but are instead authentically self-determining can meaningfully count as authors of their own actions and co-authors of their own lives when they are able to consistently exercise this capacity. This has several consequences to how it makes sense for others to relate to them. First, autonomous actions reveal who the agent is. They are, as Susan Wolf and Gary Watson put it, deeply attributable to the agent.4 They disclose the agent’s character to others, expressing her practical identity. Since autonomous actions flow from the agent’s own commitments, she can meaningfully be held answerable for them. Second, since autonomous agents are capable of forming views on what is worth doing in light of pertinent considerations and acting on them, it is fair to hold them to behavioural expectations that could in principle be justified to them. In other words, they are fit to be held fully responsible for their actions. It makes sense to praise or blame them for their actions, as well as to engage in practical dialogue with them to convince them. Third, when autonomous agents exercise the abilities that make them fit to be held

a plurality of distinct notions that are often confused. Nomy Arpaly, for example, distinguishes eight “senses” of “autonomy” (N. Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 117–130), but fails to see that the central ones are aspects of a single notion rather than distinct, as she claims. 3 â•‡At this level of abstraction one must naturally be careful not to formulate authenticity and self-determination in terms that presuppose an individualist conception of autonomy. 4 â•‡ G. Watson, 1996, S. Wolf, Freedom within Reason, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990.


responsible, they are in an important sense free.5 As free and responsible, these agents are entitled not only to full moral consideration but also to a say in how they should be treated by others. Because autonomy is essential for full participation in public deliberation, it is a central democratic value. Because it is essential to leading one’s life according to one’s own convictions, it is a central liberal value. What, then, constitutes being autonomous? According to individualist conceptions, being autonomous is solely a matter of having certain kinds of psychological capacities. Contemporary individualists can be divided into two basic groups, proceduralists and substantivists. Procedural views are content-neutral: according to them, any preference can count as autonomous, provided it is formed in the right way or fits in the right way in the agent’s motivational structure. Thus, according to hierarchical theories of Harry Frankfurt and Gerald Dworkin, our standpoint on the world is constituted by the desires that we reflectively endorse. For them, reflective endorsement is a matter of, roughly, desiring to desire as one does.6 A world-directed or first-order desire is autonomous if the agent has a suitable second-order desire (a desire about desires) to the effect that the first-order desire be motivationally effective. In such a case, the agent is said to identify with the first-order desire, which thus constitutes her will. Desires that we do not desire to have, in contrast, are in the relevant sense external to ourselves; we are alienated from them, and if they lead us to act in spite of ourselves, we are mere bystanders to our own actions. Critics of the hierarchical model within the proceduralist tradition have focused on two questions: are higher-order desires really suitable for drawing the limits of the agent’s real self, and is the origin of higherorder desires really irrelevant to autonomy? To begin with, why is it that higher-order desires should count as somehow representing the agent’s own view or her real self – what gives them such authority? There is no guarantee, notably, that higher-order desires represent our values: we might intelligibly disapprove of them, and thus, arguably, alienate ourselves from them. To solve this problem, evaluativists like 5 â•‡For the connection between fitness to be held responsible and freedom, see P. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment” in G. Watson, Free Will, 2nd ed., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962, pp. 72–93 and in P. Pettit, A Theory of Freedom, Cambridge, Polity Press, ch. 1, 2001. 6 â•‡ See the essays collected in H. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About, 1988 and G. Dworkin, Theory and Practice of Autonomy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

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Gary Watson, roughly propose that we see the agent’s own standpoint or true self as constituted by her valuational system or evaluative beliefs.7 Autonomy as self-determination, then, is achieved when the agent’s motivational system or desires is aligned with her valuational system. However, this still leaves the problem of origin open: if we admit that it is possible to get agents to form desires that do not represent their true self, why would it not be possible to get agents to form inauthentic higher-order desires or evaluations? As John Christman puts it, “a person can be manipulated and conditioned to such an extent that she gains a coherent and integrated set of desires as a result, but one which is totally the result of external manipulation”.8 Thus, Christman proposes that autonomous desires are those resulting from a process that the agent would not have resisted, had she reflected on them in a minimally rational and self-aware fashion.9 In a similar spirit, but building on an evaluativist rather than hierarchical model, Al Mele suggests that what makes ‘value engineering’ autonomy undermining is that it bypasses the agent’s capacities for rational control of their mental lives, such as those of assessing their values and principles and modifying their motives accordingly.10 The essence of all the above procedural individualist views is that the content of an autonomous agent’s evaluative beliefs and desires does not matter. Some find this problematic since it allows one to autonomously choose a life of subservience and non-autonomy, for example. Consequently, they argue that there are certain specific things that an autonomous person must care about, centrally continuing to be

â•›â•›â•›â•›7 â•‡G. Watson, “Free Agency” (1975) in G. Watson, Agency and Answerability. Selected Essays, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2004, pp. 25–26; he calls the view “Platonistic”. Frankfurt’s talk of “reflective endorsement” is also sometimes construed as a version of evaluativism (for example, M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994, p. 134), but he vehemently denies this, emphasising volitional necessity (inability and unwillingness to will otherwise) as the criterion of desire ownership in recent work (see H. Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love, Princetown University Press, 2004). â•›â•›â•›â†œ8 â•‡ J. Christman, “Autonomy and Personal History,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 21, no. 1, 1991, pp. 9n19. â•›â•›â•›â†œæ¸€å±®9 â•‡ ibid., p. 21. Robert Young’s account (“Autonomy and Socialization,” Mind, vol. 89, 1980, pp. 565–576) differs in that for him, reflective acceptance now of the processes that led to preference-formation or identification is sufficient for autonomy, while Christman requires reflective acceptance then, to avoid the problem that acceptance now can be objectionably conditioned. 10 â•‡A. Mele, Autonomous Agents, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 168–172, 183–184.


autonomous in the future.11 Another critique of pure proceduralism takes its departure from the link between autonomy and accountability, or fitness to be held fully responsible. The key idea is that it is possible to meet any procedural conditions, but still be intuitively less than fully accountable for one’s choices. This is the case when one’s values or desires lack sufficient grounding in what is truly valuable or desirable. Such agents may be self-governing in a narrow sense, even minimally rational in the sense of internal consistency, but still incapable of responsibly directing their lives, because they fail to understand the true significance of their choices. According to normative competence accounts of the sort defended by Susan Wolf, and John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, unless the content of one’s evaluative beliefs and desires is at least moderately ‘reasons-responsive’, one does not have the kind of abilities that would enable one to guide one’s life in a responsible manner, and correspondingly are not autonomous.12 I will defend this kind of view of autonomy-constituting capacities in section 4. 2.â•‡ The Social Conditions of Becoming Autonomous The roots of intersubjectivism can be found already in Aristotle’s doctrine that man is a political animal – an animal, that is, whose speciesspecific potential is actualised only in and through active participation in the life of the polis – and, as we will see, this type of argument is still used by some contemporary communitarians. It was Fichte, however, who first explicitly formulated an intersubjective condition specifically for autonomy, or “the exercise of free efficacy”,13 in his Foundations of Natural Right. His argument is a transcendental, a priori deduction 11 â•‡See, for example, T. Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect” in Autonomy and SelfRespect, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. ?. See also M. Oshana, “Personal Autonomy and Society,” The Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 1, 1998, pp. 81–102. 12 â•‡ Wolf 1990, R. J. Wallace (Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1994), Fischer and Ravizza 1998. Wolf herself (and Wallace after her) use ‘autonomy’ for the sort of Kantian views requiring contracausal freedom that she rejects, but it makes more sense to see her ‘Reason View’ as an alternative conception of autonomy rather than as an alternative to autonomy. Similarly, Pettit and Smith (1996) (“Freedom in Belief and Desire,” reprinted in Watson, 2003, pp. 388–407) use the term “orthonomy” for their normative competence account, which I class here as another variant of this conception of autonomy. 13 â•‡J. G. Fichte, Foundations of Natural Right, ed. F. Neuhouser, trans. M. Baur, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1796/2000, §1.

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from the conditions of possibility of self-consciousness, which in turn is necessary for free choice. It goes roughly as follows. To will anything, I must posit (be conscious of) an independent, external world, since acting otherwise would be superfluous (everything would change if I merely thought so). To posit something as an object is to experience it as something that constrains my spontaneity.14 As a practical subject, I must thus experience myself as a finite individual. To set ends and make plans, to deliberate consciously, I must also be aware of my unconstrained ability to set an aim for myself and act on it, my free efficacy. This kind of practical self-consciousness requires that “the subject’s efficacy is itself the object that is perceived and comprehended”.15 But how can I experience my spontaneous activity as such, as unconstrained, if at the very moment I make it an object I (by definition) experience it as something that constrains my spontaneity? That is, how can I catch myself in the act, so that the I that is experienced and the I that experiences fall together? An infinite regress or circle threatens when the I chases its tail in vain. Fichte argues that it is possible to break the circle only if I am conscious of “being-determined to be self-determining”16 – when the object that constrains my spontaneity indirectly reveals the spontaneity, allowing me to catch it from the corner of my eye, so to speak. Crucially, he notes that this is the case when I experience myself as being called on or summoned to act by another free and rational subject. When I experience something as a summons (Aufforderung), I do not experience it as a causal force that determines me to act in a certain way, but as a demand addressed to me that calls on me to decide whether or not to go along, that is, to determine myself, to exercise my spontaneity. Only in and through this reaction of the other to me do I become aware of my spontaneous ability to act as such, he claims. Now, Fichte continues, the summoner must take me to be a free rational being to try to influence me in this way: “The purposiveness of the summons is conditional on the understanding and freedom of the

14 â•‡ “[T]he nature of an object is such that, when it is comprehended by a subject, the subject’s free activity is posited as constrained.” Fichte, 1796/2000, §3, p. 31. For the idealist, the object is still transcendentally (and from the perspective of the philosopher in the theoretical mode) a result of the subject’s free activity, as is everything that exists. 15 â•‡ ibid., §3, p. 31. 16 â•‡ ibid.


being to whom it is addressed”.17 To be able to do this, the summoner him/herself must have the concepts of freedom and reason, and thus be a rational being. Seeing that it issues from a free and rational being is thus part of what I have to recognise to take the summons as such – and reach self-consciousness – so that recognising a free and rational being outside myself is necessary for me to reach self-consciousness. Since the summoner must do likewise as a precondition of his very act, the recognition as free and rational is necessarily mutual: “One cannot recognize the other if both do not mutually recognize each other; and one cannot treat the other as a free being, if both do not mutually treat each other as free”.18 In this way, mutual recognition and limitation of freedom (which, according to Fichte, is the essence of the concept of right) turn out to be necessary conditions of self-consciousness (consciousness of one’s free efficacy) and consequently autonomy. Fichte’s theory is groundbreaking in many ways. It problematises something that seems self-evident – my awareness of my own freedom to act – and argues that it depends on a linguistically mediated intersubjective relationship, thus decisively (even if not necessarily consistently19) breaking the frame of the early modern philosophy of the subject. In so doing, it opens a path along which Hegel, Mead and Habermas have each achieved their most important insights. Nonetheless, even taken at face value, it is very limited as an intersubjective theory of autonomous agency. While awareness of one’s ability to set ends may be a necessary condition of autonomy, it is far from sufficient, as the discussion of individualist conceptions showed.

â•‡ ibid., §3, p. 35. â•‡ ibid., §4, p. 42. Fichte draws the conclusion that since we all need other human beings to become human, “if there are human beings, there must be more than one” (§3, p. 37). How does it all get started, then? Well, another, non-human rational being must have brought up the first human beings (§3, p. 38) – that is, Fichte turns a ‘priming problem’ for his theory into a proof of the existence of God! 19 â•‡A. Honneth, “Die transzendentale Notwendigkeit von Intersubjektivität” in Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2003, pp. 28–48.; J. Habermas (“Individuation Through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead’s Theory of Subjectivity” in Postmetaphysical Thinking, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1992a, pp. 149–204), and R. Neuhouser (“Introduction” in Fichte, 2000), for example, raise serious concerns about the consistency and sufficiency of Fichte’s account. How do I recognise that I am being summoned, if I am not already in some inchoate way aware of myself? (At most, intersubjectivity is a condition of the move from a pre-reflexive to reflexive awareness of oneself – which is not nothing, of course.) How can my transcendental ego be in any sense the source of everything that exists, as idealists like Fichte claim, if there must be others? 17 18

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Some contemporary communitarians aim to provide a more farreaching account of the social conditions for becoming autonomous. The basic elements of a generic conception of embedded autonomy can be found in the work of Charles Taylor and Michael Sandel. First, we can revise our ends only when holding other ends fixed; Taylor argues that ‘radical choice’ is no choice at all, just plumping for one or another alternative without grounds.20 Second, not just any given ends provide support for autonomous choice, since it is not a matter of simple weighing of the strength of one’s desires.21 Instead, thirdly, autonomous choice is choice in light of one’s constitutive ends (Sandel) or strong evaluations (Taylor), commitments and valuations that define who we are and want to be and make possible qualitative distinctions among motives – for example, resisting a temptation to have one’s nose operated on because it would be vain, even if one believes this course of action would best satisfy one’s existing desires. Thus it calls for selfknowledge and self-understanding – we must know which of our ends are revisable and which are such that stepping back from them would amount to becoming a different person.22 Finally, this brings in community in two ways. Since our identity, in part, precedes autonomous choice rather than results from it, we can only become autonomous when we have a sense of where we stand, an orientation toward the good. At least initially, this orientation is provided by communally defined roles (being a Catholic, being a father, and so on) that involve definite ideals of what is noble and what is base, what is worth wanting and what is not.23 These identities may be essentially shared, so that it does not make sense to be a nun, for example, except in the context of an ongoing social practice. However, as Taylor, in particular, emphasises, community does not enter the picture merely through providing content for identities, but also through being a precondition for having a language in which to articulate the qualitative distinctions involved in strong evaluation. Language, Taylor argues, following what he calls the ‘expressivist’ Romantic tradition of Herder and Humboldt, is constitutive of human attitudes, not merely a â•‡ C. Taylor, Hegel, 1977, pp. 29–30. â•‡ Sandel, 1998, pp. 159–160; C. Taylor, Human Agency and Language. Philosophical Papers I., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985a, pp. 25–26. 22 â•‡ Sandel, 1998, pp. 58–59; Taylor, Human Agency and Language, p. 34; C. Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of Modern Identity, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 27. 23 â•‡ See, for example, A. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed., Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, pp. 220–221. 20 21


means for representing them. As self-interpreting animals, who we are depends in part on who we take ourselves to be, on how we understand ourselves. We start out with an inchoate sense of the import of a situation – something bothers me about the tone of a remark a friend made – and try to find the right words for it; perhaps reflection leads me to believe using that tone in that context bespoke of envy. Coming to formulate the matter in this way changes how one feels about the situation, given that there is an internal relation between our emotions and our interpretation of their objects. This enhanced sense of significance, made possible by linguistic articulation, enables us to form new kinds of goals and relationships to others.24 Thus it is essential for the sort of attitudes that constitute strong evaluations. And since there is no private language, this is a strong argument for what Taylor elsewhere calls the ‘social thesis’, the claim that human beings “only develop their characteristically human capacities in society”, that “living in society is a necessary condition … of becoming a fully responsible, autonomous being”.25 He argues further that eventually conceiving of alternative ways of life in a way that is an essential component of the kind of autonomy that liberals and libertarians value requires – including the very idea of going against prevailing conventions – is possible only within particular social and historical contexts.26 In sum, communitarians argue that belonging to a suitable kind of community is what makes possible having identities that provide constitutive ends, having the kind of evaluatively rich language that enables articulating and revising these ends, and developing an imagination that allows one to envision living differently from one’s role models, all capacities necessary for autonomous agency. Many feminists27 and psychoanalytically influenced theorists28 have presented similar views â•‡For example, Taylor, Human Agency and Language, pp. 102, 234. â•‡ C. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Philosophical Papers II, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 190–191. 26 â•‡Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences, pp. 204–206. See also J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986, p. 162 and Y. Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 30. 27 â•‡ See, for example, D. T. Meyers, Self, Society, and Personal Choice, New York, Columbia University Press, 1989; M. Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, and C. Mackenzie & N Stoljar (eds.), Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency, and the Social Self, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000. 28 â•‡ See S. Scheffler, Human Morality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992, and J. D. Velleman, “A Rational Superego?” The Philosophical Review, vol. 108, 1999, pp. 529–558. 24 25

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and further evidence supporting the contention that, as a matter of empirical fact, only participation in particular kinds of social relationships enables one to learn the sort of evaluative and motivational capacities required for being autonomous. This view is now broadly accepted, though its implications can be a matter of fierce debate. 3.â•‡ Recognition and the Psychological Conditions of Exercising Autonomy As the accounts discussed in the previous section show, acquiring autonomy-constituting capacities plausibly depends on intersubjective relationships. However, to be autonomous, one needs more than the simple ability to act autonomously; one must be in a position to exercise this ability. This is not optional, since it is only through the exercise of autonomy skills that one shapes an authentic self in the first place. Thus people must actually exercise a fair degree of control over the direction of their lives to count as autonomous. As Joseph Raz stresses, it is the exercise and not the mere capacity for autonomy that we hold so dear.29 It is essential to my argument that this exercise of selfdetermination can be supported or defeated both by internal and external conditions. In this section, I examine accounts that focus on the former, and return to the latter in section 5. The second family of empirical intersubjectivist conceptions of autonomy thus focuses on the influence of intersubjective relationships on agents’ second-order capacities for autonomy – in other words, psychological capacities that are required for the agent to exercise their first-order, autonomy-constituting capacities, “to actually make use of their autonomy”.30 Broadly speaking, the thesis is that the evaluative and motivational capacities of an agent (whether or not they are acquired only in particular social relationships) are as good as useless unless she also trusts in herself – that is, unless she has the capacity for particular self-directed emotional or affective attitudes.31 Autonomy

29 â•‡ “It’s hard to conceive of an argument that possession of a capacity is valuable even though its exercise is devoid of value … The ideal of autonomy is that of autonomous life. The capacity for autonomy is a secondary sense of ‘autonomy’â•›” (Raz, 1986, p. 372). 30 â•‡Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political Philosophical Exchange. Verso, London, 2003, p. 181. 31 â•‡I do not mean to suggest that positive attitudes toward oneself exhaust the psychological conditions for the exercise of autonomy. There are also the so-called


cannot be understood merely in terms of the structure of beliefs and desires. As Axel Honneth puts it in a paper co-authored with Joel Anderson, to be autonomous, we must be able “to trust our own feelings and intuitions, to stand up for what we believe in, and to consider our projects and accomplishments worthwhile”.32 The next step is the claim that the ability to adopt such attitudes depends on suitable interpersonal relationships. A proponent of this type of intersubjective account thus has a double burden of proof: he or she must show both that autonomy requires a certain kind of attitude toward oneself and that autonomy-conducive relationships are at least empirically necessary for having such attitudes. Theories of this type have been proposed by Paul Benson in a series of articles and Honneth in his The Struggle for Recognition and subsequent works.33 I will focus here on Honneth, since his view is more comprehensive, both theoretically sophisticated and empirically supported. In these respects it represents a step forward from vague and sketchy suggestions in this direction by some feminist and communitarian theorists. Honneth’s methodological starting point is a solid Hegelian insight: the dependence of autonomy on social relationships is revealed when the disruption of those relationships leads to reduction in one’s ability to make autonomous choices. The normally invisible intersubjective dependence manifests itself when there is a problem. Examining such disruptions and their effects systematically we can construct a theory of autonomy-conducive relationships that is firmly rooted in everyday experience and psychological research. Aiming to naturalise early Hegel’s account, Honneth argues that it is an empirical matter of fact we can acquire and sustain such attitudes toward ourselves only when others adopt corresponding attitudes toward us – in other words, if we are recognised by those whose attitudes we in turn regard as authoritative, that is, those whom we recognise. Because these attitudes are necessary for autonomy, autonomy

‘executive virtues’ like temperance, courage and fortitude that may be needed for one to make judgements and stand by them (see P. Pettit & M. Smith, “Practical Unreason,” Mind, vol. 102, 1993, pp. 76–77). 32 â•‡ Joel Anderson and Axel Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, in eds. Anderson and Christman, 2005, 127–149. p. 130. I will henceforth attribute the views presented in this important paper to Honneth without qualification, since they cohere with what he says elsewhere. 33 â•‡For P. Benson, see “Freedom and Value”, Journal of Philosophy 84, 1987, pp. 465– 486; “Free Agency and Self-Worth”, Journal of Philosophy 91, 1994, pp. 650–668.

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depends on mutual recognition. As we have seen, insofar as such theses are found in Fichte and Hegel, they are most plausibly read as transcendental arguments about the conditions of possibility of particular kinds of self-relation. Honneth, however, believes that in contemporary ‘postmetaphysical’ context, what is needed is “a reconstruction of [Hegel’s] initial thesis in the light of empirical social psychology”.34 I will next summarise the arguments and evidence he presents for the necessity of three kinds of self-relation, self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem, for exercising autonomy-constituting capacities, and the empirical dependence of these self-relations on being correspondingly recognised by others. It must be noted at the outset that Honneth does not always formulate the importance of recognition in terms of its contribution to autonomy, but also talks about recognition as a condition of self-realisation (Selbstverwirklichung), personal integrity, intact self-relation and personal identity-formation. It is not exactly clear what the relationship of these concepts is to autonomy; on the face of it, they are far from equivalent, though no doubt related. In the following, I will focus solely on recognition as a condition of autonomy. 3.1.â•‡Self-Confidence The first recognition-mediated self-relation in Honneth’s schema is basic self-confidence, understood as a positive affective attitude toward one’s own desires. He draws empirical support for the recognitiondependence of self-confidence from object-relations theory. According to its leading proponent, Donald Winnicott, the child and the mother initially form an undifferentiated intersubjectivity. When the mother gradually returns to life after the initial ‘holding phase’, there is a crisis for the infant that manifests itself in tantrums and aggression toward the mother. For Winnicott, this leads both child and mother to see each other as separate subjects with independent needs. At the same time, they become aware of their mutual dependence. As the mother continues to provide reliably for the needs of the child in spite of its manifesting aggressive impulses, the child can begin to express what it wants without fear of being abandoned. As Honneth puts it, “In becoming sure of the ‘mother’s’ love, young children come to trust themselves,

34 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 68.


which makes it possible for them to be alone without anxiety”.35 The idea seems to be that when the child is not rejected because of unruly impulses, it comes to see the satisfaction of its basic needs and desires as having inherent value for the other in spite of diverging from the other’s needs and desires. In internalising the other’s positive valuation, one comes to see one’s basic needs for physical and psychological integrity as worth being satisfied and gains “strength to open up to himself or herself in a relaxed relation-to-self ”.36 This, according to Honneth, is essential for autonomy, since “self-trust has to do with the affectively mediated perceptual capacities by which what is subjectively felt becomes material for deliberation in the first place”.37 These “body-bound drive impulses, the ‘id’ in Freud’s sense “push the growing child into the direction of “a higher degree of individuation in its articulation of needs”.38 If recognition in the form of love and caring is empirically necessary for openness to desires that push one away from social conformity, in particular those related to the body, their absence or active misrecognition should manifest itself in disruption of this self-relationship. Again drawing on empirical studies, Honneth argues that this is indeed the case. Misrecognition here consists of physical and psychological abuse, in the worst case torture and rape, resulting in, on the one hand, “lasting damage to one’s basic confidence (learned through love) that one can autonomously coordinate one’s own body”39 and on the other, the inability of victims to “trust their desires to be authentically their own”.40 Without confidence in the authenticity or worth of what one wants or the related sense of being at home in one’s body, the exercise of the capacity of assessing one’s desires and acting on the assessment is impaired. Thus one’s autonomy – apparently understood here roughly 35 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 104. Following Winnicott, Honneth speculates that this original dialectic of boundary-dissolution and boundaryestablishment is behind adult affective relationships as well. 36 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 105. 37 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 133. 38 â•‡Axel Honneth, ‘Objektbeziehungen und postmoderne Identität’, in Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2003, p. 149 (my translation). 39 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 132. It is not immediately clear how Honneth moves from trust in one’s needs and desires to trust in autonomous coordination of one’s body. 40 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 134.

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on the hierarchical model – is diminished because of emotional misrecognition, and shown to depend on positive recognition. 3.2.â•‡Self-Respect To make independent choices, we have to be willing to listen to ourselves, and acquiring the basic self-confidence required for this depends, as a matter of fact, on being loved. However, making choices and especially acting on them require also that we have faith in our practical judgement, that we are not cowed by the opinions of others. It is one thing to defer to someone else’s judgement on occasion and another to defer to it by default. To be autonomous, therefore, one must consider oneself to have an equal standing and authority in making judgements on the basis of generally acceptable reasons; in short, one must have self-respect. As Anderson and Honneth formulate it, “[i] f one cannot think of oneself as a competent deliberator and legitimate co-author of decisions, it is hard to see how one can take oneself seriously in one’s own practical reasoning about what to do”.41 The second thesis of Honneth’s recognitional view of autonomy is, consequently, that self-respect, as a matter of fact, depends on a certain kind of recognition by others. Love alone will not suffice for this (though it no doubt involves respecting the loved one’s take on the situation), since it is in the first instance a matter of responding to our needs and desires. What, then, does it take for us to be able to view ourselves as capable choosers, as agents deserving the respect of others in virtue of having a capacity to weigh reasons and act on them? The first step is naturally that we are consulted in disputes about what to do and that others in turn present us with reasons rather than, say, brute orders. However, this alone is not sufficient; to respect ourselves we must feel that others owe it to us to take our views into account, and this requires guarantees that we will be heard. So, according to Honneth, we can take ourselves to deserve respect only when there exist social or legal sanctions against treating us in ways that bypass our own judgement – that is, when we are conscious of having rights (and duties).42 Once we 41 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 132. 42 â•‡For example, Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 109. Honneth only talks about legally guaranteed rights, but he would hardly want to deny that self-respect was possible for respected members of, say, tribal communities without rule of law. ‘Rights’ must then be understood in a broader sense.


can expect that our legitimate claims against others will be socially or legally enforced, we gain confidence in our judgement. Honneth quotes Joel Feinberg, according to whom “[h]aving rights enables us to ‘stand up like men’, to look others in the eye, and to feel in some fundamental way equal of anyone”.43 As a form of recognition, granting rights differs in many ways from love: it does not require an emotional attachment and admits of historical development both in terms of including new groups of subjects and introducing new kinds of rights.44 Again, the dependence of self-respect on recognition in the form of rights and equal treatment is clearest in the breach. Being consistently excluded, ignored, or marginalised can lead to habitual passivity and timidity. Those who have some self-respect may feel shame or bitterness and be motivated to struggle for more comprehensive recognition. Others may sink into quiet obedience. To take a concrete example, Paul Benson discusses the persistent sense of shame associated with slavery. He points out that “[t]he social mechanisms that sustained slavery did so in part by working to destroy slaves’ sense of their competence to make their own decisions and manage their own lives”.45 Less drastic but perhaps more widespread is the diminished selfrespect of many women in patriarchal societies.46 In each case, one is unable to exercise one’s autonomy-constituting capacities, even if they should otherwise be intact, which shows that self-respect and the kind of recognition that makes it possible are empirically needed for being autonomous. 3.3.â•‡Self-Esteem It might at first appear that self-confidence and self-respect would suffice for one to be able to exercise one’s autonomy-constituting capacities. However, independent action requires more than faith in our general capacity for making judgements. We must also be convinced of 43 â•‡ J. Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 143; quoted in Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 120. 44 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 110–118. 45 â•‡P. Benson, “Free Agency and Self-Worth”, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 91, 1994, p. 659. Benson refers here to Orlando Patterson’s study Slavery and Social Death, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1982. 46 â•‡For empirical data, see M. Friedman, “Autonomy and Male Domination” in J. Anderson & J. Christman (eds.), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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the worth of the particular projects and commitments we undertake and the particular character traits and abilities they require or express. In Rawls’ words, “When we feel that our plans are of little value, we cannot pursue them with pleasure or take delight in their execution. Nor plagued by failure and self-doubt can we continue in our endeavours”.47 Our projects and plans give content to our practical identities, making us the kind of people we are. If we are not able to value ourselves under certain descriptions or if we do not have faith in our own ability to carry out the plan – if we lack self-esteem – we are likely to give up on particular endeavours, even if we would otherwise confidently judge them best. In this way autonomy depends on self-esteem. On the recognitional view, self-esteem requires that the identities and abilities of the agent are considered valuable within “a symbolically articulated – yet always open and porous – framework of orientation in which those ethical values and goals are formulated that, taken together, comprise the cultural self-understanding of a society”.48 Anderson and Honneth call this dependence our semantic vulnerability: the significance attached to a way of being and doing is a linguistic matter, and as such is not controlled by an individual’s intentions. Instead, it is a matter of connections established through use and repetition in language games, patterns of talk, action and attitude. What it means to be ‘a union man’, for example, depends on an evolving social process, a web of mutually reinforcing individual uses, and correspondingly varies between cultures and times. Where a negative stigma is attached to a practical identity, it is hard to value oneself under that description, and related projects and actions get closed off the deliberative screen, reducing autonomy. A sense of shame, characteristically felt when under a real or imaginary gaze of disapproving or taunting others, motivates one to hide and conform rather than go on with one’s plans. For Honneth, social esteem is tied to the contribution one makes to goals that are considered valuable in a society – it is, so to speak, a currency in which society rewards those who do a service to it. With modernity, social esteem becomes a matter of individual achievement

47 â•‡Rawls, 1971, p. 440. Rawls treats ‘self-respect’ and ‘self-esteem’ as interchangeable, but it is plausible to regard him as talking about two different self-relations in Honneth’s scheme. 48 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 122.


rather than a predefined role or status hierarchy. Goals are shared only at a high level of abstraction and call for supplemental cultural interpretation – even if everyone agrees that, say, intelligence is valuable, it is still an open question what constitutes intelligence.49 As Honneth makes clear in his debate with Nancy Fraser, for him the symbolic value of individual achievements is central for issues of distribution as well: according to him, even collective action for wage rises is an attempt by workers to “throw the established evaluative models into question by fighting for greater esteem of their social contributions, and thereby for economic redistribution”.50 To sum up, Honneth’s view is that we can as a matter of fact only acquire self-confidence through being loved, self-respect through being treated as inviolable, and self-esteem through having our pursuits socially valued. In the absence of such attitudes toward ourselves, we are psychologically hindered from exercising our autonomyconstituting capacities of accessing our authentic desires and feelings, making judgements based on reasons deriving from them, and following through on the judgements. Thus, being recognised is an empirically necessary condition for being autonomous.51 3.4.â•‡ Empirical Intersubjectivism and Individualism I have now outlined how both acquiring autonomy-constituting capacities and having the psychological second-order capacities necessary â•‡ See Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 123–127. â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 154 (emphasis mine). I have no room to address this debate properly, but Honneth does not seem to recognise how little market value has to do with being valued and how much it has to do with supply and demand – the fact that paper workers are better paid than metal workers has nothing to do with social esteem and everything to do with bargaining situations. Fraser and Habermas grasp this much better, and Honneth would be better served with the more cautious formulations about the relation between recognition and redistribution he uses in The Struggle for Recognition. He is also wrong in claiming that “the individualist achievement principle is also the one normative resource bourgeois-capitalist society provides for morally justifying the extremely unequal distribution of life chances and goods” (Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 148). Market libertarians like Nozick eschew reference to achievement or desert and talk instead about entitlement, which is an historical result of just acquisitions and transfers, which in turn can and will lead to unequal distributions (see R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York, Basic Books, 1974, ch. 7). Criticism of justifications of inequality, then, must likewise focus elsewhere than interpretations of the achievement principle. 51 â•‡I have here abstracted away from the historical and cultural variations between different “recognition orders” (Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 137), configurations of attitudes within the three historically differentiated spheres of recognition. 49 50

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Table 1.â•‡Recognition and the Psychological Conditions for Exercising Autonomy Enabled autonomy capacity

Required attitude toward oneself

Empirically necessary recognitive attitude by others

Form in which recognitive attitude is manifest

Basic Emotional Openness to reasons deriving Self-confidence support from desires

Love and friendship

Making independent judgements

Cognitive respect

Granting equal rights, participation in decisionmaking

Social valuing

Symbolic and material reward for achievement

Self-respect

Adopting Self-esteem identity-defining long-term goals

for exercising them causally depend on social interaction. It is time to point out that in fairness to traditional individualist conceptions, so far I have presented nothing that, say, Frankfurt or Mele could not accept and accommodate, with the possible exception of Fichte’s view. This may sound surprising to some, but it is a straightforward consequence of the empirical nature of the claims made so far. Marilyn Friedman is perhaps the most forthright of all empirical intersubjectivists in acknowledging that her view of what constitutes autonomy is traditionally individualist.52 However, the same goes for Honneth. By emphasising the empirical and naturalistic character of his theory, he is committed to treating recognition by others as contributing merely causally to one’s autonomy, by way of helping establish a positive practical self-relation. If this is all, there is a danger of false advertising when Honneth talks about “the profoundly intersubjective nature 52 â•‡ Marilyn Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 15.


of autonomy”.53 There is nothing the individualist need dispute. Gerald Dworkin, for example, encourages philosophers to suggest empirical hypotheses about “what psychological and social conditions are likely to promote the development and maintenance of autonomous individuals”.54 Thus there seems to be no essential philosophical difference between weak intersubjectivism and traditional individualism, only a different focus of attention, and a reliance on empirical theories in the case of the former. Given that the ultimate aim of intersubjectivists is as a rule in political philosophy, this may not be so problematic, so long as the empirical theories hold water – why should it matter if something is conceptually or only causally necessary for autonomy, if you are designing institutions that promote autonomy? This dialectical situation does, however, put a heavy burden of proof on empirical intersubjectivists who want to go beyond what traditional liberals already allow is needed for respecting autonomy. I want to finish this section by noting a few concerns about Honneth’s empirical assumptions. First, the empirical results he appeals to do not rank particularly high on scientific standards. The psychological theories that Honneth spends most time discussing belong to the psychoanalytic tradition. To put it charitably, there is little hard evidence for claims made by psychoanalytic theorists, and yet equally few inhibitions in the way of making grand, implausible claims like the mother and child being initially “incapable of individually demarcating themselves from each other”.55 The theories of Winnicott and Benjamin are highly speculative, arguably more so than the folk psychological hunches of philosophers, so there is scarce solid empirical support to be found in this direction. When it comes to self-respect and self-esteem, Honneth himself is content with appealing to our common experience. This is fine in itself, and the claims that he makes are by and large plausible. Insofar as they draw on commonsense folk psychological knowledge, however, they must be judged by commonsense criteria. This brings us to the second main problem: when Honneth’s claims are judged by the sort of commonsense criteria he avails himself of, 53 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 145. 54 â•‡ Gerald Dworkin, Theory and Practice of Autonomy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 162. 55 â•‡Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, p. 99. It does not seem at all plausible, for example, that a mother would be incapable of distinguishing between herself feeling hungry and the child feeling hungry.

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they turn out to be too weak to force a significant revision of liberalism. Basically, it is plausible that being recognised is empirically necessary for acquiring sufficient capacity to respect or esteem oneself. But once people have come to be able to respect and esteem themselves, misrecognition may simply lead them to resent those who do not respect or esteem them rather than prevent them from exercising their autonomy-constituting capacities. As Honneth himself acknowledges in the paper co-authored with Anderson, it is “psychologically possible to sustain a sense of self-worth in the face of denigrating and humiliating attitudes”, though it is “harder to do so, and there are significant costs associated with having to shield oneself from these negative attitudes and having to find subcultures for support”.56 What is more, there seem to be straightforward counter-examples to the recognitional view: it is surely not impossible that there could be self-respecting slaves who have never been respected by others, certainly not in terms of giving them rights. In light of such considerations, Diana Tietjens Meyers argues that “[t]here are autonomous dissenters and revolutionaries and legions of individuals who autonomously craft private lives within the confines of oppressive regimes”.57 If this is right, then it is certainly possible to be overcome psychological obstacles to exercising autonomy without being recognised at a given moment, even if it may indeed be harder. 4.â•‡ Recognition and Normative Competence The doubts I raised at the end of the previous section about the empirical validity of the recognitional view are far from decisive, and I will continue to assume that as a rule, recognition is needed to obtain the psychological conditions for the exercise of autonomy. However, there is another, more serious problem with Honneth’s assumptions about autonomy-constituting capacities. Openness to one’s desires and subsequent deliberation about them plays a major role in his view. However, recent discussions within action theory and metaethics strongly challenge this picture of desire and deliberation, providing support for a substantive conception of autonomy. Once we conceive 56 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 131. 57 â•‡ Meyers, 2000, p. 152. I do not, ultimately, accept Meyers’ description of these people as autonomous; see section 5.


of autonomy-constituting capacities along substantivist lines with reasons-responsiveness as a central component, we must reformulate the details of the recognitional view accordingly, if it is to retain its plausibility in contemporary discussion. 4.1.â•‡ Desires, Reasons and Deliberation As we have seen, for Honneth the most basic form of recognition in the form of love and friendship enables one to access one’s desires and feelings in deliberation, to treat them as reason-giving. The following passage sums up this view nicely: “[A]utonomous agents are … open to those sources of identity and choice that underlie practical reasons, in the primitive and inchoate urges, impulses, longings, and despairings that can come to be transformed into reasons”.58 The view presumes that first, (some) desires are reasons (or perhaps sources of reasons), second, we deliberate about our desires, and finally, desires and urges somehow express the authentic individuality of the agent. Each of these theses represents a problematic inward orientation at odds with Honneth’s avowed departure from subject-centred philosophy. To begin with the relationship between desires and reasons, few philosophers working in metaethics today would deny that most of our (normative) reasons for action, considerations that favour doing something or adopting an attitude, are desire-independent facts about the world, though some still fight a rearguard action of claiming that these facts owe their status as reasons for our desires.59 What reasons are there for me to sit outside and read? Why, the fact that the sun is shining, that it would be pleasant, that reading this book would be useful. No desires or beliefs feature in the list. The belief that the sun is shining, for example, would not be a reason for me to go out, since if it were false, it would not favour my doing so.60 However, is it not the case that the sunshine is a reason for me to go out because I want to sit in the sun 58 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 134. Compare Axel Honneth, ‘Dezentrierte Autonomie. Moralphilosophische Konsequenzen aus der Subjektkritik’. In Honneth Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 2000, p. 247. 59 â•‡For an example of rear-guard Humeanism, see M. Schroeder, “The Scope of Instrumental Reason,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 18, 2004, pp 337–364. 60 â•‡To be sure, in exceptional cases beliefs – rather, believings – themselves can serve as reasons; in Dancy’s example, the belief that a cliff is crumbly may be a reason not to climb it whether or not it is true, if it makes the agent nervous and so more likely to fall (J. Dancy, Practical Reality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 124–125).

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(the rearguard strategy I mentioned above)? No. First of all, I want to sit outside because I think I would enjoy it – the very fact that is the reason for me to go out is the reason why I want to do so in the first place. Second, we often have reasons to do things we do not want to do, even if we are fully informed about the situation; for example, the adolescent anorectic has a good reason to eat even if they do not want to. Third, if there were no reason for me to go out, my wanting to do so would not provide me with one. What Jonathan Dancy calls “the simple argument” is that if φ-ing is silly or just not very sensible, desiring to φ does not make it any less silly or more sensible; nor does it give a reason to do something that subserves φ-ing.61 He refines this by pointing out that generally, we desire to do something for a reason, because it would lead to or promote something of value. If the desire is based on a reason, desiring itself does not add to the reasons. If, on the other hand, the desire is not based on a reason, we can have no reason not to abandon it.62 Since desires are not the source of our practical reasons, it is not surprising that they have at best a minor place in our practical reasoning and deliberation. Honneth, like Frankfurt and Korsgaard,63 seems to hold that we focus on what we want and feel when we reason practically; it is as if desires ‘propose’ certain courses of action, which we then reflectively endorse or reject. In this vein, Honneth talks about ‘trusting’ desires and ‘engaging’ with one’s feelings, and about ‘openness’ to one’s ‘internal voices’. However, this argument skirts close to committing what Simon Blackburn terms “the fundamental mistake about deliberation”.64 When I deliberate or reflect on whether to go to a concert or a football match, say, I do not, as it were, close my eyes and focus on how I feel when I think about the alternatives.65 Instead, I focus outward, on the features of the alternatives. What counts for or against an option is not that I want or do not want to take it, but whether or not it is worth taking because of its properties.66 Even if â•‡ ibid., p. 32. â•‡ ibid., pp. 34–39. 63 â•‡Frankfurt, 1988; C. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. 64 â•‡ S. Blackburn, Ruling Passions, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998, pp. 253–256. 65 â•‡It is notable that ‘reflection’ in the ordinary sense does not involve any kind of reflexive turning inward; one ought not let etymology mislead here. Other languages, such as Finnish, do not exhibit this misleading connection. 66 â•‡ Some of these properties may be response-dependent – maybe I decide against the concert because it would be boring – but these are still properties of the alternative choices, not psychological facts about me. 61 62


I ask myself whether I really want to do something – a question that Meyers and Sandel, for example, see as central for autonomous agents67 – all this amounts to is asking whether the course of action, by my lights, is really worth taking.68 In Gareth Evans’s terms, selfknowledge is transparent with regard to our take on the world in non-pathological cases – to ask whether I believe that p, I consider whether p or not, looking out, not in.69 In short, we must reject any picture of autonomous deliberation according to which our desires or feelings are, as we might put it, deliberatively salient, except in exceptional cases. The third and final problem with Honneth’s account of basic selfconfidence concerns the status of “creative impulses” or “desires, impulses, fantasies, and other dimensions of subjectivity”70 as manifestations of spontaneous, creative agency – the Meadian ‘I’, as opposed to ‘me’, or the Freudian ‘id’.71 This kind of view can hardly help assuming that there is some pure, unspoiled inner core or self from which these ‘creative impulses’ stem, whereas in fact one need not worship at the altar of Michel Foucault to acknowledge that socialisation, cultural models and media images – not to mention biological facts – crucially shape our fantasies and unreflective urges. It is no surprise that fantasies can be boringly similar within cultures, and differ in predictable ways among them. Second, partly for this reason, control by urges, impulses, and the like is one of the paradigmatic contrasts with autonomy, as I noted in the first section. Insofar as they are not already reasons-responsive, it is quite unclear how the desires and urges could â•‡ Diana Tietjens Meyers, Self, Society, and Personal Choice, Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; Sandel, 1998, p. 159. 68 â•‡For a full argument, see A. Kauppinen, “Practical Reasoning and Self-Knowledge”, paper presented at the Unity of Reason conference at The University of St. Andrews, June 20, 2005. See also R. Moran, Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on SelfKnowledge, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001; Watson, 1975, p. 30. 69 â•‡ G. Evans, The Varieties of Reference, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982, pp. 225–228. Evans’ thesis is not, it must be emphasised, the Cartesian one that we are transparent to ourselves, but that insofar as we are not alienated from our beliefs (evaluative beliefs and consequent desires included, as I argue), questions about our own beliefs are answered from the first-person perspective by answering questions about facts, that is, the object of the belief. Precisely when there is a disconnection – we find ourselves believing or desiring something we do not take there to be any reason to believe or desire – some kind of remedial reflection and perhaps even therapy is needed, as Richard Moran argues (Moran, 2001). 70 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 134. 71 â•‡For the comparison between Mead and Freud here, see especially “Objektbeziehungen und postmoderne Identität”, pp. 148–149. 67

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be ‘transformed into reasons’ on which one acts autonomously. On the contrary, we act spontaneously precisely when we use our rational capacities that allow us to transcend both inner urges and socialisation. 4.2.â•‡ Autonomy and Normative Competence The evaluative capacity required for being held accountable and thus autonomous is not, then, one that has to do with one’s desires, but with desire-independent reasons for action. In other words, hierarchical accounts of the sort Honneth relies on are out of the question. Evaluative beliefs are beliefs about the world, and deliberation is likewise oriented at potential courses of action and the value they bring about. As such, this is compatible with evaluativist as well as normative competence accounts of autonomy competency. However, I believe we have reason to prefer the latter. On normative competence accounts, it is not sufficient that our actions flow from our deep selves or strong evaluations, but those evaluations themselves have to be at least moderately responsive to the reasons that we have – reasons that may be personal (relative to one’s personal history, commitments, capacities, pleasures, relationships, unique situation, and so on72), social, aesthetic, moral, or whatever. According to them, being autonomous implies that if I had a strong reason not to engage in the activities I do, I would be able to realise this and change my conception of what is worth doing. Thus false beliefs about the value of my central projects would undermine my autonomy. This view makes evaluative and factual mistakes symmetrical: just like I would not be self-governing with respect to an action if I chose it out of ignorance of fact (I thought it would lead to a desirable outcome, whereas in fact it was never going to), I would not be self-governing with respect to it if I chose it out of ignorance of value (I thought the outcome was desirable, whereas in fact it was nothing like that). While individual mistakes are compatible with autonomy on this account – so that people who wrong others or are just plain silly sometimes do not automatically lose autonomy – systematic mistakes are not.73 72 â•‡I emphasise this aspect, since it is particularly important in the case of autonomy to see that objective reasons can (and will) vary between individuals, even though they do not depend on their desires or beliefs. 73 â•‡Fischer and Ravizza talk of “moderate reasons-responsiveness” to make it clear that perfect recognition and motivation are not necessary for agents to count as


This view has several benefits. When we are responsive to reasons, our values are not hostage to mere chance or prevailing views; our preferences are not ‘adaptive’ in the sense in which those of a contended slave will be.74 Instead, we are able to revise them, even, as Susan Wolf puts it, correct or improve ourselves.75 To take a mundane example, suppose I am musically talented and would considerably enjoy playing an instrument. In this situation, it is plausible that I have a reason to take up playing music at least as a hobby. If I am not capable of recognising this, my choice about what to do in my free time will be less autonomous; it will be explained by such factors as peer pressure and cultural conventions. If my choice is, however, partly explained by my (genuine) recognition of what reasons I have, it will potentially transcend these other factors. It will shape an identity that is genuinely my own. Second, the normative competence approach preserves best the link between autonomy and responsibility, since it is not fair to hold responsible agents who are through no fault of their own incapable of recognising the difference between (morally, legally and otherwise) right and wrong. This is recognised in such legal conventions as the M’Naughten rule.76 Third, it also best explains the value of autonomy. Autonomy is valuable, since it leads us to valuable pursuits that we can experience as our own, thus contributing to our wellbeing. Choice that is not responsive to reasons may or may not be good for the agent; if it is valuable, it is not as valuable as reasons-responsive choice.77 Finally, and related to the previous point, from the inside, first-personal perspective, it matters greatly to us whether what we take to be valuable really is valuable, or whether it just seems so. As Charles Taylor puts it, “how can we deny that it makes a difference to the degree of freedom not only whether one of my basic purposes is frustrated by my own responsible (Fischer & Ravizza, 1998, pp. 41–46, 69–85). See also Pettit 2001, pp. 95–97 and Smith, 2003, for perspicuous presentations on this issue. 74 â•‡For the notion of adaptive preferences, see J. Elster, Sour Grapes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983. 75 â•‡S. Wolf, “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility”, 1987, reprinted in Watson, 2003, p. 385. 76 â•‡As Susan Wolf puts it, according to the M’Naughten rule, a person is sane (responsible) “if (1) he knows what he is doing and (2) he knows that what he is doing is, as the case may be, right or wrong” (Wolf, 1987, p. 381). 77 â•‡See Joesph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986, pp. 390–395. Michael Smith formulates the connection between normative competence and the value of autonomy very strongly: “[W]e value agents ruling themselves to just the extent that, in so doing, they thereby manifest their capacity to get things right” (Smith, 2004).

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desires but also whether I have grievously misidentified this purpose?”78 If I discover that in doing what I really wanted I was chasing something quite worthless, I can quite intelligibly feel, that had I been in a better position to make autonomous choices, I might have been capable of recognising where the real reasons lay. 4.3.â•‡ Recognition and Reasons-Responsiveness Given that we are best off conceiving autonomy-constituting capacities in terms of reasons-responsiveness, how should we think of the selfrelations that make possible their exercise? Is it possible to reformulate the recognitional view so as to take this into account? In this section, I will briefly explore how this could be accomplished. Since desires play a central role in Honneth’s account of self-confidence, I will focus on that – little reformulation is needed for the accounts of self-respect and self-esteem. My suggestion is that we start from the idea that desires are responses to “appearances of the good”, as Sergio Tenenbaum puts it, following the scholastics.79 What we trust when we have basic self-confidence, then, is that what appears to us as valuable or reasonable is such in reality – in particular, that what appears to us as a personal reason really is a reason that potentially grounds claims on others as well. For example, let us imagine that it seems to me there is good reason for me to take part in a demonstration against budget cuts for schools. My selfconfidence manifests itself in my taking this seeming seriously in deliberating about the issue. If I lacked self-confidence, I would dismiss this sense of things that I have and perhaps consider only reasons related to what my superiors might think about demonstrating. Reformulating the account in these terms preserves the connection to intersubjective recognition, since it is plausible that I learn to trust appearances of the good (as well as discriminate between mere seemings and epistemically valuable appearances) in the sort of early childhood interaction that Honneth talks about – from my perspective, what seems good to and for me really is good, since others are willing to take the trouble to bring it about. My pleasure and pain do not matter just to me, but to others as well. They do not merely push and pull â•‡Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences, p. 228. â•‡See S. Tenenbaum (forthcoming), Appearances of the Good: An Essay on the Nature of Practical Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 78 79


me, but serve as sources of reasons, and as such ground claims on others. We can also reformulate in less metaphorical terms the psychoanalytic insight that maturity is not just a matter of the ego controlling inner urges but “inner dialogue” in which desires have a speaking part.80 The insight here is that conscious, deliberative judgement does not necessarily represent one’s perspective on an issue. It may itself be deformed by oppressive socialisation. Nomy Arpaly uses Huckleberry Finn as an example.81 Huck, who has been raised to think of ‘niggers’ as inferior, gets to know the slave Jim, helps him escape, and finds himself even apologising to him. At the level of reflective judgement, Huck believes he is acting wrongly in treating a slave as a full person, since this is the only position that he can articulate in the language available to him. He reproaches himself for having “the spunk of a rabbit”, but cannot bring himself to turn Jim in. Yet it is clear in the context of the story that helping Jim reflects best his own, inchoate sense of what there is reason to do; as we might say, his authentic self is in control when he acts against his articulated judgement. This is manifest, for example, in his emotions when he considers the various alternatives. In such a situation, acting autonomously requires precisely going against one’s judgement and instead listening and trusting one’s affectively laden sense of things. Since this is always potentially the case, a rigid personality is harmful to autonomy; reasons-responsiveness manifests itself not only in judgement, but also in desire and emotion themselves. 5.â•‡ The Social Conditions of Exercising Autonomy The subjective experience of recognition is plausibly an empirically necessary internal or psychological (and thus indirectly intersubjective) condition for the exercise of autonomy competency, understood along the lines of a normative competence view. Are there any external or social necessary conditions for the exercise of autonomy though? How might we defend a strongly intersubjective conception that ties

80 â•‡See, for example, Honneth, “Objektbeziehungen und postmoderne Identität”, p. 159. 81 â•‡Nomy Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. 9–10, 75, 78.

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autonomy directly and constitutively to standing in certain kinds of relationships? I will make the case in the same Hegelian manner as Honneth does, by looking at cases in which autonomy is reduced simply in virtue of lack of such relationships and laying out what features they have in common. If it is the case that someone’s autonomy can be diminished despite intact psychological capacities and practical selfrelations, having a certain social standing or status is itself constitutive of autonomy. On this view, there can be two psychologically identical agents, one of them autonomous, the other non-autonomous, in virtue of their different social relationships.82 To provide support for this, I will first present some test cases for which this strong thesis seems to hold. To assess these cases, we must bear in mind the theoretical role of personal autonomy as the kind of authentic self-determination that allows their lives to express the agent’s practical identity and grounds the fairness of holding the agent fully accountable – praising or blaming her for them. This theoretical role connects autonomy to commonsense concepts, with regard to which we can regard our considered intuitions as authoritative. Is this kind of life a manifestation of the agent’s deep commitments? Does she warrant blame for particular kinds of choices? If the intuitive answer is negative, the agent does not count as (fully) autonomous— – she may have the capacities, but if unable to exercise them, her autonomy remains a potentiality. Here are four test cases for the strongly intersubjective thesis: Case 1. Jim is a slave. He grew up in freedom, and is as capable of recognising and assessing reasons for action as anyone else, and suffers from no volitional or motivational defects. Though he loathes his circumstances, he respects himself – indeed, that is one reason why he so loathes his circumstances. He takes care of his heavy duties well, and has no problem with his self-esteem; he knows he is capable of much. It is no surprise, then, that Jim is capable of forming a conception of good life for himself within the realities of his society, and a corresponding life-plan. But he has no opportunity to pursue it, since his master has the coercive power to impose his own plans on Jim. And even if Jim’s plan were to fall within the limits that his master would tolerate, the master would remain in a position to undo it on an arbitrary whim, regardless of Jim’s own judgement. Case 2. Z lives in a state run on fundamentalist religious principles. Like Jim, she has full autonomy competency, respects herself, and trusts in the 82 â•‡As Marina Oshana notes in “Personal Autonomy and Society”, The Journal of Social Philosophy 29 (1), 1998, pp. 81–102.

the social dimension of autonomy285 validity of her emotions and desires in revealing what is good for her. However, she is sexually aroused only by women. In her society homosexual conduct is legally, socially and culturally discouraged. Though her sexual orientation makes it impossible for her to adopt the kind of identity that there is available for women in her culture – built as it is around marriage and motherhood – there does not exist an alternative practice of lesbian relationships that would provide a social matrix of significance within which she could develop an identity she is at home with, nor does she have the opportunity to participate in the creation of such a practice. Case 3. Billy Bob is a policeman. He has the same competencies, skills and attitudes toward the self as Jim and Z. However, due to a combination of factors including the nature of his work, genetic predispositions and ignorance, he has gained 145 kilograms by his early 30s, quite a lot for such a short man. He was never any good at developing a rapport with women, and has not had a relationship for longer than anyone can remember. All he wants from life is to find someone special and settle down for good. Case 4. Despite growing up in a broken family, Tammy has her rational capacities and self-confidence intact. To make ends meet and pay for the trailer where she lives with her binge-drinking boyfriend, she works long hours cleaning and scrubbing the houses of the rich. Like her coworkers, she suffers from chronic back pain, cramps and arthritic attacks. Still, the company that pays her minimum wage boasts in its brochure: “We clean floors the old-fashioned way – on our hands and knees”, so she has to assume that humiliating position in front of the upper-class housewives who scrutinise and point out every speck of dirt she fails to notice. This is not her idea of a good life, but it is the best she can get with the cards she was dealt and the rules that were handed down.83

In each of the cases, the subject is capable of being autonomous, both in the sense of having the necessary rational and motivational capacities and meeting the psychological conditions for their exercise. Yet they are in different ways prevented from exercising their autonomy by their social environments, and therefore are not autonomous. They are not in control of their lives in the sense that matters. It may be unlikely that they still respect, esteem and trust themselves, but it does happen and it is not all that rare – people do adjust their expectations to their chances, and there may be systematic indoctrination and ideology

83 â•‡ This case is based on the real-life experiences of minimum-wage workers studied by Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed. On (Not) Getting By in America, New York, Henry Holt, 2001, ch. 2).

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involved.84 A positive relation to self that is rooted in false beliefs about one’s standing in the eyes of others is no guarantee of autonomy. 5.1.â•‡ Lacking Opportunities The first three cases are examples of three dimensions of objective misrecognition. The first I will call the dimension of (external) domination. Domination in this sense occurs when the agent is coerced actually or virtually by an agent or institution that gives no weight to their reasons – that is, is vulnerable to interference that is not in their avowed or avowable interests. As Philip Pettit puts it, to be in this position of relative powerlessness it is sufficient that one could be coerced without impunity.85 This is the case when one cannot effectively enforce one’s claim to be treated as a person capable of assessing and adopting longterm goals. As a consequence, the opportunity to plan ahead or carry out one’s rational life-plan is not available to the dominated agent. She does not have the necessary legal, social, or cultural standing for this, nor does she have the opportunity to challenge the rules of the practice that relegates her own views to irrelevance. Slaves are the most salient examples of this form of misrecognition, but as Pettit notes, in many cultures subjugated wives, for example, are not in a much better position.86 Their authorship in their lives is limited to trivial decisions, and they cannot be held responsible for failing to develop their talents, for example.87 Prisoners, by contrast, may be autonomous – though they are coerced – if that takes place as a result of their past autonomous action in violation of laws that they (have reason to) at least tacitly

84 â•‡For the general phenomenon of ‘making a virtue out of necessity’, see, for example, P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 54. 85 â•‡Philip Pettit, A Theory of Freedom, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 78–79, 137–138. For important qualifications see also H. S. Richardson, Democratic Autonomy. Public Reasoning about the Ends of Policy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 28–36. 86 â•‡Pettit, A Theory of Freedom, p. 78. For the psychological effects of domination, see Friedman, 2005. 87 â•‡ Someone like Meyers might ask: what about Spartacus, then? Did he not act autonomously when he rose to rebellion against his masters? Well, he certainly did exercise his power of judgement, but at the end of the day, he was killed for it. He did not have the opportunity to direct the course of his life; the social circumstances in which he found himself did not allow him to express his authentic self in his actions. So even if the particular action and desire of rebelling were autonomous, he himself as an agent or a person was not.


accept, punishment is precisely what it takes to treat them as rational decision-makers.88 The second dimension of misrecognition is that of marginalisation of identities. Marginalisation either rules out or makes it harder for one to live the sort of life one has chosen, or perhaps just gravitated toward, for good reasons. This is because most, if not all, identitydefining projects or ‘comprehensive goals’ (Joseph Raz) that give direction to one’s life are embedded in broader social practices or ‘social forms’.89 Take careers: one of Raz’s examples is being a doctor, which is not just a matter of having skills to cure people but also involves “general recognition of a medical practice, its social organization, its status in society, its conventions about which matters are addressed to doctors and which not … and its conventions about the suitable relations between doctors and their patients”.90 It is not just that it is hard to value oneself as a doctor in such a society, as Honneth would allow; it is simply not possible to be one. The same goes for other kinds of identities that may seem natural. As Foucault so forcefully reminded us, a person who has sex with someone with similar genitals is not thereby a homosexual; there is a world of difference in the significance of sexual acts between men in ancient Greece and in nineteenth-century Germany, France and Britain, where ‘the homosexual’ with “a past, a history and an adolescence, a personality, a life style; also a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mystical physiology”91 was born. In this sense, homosexuality is entirely unmysteriously and uncontroversially a social construction. Labelling someone a ‘homosexual’, often a highly charged term, may be an act of repression or a prelude to one, but as Foucault himself hints, the existence of such a classification also provides materials for constructing new possibilities

88 â•‡As Hegel puts it, in being punished, the criminal is “honoured as a rational being” (Philosophy of Right, §100R). 89 â•‡Raz prefers to talk of social forms consisting of “shared beliefs, folklore, high culture, collectively shared metaphors and imagination, and so on” (Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986, p. 311) rather than practices, since he finds the latter term only connotes behaviour. When I talk of practices, however, I mean it in a broader sense that includes several of the Razian elements. 90 â•‡ Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986, p. 311. See also Raz, Ethics in the Public Domain, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 106–107. 91 â•‡ M. Foucault, (1978), The History of Sexuality, trans. R. Hurley, vol. 1, New York, Pantheon, 1980, p. 43.

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of self-expression, as shown by contemporary gay identities and the subcultures they are embedded in. In short, the social practices form a matrix of significance that is necessary for individuals to adopt meaningful life-plans, to exercise non-trivial reasoned choice. These practices are, obviously, contingent, historical and mutable; new meanings, opportunities and identities are constantly being born, old ones reinforced and reinvented. No particular opportunity may be necessary for autonomy as such, but legal, social or cultural prejudices that marginalise, stigmatise or penalise the practices that nourish certain identities diminish the autonomy of those individuals who could authentically express themselves only (or best) within them. Since this is the case even when the individuals escape psychological injury, like Z in our example, the harm to autonomy is a matter of objective social relations. The third dimension of objective misrecognition I call emotional exclusion. If domination limits one’s opportunities to realise one’s plans in general and marginalisation limits one’s opportunities to adopt particular identity-defining projects, emotional exclusion limits one’s opportunity to form personal relationships. It is perhaps conceivable that there could be a human being who would have the capacity to make choices about one’s life in response to reasons and would still not seek to engage in any close relationships, but it is doubtful any such person has actually existed.92 For real people, pursuing and maintaining relationships to family, friends and lovers is an essential component of autonomous life. Correspondingly, their unavailability compromises the exercise of autonomy. Clearly, this is not much of a complaint when one gets turned down by someone one is attracted to, or never receives the invitation to cousin Agatha’s wedding. For emotional exclusion to reduce autonomy, it must be a matter of systematic cultural value patterns that condemn people with certain qualities to a life of loneliness and detachment regardless of their contrary efforts. It is no coincidence that these forms of objective misrecognition roughly coincide with the three dimensions of the subjective experience of recognition articulated by Honneth. Awareness of domination and lack of self-respect, awareness of marginalisation and lack of 92 â•‡ There are people who shirk relationships, of course, but this is very likely the case because of a failure to appreciate the reasons provided by their importance to personal wellbeing (psychopaths), or psychological inhibitions and injuries (timidity, incapacity to love due to child abuse, and so on).


self-esteem, and awareness of emotional exclusion and lack of basic self-confidence surely go together, empirically speaking. As I have argued, however, objective misrecognition with respect to power, identity or relationships by itself limits one’s opportunity to lead a life of authentic self-determination, regardless of one’s attitudes toward oneself. Objective recognition, however, does not exhaust the social conditions for the exercise of autonomy. Lack of competitive material resources resulting from economic exploitation is an independent constraint on the exercise of autonomy.93 (I emphasise the competitive aspect, since for success in many pursuits, it is one’s relative rather than absolute resources that count.94) As the situation of the cleaning woman in Case 4 shows, working for less than a living wage is apt to render one dependent on one’s employer or one’s family, leaving little room for significant autonomous choice. This hardly needs much argument. We can see this as a social condition of autonomy when we remember that the rules and principles of economic reward are legal, social and cultural in nature. There is nothing natural about bargaining situations that pin workers against employers separately rather than as a group, or inheritance laws that allow for accumulation of advantage from generation to generation. It is these rules rather than individual economic decisions made within them that may restrict the availability of resources in a way that threatens the exercise of personal autonomy. Though economic exploitation often goes together with domination or marginalisation, it is still conceptually distinct, as Nancy Fraser stresses.95 White, well-educated and self-respecting men in recognised professions can yet be exploited by option-hungry management in the ruthless environment of predatory capitalism. 5.2.â•‡ Being at Home in the Social World I have defined both objective recognition and competitive resources terms of availability of a guaranteed chance to realise life-plans, live

93 â•‡I use the term ‘exploitation’ in a broader sense than Marxists, to refer to any situation in which one is rendered at the mercy of others as a result of lack of material resources. 94 â•‡For an impassionate argument for the moral importance of positional goods and the corresponding value of equality by itself, see B. Barry, Why Social Justice Matters, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2005. 95 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 16–22.

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out identities, participate in relationships, and make an independent living. But what does availability mean here? It obviously cannot mean getting what one wants whenever one wants it. Promoting someone’s autonomy does not require somehow providing her with magical or dictatorial control of her life.96 Nor should we rush to moralise autonomy, so that one could be autonomous only if one respects the like autonomy of others – it is possible to be personally autonomous and immoral, though normative competence involves some degree of sensitivity to the reasons of others. Instead, I have implicitly interpreted availability democratically, in terms of the following three conditions. The goods required for the exercise of autonomy are available to an agent if and only if: (a)â•‡the rules of the relevant practices reflect the agent’s (personal and other) reasons (b)â•‡ the agent has the opportunity to ensure that (a) holds (c)â•‡the agent cognitively and emotionally accepts that (a) holds (the subjective experience of recognition) The first condition is that the rules of the relevant practice must reflect the agent’s reasons. This is obviously a matter of degree, as it should be, since autonomy is a matter of degree. When the (usually implicit) rules of a social practice take into account an individual agent’s reasons, she has the opportunity to exercise her capacity to be responsive to these reasons in making her choices. For example, if Z derives sexual pleasure from relations with other women, Z has a reason to explore such relations, and her autonomy will be reduced if the sexual mores of her social environment reflect only men’s interest in their pleasure and a social interest in reproduction. The second, participation condition, stresses that it cannot be a coincidence that the rules incorporate the agent’s reasons. If they are subject to change by the arbitrary will of others, opportunities are not available in the sense required for longterm projects. What it means for an individual’s voice to be heard varies considerably by case – it is one thing to have input to legislative decision-making and another to make a difference to diffuse cultural 96 â•‡As Michael Hardimon puts it in Hegelian terms (see below), “[T]o say that the social world is a home is not to say that it meets our each and every wish. It is, rather, to say that there is no significant objective dimension along which we are split from it” (Hardimon, “The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel’s Social Philosophy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 21, no. 2, 1992, p. 187)


value patterns. Little can be said a priori about this. The final, subjective acceptance condition, points back to the experience of recognition. The agent must be confident that the rules take her reasons into account to be able rely on them and participate wholeheartedly in the practice.97 The conditions (a) to (c) delineate in general terms what counts as a fair chance with respect to the various analytically distinct goods needed to exercise autonomy: social power, cultural resources, personal relationships and economic resources.98 The difference between objective recognition and misrecognition, as well as competitive and insufficient material resources, is the difference between meeting them and failing to meet them with respect to these goods. Since the conditions incorporate political participation, broadly understood, it cannot be said in advance where the lines are to be drawn in particular cases. However, we can say that if (a) to (c) are fulfilled for each practice within which one acts and lives, the objective social conditions for exercising autonomy are met and the agent is aware of this; in short, the she is at home in her social world, to use the Hegelian expression. She is neither objectively nor subjectively alienated from her surroundings. I will summarise these results in a table and then examine briefly the Hegelian background of this type of theory. 5.3.â•‡ Related Views The historical model for this type of account is Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which can be read as an extended argument for the social and institutional preconditions of actualising individual freedom, as Honneth suggests in his Suffering from Indeterminacy. Hegel begins with a commonsense conception of freedom: to be free is to be unconstrained or unlimited. But what is it to be unconstrained? Hegel mocks those who equate lack of constraint with the mere ability to step back from immediate impulses; such abstract conception of freedom is a recipe for inaction or blind fury of levelling all the distinctions

97 â•‡ Since the rules are by nature general, they will also reflect the reasons of others involved in the practice; consequently, in accepting them and acting accordingly, one recognises those others in the relevant capacity. The recognition must thus be mutual. 98 â•‡ Having a fair chance does not entail being successful. Thus, given these conditions, it is possible for an agent to fail to get what they want even though the kind of opportunities autonomy requires are available to them. This is why being fired or imprisoned or rejected does not in itself reduce autonomy.

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Table 2.â•‡ The Social Conditions of Exercising Autonomy Enabled autonomy capacity

Required opportunity

Lack of opportunity amounts to

Psychological attitude corresponding to objective recognition (see table 3)

Acting on reasons Access to personal Emotional deriving from relationships exclusion emotional needs

Basic selfconfidence

Acting on independent judgements

Access to social practices whose rules guarantee control over life-plans

Self-respect

Realising identitydefining long-term goals

Access to MarginaÂ� practices lisation within which comprehensive goals acquire significance

All of the above

Access to compeÂ� Exploitation Any or none titive material (economic of the above domination) resources

Domination

Self-esteem

between people.99 To refuse to will anything particular is not to will at all, so talk of free will here must be empty – though the ability to abstract from particular contents is indeed an essential component of free will, since it is required to transcend determination by arbitrary, contingent desires and drives. Freedom that is worth its name must be concrete, it must be manifest in particular choices and actualised in the objective world. This requires, first, settling on a determinate content of the will (forming a particular intention) and, second, carrying out â•‡Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §5.

99


this intention through action (realising the end one has set for oneself). Both steps necessarily bring in limitations to abstract freedom: to settle on a goal means ruling out other goals, and action always takes place in a social and institutional context that allows some kinds of behaviour and rules out other kinds. Hegel’s insight is that not all kinds of limitation have the same status: as long as one is (rationally) ‘at home’ (bei sich) with the limitation – as long as one identifies with one’s goal and the normative framework within which one operates – one is not constrained by it, but quite the opposite; the limitations are an expression of one’s self. His example of this is friendship and love, within which we “willingly limit ourselves with reference to an other, even while knowing ourselves in this limitation as ourselves”.100 To be free, in other words, is to be constrained only by what one identifies with good reason, so that one is after all not determined by something external to oneself.101 It is to be reconciled with one’s social environment. As Michael Hardimon stresses, for Hegel, this involves subjective acceptance of the practices and their being worthy of it – that is, in terms that I have used, the subjective experience of recognition and the objective fact of recognition.102 Given the conflicts of interest involved in modern social practices like the market and party politics, it may not be obvious (even when it is the case) that the normative framework expresses their values and takes into account both their individual and communal needs, thus enabling rather than restricting freedom. In these cases, it is a task of philosophy to help people see this – to see the rational in the real, as Hegel famously (or notoriously) put it. However, though Hegel’s own inclinations are perhaps conservative, nothing in his view precludes the possibility of criticising a social arrangement that does, in fact, objectively alienate some of those affected by it by making it difficult or impossible for them to exercise their autonomy within it – quite the contrary. At this level of abstraction, at least, the model presented here is clearly Hegelian in spirit.103 â•‡Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §7Z. â•‡ Compare Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §23: “Only in this freedom is the will completely with itself, because it has reference to nothing but itself, so that every relationship of dependence on something other is thereby eliminated”. 102 â•‡Hardimon, “The Project of Reconciliation: Hegel’s Social Philosophy”, pp. 173–174. As he sums up the view later, it must be the case both that the social world is a home and that people grasp this, feel at home within it, and accept and affirm the social world (Hardimon, 1992, p. 181). 103 â•‡I have not in any way tried to mirror the complexity of Hegel’s tripartite account of abstract right, morality, and (itself internally complex) ethical life, nor have 100 101

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In terms of contemporary debates, a strongly intersubjective account of autonomy in a Hegelian spirit amounts to an Aufhebung of the dispute between Honneth and Nancy Fraser. I have argued that Fraser is correct in separating analytically the wrongs of economic maldistribution from those of recognition. In arguing for the independent importance of objective recognition in addition to subjective experience of recognition, I have also in effect subscribed to what Fraser calls a “status model of recognition”, which construes recognition as a matter of institutionalised patterns of cultural value that enable one to participate as a peer in social life.104 From the Hegelian as well as liberal perspective, however, Fraser makes a mistake in displacing autonomy as the fundamental deontological normative notion in favour of what she calls “parity of participation”, according to which “justice requires social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers”.105 The Hegelian view, by contrast, sees access to participation in social life as normatively central because and to the extent that it is necessary for exercising autonomy. If we understand Honneth’s concept of self-realisation to refer to exercising autonomy, we will thus side with Honneth on the issue of normative foundations. Indeed, it is difficult to see how one could answer the question of why participatory parity is valuable, if not by reference to the value of autonomy. No wonder Fraser avoids raising the question.106 Another advantage of the Hegelian view is that it recognises and incorporates not only the objective but also the psychological conditions for exercising autonomy. Neither Fraser nor Honneth seem to

I followed the principles of composition derived from his logic. By beginning my account of objective conditions from the various capacities whose exercise they enable, I have naturally ended up with a different classification than Hegel’s, which is rather based on the various social spheres within which autonomy is exercised: family, civil society and the state. The capacities I discuss are exercised within each, though it may be true that there is a rough correlation between forms and spheres of recognition (that is, love and family, esteem and civil society, respect and state). 104 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 28–33 and passim. Fraser’s talk of cultural value patterns fits best with my account of the dimensions of non-marginalisation and non-exclusion. 105 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 36. 106 â•‡I thus concur with Honneth when he says of Fraser that, “there is something inherently arbitrary about her idea of participatory parity” (Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 179) and subscribe to what he calls “teleological liberalism” (p. 178).


realise that the status and psychological experience models of recognition are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Again, the former lays out (part of) the social conditions for exercising autonomy, while the latter involves empirically important social-psychological conditions for the same. Both social status and positive psychological self-relation are necessary for exercising autonomy, as I have argued. To be sure, Honneth’s position is not as clear-cut as Fraser’s rejection of psychological considerations. After all, the subtitle of his Suffering from Indeterminacy is “an attempt at a reactualisation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, and he clearly recognises the objective and institutional character of Hegel’s conditions for autonomy. Still, from his exposition, it is hard to tell which aspects of his Hegel exegesis Honneth actually endorses, and he sometimes adds a reference to how recognition enables the subject to see or experience him or herself as free, suggesting that in his interpretation the importance of recognition to autonomy is mediated by experience after all.107 Both The Struggle for Recognition and his contributions to Redistribution or Recognition? are unambiguously psychologistic. For example, in his response to Fraser he claims that we are interested in a just social order because “it is only under these conditions that subjects can attain the most undamaged possible self-relation, and thus individual autonomy”108 and that the “insufficiencies and deficits” of forms of mutual recognition are “always tied to feelings of misrecognition”.109 Thus it is fairly safe to conclude that both Honneth and Fraser have a one-sided understanding of the double contribution of recognition to making possible the exercise of autonomy. 6.â•‡ Conclusion: Toward a Hegelian Liberalism In this essay, I have been exploring various conceptions of autonomy and assessing them against what I take to be the widely accepted theoretical role the concept has, finding that effective autonomy has three kinds of social or intersubjective conditions. The core of the concept is authentic self-determination. Authentically self-determining agents

107 â•‡ See for example Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Eine Reaktualisierung der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, Philipp Reclam, Stuttgart, 2001, pp. 31, 80–81. 108 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 258–259. 109 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 245 (my emphasis).

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are fully accountable for their life choices and deserve to be rewarded and punished accordingly. This accountability requires that the agents are at least moderately responsive to desire-independent reasons and so capable of standing back from their immediate inclinations and assessing situations in light of standards that are not merely passed on through socialisation. I have defended this normative competence view as the best account of individual autonomy-constituting capacities. However, I have also laid out three ways in which the acquisition and effective exercise of these capacities, and so being autonomous, depends on a suitable social environment. First, we become autonomous only through being taken care of within an autonomysupporting culture. Roughly, we learn to understand and recognise reasons that go beyond biological needs in and through the process of initiation into language that involves qualitative distinctions of value. We gain a capacity to imagine living differently by learning about particular ways of life that are concretely realised in our culture or in the past, and learn to control our behaviour accordingly through internalising demands made, to begin with, by concrete, loving authority figures. Second, as a matter of fact and for the most part, we come to meet the psychological conditions for exercising autonomy (or second-order psychological capacities for autonomy) like self-confidence, selfrespect and self-esteem only through the experience of being recognised by others, in the context of the family, civil society, and the legal and political system. And third, even if we have both kinds of psychological capacities, we are still not able to lead an autonomous life unless the structure of our social environment meets the directly social conditions for exercising autonomy. We must be objectively recognised so that the rules of the relevant social practices do not deny us the opportunity to participate in personal relationships, pursue valuable comprehensive goals in a context within which they are meaningful, and enjoy guaranteed control over our plans of life. We must also enjoy sufficient competitive material resources, lest the opportunities opened by objective recognition remain meaningless. In each case, it does not suffice that the rules of the practices are accidentally responsive to our personal reasons; full exercise of autonomy requires that we have a voice in defining what being autonomous amounts to in our particular historical and cultural situation. A social world that meets all these conditions is a ‘home’ in the Hegelian sense, and insofar as we are also aware that it is such, we are at home within it, and so free and autonomous. It is unlikely, of course, that all these conditions are ever


fully met. However, they, like autonomy itself, are a matter of degree, and we can be confident that most adults in contemporary Western societies meet them to a sufficient extent to be fit to be held responsible for their life choices, so the view does not set the bar for autonomy too high. In addition, it helps make sense of locally reduced responsibility. When either the psychological or directly social conditions for exercise are impaired with regard to a certain set of options, we are and should be reluctant to place blame on people for their failures in that regard. While each of these intersubjective conceptions of autonomy has been addressed in the past, a systematic, comprehensive synthesis has so far been lacking. All that remains is to sketch how such a conception could be normatively fruitful as an internal critique of contemporary liberalism and liberal democracy. In doing so, I will adopt as a starting point a generic form of liberalism characterised by three basic principles. First, basic liberties are to be guaranteed to everyone by granting rights that trump utilitarian considerations of maximising general welfare. Second, the state is to be maximally neutral between competing rights-respecting conceptions of the good. And finally, distributive inequalities are acceptable so long as they are consistent with fair equality of opportunity, so that the resulting distribution is choicesensitive but endowment-insensitive. These principles concretise the goal of equally respecting each citizen as a person capable of forming and pursuing a conception of good and taking responsibility for her choices – in other words, respecting, protecting and promoting everyone’s autonomy. That is why they are justifiable to everyone in a pluralistic society where there is no single model of the good life, as long as they are reasonable enough not to want to impose such burdens on others that they would not themselves accept. I will assume that this generic model captures the central ideas of such paradigmatic (nonutilitarian) liberals as Rawls, Dworkin, Kymlicka and Scanlon, though each develops and justifies his view in different ways. The question then is whether individual rights, state neutrality and equal opportunity suffice to respect autonomy in light of its threefold social conditions. The issues that Hegelian liberalism raises are for the most part familiar from earlier debates around the challenges to standard liberalism – the hope is simply that the systematic framework allows a more perspicuous view and perhaps helps with their resolution. For example, as we have seen, communitarians, recognition theorists and perfectionists each argue that the existence of a plurality of valuable and valued ways of living embedded in cultural practices is

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necessary for autonomy. Taking a closer look though, communitarians like Taylor emphasise its importance for developing a capacity to make choices; recognition theorists like Honneth stress its role in acquiring and maintaining self-esteem; and perfectionists like Raz point out that it is necessary for exercising autonomy. These are very different arguments that rely on different kinds of evidence and have potentially different implications for autonomy-respecting policies, though there is naturally a significant degree of overlap. To mount an effective challenge to liberal assumptions, it is essential to have a clear view of these differences and the sort of conditions of autonomy they appeal to. Here, my goal is simply to indicate some directions for future research and possible liberal lines of response. To begin with the development of first-order capacities, several of the empirical intersubjective requirements concern caring parentchild relationships. Thus they fall on the ‘private’ side of the public/ private distinction, and so, in some traditional liberal views, beyond the reach of justice. Insofar as respecting autonomy as an issue of justice, however, this means there is a potential conflict between the child’s rights to the conditions of autonomy and the parents’ rights to privacy and continuing a culture across generations. The parents’ rights and pragmatic considerations speak against any direct legal regulation, which would no doubt be counterproductive within the sensitive family dynamic. However, acknowledging the child’s interest provides an autonomy-based argument for non-intrusive, indirect measures, such as paid maternity and paternity leaves, free child-care classes and packages, well-trained and well-paid kindergarten teachers in public services, and pluralistic educational materials.110 What about the psychological conditions for the exercise of autonomy and their intersubjective requirements? Anderson and Honneth claim that accepting the recognitional view signals a “need for significant revisions to commitments of (Rawlsian) liberalism”.111 Their main arguments seem to boil down to the following: rights are not sufficient 110 â•‡ None of these means really addresses the need for loving parent-child relationships, and there is obviously little one can do to further them. However, since the emotional quality is essential for autonomy – including the psychological conditions for its exercise, as Honneth stresses – there is also a further autonomy-based argument for making available remedial means, such as therapy, for those who have been injured in this respect. 111 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 142.


to guarantee psychological conditions for exercising autonomy, since legally enforced esteem and love are not only absurd but also positively useless for developing self-trust, and correspondingly “parties in the original position need much better understanding of these conditions for acquiring self-respect and self-esteem than Rawls equips them with”.112 More broadly, they suggest a shift of focus from distributive to recognitional concerns. There are only scattered hints in Honneth’s work for what this might mean in practice and how it would go beyond the sort of legal equality that liberals of all stripes should be willing to extend to everyone. He does suggest, however, that progress in the sphere of love might amount to “a step-by-step elimination of roleclichés, stereotypes, and cultural ascriptions that structurally impede adaptation to others’ needs” and that in the case of social esteem it would involve “radically scrutinizing the cultural constructions that, in the industrial-capitalist past, saw to it that only a small circle of activities were distinguished as ‘gainful employment’â•›”.113 Thus it seems that there is no actual conflict with basic liberal tenets of rights and neutrality, but rather an emphasis on the need to supplement state action with cultural change, for which the recognition view offers evaluative criteria that are absent from liberalism. Finally, the social conditions for exercising autonomy are already a battleground between liberals, on the one hand, and perfectionists, republicans, communitarians and deliberative democrats on the other, even if not always under that heading. Liberal egalitarians do naturally address domination and exploitation by insisting on civil and political 112 â•‡Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, p. 143. It must be noted that Anderson and Honneth seriously misconstrue Rawls’ ‘original position’ behind the veil of ignorance in their critique when they claim that according to him, participants “should not have knowledge of what people in the society are like, except the most basic features of their instrumental rationality” (Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, pp. 141–142). On the contrary, Rawls argues that the parties know, among other things, “the laws of human psychology”, and indeed “whatever general facts affect the choice of principles of justice” (Rawls, 1971, p. 137). Rawls himself goes on to give an example in which knowledge of moral psychology makes a difference to the principles adopted. Importantly, parties in the original position also have conception of primary goods, the kind of things that are useful or needed for any rational plan of life, and these include self-respect, “perhaps the most important primary good” (Rawls, 1971, p. 440). What the parties do not know is their own position in the society they are designing and the particular conception of the good they will have. 113 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 188. The latter argument relies at least in part on the mistaken view that economic compensation is rooted in cultural valuation.

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rights and fair equality of opportunity. Both republicans and deliberative democrats have challenged the sufficiency of non-interference with rights in combating domination, and argued for the importance of political participation and access to public deliberation that goes beyond aggregation of prepolitical preferences.114 Some liberals, however, view these theories as supplementing rather than replacing liberalism; the issue hangs on the question of the relationship between theories of justice and theories of democracy, which has not yet been sufficiently addressed.115 On the issue of economic domination, Rawls, for example, insists on guaranteeing basic resources for everyone precisely so that “no one need be servilely dependent on others and made to choose between monotonous and routine occupations which are deadening to human thought and sensibility.”116 In practice, liberals adopt what Fraser terms ‘affirmative’ policies like unemployment insurance and income transfers to address inequality instead of ‘transformative’ policies addressing the economic structures that create massive inequalities in the first place.117 Whether this is sufficient or not is open to much dispute. As to other aspects of objective recognition, while personal relationships have remained off the radar for liberals, the importance of cultural practices within which to express one’s identity has been a major impetus for recent developments in liberalism. For example, Yael Tamir’s liberal nationalism is based on ‘contextual individualism’, according to which an autonomous person is capable of making choices, including constitutive choices of national and cultural identity, only “because he is situated in a particular social and cultural environment that offers him evaluative criteria”.118 She argues that civil â•‡For republicanism, see Philip Pettit, A Theory of Freedom, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001, and Q. Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; for deliberative democracy, J. Habermas, Die Einbeziehung des Anderen. Studien zur politischen Theorie, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1996; J. Bohman, Public Deliberation. Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1996; Richardson 2002, among many others. 115 â•‡ See W. Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 286–287. Richardson, 2002 is happily a liberal, a republican and a deliberative democrat at the same time! 116 â•‡Rawls, 1971, p. 529. 117 â•‡Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 72–78. She herself prefers the strategy of ‘non-reformist reform’, policies that are affirmative in nature and so pragmatically feasible, but “set in motion a trajectory of change in which more radical reforms become practicable over time” (Fraser, 2003, p. 79). 118 â•‡ Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993, p. 33. 114


rights and liberties are not sufficient for guaranteeing the existence of such an environment, so that individuals must be granted rights to culture and national self-determination and, as long as they exercise them, have special obligations toward their fellow nationals and flourishing of the culture. ‘Nation-building’ through conscious propagation of a common language, history, symbols, rituals and customs in schools and the media can and often does create an environment within which citizens have access to collective goods and develop a sense of belonging and solidarity that lends legitimacy to redistributive policies, for example.119 However, this threatens liberal neutrality and places minorities and rebels at a disadvantaged position. Some liberals, like Will Kymlicka, support special minority rights precisely as a response to such majority nation-building.120 Whether such means suffice to guarantee provision of valuable alternatives without compromising state neutrality is yet another open question. The plausibility of the liberal prohibition of value judgements in public action seems to depend on seeing ‘the state’ and ‘the political’ as something opposed to “groups and associations below the level of the state – friends and family … churches, cultural associations, professional groups and trade unions, universities, and the mass media”121 to which liberals relegate assessing the value of various cultural options. The insight of deliberative democrats is that the purpose of democratic procedures is precisely to allow for the public opinion formed within such organisations of civil society to be channelled into the political sphere and into law.122 This makes it possible to go beyond liberal neutrality by enlarging the options for exercising personal autonomy through the exercise of political autonomy. I have been able to give the merest taste of the debates around the social conditions of autonomy within normative political philosophy. What are we left with in the end? It seems liberalism is an easy target to shoot at, but a hard one to hit. Its commitment to providing everyone with the basic goods needed for autonomy gives it a great deal of flexibility in response to conceptions that add more conditions to the 119 â•‡ See, for example, Tamir, Liberal Nationalism, ch. 3–6. Identification with common institutions and mutual solidarity are naturally requirements of the subjective aspect of Hegelian ‘being at home’. 120 â•‡Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, pp. 362–365. 121 â•‡Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, p. 250. 122 â•‡ See J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1992b, ch. VIII.

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list – if something really is necessary for the autonomous pursuit of any kind of good life, the liberal will (or at least should) happily adopt it. The real issue is whether some of these commitments conflict with other core commitments of liberalism, such as those of limiting the means to individual legal rights and state neutrality. Here empirical questions about which sort of policies best promote the existence of autonomy-conducive relationships cannot be avoided, particularly since many of them are in principle out of direct reach of legislative and administrative means. The kind of Hegelian liberalism I have outlined in this essay could help focus such research and justify the resulting policy proposals on the basis of the internally complex social dimension of autonomy.

Chapter ten

First Things First: Redistribution, Recognition and Justification Rainer Forst 1. The debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth presents the two most advanced attempts to construct what we could call a comprehensive critical theory of justice. And the antagonism of their respective approaches reminds us of an ancient ‘schism of critique’, that is, of the divergence of two strands of theory, having roots in the critical discourses of the Enlightenment as well as the Marxist tradition. The first strand is the one that primarily aims at overcoming economic, social and political relations of inequality; with respect to the sphere of political economy, ‘exploitation’ was and is the central topic. The other strand mainly denounces the impoverishment of personal and cultural life under modern, capitalist modes of production; here, the main term of critique was and is ‘alienation’ rather than exploitation. These forms of critique have been, to be sure, connected in many ways,1 yet the search for an integrated contemporary theory goes on, for the theoretical difference between the two approaches is clear enough. Whereas the former critique has as its basis a notion of justice that aims at the establishment of social and political relations that are free from grave power asymmetries and unjustified forms of domination, the other uses much more qualitative, ethically substantive terms as the tools of critique: ‘true’ self-realisation, a ‘meaningful’ form of life, or being aufgehoben in various forms of mutual recognition and social esteem. One could be tempted to analyse this difference with Ernst Bloch, who reconstructed such a divergence as one between teachings of natural right focusing on the idea of human dignity and social utopias

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â•‡ The works of Rousseau provide illuminating examples of their combination.

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aiming at the realisation of human happiness.2 This, however, is not quite adequate, for neither is the latter form of qualitative ethical critique necessarily in any sense ‘utopian’ nor is it devoid of a concept of dignity. As Honneth makes clear in his work, the reconstruction of various forms of misrecognition so as to construct a positive notion of recognition is supposed to provide a rich and historically textured notion of human dignity, arising out of social struggles. Still, the juxtaposition between dignity and happiness captures something of the theoretical difference we encounter in this debate, for it reflects a difference between a basically Kantian and a Hegelian way of understanding the critical enterprise. And this not just in light of the fact that theorists of the first tradition, like Nancy Fraser, keep reminding those of the second that happiness or ‘the good life’ is a contested term that cannot ground justice claims in pluralist and post-metaphysical times. Conversely, proponents of the second tradition, like Axel Honneth, keep reminding the others that the overall aim of struggles for justice ultimately is having the possibility of leading a fulfilled and good life. More than that, the debate between the two reflects, I think, deeper issues about how to see human beings in relation to their society, that is, issues of social ontology. In fact, one could say that representatives of the first tradition already start from a more ‘alienated’ social-ontological view than those of the second, and that those who are mainly concerned with alienation and other phenomena of ‘bad’ forms of life start from an ethical view that expects ‘nonreduced’ social life to be one of a certain unity – if not identity – of individual and society.3 It is only from that vantage point that we see why representatives of the first approach like Nancy Fraser do not frame their critique of society as a critique of its ‘pathologies’, trying to avoid carrying the burden to prove what a ‘healthy’ form of social life would be – a burden that Axel Honneth tries to reformulate and make less metaphysically weighty in his comprehensive theoretical endeavour, yet one he believes one must carry to avoid settling for a reduced mode of critique

2 â•‡E. Bloch, Natural Law and Human Dignity, trans. D. Schmidt, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987. 3 â•‡See Axel Honneth on the Hegelian idea of a “rational universal” in “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory”, trans. J. Hebbeler, in ed. F. Rush, The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336–360.

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that does not address the totality of a ‘false’ form of life.4 This difference, it strikes me, may be the basic issue we are confronted with when we look at the debate about ‘recognition’ and ‘redistribution’; it is more than just another debate about justice. It is, to borrow a phrase from Fraser’s recent work (out of context), a debate about the proper “frame” of critical thinking.5 And then if, as she argues, debates about the frame of justice are a sign of ‘abnormal’ discourse (as opposed to ‘normal justice’ in neo-Kuhnian language), then here we find a debate of another form of ‘abnormality’: not just one where the political frame of justice is at issue, but one where the basic methodological and normative questions of thinking about justice are contested. Furthermore, this may also be a debate about the question of whether justice should be what we mainly focus on when we practise critical theory. These are the issues I address in my following brief remarks. 2. To regard the theories of Fraser and Honneth as ‘advanced’ implies that they each attempt to overcome the traditional schism of critique I mentioned, yet in quite different ways. Nancy Fraser starts from the diagnosis that contemporary Western capitalist societies are marked by two dominant forms – and subjective experiences – of injustice, often connected: suffering from a lack of resources due to economic and political inequality and suffering from a lack of social and cultural recognition for what one is – one’s identity. Hence she suggests a twodimensional theory of justice that aims at ‘transformative’ strategies of redistribution as well as recognition, united in the aim of establishing a basic social structure in which there is participatory parity among all members regarding the most important aspects of social life. This ideal of parity, however, is not based on substantive notions of the good life in mutual recognition. Rather, it is meant to be a form of a “thick deontological liberalism”6 that aims at establishing equal chances of leading

4 â•‡See A. Honneth, “Pathologien des Sozialen” in his Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Aufsätze zur praktischen Philosophie, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2000, pp. 11–69. 5 â•‡N. Fraser, “Abnormal Justice” in her Scales of Justice. Reimagining Political Space in a Globalized World, New York, Columbia University Press, 2009, pp. 48–75. 6 â•‡N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition. A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram & C. Wilke, London, Verso, 2003.

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an autonomous life (without providing an ethical interpretation of the meaning of ‘autonomy’). Axel Honneth, on the other hand, suggests a ‘monistic’ theory of recognition that is, however, based on an analysis of three dimensions of recognition – and of self-realisation enabled through that recognition. On that basis, he claims, we can not only identify forms of suffering that we could not address with the help of a theory such as Fraser’s, we will also better understand the social dynamics of the various struggles for recognition that are far from being simply struggles for ‘cultural’ recognition. Rather, debates about economic redistribution are at their core debates about how to evaluate and recognise certain forms of work and contributions to the economic social process. Finally, in Honneth’s eyes the lack of a substantive ideal of recognised life in the three spheres of love, equal rights and social esteem makes a theory of justice empty and formal, doomed to forget what justice is really about: the good life. But Honneth’s theory, as I indicated, is not just one more attempt to bring out a teleological point about procedural justice, or the substantive side(s) of it; rather, there is a different comprehensive framework of thinking about individuality, sociality and normativity at work here. For in stressing that his approach relies on a stronger view of both the immanence and the transcendence of social critique, Honneth implies that a recognitional account has access to a dimension of social and individual life that exhibits “a normative potential that reemerges in every social reality anew because it is so tightly fused to the structure of human interests”.7 According to his view, there is an anthropological as well as moral logic built into the very fabric of society that can lead to experiences of misrecognition that only a nuanced recognitional view can identify. Approaches like Fraser’s thus are doomed to remain bound to conventional paradigms of thinking about justice, especially to “goals that have already been publicly articulated” thereby neglecting “everyday, still unthematized, but no less pressing embryonic forms of social misery and moral injustice”.8 Against this charge, Fraser insists on the normatively mediated form of our access to experiences of subjective suffering, and she also stresses the “nonfoundational”, pragmatist character of her approach, which

â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition, p. 244. â•‡ ibid., p. 114.

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critically reconstructs current “folk paradigms of justice” – as judged from an idea of participatory parity that according to her view represents a pivotal point of contemporary struggles for justice.9 3. Given the many important aspects and dimensions of that debate, I cannot pretend to do it justice in what follows. Rather, my way to address the issues I find most important will be to develop a third, alternative approach to a critical theory of justice in dialogue with Fraser’s and Honneth’s theories. I call it the ‘first-things-first’ approach or, more technically, an approach of justificatory monism and diagnostic-evaluative pluralism.10 From that perspective, I might be able to explain why I still think that recognitional accounts provide an indispensable sensorium for experiences of social suffering generally and of injustice more narrowly.11 Yet when it comes to the question of the criteria of the justification of justice claims, a procedural-deontological, discourse-theoretical account is necessary (which does not mean we have to restrict ourselves to a ‘purely’ procedural account of justice devoid of any substantive components). In matters of justice, we have to use a specific normative grammar of justification that cuts deep into the realm of the normative judgements we make: it works like a filter to sort out justifiable from unjustifiable claims, one that opens up and at the same time restricts the possibility of justice claims. If one understands justice in a critical way, not only this kind of opening but also the moment of restriction serve an emancipatory purpose. Ultimately, this is what practical reason – and the respect for others – demands in this context. Let me explain why I think that there is such a peculiar grammar of justice. When we talk about political and social justice, we talk about the (‘perfect’ in Kantian terms) duties of members of a given social and political context to establish institutions on the basis of norms that can

â•‡ ibid., pp. 204–9. â•‡I develop this approach more fully in my The Right to Justification. Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice, trans. J. Flynn, New York, Columbia University Press, forthcoming. 11 â•‡For an earlier version of that argument, see my Contexts of Justice. Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism, trans. J. Farrell, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2002 (German orig. 1994), p. 280. â•›â•›â•›â•›9 10

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legitimately claim to be generally and reciprocally valid and binding. A context of justice always is a specific context of justification in which all relevant basic social and political relations – including basic economic relations – are in need of mutual and general justification. Hence the criteria of reciprocity and generality turn, reflexively speaking, from criteria of validity into criteria of discursive justification. Seen in that way, contexts of justice are contexts of justification based on these criteria; from a realistic perspective, however, most often contexts of justice are contexts of injustice first, and out of a critical analysis of such various forms of injustice an account of justice has to be constructed. Thus every theory of justice requires a complex theory of injustice, not just as a normative account, but also in the form of a social analysis. Still, even if such an account has to be complex and multi-dimensional, by way of a recursive argument, we can formulate one overarching reflexive principle of justice: there must be no social and political relations that cannot be reciprocally and generally justified to all those who are part of a political-social context. Justice, according to this view, is not primarily about what you have (or do not have), rather, it is about how you are treated. Justice is not a teleological notion, for first, it rests on deontological duties of what persons owe to one another in a context of justice. Second, its critical part is not about persons lacking something that it would be good for them to have; rather, it is about persons being deprived of something they have reciprocally and generally non-rejectable reasons to claim. Justice is above all about ending domination and unjustifiable, arbitrary rule, whether political or social in a broader sense; it is about citizens’ status as equals in political and social life, that is, as persons with what I call a basic right to justification.12 The most fundamental principles of justice do not require specific patterns of distributing certain goods; rather, they demand that every such distribution has to proceed in the most justifiable way. It is important to see that we can call quite different and competing arrangements just or fair, depending on whether all affected have participated properly in the way they came about and had a sufficient chance to influence the results. Seen in this reflexive, higher-order perspective, there is an emancipatory priority 12 â•‡See my “The Basic Right to Justification. Toward a Constructivist Conception of Human Rights”, trans. J. Caver, Constellations 6, 1999, pp. 35–60 and “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice” in ed. T. Pogge, Global Justice, Oxford, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 169–187.


of democratic justice that focuses on the equal standing of members in a context of justice.13 This account suggests, unlike at least one reading of Fraser’s theory, a monistic approach to justice. Yet unlike Honneth’s theory, it is not an approach based on a substantive account of recognition and selfrealisation, though it does presuppose one basic form of recognition: the recognition of the basic right of every member of a basic social structure to be respected as an equal participant in procedures of effective social justification. This is what the respect for human ‘dignity’ means in this context. There is an interpretation of Fraser’s approach that also reads her theory as a monistic one, that is, as based on the (single) general principle of ‘participatory parity’. In her theory, however, that notion seems to serve different purposes.14 On one reading, participatory parity is the telos of establishing just social and political structures, an end-state of justice: Redistribution claimants must show that existing economic arrangements deny them the necessary objective conditions for participatory parity. Recognition claimants must show that the institutionalized patterns of cultural value deny them the necessary intersubjective conditions. In both cases, therefore, the norm of participatory parity is the standard for warranting claims.15

On another reading, and that is the preferred one (also in light of Fraser’s more recent work), participatory parity is not the goal of justice but its main means. It secures the necessary political and social standing of citizens in democratic debates about justifiable policies of redistribution or recognition: “Fair democratic deliberation concerning the merits of recognition claims requires parity of participation for all actual and possible deliberators. That in turn requires just distribution and reciprocal recognition”.16 This interpretation, however, implies a stronger theoretical agnosticism as to the aims of justice than Fraser at other times allows for. To overcome ambiguities and circularities at this point, I suggest we distinguish conceptually between fundamental (or minimal) and 13 â•‡On this point, see my “Zwei Bilder der Gerechtigkeit”, in Sozialphilosophie und Kritik. Festschrift for Axel Honneth, ed. R. Forst, M. Hartmann, R. Jaeggi and M. Saar, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009, pp. 205–228. 14 â•‡See also Honneth’s critique in Redistribution or Recognition, p. 261. 15 â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition, p. 38. 16 â•‡ ibid., p. 44.

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maximal justice, based on the above-mentioned reflexive principle of justice.17 Fundamental justice calls for the establishment of a basic structure of justification, that is, one in which all members have sufficient status and power to decide about the institutions they are to live under. Maximal justice then means the establishment of a fully justified basic structure, that is, a basic structure that grants those rights, life chances and goods that citizens of a just society could not reciprocally deny each other. Obviously, ‘participatory parity’ means quite different things in the fundamental and in the maximal mode. In the fundamental mode, it means having an effective right to justification in ‘reflexive’, democratically self-transforming social and political institutions. Essentially, this includes the power to decide about the basic institutions of the way goods are produced and distributed in the first place. Hence if we argue – with Nancy Fraser (who agrees with that point18) – for a ‘transformative’ approach to social justice, we have to talk about fair institutions of production and distribution, not primarily of redistribution. The ‘re’ gives the false image that some ‘natural’ first distribution has already taken place and that we want a second, less ‘natural’ one. Rawls stresses this in his ideal of “pure procedural justice” and I will come back to that point.19 In the maximal mode, ‘participatory parity’ could be a general, though vague term for the possibility of really and fully living a socially integrated life without suffering any kind of structural social injustice; though given the required agnosticism about this, I am not sure we should give this idea of a just society a teleological name. I conclude this discussion of Fraser’s approach by questioning whether, seen in that light, ‘participatory parity’ is a sufficient criterion of justifying justice claims, and also whether the conceptual tools she suggests for analysing phenomena of injustice are sufficient. These are two large questions, and I can only hint at answers here. As for the first, I am not sure how (socially unavoidable) conflicts between different interpretations of what ‘participatory parity’ means will be resolved. I assume that a notion of equality will be decisive here and not some more substantive idea of ‘participation’. But if that is so, it seems that reciprocity and generality might be more adequate normative criteria, â•‡See especially my “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice”. â•‡See Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition, p. 95n8. 19 â•‡J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness. A Restatement, ed. E. Kelly, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 50. 17 18


for they place the burden of justification on anyone who is trying to justify a social privilege of some sort, and it is here where the notion of reciprocity has sufficient bite. When it comes to questions of gay marriage, for example, the denial of equal rights is reciprocally nonjustifiable; at least the claim to equality cannot be rejected with heavily contested religious or traditional ideas about the meaning of marriage. And when it comes to injustices in the systems of providing education or meaningful and decently paid work, social privileges of some groups are likewise indefensible. Hence with respect to criteria for claims to ‘recognition’ or ‘redistribution’, we move from ‘parity’ to ‘equality’ in the sense of reciprocally non-rejectable justifications for certain social structures and relations. Regarding the question of analysing phenomena of injustice, I would say that injustices can have many faces, and that economic exploitation or exclusion or a lack of cultural recognition definitely are among those. But I am not sure we have to restrict our social-analytic language to these forms. If, for example, we criticise forms of manipulation in the media or forms of political exclusion, we might want to say that they are violations of democratic principles due to certain influences of power and interest politics, but it is not clear that the basic phenomenon is to be analysed either in the economic or the cultural register, for these phenomena could also be products of a malfunctioning representative system; the political itself seems to be a broader and more independent realm than the two-dimensional theory allows for. 4. Let me now turn to Axel Honneth’s theory, reiterating the two questions I just posed. As I argued, theories of recognition play an important role in identifying forms of injustice, but again I do not think that we need to restrict our explanatory tools in such a way. Take, for example, issues of distributive (in)justice. In some cases, misrecognition clearly can be the cause of unjust economic relations, and in such cases the remedy may not only be an institutional change (such as fair structures of economic compensation for socially important work) but also require a cultural change. But sometimes, it seems, injustice is not primarily linked to questions of recognition, for some professions with extremely high compensation are precisely not in high esteem, such as being a manager of a large corporation or a real estate agent. It is true,

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as Honneth says, that the economic realm is part of the general cultural realm of recognition, but many phenomena of injustice in that realm seem to have other causes and follow a different market or ‘systemic’ logic that needs to be identified and criticised.20 To add one further point: even if it is correct that a change in the recognitional social structure is called for by way of a re-evaluation of some group’s ‘contribution’, such change might very well only be the means to the end of justice, not the end itself – the end would not be to be socially esteemed but to have equal social standing and chances and no longer be the object of discrimination (which is different from being especially valued). Thus I question Honneth’s charge that a deontological theory necessarily gets the means/ends relations the wrong way around and is blind with respect to the goals of social justice. As for the question of whether criteria of recognition are sufficient to identify claims to justice (and to just recognition) that are justifiable, I have certain doubts. For any such claim needs to be justifiable with the criteria of reciprocity and generality: all those forms of ‘misrecognition’ fall under the category of ‘injustice’ that can be rejected with reciprocally and generally justifiable reasons. Call that the a priori of justification. I do not in fact think that this is far from Honneth’s own argument, for when it comes to translating a phenomenon – or subjective experience – of misrecognition into one of injustice and again translating this into a justice claim, he generally uses terms like “justified”, “fair” or “equal”: claims to recognition must be “well-founded”, and injustice is an expression of “unjustified relations of recognition”.21 With respect to the justification of such relations or claims, I think equality – or reciprocity, in my language – clearly is the major criterion, even, I would venture to say, the only one. In the sphere of legal recognition this is explicitly so, but it is also true for claims to cultural recognition that must, according to Honneth, “pass through the needle’s eye of the equality principle” since “the sort of social esteem that would be entailed in recognizing a culture as something valuable is not a public response that could be appealed for or demanded”.22 I would add that what can be ‘demanded’ reciprocally in the third sphere, that is, that of the evaluation of individual contributions to economic-social cooperation, also follows the logic of reciprocal justification regarding â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition, p. 142. â•‡ ibid., p. 114. 22 â•‡ ibid., pp. 140, 164, 168. 20 21


unjustified privileges as unfair. Here is Honneth’s reconstruction of Hegel with respect to that point: With the three new forms of social relations that in my view prepare the way for the moral order of capitalist society, distinct principles of recognition develop in whose light the subject can assert specific experiences of undeserved, unjustifiable disrespect, and thus produce grounds for an expanded kind of recognition.23

Yet the critique of existing and ‘unjustifiable’ forms and standards of recognising ‘contributions’ is most commonly expressed in terms of ‘fairness’: And the fact of social inequality can only meet with more or less rational agreement because, beyond all actual distortions, its legitimating principle contains the normative claim to consider the individual achievements of all members of society fairly and appropriately in the form of mutual esteem.24

Thus the logic of reciprocal recognition, in translating subjective experiences into claims of justice, is dependent on the criteria of reciprocity and generality: the substance of the sphere and the kind of particular recognition entailed do not transfigure into different criteria for justifying justice. And likewise, the multidimensional sensorium for phenomena of injustice does not either. This then also allows for a more radical critique of the “historically established recognition order” persons have to orient themselves toward – and possibly also for a critique of the problematic idea of ‘contribution’ itself. 25 In sum, normatively I argue for a basically monistic approach regarding the overarching principle of justice, which is to be spelled out substantively with respect to the basic social structure of justification first, yet with respect to the question of what ‘maximal justice’ means I opt for a radically pluralistic approach. Here, if you think for example about the question of how goods such as ‘work’ or ‘health’ should be distributed, we can think of a number of normative aspects that could be combined in an argument about (maximal) justice, and I see no reason why we should restrict that to a ‘dualistic’ or a ‘monistic’ approach in Fraser’s or Honneth’s sense. Once a structure of fundamental justice is in place (which is quite demanding in terms of â•‡ ibid., p. 144. â•‡ ibid., p. 148â•›ff. 25 â•‡ ibid., p. 137. 23 24

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substantive justice), and once the criteria of reciprocity and generality are in play that rule out arguments that unjustly favour one party, the argument should be open to a wide range of normative considerations, from the tradition of a political community to general human needs or particular capabilities, questions of effectiveness, specific ethical values, and so on. In all these discourses, however, a discursive version of Rawls’ difference principle should be in place, giving the “worst off ”, as Rawls says, a “veto” against unjustifiable distributions: “Taking equality as the basis of comparison, those who have gained more must do so on terms that are justifiable to those who have gained the least”.26 5. The maxim ‘first things first’ does not just have a normative meaning, with respect to the a priori of justification. For based on that, we should say that in matters of justice power is the most important of all goods, a true ‘hyper-good’ for it is the good that is required to set up a justified basic structure in the first place – and to keep it going. Hence a critical theory of (in)justice has to be above all a critique of the existing relations of justification (or of ‘justificatory power’). Such a critique, speaking in ‘diagnostic’ terms, has three essential aspects.27 First, by way of critical social analysis it aims at exposing unjustifiable social relations, not just political ones in a narrow sense, but also those of an economic or cultural nature, that is, all those relations, in more or less institutionalised form, that fall short of the standard of reciprocal and general justifiability and are marked by forms of exclusion or domination. Second, it implies a discourse-theoretical (also in part genealogical) critique of ‘false’ (possibly ideological) justifications for such relations, that is, justifications that veil asymmetrical power relations and traditions of exclusion (say, along gender or class lines). And third, it implies an account of the failure (or non-existence) of effective social and political structures of justification to (a) unveil and (b) change unjustifiable social relations. 26 â•‡Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed., Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 131. 27 â•‡I can only list these aspects here; to spell them out, a normative account of justification needs to be completed by a theory of discursive power and a social theory of justification; for an attempt of the latter see L. Boltanski & Laurent Thévenot, On Justification. Economies of Worth, trans. C. Porter, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006.


In normative-institutional terms, a justificatory approach of that kind suggests that only if a fair structure of justification is set up can more particular perspectives of justification be adopted. A just social structure will have many aspects, but it will in essence be one thing: a reciprocally and generally justified basic structure. And thus the first thing to aim at is a power structure of effective justification. Hence, I argue for a political turn within the theoretical discourse of justice, for there can be no proper account of distributive justice without first addressing the political issue of power relations in a society: persons should not primarily be recipients of justice, rather, they should be agents of justice, that is, autonomous agents who co-determine the structures of production and distribution that determine their lives – given, of course, the constraints of social systems that have developed within modern societies. And even though Rawls does not take such a turn and does not explicitly argue for political power being the most important of all primary goods, his argument for a form of “pure background procedural justice”, which he explains in the following way, is essential here: “The basic structure is arranged so that when everyone follows the publicly recognized rules of cooperation … the particular distributions of goods that result are acceptable as just (or at least as not unjust) whatever these distributions turn out to be”.28 He spells this out by distinguishing welfare-state capitalism from his version of “property-owning democracy”: The background institutions of property-owning democracy work to disperse the ownership of wealth and capital, and thus to prevent a small part of society from controlling the economy, and indirectly, political life as well. By contrast, welfare-state capitalism permits a small class to have a near monopoly of the means of production. Property-owning democracy avoids this, not by the redistribution of income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (that is, education and trained skills) at the beginning of each period, all this against a background of fair equality of opportunity. The intent is not simply to assist those who lose out through accident or misfortune (although that must be done), but rather to put all citizens in a position to manage their own affairs on a footing of a suitable degree of social and economic equality.29

28 29

â•‡Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 50. â•‡ ibid., p. 139.

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My argument for the priority of the good of power and for an effective basic structure of justification implies that a two-dimensional view of justice between redistribution and recognition is insufficient if it does not stress the important political question of exercising power. This is in line, however, with a recent development of Nancy Fraser’s theoretical enterprise; she now – in the context of second-order debates about the right frame or context of justice (national or transnational) – argues for a “three-dimensional” theory of justice, stressing the dimension of political representation as a third one, not reducible to the others.30 “The political dimension sets the procedures for staging and resolving contests in both the economic and the cultural dimensions: it tells us not only who can make claims for redistribution and recognition, but also how such claims are to be mooted and adjudicated”.31 I believe that this is not just the case in an age of ‘reframing’ justice, but more generally, and I also believe, pace Fraser, that this turns the political into a “master dimension of justice”.32 If we rely on a principle of justification, the political question is necessarily a higher-order question of justice, for it is here (if we understand the political not in a narrow institutional sense) where unjust cultural, economic and political social practices can be challenged and where changes in these spheres can be brought about. 6. By way of summary, let me emphasise why I think that through the combination of justificatory monism and diagnostic-evaluative pluralism that I have suggested, a critical theory of justice (and injustice) can be constructed that does contain a number of the important characteristics that Honneth as well as Fraser claim such a theory needs to have – and that avoids some of the problems I pointed out. First, it does not rest on a “quasi-transcendental”33 anthropological or social-ontological foundation but finds a recursive, transcendental grounding in the principle of justification and in the self-reflexive idea of what it means to be a person with the capacity for practical reason â•‡N. Fraser, Reframing Justice. Spinoza Lectures, Amsterdam, van Gorcum, 2005, pp. 41â•›ff., 49. 31 â•‡ ibid., p. 44. 32 â•‡ ibid., p. 49. 33 â•‡Honneth in Redistribution or Recognition, p. 245. 30


(that is, somebody who understands and accepts that principle and is capable of using reasons accordingly). Thus I would not follow a ‘nonfoundationalist’ (Fraser) path here. At this point, of course, Fraser could accuse me of foundationalism, while Honneth could raise the objection that my ‘first-things-first’ approach gets things the wrong way around, for it also seems to rest – as I indicated – on an “a priori of recognition”: the moral recognition of the other as a being whom I owe respect given their basic right to justification. I cannot go into these issues at length here, but only answer, to the first critique, that I think that any critical theory of justice and justification such as Fraser’s is in need of a strong moral foundation of the right and the duty of justification in order to be a ‘deontological’ theory,34 whereas the competition between the a priori of recognition and that of justification may be resolved by interpreting the ‘original’ form of moral recognition as a ‘fact’ of justificatory reason, to use Kant’s (in)famous term, that is, as both the cognitive and moral recognition of the other as a justificatory being and authority to whom I owe appropriate justifications (in given contexts) – without further ethical, metaphysical, religious or selfinterested reasons. This, I take it, is a basic – and autonomous – moral insight of practical reason, for it sees the other in the light of the capacity of reason we share: as someone who can use and is in need of reasons. Thus I do not think that this is an act of practical recognition alone but also one of cognition: an insight of (justificatory) reason.35 To learn to see yourself as a ‘rational animal’, that is, to be socialised into the space of reasons, presupposes that kind of insight that needs no further relation to my self-interest (broadly understood). A second possible objection from the viewpoint of Honneth’s theory could be that a justificatory approach is ahistorical, being based on an abstract principle of reason alone. But as I tried to show elsewhere – in my reconstruction of the discourse of toleration from the early Christians until today36 – the claim for justice as the claim for mutually justifiable concrete social and political relations, that is, the claim to be respected as an agent with a right to justification, was and still is an

â•‡ Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition, p. 30. â•‡See my “Moral Autonomy and the Autonomy of Morality”, trans. C. Cronin, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 26:1, 2005, pp. 65–88. 36 â•‡ R. Forst, Toleranz im Konflikt. Geschichte, Gehalt und Gegenwart eines umstrittenen Begriffs, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2003. English translation forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. 34 35

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important and central driving force in social conflicts. People in very different historical circumstances, speaking different ‘thick’ normative languages, questioned given justifications for the structures and norms they were supposed to live under, demanding other, better reasons. The struggle for justifications is, to use one of Honneth’s own phrases, a deep “grammar” of social conflict and emancipatory movements, leaving the form in which this demand is phrased up to them and historical circumstance. The practice of justification then is to be seen as a basic social and dynamic practice with the inherent potential of opening up conventional and exclusionary forms of discourse. Reason, as I see it, is a critical and subversive force— but reason it must be to criticise ‘pathologies’ of false practices and contents of justification. A critical theory is in need of a free-standing as well as situated conception of practical reason. Hence, to address a third possible worry of a recognition theorist, as far as the psychological aspects of the ‘desire’ for justice and/or recognition – in other words the ‘emancipatory interest’ – are concerned, I believe that the desire to be respected as an autonomous agent to whom others, especially in a political context, owe good reasons is a deep and rational desire of human beings. Its basis is a moral sense of ‘dignity’ that is violated by being ‘invisible’37 and by being disregarded as a proper justificatory ‘authority’. The insult of being treated unjustifiably is felt very deeply, yet the insult of not even being seen as someone others owe reasons to is worst of all. Autonomy (understood in the sense of having a right to justification) is not just a philosophical idea in the noumenal realm, it is basic to individual self-understanding and self-respect. 7. One last concern may remain, and it brings me back to my opening remarks. Could it be, as Jürgen Habermas once asked in his famous essay on Walter Benjamin, that such a vision of justice forgets something most important. Could it be, in Habermas’ words, that “one day an emancipated humanity would exist in an enlarged space of

37 â•‡See also A. Honneth, Unsichtbarkeit. Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 2003.


discursive will-formation and yet be bereft of the light in which it could be able to interpret its life as a good one”?38 As a first answer to this, I believe that a sufficiently pluralist approach to just institutions in the above-mentioned sense would be capable of incorporating a great number of aspects of the ‘good’ life based on the particular justice claims persons justifiably make. Yet as a second answer, I think that the first tradition I spoke of above, and in which I have placed my own thinking, has to pay some price for its ethical agnosticism: there are aspects of the good – contested ones, to be sure – that such an approach does not capture, and there are other forms of critique with particular conceptual tools to address the ways societies fail to provide certain forms of the good. An approach based on the notion of justice can only go as far as that concept allows for, which I think is what Nancy Fraser stresses. And yet I think that it is one of the virtues of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition that it enables him to formulate a rich critical theory of ‘pathological’ and ethically ‘bad’ forms of social practice that goes beyond what a critical theory of justice can and should do. His recent Tanner Lectures on the theme of reification – analysed as “forgetfulness of recognition” – attest to that.39 But it seems to me important, and no sign of conceptual poverty but rather of richness and clarity, to see that whenever such a critique uses the terms of injustice or justice, a certain kind of reciprocal recognition, materialised in the practice of reciprocal justification, is primary. That does not mean that other forms of critique are weak or misguided; they just use other tools, have other aims and might imply different claims to validity.40 38 â•‡ “Könnte eines Tages ein emanzipiertes Menschengeschlecht in den erweiterten Spielräumen diskursiver Willensbildung sich gegenübertreten und doch des Lichtes beraubt sein, in dem es sein Leben als ein gutes zu interpretieren fähig ist?” (my translation). J. Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1987, p. 375. On the same page, Habermas also argues for a “first things first” approach to questions of emancipation, adding, however, some thoughts about (what we could call) the saving power of undistorted communication. 39 â•‡A. Honneth, Verdinglichung. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie, Frankfurt/ M., Suhrkamp, 2005. 40 â•‡Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the “Socialist Scholar’s Conference” in New York City (March 2004) and at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, in Chicago (April 2006). My thanks for helpful comments and criticism go to the participants of the respective panels, and especially to Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth for their constructive replies. Nancy Fraser’s reply has been published in the European Journal of Political Theory 6, 2007, pp. 305–338, together with this essay (pp. 291–304); both have been reprinted in N. Fraser, Adding Insult to Injury. Nancy Fraser Debates Her Critics, ed. K. Olson, London & New York, Verso, 2008, pp. 310–346.

Chapter eleven

Recognition, Culture and Economy: Honneth’s Debate with Fraser Nicholas H. Smith 1.â•‡Introduction In their co-authored introduction to Redistribution or Recognition? Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth state that “at its deepest level” their book is concerned with the relationship between the economic order of contemporary capitalism and the patterns of cultural valuation that prevail in capitalist society.1 The motivation behind their inquiry is to correct the flawed conceptions of economy and culture that, in their view, debilitate the tradition of critical social theory, and to renew that tradition around non-reductive, more differentiated conceptions. Fraser presents her contribution as pointing the way beyond “economism” and “culturalism”, two pernicious forms of reductionism that account for all social change, including the kind of change brought

1 â•‡ N. Fraser & A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. J. Golb, J. Ingram & C. Wilke, London, Verso, 2003, p. 5. They write:

Should capitalism, as it exists today, be understood as a social system that differentiates an economic order that is not directly regulated by institutionalized patterns of cultural value from other social orders that are? Or should the capitalist economic order be understood rather as a consequence of a mode of cultural valuation that is bound up, from the very outset, with asymmetrical forms of recognition? At its deepest level, this book attempts to pose this question theoretically and to develop a common framework for assessing our divergent answers. This highly condensed passage is hard to follow because while it hints at two competing solutions to a single problem, it actually poses two distinct problems the logical relationship between which is unclear. One could answer both questions in the affirmative without contradiction: there is no obvious inconsistency in asserting both that the capitalist economy is not directly regulated by ‘institutionalised patterns of cultural value’ and that it is in some sense a ‘consequence of a mode of cultural valuation’. Conversely, one could answer both questions in the negative with equal justification: it is conceivable, of course, that contemporary capitalism should be understood in neither of the ways suggested.

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about by progressive politics, in either economic or cultural terms alone.2 Honneth, for his part, targets the “anti-normative” bias in the way the Critical Theory tradition conceives the capitalist economic system, but he is just as opposed to notions of culture as an undifferentiated source of norms and values.3 Honneth and Fraser share the conviction that critical social theory must develop a conception of capitalist society that articulates the relation between its economic structure and cultural norms in a more satisfactory manner than do currently available models. For the critical social theorist, three types of consideration are relevant to determine whether an articulation of this sort is satisfactory or not. First, there is the question of its descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The standard against which the theory’s descriptive and explanatory adequacy is to be measured is social reality itself. Second, there is the issue of determining the normative significance of this reality. An articulation that is satisfactory in this respect will render perspicuous the fit (or lack of it) between what is and what ought to be. Such articulations, when successful, at once clarify the grounds of social criticism (the standards against which the worth of social reality should be judged) and make the need for social criticism more palpable. A third kind of consideration concerns the grounds for hope that existing normative deficits, or the gap between standard and reality, can be overcome. A critical social theory that provides no grounds for such hope is as unsatisfactory as a physical theory that delivers no recipes for intervening effectively in the physical environment. In striving to articulate the proper relation between economy and culture, critical social theorists must keep in mind all three kinds of consideration: the descriptive/explanatory, the normative and the emancipatory/transformative. This desideratum is crucial for both Honneth and Fraser and it shapes the course of their debate, which criss-crosses over issues in social theory, theories of justice, diagnoses of the times and strategies for progressive politics. I have no wish to question the idea that the commitments implicit in one’s beliefs about society, one’s moral judgements and social hopes should be expressible in a unified philosophical vocabulary. On the contrary, Critical Theory owes its power precisely to its stubborn

â•‡ ibid., pp. 50–53. â•‡ ibid., pp. 128–129, 134.

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adherence to the project of integrating these commitments, or as it used to be called, of reconciling ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. But in the discussion that follows I want to bracket the larger question of what practical orientation Critical Theory provides in order to focus on the descriptive function of the categories disputed in the Honneth-Fraser exchange. In particular I want to address how the concept of the ‘economic’ features in their debate since this, as we have seen, goes to the heart of the matter for both Fraser and Honneth. Although the contrast between ‘economy’ and culture’ that structures the Fraser-Honneth debate derives ultimately from Weber, it has a more proximate ancestry in Habermas’ work. So I shall begin by glancing back at Habermas’ formulation, not just because its background role in shaping the current debate has not been properly acknowledged (though I believe that is the case), but because Fraser and Honneth’s original responses to it provide a nice segue into their current positions.4 After briefly reviewing what those responses were, I then offer a critical analysis of the conceptions of economy and culture they now propose. 2.â•‡ Habermas’ Original Proposal Let me start with a reminder that the distinction between redistribution and recognition, in the form it is debated by Fraser and Honneth, is inherited from the account Habermas gave of changing patterns of social conflict in the concluding sections of The Theory of Communicative Action (1981).5 By this time Habermas was already able to draw on empirical studies documenting the emergence of a “new politics” 4 â•‡ The extent to which the debate between Fraser and Honneth is steeped in problems inherited from Habermas’ project has been all but passed over in the literature. See, for example, A. Sayer, The Moral Signifiance of Class, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ch. 2; J. Swanston, “Recognition and Redistribution: Rethinking Culture and the Economic,” Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 22, no. 4, 2005, pp. 87–118; M. Yar, “Beyond Nancy Fraser’s ‘Perspectival Dualism’,” Economy and Society, vol. 30, no. 3, 2001, pp. 288–303; C.F. Zurn, “Identity or Status? Struggles over ‘Recognition’ in Fraser, Honneth, and Taylor”, Constellations, vol. 10, no. 4, 2003, pp. 519–537; and C.F. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory”, European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 1, April 2005, pp. 89–126. 5 â•‡ See J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, trans. T. McCarthy, 1987, pp. 392–396. The quotations that follow in this paragraph are taken from page 392.

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geared towards “quality of life”, “equal rights”, “participation” and “individual self-realisation” from an “old politics” focused on economic and security issues. Developments such as these, in Habermas’ view, reflected a fundamental shift in the way advanced capitalist societies generated and managed social conflict. On the one hand, what Habermas called “problems of distribution” that arose in “domains of material reproduction” generated a potential for conflict that could be allayed, if not fully resolved, through the redistributive mechanisms of the welfare state. Put otherwise, and drawing on Habermas’ earlier terminology, the welfarist politics of redistribution is a crucial means by which advanced capitalist societies solve (or at least neutralise) one particular kind of “legitimation” problem. However, this kind of politics is inappropriate for dealing with conflicts that now arose in what Habermas called “domains of cultural reproduction”. These conflicts were not sparked by problems of distribution but rather concern – in Habermas’ lapidary if somewhat enigmatic formulation – “the grammar of forms of life”. While Habermas did not use the expression ‘politics of recognition’ here, he did say that this kind of politics was oriented towards “defending and restoring endangered ways of life”. This sort of politics involved a form of conflict qualitatively distinct from that arising in the sphere of material reproduction geared towards redistribution, and it could be used to characterise the new social movements that shot up in the 1960s and 70s. But the contrast between conflicts over distribution and those concerning the grammar of forms of life was not just an interpretation of changing patterns of politics and social movements. More fundamentally, its applicability to these phenomena provided a kind of corroboration of the ‘thesis of internal colonisation’ at the heart of the theory of communicative action. If the lifeworld had become colonised by the system, there would (given other factors) be conflict constellating around the grammar of forms of life as well as problems of distribution. There would be heterogeneous modes of conflict generated at the interface of lifeworld and system as well as traditional class-based conflicts (however institutionalised and pacified through the welfare state) over the distribution of resources generated by a relatively autonomous market economy. Of course there would be other consequences too, including forms of social pathology not directly tied to a potential for protest, and one of the chief advantages claimed of Habermas’ theory was its broader diagnostic sweep relative to its rivals. However, what needs to be emphasised here is that Habermas’ talk of conflicts over


distribution and the grammar of forms of life was bound up with a framework for identifying and explaining the more or less sustainable mutations of modern society. The availability of material resources to redistribute requires the differentiation of system-regulated contexts of action (market-driven contexts oriented towards accumulation), placing limits on how much social life can be regulated by the norms of communicative action. On the other hand, the expanded scope for instrumentally rational action in modern societies is itself limited by the normative action-orientations that prevail in the modern lifeworld. The cultural or ‘symbolic’ resources of the lifeworld, the grammar of modern forms of life, cannot be instrumentalised indefinitely without triggering social conflicts and a degree of social disintegration. According to Habermas’ theory, we need to posit limits to such instrumentalisation, or incursions of the system into the lifeworld, to make sense of the characteristic social pathologies and conflicts of the times. Now it is not insignificant that both Fraser and Honneth, whom we should recall were two of the most prominent figures in the critical reception of The Theory of Communicative Action in the mid 1980s, focused their critique on the social-theoretical framework of Habermas’ wide-ranging work. In her influential 1985 article “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender” Fraser criticised Habermas for failing to account properly for gender-based patterns of social conflict, which in turn led to blind spots in his theory concerning the grievances that motivated the women’s movement and its emancipatory potential.6 These oversights, Fraser argued, were not simply due to limitations of scope: they were not just gaps that could be filled in leaving the rest of the theoretical framework untouched. Rather, they arose because Habermas was (at least sometimes) confusedly committed to a conception of his basic categories as ‘natural kind’ terms that designated distinct domains of reality. The thesis of internal colonisation seemed to imply that there were ontologically distinct spheres of cultural or symbolic reproduction (the lifeworld) on the one hand, and material reproduction (the economic system) on the other. And it seemed to presuppose a difference in kind between contexts of action integrated by social norms, cultural values and consensus, and those coordinated through the media of money and power to the 6 â•‡ N. Fraser, “What’s Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender”, reprinted in N. Fraser, Unruly Practices, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989, pp. 113–143.

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exclusion of norms and cultural values. However, as soon as one considers where gender-conflicts are located, it becomes clear that there are no ontologically distinct spheres of symbolic and material reproduction, and no absolute difference between ‘system-regulated’ and ‘norm-guided’ contexts of action. Societies reproduce themselves materially as well as symbolically through family life, which is the site of strategic action as well as action oriented by moral norms and ethical values, just as economic activity is identified and rewarded according to cultural norms, not least of course regarding gender. However, Fraser’s argument was not just that Habermas’ distinctions between material and cultural reproduction, and between systemically and socially integrated contexts of action were empirically false when construed as involving natural kinds of terms or as being ‘absolute’. Her further point was that they reinforce the ideological appearance that there is such a thing as ‘the economy’, which is distinct from the family. The appearance is ideological because it masks the unpaid work of childrearing that women contribute to the economy, while making it seem that the spheres of childrearing, family life and paid work are ‘naturally’ different and ought to be kept separate. At the same time, Fraser argued that the empirical inadequacy and ideological potential of Habermas’ distinctions arose from the ontological purport they were presumed to possess. So long as the distinction between material and cultural reproduction was regarded merely as a tool for social analysis, as invoking distinct standpoints from which to think about social processes, it could in principle serve a useful purpose. Likewise, it made sense to distinguish between contexts in which strategic action was predominant from those in which actions were integrated on the basis of shared values, so long as the role of both types of action in all action-contexts is acknowledged. Once the family is seen as a mélange of strategic, consensual and norm-oriented action, viewable from the perspective of both symbolic and material reproduction, its resemblance to the economy becomes apparent, and the ideological appearance of their real difference vanishes. Families can thus usefully be analysed as economic systems in their own right that exploit female labour. And the capitalist economy, for its part, can be analysed in terms of the particular ‘moral-cultural dimension’ it possesses: specifically, a masculinist one that diminishes and demeans the contribution of women. Admittedly, it is not clear from Fraser’s 1985 article that Habermas’ distinctions between material and symbolic reproduction and between socially and systemically integrated action contexts are


especially useful for critical social theory. The point is that they are baleful only when regarded as possessing ontological purport, and this does not rule out a more positive pragmatic value when regarded as standpoints for analysis in other contexts.7 As we shall see below, Fraser actively embraces these distinctions as analytical tools in her later debate with Honneth over redistribution and recognition. Before turning to that, let us briefly consider Honneth’s response to Habermas in The Critique of Power, also published in 1985.8 Although Honneth’s focus was more on the research program that linked Habermas to the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and less on Habermas’ success in clarifying “the struggles and wishes of the age”, Honneth shared Fraser’s fundamental concern with determining the ‘critical’ character of Habermas’ social theory.9 And although Honneth reached his conclusions by way of an immanent critique of Habermas’ thought, rather than by applying Habermas’ theory to the case of gender, the substance of the conclusions he arrived at was much the same as Fraser’s. Like Fraser, Honneth criticised the dualistic image of modern society projected from Habermas’ writings. According to Honneth, Habermas at first construed the object-domain of critical social theory in terms of distinct but unevenly developed spheres of norm-free purposive action oriented to technical control and normatively regulated communicative action oriented to reaching understanding. However, this implausibly implied that in spheres of purposive action ‘technical’ rules somehow applied themselves, and it falsely made it seem as if there were no purposively rational organisation of everyday life prior to the emergence of capitalism – nor normative conditions (embodied for example in law) for that emergence. To correct these distortions, Honneth observed, Habermas reconceived the object-domain of his mature social theory as distinct but 7 â•‡ The one distinction Fraser clearly does want to take on board in this article is that between ‘normatively secured’ and ‘communicatively established’ action contexts. But this distinction, Fraser argues, tends to be eclipsed by the potentially ideological ones about social reproduction and action integration. See N. Fraser, Unruly Practices, p. 138. 8 â•‡ See A. Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. K. Baynes, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1991 (1985). For a fuller discussion of Honneth’s book, see “Social Power and the Domination of Nature”, History of the Human Sciences, vol. 6 no. 3, 1993, pp. 101–110. 9 â•‡Fraser begins her article on Habermas by invoking Marx’s 1843 definition of Critical Theory as “the self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age”. See Unruly Practices, p. 113.

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unevenly exploited modes of action-coordination: that by which the symbolic resources of the lifeworld were reproduced rationally (communicative action), and those that were responsible for the efficient reproduction of material resources (the ‘steering media’ of money and power). However, this hardly fared better, Honneth objected, since it implied the existence of norm-free mechanisms of actioncoordination on the one hand, and power-free paths of dialogical interaction on the other. While Fraser attributed these dualistic fictions to Habermas’ tendency to ontologise his categories, Honneth’s explanation was that they reflected Habermas’ misguided preoccupation with a founding idea of critical social theory: the disturbance in the self-formation of the species/subject wrought by the technical domination of nature. The central feature of this idea is that some norm-free or norm-transcending mechanism is ultimately responsible for the characteristic social pathologies of the times. For Honneth, diagnoses of the times in terms of the domination of instrumental reason, identity-thinking, disenchantment, technocracy, the colonisation of the lifeworld by system, and for that matter ‘power’ and ‘capital’ are but avatars of this fundamental but mistaken notion. By different means, then, Honneth and Fraser reached a similar conclusion about the thesis of internal colonisation. For both, it involved an implausibly dualistic conception of society that artificially separated spheres of material and cultural reproduction and social and systemic modes of action integration. Furthermore, like Fraser, Honneth challenged the model of social conflict foregrounded in the theory of communicative action. Just as Fraser criticised Habermas’ theory for overlooking the fact that contemporary conflicts around gender concerned not whether lifeworld norms should prevail but which norms should hold sway, so Honneth objected that Habermas’ diagnosis screened out conflicts that arose within the sphere of the social. However, Honneth’s point was not so much about the inadequacy of Habermas’ analysis of contemporary social conflicts, such as those into which the new social movements were drawn, as about the dynamics of social change in general. Thus while Honneth and Fraser shared the conviction that Habermas had misdiagnosed conflicts that arose over the meaning of norms as disturbances at the seam of lifeworld and system, Honneth saw this as exemplifying a deeper conceptual flaw in Habermas’ whole approach to the evolution of society in The Theory of Communicative Action. However, Honneth also detected traces of an alternative approach in some of Habermas’ earlier work,


one that promised to put critical social theory on a sounder footing, and which Honneth would single-mindedly seek to develop in his own work. This alternative model construed social interaction as “a struggle between social groups for the organisational form of purposive rational action” from which new social forms emerged.10 Thus “under conditions characterised by an unequal division of burdens and privileges”, practical conflicts would arise over “the legitimacy of existing social norms and the introduction of new ones”.11 If the newly negotiated institutionalised norm still prescribes “an unequal distribution of burdens and advantages”, the struggle for social recognition is set in motion again.12 In this model of the moral dynamic found in the struggle between social classes a new basis for the critique of power suggested itself, one that would avoid the reifying dualisms of Habermas’ mature theory. Such struggles for recognition, which Honneth later dubbed “the moral grammar of social conflicts”,13 encompassed what Habermas had conceived first as separated spheres of communicative and purposive action and then as ‘uncoupled’ modes of action integration, responsible for reproducing the rationalised modern lifeworld and the capitalist economy respectively. It would thus make no sense to construe conflicts over the grammar of forms of life, conceived now as struggles for recognition, as fundamentally different in kind from conflicts generated by problems of distribution. Looking back at Honneth and Fraser’s original responses to Habermas, one is struck above all by the convergence of their positions. Let us now consider how the problem of articulating the economic and cultural orders of contemporary capitalist society, formulated under the rubric of ‘redistribution or recognition’, pulls them apart. 3.â•‡ Fraser’s Perspectival Dualism As I mentioned at the beginning, Fraser aims to construct a framework for critical social theory that moves conclusively beyond the false

â•‡Honneth, The Critique of Power, p. 269. â•‡ ibid., p. 270. 12 â•‡ ibid., p. 272. 13 â•‡ This is of course the subtitle of Honneth’s next major work, The Struggle for Recognition, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, Polity, 1995 (1992). 10 11

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reductionisms of ‘economism’ and ‘culturalism’. Economism is the tendency to look at social developments and events as if they were wholly shaped by economic imperatives, imperatives that underlie and ultimately account for whatever cultural values hold sway in society. Injustices that seem to arise from prevailing patterns of cultural valuation – for example, institutionalised racism and sexism, or culturally entrenched forms of disrespect shown towards blacks or women – are then said to be really due to economic or ‘class’ relations. Economism then advocates ‘class politics’ as the only really effective strategy for correcting all kinds of injustice. Vulgar Marxism, the view that economic motives explain everything and that the class structure is the root of all wrongs, is the paradigm of this form of reductionism. Culturalism makes the opposite error to economism: it views the economic order of a society as wholly determined by cultural values, and it construes injustice solely in terms of social discrimination, injured identity and denied cultural recognition. The culturalist outlook is thus blind to the independent workings of the capitalist economy and the unjust distribution of resources it generates among classes. Fraser thinks that Honneth (and Taylor) is guilty of culturalism, indeed this is the central reason why Fraser opposes his position. Even from what we have just seen about Honneth’s argument in The Critique of Power, this looks like a tendentious characterisation, and it has to be said it sets their whole debate off on the wrong foot. Nevertheless, it is clearly a good thing to leave economism and culturalism behind, and Fraser is surely right to insist that the notions of recognition and class, at least, are indispensable to critical social theory. The problem facing Fraser is to show exactly how the notions of recognition and class are to be articulated in a non-economistic, nonculturalist critical social theory. The thrust of Fraser’s solution is to propose that class and identity be understood as referring to two analytically distinct aspects of a social order: the ‘economy’ and ‘culture’. The social order is correspondingly criticisable from two analytically distinct points of view: how resources are distributed or maldistributed, and how cultural differences (or status positions) are recognised or misrecognised. Reductionism is avoided because class as opposed to status, the distribution of resources within the economy as opposed to the institutionalised patterns of recognition in the culture, are not conceived to be substantively distinct. Class and status, distribution and recognition, do not refer to different things, or to ontologically separate spheres of society such as a


norm-free market or a market-free culture. They are analytic, not substantive distinctions. They provide alternative perspectives or standpoints from which to describe and normatively assess any aspect of a given society. Such perspectival dualism treats “every practice as simultaneously economic and cultural, albeit not necessarily in equal proportions” so as to “assess each of them from two different perspectives”.14 It can thus draw attention to the ‘mutual imbrication’ of class and status, economy and culture, the distribution order and the recognition order. Moreover, it is also capable, Fraser claims, of identifying the “causal interactions” between them, a task that she maintains is as important for critical social theory as philosophically well-grounded normative critique.15 Fraser’s approach is capable of undertaking the latter task because of its reliance on a deontological principle of participatory parity (rather than a substantive conception of the good). That is to say, it traces back the wrongness of maldistribution and misrecognition to social arrangements that prevent members of society from interacting with each other as peers.16 Thus while class injustice (injustices of distribution) and cultural injustice (injustices of misrecognition) are analytically distinct, they can be (and in the contemporary world, always are) present in one and the same social practice, and they share the same objectively criticisable normative deficit. As Honneth remarks in his reply to Fraser, all distinctions, even merely analytical ones, have to be grounded in something.17 What are the grounds of Fraser’s distinctions? For the most part, they are pragmatic. That is, they are useful for both directing and keeping fluid the practice of normative criticism. In particular, her model opens the way for a critique of gender and race relations that can deal with both the economic and cultural injustices they involve, as well as status or identity issues that arise as part of class-based claims for redistribution. At the same time, however, Fraser appeals to social-theoretic considerations not directly tied to pragmatic criteria to back up the particular distinctions she employs. This becomes clear when we consider what Fraser means by ‘the economy’. Fraser’s official view, as we just saw, is that every practice has an economic aspect, and that the economy is how the social order looks from a particular perspective, which brings â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 63. â•‡ ibid., pp. 48, 214, 217. 16 â•‡ ibid., p. 36. 17 â•‡ ibid., p. 156. 14 15

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only one of its aspects to light. However, this view sits alongside another, which seems hard to reconcile with it. According to this other view, economic institutions are those that “prioritise strategic action” rather than “value-regulated interaction”.18 In modern market economies, these institutions gain an unprecedented degree of independence from those regulated by cultural norms and values. Markets have thus come to “constitute the core institutions of a specialised zone of economic relation, legally differentiated from other zones”.19 In this “marketised zone” social interaction is regulated by “the functional interlacing of strategic imperatives, as individuals act to maximise selfinterest”.20 Modern capitalist societies are distinctive in that they have an economy that is impersonal and “quasi-autonomous”, possessing “a logic of its own” that interacts with the cultural order.21 The view being expressed here appears to be that the economy is that concentrated zone of strategic action, manifest predominantly in markets, which in capitalist societies comes to be regulated in impersonal, indirect ways in accordance with its own functional requirements, but that nevertheless causally interacts with other, non-economic, non-marketised zones in which patterns of cultural and moral value still hold sway. This is a quite different conception to the one dual-perspectivism, Fraser’s official position, countenances. And it is striking how Fraser oscillates between a view that sets up the economy as a separate social sub-system – one in which strategic action predominates and actions are coordinated according to the autonomous logic of the moneymedium – and one that views any social sphere as readable from an economic (or cultural) perspective. Honneth himself picks up on Fraser’s oscillation between these two views, but how are we to explain it?22 A way opens up if we think back to Fraser’s original response to Habermas. The failure of the thesis of internal colonisation to account for gender-based social conflict convinced Fraser that the distinctions between system and lifeworld, social and system integration, and domains of cultural and material reproduction could not have any ontological purport. At best they represented standpoints available to â•‡ ibid., p. 52. â•‡ ibid., p. 58. 20 â•‡ ibid. 21 â•‡ ibid., p. 214. 22 â•‡ ibid., p. 253. Honneth gives his own explanation, which traces Fraser’s dilemma back to a misplaced desire to emphasise more than Honneth the “empirical weight of economic mechanisms” (ibid). 18 19


the critical social theorist, whose worth depended on the use the theorist could extract from them. However, it was not clear from Fraser’s critique of Habermas what use they could be. As we have seen, Honneth was just as sceptical about the value of these distinctions in his reading of Habermas. However, in the debate with Honneth, whose theory of recognition Fraser regards as irremediably culturalist, these distinctions are brought back into play. They serve to draw attention to the independent workings of the economic system, in which material (not just cultural) resources are reproduced through contexts of action integrated by the ‘functional interlacing of strategic imperatives’ (rather than cultural norms). Furthermore, they seem to provide a theoretical framework within which the causal interaction between media-regulated economy and norm-regulated culture can be determined. This correction of Honneth’s putative culturalism, however, reintroduces categories with an inescapable ontological purport: action-contexts, or mechanisms of action-coordination, can only separate from each other, develop according to independent ‘logics’, and then causally interact if they are different in nature. These real differences are in fact what ground the differences in standpoint. However, this then leaves us back with ‘substantive dualism’ and all its attendant problems, which in turn trigger a reassertion of the merely ‘analytical’ or ‘perspectival’ status of the key social-theoretic categories. And so the oscillation continues. It is as if functionalism and hermeneutics, divorced after their unhappy marriage in the mid 1980s, have reunited but still can’t work it out.23 Leaving to one side the ambiguity regarding the ontological purport of Fraser’s distinction between economy and culture, there are still problems arising from the content attributed to these categories. Economic activity, in Fraser’s view, is strategic action the consequences of which are integrated according to the functional logic of systempreservation. It includes not only the typical behaviour of the marketplace but the productive labour that creates the things circulated there. Now there is of course much more to be said about this conception, but just from this basic characterisation it is evident that Fraser has inherited from Habermas a highly questionable conception of labour as

23 â•‡ See H. Joas, “The Unhappy Marriage of Hermeneutics and Functionalism” in Communicative Action, eds. A. Honneth & H. Joas, trans. J. Gaines & D.L. Jones, Cambridge, Polity, 1991 (1985).

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instrumental action. This is also reflected in Fraser’s fundamental view that it is the distributive mechanisms in society that have normative significance, not the activity of production or productive labour as such. The latter counts normatively only as an aspect of the former, with the division of labour and property relations, for example, significant insofar as they are governed by the norms of distributive justice. This idea is implausible though from both a normative and a socialtheoretic point of view. To explain why, let me briefly consider a thought-experiment Fraser uses to illustrate the ‘ideal-type’ of class differentiation. Fraser writes: In this conception class differentiation is rooted in the economic structure of capitalist society. The working class is the body of persons who must sell their labor power under arrangements that authorize the capitalist to appropriate surplus productivity for its private benefit. The core injustice of these arrangements is exploitation, an especially deep form of maldistribution in which the proletariat’s own energies are turned against it, usurped to sustain a system that benefits others … The remedy for the injustice, accordingly, is redistribution, not recognition. OverÂ� coming class exploitation requires restructuring the political economy so as to alter the class distribution of burdens and benefits … The last thing it (the proletariat) needs is recognition of its difference.24

Fraser does not use this thought-experiment to describe the injustice to which the working class actually is (or was) subject. It is not meant to suggest, for instance, that the members of the proletariat did not have their own distinct cultural identity and values the recognition of which they struggled for. And it is not meant to suggest that members of the working class do not also suffer from status subordination and demeaning cultural attitudes. The ideal type, on its own, masks a ‘complex reality’. This is just why a dual-perspective or two-dimensional approach is needed: malrecognition and maldistribution are mutually imbricated even in this folk-paradigm case of class injustice. Nevertheless, this ‘ideal type’ of class differentiation does supposedly illustrate the analytical distinction between distributive injustice and injustices of misrecognition. While, in the course of her argumentation, Fraser will refine the ‘folk-conception’ of class and economic injustice illustrated in the thought-experiment, she holds fast to the idea that maldistribution, and the class-politics aimed at correcting it, is conceptually distinct from misrecognition and struggles against it. â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 17.

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I have two broad reasons for doubting the merits of this articulation of the relation between an economic, distributive order, with its complementary notion of class, and a cultural, recognitive order. First, it fails to address the crucial question of what it is exactly that the economic order distributes. To speak abstractly about the ‘benefits and burdens’ of society is not sufficiently precise. To speak more precisely we need to have a more determinate, fine-grained idea of what a society actually produces. However, this can only be done by considering what the individuals in a society actually do, and how they do it in relation to each other. As soon as we ask that question – what are the social relations between individuals that work? – we are in the realm of recognition. Once we draw out what is implicit in the notion of distribution, we are forced into thinking about social relations mediated by recognition (or its withdrawal). If so, this casts doubt on the usefulness of the distinction between recognition and redistribution even as a tool of analysis, before we even get to the question of the perspectival or substantive basis of the distinction. The second reason for scepticism is that the distinction as it stands fails to address adequately the question of what is recognised. On the one hand, it is not clear why recognition is restricted to one’s place in the ‘cultural order’ or to ‘status’. Fraser admonishes some recognition theorists for talking as if the cultural goods of recognition are just as subject to distribution and redistribution as economic benefits.25 For Fraser, such talk is at best metaphorical and is likely to create confusion. Certainly, she is right to want to avoid an economistic reduction of the goods of recognition, as if they could be distributed and redistributed like loaves or money. However, that misconception can be avoided without having to rely on a contrast between material and symbolic goods, which once in place does indeed make the idea of an economic recognition order seem absurd. More to my current point, it is not clear why recognition should exclude – even at the notional or ideal-typical level – what one does as a member of a class, and in particular what one does, in relation to others, in one’s work. It is true that the moral injuries of class include low pay (maldistribution) and status subordination. And as Fraser notes, these can be analysed into a lack of participatory parity; but they include more than that. They include the experiences of humiliation, fragilisation, atomisation and shame: 25

â•‡ ibid., p. 35.

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experiences of disrespect and the withdrawal of recognition that are not even notionally separable from the sufferer’s place in the economic order.26 And lack of participatory parity – the norm by which we measure the moral meaning of economic and cultural disorder in Fraser’s account – can seem insignificant by comparison. It may be that Fraser would find nothing to disagree with here: one’s location within the economic order makes one vulnerable to particular kinds of misrecognition as well as maldistribution. Fraser does say explicitly that, “a politics of class recognition may be needed both in itself and to help get a politics of redistribution off the ground”.27 Nonetheless, Fraser’s whole account turns on the notion that the independence of the economic order of capitalist societies from their patterns of cultural valuation generates two analytically distinct types of injustice: economic injustices that can be remedied by the redistribution of resources (the matter of old-style politics), and cultural injustices that can be rectified by granting proper recognition to a discriminated-against group (giving due recognition to different forms of life). However, the points just adumbrated seem to lend support to the claim Honneth insists on that the distinction between redistribution and recognition, grounded this way, is unwarranted. They suggest that so-called economic injustice, injustice arising from the work one does or one’s class position, is inseparably tied up with the ‘logic of asymmetrical recognition’. This undermines Fraser’s thesis that the ‘moral grammar of social conflicts’ to borrow Honneth’s expression, involves distribution struggles and struggles for recognition that are analytically and in principle empirically distinct. With the dialectic swinging in Honneth’s favour, let us now look at how the cultural and economic orders are articulated within his theory of recognition. 4.â•‡ Honneth’s Anti Anti-normativism We saw when considering Honneth’s response to Habermas’ thesis of internal colonisation that even within the social-theoretical framework tentatively advanced in The Critique of Power, it makes no sense to oppose struggles for recognition with conflicts over the asymmetrical 26 â•‡ For an overview of the important recent literature on the experience of injustice at work from a recognition-theoretic perspective, see A. Petersen & R. Willig, “Work and Recognition”, Acta Sociologica, vol. 47, no. 4, December 2004, pp. 338–350. 27 â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 24.


distribution of the material privileges and burdens of social life. Hence there is as little point in choosing between a ‘politics of redistribution’ and a ‘politics of recognition’ from where Honneth stands as from Fraser’s vantage point. It is clear from the outset that for Honneth, the ‘grammar of forms of life’ includes the way societies distribute resources, and that a politics of redistribution, where this is an appropriate response to injustice, is itself a matter of correcting asymmetrical patterns of recognition. It is also clear that Honneth is as strongly of the view as Fraser that radical redistributional measures are needed to correct the injustices of contemporary capitalist societies. Honneth makes these points himself in his response to Fraser and there is no need to take them further. However, if Honneth does not face the problem of articulating the relation between the politics of recognition and redistribution as such (since he does not use this distinction in the way Fraser does), there is still the question of how capitalism’s ‘economic order’ is to be conceptualised within the theoretical framework he proposes. Of course Fraser has this problem too, and it is their differing approaches that interest me here. The main problem Honneth has with Fraser’s position is that it asserts the independence of economic activity and economic institutions from normative expectations and structures. He questions both the intelligibility of a social sphere – the ‘economy’ – in which actions are coordinated automatically through the medium of money, and a fortiori, the specific application of that notion to capitalist society. The very distinction between a norm-free zone of system integration and a normatively regulated sphere of social integration, Honneth suggests, rests on the problematic assumption that social reproduction can take place independently of constraints imposed by the standards of acceptable human conduct prevalent in a society. After all, he points out, the functional efficacy of money as a ‘steering medium’ is contingent on its acceptance as a legitimate form of coordinating behaviour. A point like this holds of all societies, but in Honneth’s view it is particularly important to bear in mind for the analysis of contemporary capitalism. Capitalist society generates the appearance of a norm-free zone – the economy – in which profit-maximisation is the only guiding principle, as if it were the sole determinant of economic activity. However, this ignores the “social limits on markets” that are imposed by patterns of cultural evaluation and most importantly by law.28 28

â•‡ ibid., p. 256.

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For Honneth, then, the capitalist economic order has to be understood as “not only normatively but also factually ‘embedded’ in the normatively structured social order”.29 For Honneth, as we have seen, the key to this normative social order is recognition. He identifies two ways in which the specifically capitalist economic order is constrained by such norms, that is, by institutionally embedded expectations and demands for social recognition. First, there is the principle of individual achievement (Leistungsprinzip), according to which one is socially esteemed not on the basis of one’s inherited place in the social hierarchy (as in feudal society), but on account of what one makes of one’s own life as an individual. This principle provides a justification for the unequal distribution of wealth in capitalist society, but it is also called on to criticise inequalities (undeserved wealth). The second principle is that of equal respect. This principle was used to legitimate the expropriation of disadvantaged groups (as it regards all as formally equal, each with the same subjective right to property, including the right, for example, to own labour power), but it was also later used to support the more or less egalitarian redistributive measures of the welfare state (to provide minimum standards of welfare for all). Now Honneth stresses that both these legitimations of the distribution of goods and resources in capitalist society have always functioned ideologically. He agrees, for instance, with Fraser’s point that they have traditionally been interpreted in a way that hides the contribution of women to society, and he goes as far as to say that the “superimpositions” and “distortions” inherent in it make it all but unrecognisable as “a normative principle of mutual recognition” at all.30 At the same time though, women and other groups can appeal to the achievement principle in their struggles for recognition of the work they do, that is, in articulating their feelings of injustice at not being properly esteemed. The principle of equal respect can be drawn on for making legal challenges to distributions the achievement principle might otherwise countenance. Such struggles for recognition, Honneth insists, are integral to the capitalist economy. They played a crucial role in its coming into being, and they continue to shape its development. For these reasons, Honneth is convinced that the economic order is actually constituted through institutionalised “interpretations of the â•‡ ibid. â•‡ ibid., p. 148.

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achievement principle, which give it a particular shape in the form of a division of labour and a distribution of status”.31 It is thus both conceptually and empirically mistaken to regard the capitalist economy as isolated from patterns of cultural valuation, as following a norm-free, autonomous logic of its own. The “efficiency considerations” that systems theory takes to be the sole motor of economic development are “inextricably fused with cultural views of the social world”.32 Such views also provide the motivation for engaging in distributive struggles. Hence the capitalist economy is, to return to the formulation we began with, “bound up, from the very outset, with asymmetrical forms of recognition”.33 What stands out above all in Honneth’s treatment of these matters is his concern to avoid the baleful anti-normativist bent of critical social theory. So much so, it would not be inaccurate to describe Honneth’s position as fundamentally ‘anti anti-normativist’. We have already seen how the rejection of anti-normativism provided the leitmotif of The Critique of Power: for all their critical insights, the key figures of the Frankfurt School (and, for that matter, Foucault) were ultimately led astray, so Honneth argued, by a social-theoretic blindness regarding the binding force and action-driving, history-shaping power of norms. This recovery of the socio-ontological provenance of the normative remains Honneth’s overriding objective in his debate with Fraser. From his rejection of Fraser’s claim regarding the norm-transcending logic of systemically integrated zones of interaction (‘the economy’), to his insistent repudiation of the “utilitarian anthropology” and “fixation on the concept of interest” that typically underwrites Marxist critiques of capitalism, Honneth’s anti anti-normativism is clear.34 However, in the context of this single-minded undertaking to redress conclusively critical social theory’s atavistic anti-normativism, the danger of overcorrection arises. The task of exorcising the spectre of homo oeconomicus, and with it the eradication of the anthropological basis of anti-normativism allegedly bequeathed to critical social theory by Marx, requires Honneth to accentuate the normative. By doing so, Honneth naturally makes himself vulnerable to charges of ‘normativism’, ‘culturalism’ and ‘idealism’. Fraser does not hold back in making â•‡ ibid., pp. 155–156. â•‡ ibid., p. 156. 33 â•‡ See note 1. 34 â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, pp. 127, 137. 31 32

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such charges in her reply to Honneth, and I shall conclude by briefly considering what substance there is to them. One version of the culturalist charge concerns the role of cultural values in bringing out historical change. According to Fraser, Honneth ends up with the view that the development of capitalist society is to be explained solely in terms of the “cultural schemas of evaluation” that regulate it.35 This view looks less absurd if it is taken into account that struggles for recognition concern the institutionalisation of norms or ‘cultural schemas’, in this case of the achievement principle and the principle of equal respect, but even then Honneth distances himself from this position. He denies that his reconstruction of the recognition order of capitalist societies was tied to “explanatory aims”.36 However, this rearguard position is difficult to stick to, and there are occasions when, driven by the impulse to correct Critical Theory’s atavistic antinormativism, he does seem to overstate the case regarding the historyshaping role of norms. As we have seen, for Honneth the achievement principle and the principle of equal respect serve both as legitimations of extant social relations and, owing to their “surplus of validity”, as rallying points for progressive social change.37 Radical inequalities in the distribution of social goods that the achievement principle seemed to justify could be challenged by appeal to the implicit content of the principle of equal treatment, and from this point of view, Honneth suggests, the establishment of basic social welfare provisions for all, irrespective of achievement, looks imperative. As Honneth says, the “assertion that members of society can only make use of their legally guaranteed autonomy if they are assured a minimum of economic resources” is “hardly disputable”.38 However, Honneth continues by speaking as if the unassailable force of this normative argument were an irresistible historical force: “Here we have an especially vivid example,” he writes, “of how historical changes can be brought about by innovations whose origins lie in nothing other than the persuasive power – or better, the incontrovertibility – of moral reasons”.39 Leaving aside the obvious objection that the incontrovertibility of these reasons has not prevented the erosion of basic social rights and universal â•‡ ibid., p 217. â•‡ ibid., p. 249. 37 â•‡ ibid., p. 186. 38 â•‡ ibid., p. 149. 39 â•‡ ibid. 35 36


welfare state provisions across advanced capitalist societies (which implies of course that more than moral reasons were behind those innovations: the reasons are as incontrovertible now as then), the central problem here is that Honneth makes this claim without considering alternative explanations of the historical emergence of the welfare state. This makes it seem as if he is relying on the unlikely assumption that the interpretation of normative principles is a sui generis source of historical change. Hence, while Honneth wisely disavows the explanatory purport of his account of the achievement and equal treatment principles, where explanations do surface – as they inevitably do – it is hard to avoid the impression that they give too much weight to the role of norms. In this way, his anti anti-normativism, which is valid in its own right, over-extends itself into an invalid form of normativism. A second version of the culturalism charge Fraser lays at Honneth concerns the nature of market mechanisms and their role in determining the economic order of capitalist society. The charge here is twofold: that Honneth’s theory is incapable of providing any account of such mechanisms, and that it denies they even exist. Either way, Honneth’s theory of recognition is said to be “congenitally blind” to them.40 For Fraser, this is culturalism at its worst since it blocks off any understanding of the sources of the massive distributive injustices capitalism creates. It is harsh to assert that Honneth must deny the reality of market mechanisms that operate without regard for things like achievement or the equal moral status of persons. To be sure, Honneth sometimes writes as if the economic order just is a recognition order, that is, an institutionalised pattern of cultural valuation organised primarily by the achievement principle and the principle of equal treatment. However, this does not commit Honneth to the view that the cultural norms by which market-driven distributions are judged, and on which they ultimately depend, are identical to those market-driven processes themselves. Honneth can accept the non-cultural determinants of markets without having to give an independent account of what they are. And it is clear that Honneth does not see it as his business to provide such an account.41 Here Honneth seems simply to be conceding Fraser’s point that the theory of recognition is not conceptually equipped for grasping the dynamics of capitalism insofar as they

40 41

â•‡ ibid., p. 215. â•‡ ibid., p. 248.

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are determined by market processes. And given that the distribution of goods and resources, the division of labour and so forth according to market forces clearly have very little if anything to do with recognition – with who deserves what on the basis of their achievements or who has a right to what – this self-limiting move regarding the provenance of the theory of recognition looks right.42 This is not the end of the matter, however. Honneth also claims that “social limits on markets”, of the kind expressed in the institutionally embodied principles of achievement and equal respect, must also “play the role of independent variables when trying to explain processes of economic development”.43 Time and again Honneth speaks of the moral “constraints” exerted on economic processes by the norms of recognition.44 Without wanting to take this language too literally, it does strongly suggest that these processes, left to themselves, are at odds with the norms of recognition. The issue now is not the indifference of market mechanisms to norms of mutual recognition, but their tendency to subvert those norms. And this should lead us to ask whether there is something intrinsic to markets, however embedded in institutionalised patterns of cultural valuation, that ties them to ‘asymmetrical forms of recognition’. The question to be posed at this point, in other words, is not whether there are zones of norm-free, economic action completely unmediated by norms – the problem posed by Fraser and that shapes the whole debate with Honneth – but rather whether the self-subversive tendency of such recognitively patterned economic activity is a necessary or accidental feature of it. This way of presenting the issue should make clear that it is not one that in good faith can be left to political economists. It does not leave one having to “pronounce upon the determinants of the market process”.45 It is rather a question of social ontology, one that critical social theory, and therefore the theory of recognition, must be ready to address. That Honneth does not seem ready to address it, seems to me another unfortunate consequence of his anti anti-normativism. His polemic with the antinormativism of critical social theory from Marx to Habermas and

42 â•‡ On the folly of supposing that distribution through markets reflects norms of recognition see A. Sayer, The Moral Significance of Class, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 43 â•‡ Fraser & Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, p. 256. 44 â•‡ ibid., pp. 249, 252. 45 â•‡ ibid., p. 248.


Fraser makes it difficult to focus on the problem of what exactly it is about capitalist market economies that brings them into conflict with the norms of recognition. 5.â•‡Conclusion In debating the relation between redistribution and recognition, Fraser and Honneth advance a wide range of competing claims about social justice and identity politics, the rational grounds of normative criticism, the basis of critical social theory, and other things, most of which I have not touched on in this essay. Instead I have tried to focus on their strategies for articulating the relation between economy and culture in capitalist society, and even here I have only scratched the surface. What does emerge a little more clearly is the extent to which the fundamental problems at issue in their debate are framed, behind the scene as it were, by Habermas, and in particular his appropriation of the categorial apparatus of systems theory. Were it not for Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, it is hard to see why the concepts of recognition and redistribution, as ways of thinking about the normative evaluation of the cultural and economic orders, would find their social-theoretical underpinning in the notions of social and system integration. And it is Fraser’s adherence to this idea that, above all, puts her at odds with Honneth as far as social theory goes. We also saw that Fraser first arrived at a pragmatic, perspectival understanding of the terms of Critical Theory in response to Habermas’ thesis of internal colonisation and the interpretation of new social movements it supported. In the debate with Honneth, Fraser maintains that the merely ‘analytic’ distinctions between culture and economy, recognition and redistribution, and status and class are justified pragmatically insofar as they keep the full range of injustices and responses to injustice in view: they circumvent the false reductionisms of culturalism and economism. This is a desirable outcome, but in order to show why we must adopt Fraser’s model if we are to reach it, some other grounding to the distinctions must be given. Fraser wants more from her theory than the mere identification of analytically distinct, rationally well-grounded normative standpoints from which to assess contemporary capitalism. She also wants the theory to be able to explain the causal interaction between the economic order and the rest of social life. However, the only means she has available for meeting

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this desideratum is the discredited social ontology of zones of material and cultural reproduction, system and lifeworld. Recoiling from this, Fraser denies she is committed to any social ontology, leaving the explanatory ground of her social theory quite unaccounted for. I then argued that even the pragmatic advantage of sharply distinguishing distribution and recognition was dubious in view of the recognitively structured social relations implicit in belonging to a class. Honneth does not have to deal with such problems. He defends a thoroughgoing social ontology disentangled from the notion of system integration and its imputation of an autonomous, norm-free zone of economic activity. For good reasons, Honneth wants to avoid at all costs the anti-normativism of this model. Taken out of context, Honneth’s anti anti-normativism can look like a plea for rampant normativism, which is how it looks to Fraser. While that is not how it is, Fraser’s objections regarding the excessive culturalism of Honneth’s approach are not completely unwarranted, if not quite for the reasons Fraser gives. While Honneth’s debate with Fraser may end at an impasse, the theory of recognition can move on from it by attending further to its explanatory schema and by reassessing the modality in which asymmetrical forms of recognition unfold in capitalist society.

Chapter twelve

Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders Christopher F. Zurn In light of the attention and interest that Axel Honneth’s development of a systematic theory of recognition has generated, it is perhaps not surprising that another of his contributions to reorienting the tradition of critical social theory has garnered less attention. Aside from continuing the project of grounding the normative standards that critical social theory employs in specific features of human intersubjectivity (in his case, in the formal anthropology of intersubjective recognition), in the last decade or so Honneth has also been substantively engaged in reanimating an older tradition of social philosophy, one that is specifically focused on explicating and diagnosing social pathologies. It is imperative for social philosophy to find a determination and discussion of those developmental processes of society that can be conceived as processes of decline, distortions, or even as “social pathologies” … Social philosophy, in distinction from both moral philosophy and political philosophy, can be understood as an instance of reflection within which measures for successful forms of social life are discussed.1

Believing that this is indeed a productive reorientation of critical social theory, I intend here to show, first, how Honneth’s different social diagnoses exhibit a similar underlying conceptual structure, that of second-order disorders. The first part of the essay argues that a number of different social pathologies that Honneth has recently analysed – those of ideological recognition, maldistribution, invisibilisation, rationality distortions, reification and institutionalised self-realisation – all operate by means of second-order disorders, that is, by means of constitutive disconnects between first-order contents and second-order

1 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social Philosophy” in Handbook of Critical Theory, ed. D.M. Rasmussen, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1996, p. 370.

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reflexive comprehension of those contents, where those disconnects are pervasive and socially caused. Once this underlying conceptual structure is grasped, I claim, it becomes clear that there are a number of different tasks a theory designed to diagnose social pathologies must fulfil. It must not only accurately identify and describe the second-order disorder as a social pathology, it must also be prepared to explain the root social causes of the pathology if it intends to carry out the basic emancipatory aims of a critical social theory. Taking its cue from the relative paucity of explanatory content that might fulfil these latter desiderata in Honneth’s substantive analyses of social pathologies, the second part of the essay argues that more attention must be paid to etiological, prognostic and therapeutic concerns. A sufficient diagnosis of social pathologies must do more than simply take note of a complex of related social symptoms. It must also develop a convincing explanation of the social pathologies precisely so that social members can comprehend the discontinuities between their first-order experiences and their secondorder reflexive understandings of them as discontinuities caused by specific social institutions, structures and practices, and for them to engage productively in the manifold social struggles necessary to overcome the causes of the pathological disorders. Said simply, a critical social theory of social pathologies needs not only an accurate explication of pathological disorders at the level of personal experiences but also insightful sociological explanations of the causes of those pathological distortions. My sense is that the current theory of recognition has managed the first task better than the second. Nevertheless, articulating the second-order disorder structure of social pathologies can help to clarify the advantages and disadvantages of different methodological strategies for explaining their causes and pointing the way towards a less pathological society. 1.â•‡ Social Pathologies as Second-Order Disorders 1.1.â•‡ Ideology and Ideological Recognition Marx’s articulation of a theory of ideology, grounded in an historical materialist social theory, is a good example of the conceptual structure that this essay claims is central to Honneth’s attempts to reinvigorate the practice of social critique through the diagnosis of social pathologies: namely, the grasp of social pathologies as second-order disorders.

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The classical concept of ideology investigates first-order beliefs, especially those about the basic structures, orders and functionings of the social world, and argues that social actors suffer from a cognitive pathology to the extent that they are not cognisant of how those beliefs come about. In particular, the social pathology arises to the extent that persons are not aware, at a second-order level of reflexivity, that the current social consensus – one that exerts a tremendous orienting pressure on individuals’ belief schemas – is to a significant degree sensitive to and shaped by predominant social powers and class-specific social interests. We can see that ideological beliefs are second-order disorders by comparing them with ordinary instances of mistaken beliefs. In both cases, there is an error at the first-order level: the person holds a false belief about something. However, only in the case of ideology is the mistaken belief systematically tied to social formations that affect belief formation and stabilisation at the second-order level, by hiding or repressing the needed reflexivity of social participants about the structures of belief formation and the connection of those cultural-cognitive structures to the material ordering of the social world. For example, a belief that the morning star and the evening star are different celestial bodies might arise for any number of reasons particular to an individual’s situation – insufficient information, lack of astronomical education, confusions about the particular names used, and so on – and it is not likely that the mistaken belief is rooted in a deformation of second-order cognitive processes, since the mistake is easily corrected when explicitly pointed out. By contrast, a belief that wealth in capitalist societies is dependent entirely on one’s individual initiative rather than the amount of capital at one’s disposal is an ideological belief. It is rooted in a deformation of the second-order process of belief formation about the characteristics of the extant socio-economic world, the first-order belief and the second-order deformation are both widely shared in society, those deformations systematically serve certain interests in society, and the mistaken belief is not easily corrected. At best, faced with examples and information directly contradicting the first-order ideological belief, individuals will tend to rationalise away contradictions as exceptions to the rule or as biased information in order to save the first-order belief from falsification. This process preserves the perceived naturalness and unchangeability of the socio-economic world as currently given. According to the classical theory, these features of ideological belief are explained

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by second-order distortions in the processes of belief-formation and stabilisation that functionally serve to reproduce inegalitarian social structures by hiding their essentially historical character and social causes. Of course, ideology is not restricted to cognitive beliefs, concerning only true or false propositions, but also crucially involves normative assessments, their central relation to individual dispositions and motivations, generalised patterns of behaviour, shared schemas of perception, typical patterns of social interaction, and so on.2 Expanding the content of what counts as ideology does not, however, change the conceptual structure of diagnosing ideological social pathologies as second-order disorders: there is still a fundamental disconnect between first-order contents and subjects’ reflexive grasp of the origins and character of those contents, where that gap systematically serves to preserve otherwise dubious social structures and practices. Ideology critique, as an exercise of critical social theory, then seeks to break the second-order sense of the naturalness and obviousness of participants’ first-order beliefs, assessments, dispositions, behaviours, perceptions and interactions, by showing how many of these first-order contents are the specific results of socially determinate relations of power, and by showing how subscribing to or acting in accord with these firstorder contents contributes to the perpetuation of forms of domination, oppression and arbitrary inequality without the overt use of coercive mechanisms. Ideology is a social pathology because it contributes to deleterious social outcomes through a kind of second-order disorder, a disorder socially patterned and thereby contributive to unwanted social outcomes. Honneth’s recent use of the concept of ideology, if I understand it correctly, does not significantly differ from this theoretical pattern. His focus is the question of how to conceptualise ideological forms of recognition, specifically to be able to differentiate them from socially productive and healthy forms of recognition. Taking his cue from 2 â•‡The specific scope and character of ideology may vary widely depending on whether we are talking about beliefs, norms, or bodily comportment, and so on. Yet expanding the scope of the concept of ideology does not ipso facto render the concept useless – at best it renders the specific classical theory of ideology as formulated by Marx open to substantial critical reinterpretation. I mean these comments as a brief response to a paper that emphasises the need to escape the narrow cognitivism of the classical theory of ideology: M. Saar, “From Ideology to Governmentality”, paper presented at the Philosophy and Social Sciences Conference, Prague, 19 May 2005.


paradigm examples of ideological recognition – for instance, where a black slave is ‘recognised’ for his subservience and submissiveness, a soldier is ‘recognised’ for his heroic slaughters, or a housewife is ‘recognised’ for her menial cleaning skills3 – Honneth seeks a way of identifying, in the act of the recognition relationship itself, which markers we could use to say that it is an ideologically distorting, rather than a socially productive, instance of interpersonal recognition. His answer is basically that acts of recognition are ideological when there is a substantial gap between the evaluative acknowledgement or promise that the act centres upon, and the institutional and material conditions necessary for the fulfilment of that acknowledgement or promise. I am not so much interested in the specifics of this proposal here. Rather, I wish only to note that, as with the traditional concept of ideology, the social pathology crucially involves a second-order disorder. Only if persons subject to ideological forms of recognition are not able to understand – at a second-order level – that the required social conditions are lacking, will they actually and voluntarily conform their beliefs and behaviours to a set of social patterns that nevertheless materially contribute to their oppression or domination. In short, without the second-order disorder, what we might generically call ‘bad’ acts of recognition (misrecognition, non-recognition) are not ideological and so cannot count as social pathologies. This analysis of ideological recognition then shares the same conceptual features as the classical concept of ideology identified above. It is rooted in widely shared social deformations of second-order processes, namely institutional processes of the formation and stabilisation of interpersonal recognitional evaluation. These deformations systematically serve certain social interests by maintaining systems of oppression without overt coercion. Ideological recognition is not easily corrected but rather socially reinforced, and the processes whereby ideological recognition is naturalised work by hiding or repressing the second-order disorders they cause. The social theoretic critique of ideological recognition should then aim not only to uncover gaps between the evaluative acknowledgement of ideological acts of recognition and the material conditions necessary to fulfil them. More centrally it should also expose the social mechanisms that promote and perpetuate the widely

3 â•‡A. Honneth, “Anerkennung Als Ideologie”, WestEnd: Neue Zeitschrift Für Sozialforschung vol. 1, no. 1, 2004, pp. 52–53.

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shared patterns of ideological recognition while simultaneously hiding the mechanisms of second-order recognitional disorders from society’s members behind a functional veneer of naturalised patterns of class and group-differentiated recognition. 1.2.â•‡ Maldistribution as Distortions of Esteem Dispositives This higher-order structure of social pathologies is not, however, limited to ideological formations. Let me now briefly review a few other important social diagnoses with specific attention to this structure. Consider first Honneth’s recuperation of Dewey’s ideal of democracy as a reflexive form of social life.4 The crucial claims here are, first, that democracy is much more than a specific organisation of decision procedures in the formal political domains of the state and allied spheres. According to Dewey, and as approvingly transformed through the insights of recognition theory, democracy is first and foremost a general form for the organisation of social cooperation, whereby participants detect problems that affect them collectively and that can only be or can best be solved through reflective collective activity. The second major claim is connected to the fact that effective cooperative activity makes use of the advantages of a division of labour whereby different participants, with different skills and capacities, contribute different components to the collectively determined solution modality. This requires a form of interpersonal recognition, specifically that form centred around relations of esteem where individuals are treated as worthy co-participants in a differentiated scheme of cooperation. The world of work is here a paradigm example of a form of reflexive social cooperation that requires healthy relations of recognition. Third, such cooperation is valuable not only because it contributes to effective problem resolutions, but more importantly from a recognitional perspective, because it provides an opportunity for the full self-realisation of each of the participants. To the extent to which participants are acknowledged for their particular capacities and contributions to the cooperative activity according to a decent schema of evaluative esteem, persons will be able to develop healthy self-esteem. Fourth, the democratic character of social cooperation forms the model of healthy social relations amongst a diverse collection of people interacting through 4 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today”, Political Theory, vol. 26, no. 6, 1998, pp. 763–783.


their specific contributions to overall social goals and projects. Thus democracy in this fulsome sense is not only an ideal for political selfgovernment, but also a crucial desideratum of economic interrelations. In particular, the healthy or distorted character of contemporary economic relations can be judged from the way in which the recognition that individuals achieve through the official economic division of labour matches or does not match the official esteem dispositive that the economy is said to realise institutionally. Finally, social pathologies occur in those situations where there is a disconnect between the regnant evaluative schemas connecting individual achievements to esteem recognition, and the social institutions that practically function to recognise or denigrate the actual achievements and worth of individuals. The key to understanding how this complex conception of democracy as social cooperation relates to the account of second-order disorders is the concept of reflexivity. It is not enough, according to the Dewey/Honneth analysis, that a system of cooperation be based on an effective division of labour, one that can efficiently detect, problematise and solve collective social problems. To be democratic such a system must be open to the deliberative and participatory contributions of all the diverse members, and this means that those members must be reflexively aware of themselves as engaged in such a form of social cooperation. Not only does such reflexivity heighten the rationality of the system of social problem solving, but more importantly, it is an irreplaceable component in a healthy system of esteem recognition. Individuals must not only contribute on the basis of their particular capacities and skills, but their contributions must be, at a second-order level, recognised as such for real possibilities for individual self-realisation to exist. To put the point in negative terms, to the extent that individuals do contribute and achieve in a division of labour, at a firstorder level, without being recognised appropriately and understanding themselves as so recognised, at a second-order level, there is a nondemocratic, hence pathological, organisation of social cooperation. This can be seen where the division of labour relies, at the first-order level, on the specific capacities and contributions of diverse individuals, but they are not accorded the appropriate recognition for their social contributions. Concretely, according to Honneth, this occurs where patterns of remuneration – the wages, salaries, benefits, and so on that are the media of recognition in a formal economic system – are not justifiably related to the actual first-order patterns of socially valuable work. Distributive injustice, then, is one form of more general

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second-order disorders in a democratic system of reflexive cooperation. Once again, the task of critical social theory is to expose secondorder disorders in a society’s esteem dispositive and division of labour in an insightful way in order to stimulate the denaturalisation of socially caused inequality and thereby open up possibilities for egalitarian transformations.5 1.3.â•‡ Group-specific Invisibilisation Another example of social pathologies as second-order disorders is Honneth’s analysis, inspired by Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, of the peculiar structure of social processes of denigration that involve ‘looking through or past’ another person.6 Here the curiosity is that social invisibility, especially of persons of denigrated castes, races and classes, involves an actual form of acknowledgement at a first-order level, but a non-acknowledgement of the person at the second-order level. The harmful, disdainful disregard of another is essentially active, involving the activity of purposefully ignoring or looking through another, and this presupposes that one has actually taken cognisance of the presence of the other in order to deny them the normal recognition that others are due as fellow persons. Finally, to be a social pathology, active disregard must be essentially connected to social patterns, here caste-like patterns of group-specific denigration. Unlike the phenomena of ideological recognition and maldistributive esteem dispositives, in the case of social invisibilisation those who directly suffer from the social effects of the social pathology are not the same as those 5 â•‡ Another related example of the diagnosis of social pathologies as second-order disorders comes from Emmanuel Renault’s developing research on social suffering, research intended to expand substantially the reach of the recognition paradigm into empirical sociological and social-psychological research. The central idea here is that both social exclusion and new forms of work cause first-order suffering for individuals, but that a combination of ideological formations, social structures and institutional mechanisms lead individuals to understand this suffering, at a secondorder level, in personal moral terms: that is, as their own fault. These individualising and moralising tendencies then constitute a social pathology insofar as they hide the crucial social causes, character and consequences of suffering, which are traceable to developing forms of social exclusion and to changes in the contemporary structure of the world of work, but nevertheless are reflexively experienced as rooted solely in individual deficiencies and failures. See chapters 6 and 7 of E. Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice: Clinique et reconnaissance de l’injustice, Paris, La découverte, 2004. 6 â•‡ A. Honneth, “Invisibility: On the Epistemology of ‘Recognition’,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, no. supplement, 2001, pp. 111–126.


subject to the problematic form of reflexivity. Nevertheless, the same conceptual structure of a second-order disorder is evident, and critical social theory has a similar role in exposing and explaining it as a social pathology. 1.4.â•‡ Pathologies of Modern Rationality Many other examples of this connection between social pathologies and second-order disorders could surely be given from the history of critical social thought, broadly construed. It holds in a narrower construal of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as well, as Honneth has shown in his summary article on the core theorists Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas.7 A central claim of Honneth’s intellectual history is that, in their different ways, all of these theorists consider present social pathologies to be fundamentally connected to distortions in rationality. In particular, each gives a type of social diagnosis that highlights the disconnect between extant social structures, forms of practice and modes of thought – all of which are largely characterisable in specific connection to modern capitalism – and the latent potential of reason as disclosed at a particular level of historical development. The disorders here are, first, that the first-order level of the extant social institutions does not reflect the potential of the second-order level of historically available rationality and, second, that even that rational potential is not widely shared and accepted as socially relevant by society members. The pathologies are therefore twofold: the disconnect between extant social institutions and the available level of rationality, and the disconnect between the broadly accepted sense of what is rational, just and possible and the latent potential of reason, which is not yet understood by society’s members as available and potentially emancipatory. Again, the tasks of a critical social diagnosis include not only identifying the disconnects between the first-order and second-order levels, but also indicating exactly what kinds of social mechanisms – cultural, institutional and psychological – maintain and further the social pathologies diagnosed. Of course the purpose of diagnosing symptoms and their etiology is not a

7 â•‡ A. Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory” in The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, ed. F. Rush, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336–360.

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pure theoretical exercise; rather, it must be practically oriented towards fostering the overcoming of such social pathologies. 1.5.â•‡Reification It seems plausible to me that the same type of analysis could productively illuminate the general forms of misrecognition that Honneth identified over fifteen years ago – abuse, disrespect and denigration – and the possibility that they may be experienced generally throughout a society, hence warranting the thesis that one is dealing here with specifically social pathologies.8 However, the next example I would like to discuss comes from Honneth’s more recent work putting forward a suggestive way of rehabilitating Lukács’ concept of reification under changed historical, social and theoretical conditions.9 Honneth’s reinterpretation of reification begins with a focal contrast between two different stances individuals might adopt towards others, the world and themselves: a stance of practical, interested involvement and a stance of detached, cognitive objectivation. The central ambitious thesis of the Tanner Lectures is that the stance of practical, interested involvement is both ontogenetically and conceptually prior to the objectivating, cognitive stance. For instance, the mode of formal, objectivating and calculative cognition of the facts of the social world and of social actors within it that is often required in the economic sphere presupposes a prior act of what might be called fully humanised recognition of the other, a moment of interested involvement with the other as an other. The thesis is supported by a set of fecund readings of diverse theoretical and empirical sources, all according to Honneth pointing at similar phenomena, and all tending to support the claim that qualitative relations to others have priority over reified relations to others and, in fact, that the former are a condition of possibility for the latter. In support, Honneth approvingly reinterprets Lukács’ theory of reification; Heidegger’s analysis of the practical mode of relating to the world he called care; Dewey’s epistemological thesis of the priority of

8 â•‡See, in particular, A. Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Location of Critical Theory Today”, Constellations, vol. 1, no. 2, 1994, pp. 255–269; A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. J. Anderson, Cambridge, MA, Polity Press, 1995. 9 â•‡ A. Honneth, Verdinglichung: Eine Annerkennungstheoretische Studie, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2005. Originally delivered as the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, Berkeley, CA, Spring 2005.


an holistic, qualitative grasp of the world to one of analytic quantities; the ontogenetic priority of emotional attachment over a depersonalised cognitive grasp of the world shown by developmental psychologists; Adorno’s theory that the archetype of imitation is love; and Cavell’s claim that acknowledgement must precede linguistic understanding of the self-revealing content of the utterances of another. Once we understand the stance of interested involvement with another as a stance of recognition, it is then a short but momentous step to seeing these diverse arguments as support for the claim that intersubjective recognition is a condition of possibility of even monological cognition. Although these ambitious claims and their supporting arguments deserve a fair amount of critical scrutiny, I accept them here arguendo in order to focus on the use of reification as a critical concept for diagnosing social pathologies. Honneth argues that the concept of reification can be productively reanimated today under changed theoretical and historical conditions by understanding acts of reification as actions in which an objectivating stance to others, the world or the self is adopted, while simultaneously forgetting the constitutive connections that such an objectivating stance has to our practical, interested and normatively laden interactions with others. For Honneth an objectivating stance can be benign when it serves to promote cognitive values in a normatively permissible manner – say a naturalising stance that promotes rational problem-solving within a morally delimited sphere of permissible objectivation of others. What is distinctive of reifying objectivation is that it involves an active forgetting of the priority of intersubjective recognition to cognition, where that forgetting is socially pervasive and systematically or institutionally reproduced, and serves to deform the networks of intersubjective recognition that are essential conditions for maintaining an ethical form of social life. Thus the reification of others involves a disregard of the structures of normatively imbued and meaningful recognition of others, where that disregard is located in distorted forms of sociality that serve to dehumanise participants and thereby perpetuate pathological social structures. A further analysis claims that reification of others can be caused in two analytically distinct ways. It can be caused internally, where individuals more or less consciously adopt a praxis that requires the objectivating stance to overwhelm any limits set by the normative structures of recognition – say engaging in sports where the intensity of competition leads participants to dehumanise their opponents.

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Reification of others can also be caused externally, through the socially prevalent use of thought schemas and interactive patterns that require participants to approach others as mere objects to be manipulated for self-interested motives – say the structural imperatives of marketmediated interactions where objectivation of others is assumed to be a necessity for bare material survival itself. In either case, reification involves a widely shared disregard of the primordial recognitional structure of intersubjective interactions in favour of objectivation, where that forgetting is socially caused and leads to social pathologies: specifically, pathologies that distort fully humanised interactions, thereby impeding the necessary social conditions for an ethical form of the good life. Social interactions are the centrepiece of this analysis, yet it is not restricted to intersubjective phenomena, for Honneth also develops a categorial framework for understanding what it would mean to have reifying relationships both to the objective, non-social world, and to the inner world of subjective self-relations. Reification of the physical world means a forgetfulness of the significance that objects and relations in the physical world might have for others. The idea here follows Dewey’s epistemological lead: to cognitively grasp objects in the world, one needs to be able to set them in a context of purposes and uses, and this context is in turn constituted by other human projects and human interactions with others. (A similar account could equally proceed from Heidegger’s analysis of the conceptual primordiality of the stance of care for our being-in-the-world). Reification of objects involves a systematic forgetting of the way they are constituted as meaningful and useful to us only in a specific context of social purposes and interactions. Reification of objects is then a sort of derivative phenomenon of the reification of others. Reification of self involves a distorted relation to one’s inner states, where one forgets that one’s relation to self is chiefly a practical relation, a kind of qualitative recognition of one’s self first made possible through the variety of intersubjective relations of recognition one experiences. The analysis identifies two varieties of such self-reification evident in contemporary culture. On the one hand, there is a form of self-objectivation that Honneth labels detectivism, where individuals take their inner states as brute empirical givens, not subject to transformation through acts of self-reflection, but rather only given states of affairs to be accurately detected and catalogued. Exemplary here is the kind of reification that occurs when individuals are required to take a disinterested stance towards their ‘personality


type’ and adjust their detached observations of their inner states to standardised grids for self-profiling: think for instance of the reification involved in establishing one’s identity profile in online dating forums. At the opposite extreme, there is a kind of reification of self that Honneth identifies as constructivism, where individuals take up an instrumentalising stance to their inner states, believing in essence that those inner states are at the disposition of acts of will, and thereby represent wholly plastic material to be remoulded in the light of socially defined norms and goals: think for instance of the repeated need to transform one’s personality under the pressures for job-specific character traits in contemporary ‘flexible’ economies and the demise of lifelong careers. In both cases, there is a forgetting of an antecedent recognition of self, where one’s desires and feelings are taken as worthy of articulation, neither brute unshapeable givens nor wholly malleable fodder for purposive use. Where we forget this essential recognitional relationship to ourselves, we end up reifying our inner states, either believing that we can instrumentally remake ourselves in the interest of selling ourselves to others, or that our inner states can be calculatingly reduced to standardised schemas of categories thereby locating ourselves on a selective and pre-given grid of human personality types. In the terms I have developed here, it should be clear that the social pathologies of reification represent second-order disorders: first-order objectivating cognitions and interactions (whether of and with other persons, one’s own feelings and dispositions, or the objective world) are disconnected from a second-order grasp of them as temporally and conceptually dependent on a prior act of recognition, yielding reifying cognitions and interactions properly speaking. The metaphor of forgetting here essentially refers to a second-order disorder, yet reification is not a mere instance of self-misunderstanding, a psychological peculiarity or individual psychopathology. The analysis aims rather at diagnosing social pathologies: widely dispersed, shared features of and practices in our collective life, caused by specific mechanisms located in the extant forms and institutions of social life that thereby deform the prospects for a good life. Here a central set of questions about the social theory underlying the conceptual and phenomenological analyses of reification arises. One is led to ask: what is the explanation for such phenomena; what are the specific social causes of the various types of reification; are those social causes ineliminable features of human life (as Honneth suggests with respect to necessary forms of objectivation that should not be understood as reification); or are they

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socio-culturally specific forms of pathology that are amenable to amelioration or eradication through the transformations of current social structures, institutions and practices? Recall that Lukács had a ready set of answers to such questions, rooted in a belief that the economic imperatives of capitalist market society, as analysed by Marx, are the primary driving force behind the formation and reproduction of social structures, that the economic relations of production largely determine the objective totality of a social form of life – including social norms and behaviours, cultural formations, psychological dispositions, political and legal institutions, and so on – and that such an objective totality systematically serves to promote the interests of holders of capital and to oppress those without it. By contrast, given substantial changes in the forms and effects of capitalism and in the theoretical and methodological landscape one hundred years later, we can no longer simply presuppose such a social theory as unproblematic, let alone singly persuasive. In fact, Honneth is careful to separate his analysis of reification from such problematic presuppositions. He insists that he is not following the economic determinism Lukács adopted from Marx, and he insists, against monocausal theories, that different types of reification may have quite different types of causes. Finally, he acknowledges just how tough a nut he must crack sociologically: if both the ontogenetic and conceptual arguments for the priority of recognition over cognition are correct, it would seem quite difficult for this anthropologically fundamental relationship to be forgotten. The suggestion here is that some specific combinations of determinate social practices, institutional incentives, and skewed cognitive schemata and evaluative patterns can often overcome the anthropological fundamentals of recognition and ensue in reifying second-order disorders. Unfortunately, beyond these methodological preliminaries, there is little robust social explanation given for the causes of contemporary forms of reification in the Tanner Lectures. What we get instead are a few suggestive comments about the changing state of work and communications technologies, and a positing of the general importance of widely shared social practices to the formation and perpetuation of reification pathologies. The substantive socio-theoretic explanations of reification are left open for another day, as well as the choice of which explanatory models and methods should be adopted in developing a social theory supporting the social diagnoses of reification. Before considering the socio-theoretic tasks posed by a Critical Theory


focused on social pathologies as second-order disorders, and some of the available methodological options, I turn to one last example of a second-order social disorder. 1.6.â•‡ Paradoxes of Individualisation In a paper in the inaugural volume of a new series intended to reinvigorate the distinctive Frankfurt School tradition of closely linking sociological and critical-philosophical research, Honneth argues that a new, paradoxical form of individualism has developed since the 1960s.10 According to the diagnosis, starting some forty years ago, claims to self-realisation vastly multiplied in developed Western nations. Although from an objective standpoint such a development would appear to be an increase in the qualitative possibilities for individual freedom, paradoxically, from a subjective standpoint, the expectations for self-realisation increasingly strike individuals as insistent, increasingly inescapable demands. This form of institutionalised individualism in turn has led to pathological symptoms of psychological feelings of individual emptiness, meaningless and purposelessness on the one hand, and sociological symptoms of a pervasive ideology of personal responsibility that leads to neo-liberal deinstitutionalisation on the other. The pathologies of socially required and organised selfrealisation clearly count as second-order disorders. Conceptually, a claim to authentic self-realisation requires that one’s own mode of selfrealisation – the first-order contents – be grasped, at a second-order level of reflexivity, as arising autochthonously out of one’s own specific appropriation of one’s life-history and character. Yet the very claim to authenticity is itself rendered invalid – inauthentic, as it were – either when the first-order contents are not really one’s own, in some significant sense, or when the second-order grasp of those contents is demanded from the outside as a condition of normalcy in contemporary capitalist culture or even as a job requirement in a neo-liberal economy requiring employees to become creative independent contractors and entrepreneurs. Thus, in the contemporary paradoxical form of institutionalised individualism, there exists a series of disconnects between the first-order contents – often enough, vacuous forms 10 â•‡A. Honneth, “Organisierte Selbstverwirklichung: Paradoxien Der IndividÂ� ualisierung” in Befreiung Aus Der Mündigkeit: Paradoxien Des Gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus, ed. A. Honneth, Frankfurt am Main, Campus Verlag, 2002, pp. 141–158.

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of consumer self-identification and ‘fulfilment’ that are supplied as pre-given templates for individuality – and the second-order reflexivity required of adequate claims to authenticity – often itself vitiated by individuals’ own recognition that the demand for individualised selfrealisation is itself a productive force, a functionally useful innovation of post-Fordist capitalism, one playing an ideological role in furthering neo-liberal deinstitutionalisation and deregulation. What is particularly interesting in Honneth’s development of these theses is that, more so than in other works focusing on his own diagnoses of contemporary social pathologies, they are supported by substantive and explanatory socio-theoretic claims. Methodologically, the point is made (as it also is in reification analysis) that the symptoms of emptiness and purposelessness arising from institutionalised demands for authentic self-realisation are not to be explained in a monocausal fashion, much less as ensuing from deliberate manipulations by capital interests of contemporary forms of social life. However, this piece goes beyond these negative caveats to argue that social theory can identify elective affinities between distinct developmental processes, each with their own logic and dynamics, which nevertheless coalesce in a certain social formation. Thus without falling prey to the errors of explanatory monism that plague not just Marxist economism but also Hegelian idealism, and without introducing unbridgeable dualisms between functional and hermeneutic forms of explanation, social theory is used to identify in a piecemeal fashion the similar directional tendencies of distinct and often unrelated societal transformations. This methodological idea is operationalised in a social theory that identifies six different developmental processes giving rise to paradoxical institutionalised individualism, a social theory providing explanatory support to the social pathology diagnosis. First, of course, are the general structural transformations identified by the founding sociologists (Durkheim, Simmel and Weber, and carried forward in Parsons) as definitive of modernisation over the last several centuries, through which individuals are released from the set bonds and life patterns of traditional societies, and experience tremendous increases in the degree of freedom to determine their own lives. Second, and more recently, the move from a Fordist form of industrial economic organisation to a post-Fordist form of capitalism after the Second World War, where employees are increasingly required to become self-responsible, creative inventors and promoters of their own careers, has made selfrealisation into a productive force in economic development itself.


To these socio-structural and economic transformations, at least two cultural transformations should be added. On the one hand, the upheavals and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s brought to pre-eminence Romanticism’s ideal of individual authenticity as a central orienting value and, on the other hand, transformations of electronic communications media increasingly diffuse celebrity-centred models of authenticity that delimit available styles of life and blur the lines between fiction and reality. Finally, two other changes must be accounted for, neither of which fits neatly into only one of the explanatory categories mentioned above (that is, of social structure, economy and culture). As a response to the way consumption-focused capitalism requires an ever-increasing turnover of new consumer goods, the advertising industry has instrumentalised the ideals of authenticity by packaging consumer items as aesthetic resources for each person’s development of their ‘own’ lifestyles. Finally, there is a dialectical interplay between the neo-liberal political program of dismantling the welfare state and the increasing prominence of ideals of self-responsible, atomistic individualism, ideals that get channelled into and realised through pre-organised forms of ‘authentic’ self-realisation. 2.â•‡ The Tasks of a Critical Social Diagnosis of Pathologies So far I have argued that many of the different social pathologies that Honneth has analysed can be productively understood as exhibiting the conceptual structure of second-order disorders. In each case, there is a pervasive disconnect between first-order contents and secondorder reflexive modes of grasping those contents, and that disconnect is claimed to be widely shared in contemporary society, caused by determinate social structures, institutions and/or cultural patterns, and leading to deleterious consequences for society’s members by blocking opportunities for the realisation of an ethically intact form of collective life. Surely this is not the only way Honneth’s social diagnoses can be reconstructed, but I do believe that it is particularly helpful in illuminating the various tasks a critical social theory must fulfil if it is to vindicate and put to use its proposed social diagnoses. I now turn to articulating four such tasks, before considering three different broad methodological strategies that might be adopted to fulfil them, provisionally indicating for each of the strategies some of their prospective strengths and weaknesses.

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The first task, rather obviously, is identifying and explicating the symptomatic phenomena of the social pathology in a revealing way. In line with the action-theoretic and phenomenological approaches Honneth has taken to identification, I have suggested that the articulation of a socially pervasive disconnect between lower-order and higher-order experiential structures can productively illuminate the feelings of suffering, disorientation, meaninglessness, and so on that the analyses take as their primary data. This task of describing the relevant pathological symptoms – what might be called symptomatology – presupposes substantive background assumptions concerning health and normalcy, in this case the health or normalcy of a social form of life, in the light of which the identified phenomena can be said to be pathological.11 Analyses of social pathologies need further to establish that the described phenomena are pervasively experienced throughout contemporary society. Here the theory must vindicate the claims that the symptoms really exist in a population, and in more than an accidental, episodic or individualistic manner. This second task of supporting the claim that we are dealing with social pathologies is then a kind of epidemiology. The third task is etiological: a diagnosis of social pathologies must supply some convincing explanation of their causes. As I have argued here, this will involve giving explanations for the second-order disorders in a way that shows them to be not only socially experienced, but also causally rooted in social structures, institutions, normative patterns, cultural schemas, and so on. A social theory with only descriptive and explanatory ambitions might rest content with fulfilling these three tasks of symptomatology, epidemiology and etiology, but a critical social theory – an interdisciplinary social theory fundamentally oriented by an emancipatory intent – will need to go further, and begin to fulfil, fourth, the tasks of prognosis and therapeutic recommendations. It will need to provide theoretical resources for transformative social change, which may (non-exhaustively) include: resources for evaluating the likelihood and feasibility of social change; resources for consciousness-raising about the relevant second-order disorders; resources for strategising, centrally including convincing accounts of the correct targets for social struggle; and normative 11 â•‡ The difficulties inherent in extending the metaphor of pathology from individual biological organisms – where it is relatively easy to articulate standards of health – to societal phenomena occupies much of the interesting work in Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social”.


resources for collective evaluations of current conditions, goals, strategies, and so on. It should be noted that the critical social theoretic desideratum of clearly articulated and justified normative standards will also help to fulfil the first task of symptomatology, since this requires determinate ways of distinguishing between pathological and healthy social formations. Surely this is an ambitious set of theoretical tasks, but it seems to me that they follow organically, as it were, from the attempt to actualise critical social theory in the form of diagnoses of contemporary social pathologies. Looking over the substantive analyses of social pathologies presented in the first part of the essay, I think it warranted saying that Honneth has fulfilled these tasks to a decreasing degree of success. The symptomatologies are phenomenologically well developed and often convincing in articulating subjectively felt experiences of second-order disorders, and the distinctions employed between pathological and non-pathological forms of social life are repeatedly based on the “formal conception of ethical life”12 developed out of the theory of recognition. The epidemiological claims are not explicitly vindicated, but since such vindication is a matter of empirical social research, perhaps the diagnoses should be understood as theoretical hypotheses to be tested through well-designed sociological and social-psychological studies, rather than as self-endorsing claims that the phenomena identified are in fact social pathologies. Only in the cases of maldistribution based in distorted esteem dispositives and of organised selfrealisation do we get the fundaments of an etiological explanation for the root causes of the social pathology.13 As indicated throughout, the analyses of ideological recognition, invisibilisation, modern rationalisation and especially reification suffer from a lack of substantive sociological details that can move the theory from the action-theoretic description of second-order disorders to institutional, structural, normative, cultural and/or functional explanations for their social sources. This lacuna is particularly glaring in the cases of ideology and reification, as Honneth there intends to reanimate diagnostic concepts from

â•‡ See A. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, pp. 171–179. â•‡ The etiology of organised self-realisation seems to me more plausible than that advanced to explain the relationship between injustices of maldistribution in terms of distortions in the esteem dispositives in the contemporary world of work. On the latter, see C. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory”, European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 1, 2005, pp. 89–126. 12 13

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the earlier history of critical social theory while simultaneously denying the cogency and validity of the underlying explanatory social theory of historical materialism that those earlier diagnoses relied on. Finally, I would suggest that without a well-developed and relatively detailed etiological account of social pathologies, the tasks of prognosis and therapy cannot even begin to get off the ground. Unsurprisingly, this fourth set of tasks has not yet been acknowledged, let alone brought to fruition, even as there are some theoretical resources in the general theory of recognition that could be put to productive use. To conclude, I would like to indicate at least three different methodological strategies for fulfilling these tasks – for convenience labelled as ‘hermeneutic physiognomy’, ‘sociological maximalism’ and ‘pathologyspecific eclecticism’ – and make some comments concerning their potential fecundity for the diagnosis of social pathologies. In a very recent essay, Honneth has admirably clarified the basic methodological structure of Adorno’s social theory, separating its truly original contribution of an hermeneutic physiognomy of contemporary social formations from much of the “under-informed, strangely uninspired, and almost dogmatic” substantive explanatory theses and sociological models that Adorno often buried the originality within.14 A central claim of the paper is that we often misunderstand Adorno’s social theory as putting forward either descriptive or explanatory claims about the structures and mechanisms of contemporary society. Rather, he was attempting to provide an illuminating sketch of the physical surfaces and appearances of the capitalist form of life that could hermeneutically reveal that form of life as reified, falsely naturalised, oppressive, stultifying, instrumentalising, endlessly productive of preventable suffering – in short, as a failed form of life. In not only his social theoretic writings, but also his aesthetics and philosophy, Adorno: tries to develop a method suited to perspicuously depicting the objective meaning of the courses of social action … By conceptually accenting particular aspects of social reality, it creates figures which exemplify the pathology of reason that has arisen through generalized commodity exchange … As soon as we manage to produce a particular “figure” with this illustrative function, we at the same time achieve an interpretation, 14 â•‡ A. Honneth, “A Physiognomy of the Capitalist Form of Life: A Sketch of Adorno’s Social Theory”, Constellations, vol. 12, no. 1, 2005, p. 50.

social pathologies as second-order disorders365 since a whole ensemble of practices, attitudes, or rules becomes comprehensible as a symptom of a failed developmental process.15

In terms of the four tasks laid out above, the method of hermeneutic physiognomy at most intends to fulfil the first two tasks of symptomatology and epidemiology, while explicitly forswearing the latter two tasks of etiology and prognosis. The claim is, in effect, that a social theory intending to fulfil all four tasks is overly ambitious, though support for the rejection of more ambitious social theory construction is not articulated here. What Honneth does say, somewhat cryptically, is that the purpose of his own reconstruction of Adorno’s hermeneutic method and its resulting diagnosis of the pathologies of a capitalist form of life is “in attempting to defend Adorno’s analysis of capitalism for the present”.16 Aside from engaging in questions of textual or scholarly interpretation of Adorno’s corpus, the crucial question here is whether or not hermeneutic physiognomy is adequate to the diagnosis of social pathologies. As I see it, the main problem with such a strategy is that, even at best – when the evocative theoretical description of contemporary forms of suffering does crystallise illuminatingly some particular configuration of felt responses to social reality – it still fails to connect these experiences to causes. This is because such a method deliberately aims not only to avoid offering a precise and accurate description of what a capitalist form of life is – one crucial trope of physiognomy is, as Honneth emphasises, strategic exaggeration – but also to avoid explaining how such a form of life works or even how some aspects of it work. The aim, rather, is simply to illuminate pathological symptoms. However, this means that there will be no systematic, or even accidental, socio-theoretic connection made between the articulated feelings of dissatisfaction and their actual social causes: no etiology of the relevant second-order disorders. There are several resulting deficits. First, the theory will have significant difficulties in even justifying its claim to having identified social pathologies as it might well be that the suffering identified is, in some important way or sense, an â•‡ ibid., p. 56. â•‡ ibid., p. 51. I say ‘somewhat cryptically’ because this is the only sentence of its kind in the essay, and it is frankly ambiguous whether Honneth is interested in defending the method of hermeneutic physiognomy, the substance of Adorno’s critique of the capitalist form of life, or both. 15 16

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‘objectively necessary’ form of suffering. Whether one here takes Freud’s reality principle as an inescapable psychological source of suffering arising from the need to internalise behavioural controls, or like Marcuse attempts to outline a metric dividing objectively necessary from unnecessary suffering ensuing from the generic features of any form of social life, or accepts some other account separating preventable from unpreventable suffering, a critical social theory must be able to justify its claim to having identified deformations ensuing from a specific form of social life rather than merely the predictable pains of intersubjectivity simpliciter. As indicated above, even symptomatology and epidemiology require distinctions between pathological and healthy forms of life, whether we are talking about organisms, individual psyches or forms of social life, and such distinctions require historically sensitive socio-theoretic explanations. Further, such Adornoesque hermeneutic physiognomies cannot answer to the prognostic and therapeutic demands of a critical social theory: namely to provide useful theoretical resources for emancipatory social change. Perhaps Adorno himself, somewhat worried (like Plato after counselling Dionysius I) about the misuse of his ideas in the hands of social activists, withdrew precisely from this task and sought, as it were, to cover his socio-theoretic insights behind a screen of obtuse philosophy and ‘almost dogmatic’ boilerplate historical materialism. The practical question for progressive theorists today is changed, in my opinion, by quite different social and cultural conditions. Rather than worry about the explosive potential of revolutionary change, the mood of critical theorists is today much more pessimistic in the face of the withdrawal of utopian energies in advanced capitalist societies. Rather than worry about the misuse of radical theory, we should be worried about exactly what and how we can change the symptoms and causes of social pathologies, how we can overcome the sufferinginducing disconnects of second-order disorders. This is not to say that Adorno’s method wholly forecloses connections to social struggles. He surely attempted theoretically to keep open the possibility of social transformation, for instance by identifying certain ontogenetically fundamental modes of awareness and experience that harbour the potential, as it were, to resist actively the reifying and instrumentalising tendencies of contemporary capitalist society. Nevertheless, the identification of potential motivational well-springs for resistance is a long way from providing the kinds of resources I indicated are needed for prognosis and therapy: no prognostic power, no therapeutic advice,


no strategic guidance, no explicit and justified normative standards are made available by pointing out that certain psychological motivations are not inevitably erased by current social formations. And these deficiencies are constitutively tied to the methodological strategy of refusing etiology, for the critical resources depend on an understanding of the root social causes of the social pathology. In short, the method of hermeneutic physiognomy promises less than a critical social theory requires, and is perhaps little more than an interesting cultural critique. A quite different methodological strategy starts by building a grand theory of society, a fully descriptive and explanatory sociology, and then attempts to deduce, as it were, hypotheses about possible social pathologies from the likely conflict points identified by the theory in contemporary social formations. Such sociological maximalism has taken innumerable forms: Marx’s theory of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, Durkheim’s account of organic social integration and anomie, Weber’s theory of the iron cage of ascetic bureaucratic rationalisation, Habermas’ colonisation thesis, and so on. Such sociological maximalism is centrally concerned with accurate explanations of the basic mechanisms of contemporary societies, and so looks well poised to carry out the etiological tasks of social diagnosis, with a clear set of tools for accounting for the epidemiological aspects of social pathologies. Of course, as the devil is in the details – the particular theses and support provided by the substantive sociological theory – there is much that must be passed over in this brief consideration of the basic methodological strategy of sociological maximalism. Nevertheless, it strikes me that such attempts suffer from two complementary deficits from the point of view of diagnosing social pathologies – unconvincing symptomatologies and insufficiencies in prognostic and therapeutic power – where those deficits are rooted in the same methodological difficulty of connecting structural and functional sociological explanations to the everyday experiences and understandings of social actors. Let me explain. One striking trend in the history of postwar economic and sociological research has been that theoretical demands for empirical and methodological adequacy have increasingly driven social theory towards counter-intuitive explanations of social processes and dynamics couched in complex, expert discourses irreducible to everyday understanding. Such technical theories buy their explanatory power at the cost of deliberately abstracting away from variables dependent on

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individual human experiences, intentions and normative judgements. They thereby cede the requisite ability to make sense of intra-mundane experiential reactions to so-called ‘systemic’ processes and of the social movements such experiential reactions can generate. In so ceding the ability to make sense of the struggles and wishes of the age, however, they relinquish both the prospects for convincing symptomatologies of social pathologies and hopes for realising critical social theory’s emancipatory interest by influencing progressive social change. As an example, consider how the theory of communicative action, seduced by the methodological power and (arguable) empirical adequacy of systems theory, ended up unable to connect its ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’ theses in a convincing way to the nature and interests of the actual new social movements that have become so prominent since the end of the 1960s. Similarly, it is not clear how the very general social pathologies of a loss of meaning, anomie and psychopathological breakdowns of identity that the theory of communicative action predicts as the result of long-term processes of the development and extension of functional systems of social integration can be convincingly connected to the variegated, often shorter-term, socially and culturally specific developments that Honneth draws our attention to in terms of second-order disorders like ideological recognition, esteembased maldistribution, group-specific invisibilisation and organised self-realisation. For all of the apparent explanatory power gained by adopting the latest form of technical sociology, critical social theory at the same time lost its evident connection to contemporary social experiences and movements. Thus the same problem of connecting the social diagnoses of second-order disorders – which are developed from the intra-mundane point of view of phenomenological and action-theoretic descriptions – to the functional and structural explanations of long-term modernisation processes – which are developed from the extra-mundane point of view of counter-intuitive sociological concepts and theories – manifests itself in the tasks of both symptomatology and therapeutic prognosis. On the one hand, the social diagnoses resulting from sociological maximalism appear disconnected from the actual symptoms of experienced suffering, symptoms better captured in their detail and specificity by starting from the point of view of second-order disorders. On the other hand, because the social theory is not in the first instance generated out of the felt and expressed experiences of social actors, the distance between the theory’s prognostic and therapeutic resources and recommendations and


the emancipatory interests of society’s members and social movement participants can appear unbridgeable.17 A final strategy then would be to combine the symptomatological and epidemiological acumen of detailed descriptions of the experiences and understandings evident in second-order disorders with the etiological power of pathology-specific explanations of their causes. Prima facie the different social pathologies identified by Honneth do not call for the same kinds of explanations. For instance, the phenomenon of group-specific invisibilisation seems open to a relatively straightforward analysis where the second-order disorders are caused largely by cognitive and evaluative schemas that are unjustifiably group-differentiated, so that the prognosis for healing the social pathologies is relatively good: the therapy consists largely of deliberate and organised strategies for changing extant cultural patterns that systematically serve to further the oppression of denigrated group members. In contrast, the social pathologies associated with maldistributive injustice cannot be explained only in terms of distorted cultural patterns of cognition and evaluation. To be not only accurate but also useful for emancipatory ends, then, critical social theory would here need to go beyond an account of distorted esteem dispositives to incorporate analyses of the relatively autochthonous functional imperatives of capitalist economies and of the structural transformations of both legal systems and global political relations between nation states.18 Prognosis and therapeutic suggestions would then assume a quite different character than they do with respect to invisibilisation. Such mid-level methodological eclecticism, neither exclusively descriptive in intent nor grandiose in explanatory ambition, at least then promises to be able to provide the resources a critical social theory needs to carry forward its emancipatory intentions. 17 â•‡One might object here that the problem I am identifying between the technical explanatory language of sociological maximalism and the mundane language in which symptomatic experiences and social movement reactions to them is really nothing more than a problem of translating the results of expert discourses into understandable language. My intuition, however, is that the much greater diagnostic acumen and accuracy of theories starting from phenomenological and action-theoretic bases, in comparison to those starting from an encompassing sociological explanatory theory, is constitutively tied to the original choice of methodological strategies. Said another way, the problem is not just in translating explanatory claims into prognostic and therapeutic resources; it is also in perspicaciously identifying social pathologies in the first place. 18 â•‡Or so I argue in Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy”.

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I take it that phenomenon-specific eclecticism is precisely the methodological strategy adopted in Honneth’s analysis of organised selfrealisation, where he posits elective affinities between various distinct developmental processes that follow their own inner logics but nevertheless coalesce in the specific pathological formation of contemporary institutionalised individualism. This kind of critical contextualist methodology then leaves room for different kinds of explanation, prognosis and therapy, with varying degrees of causal and political complexity tailored to the specific pathologies under investigation. Hermeneutic physiognomy and other descriptive strategies are insufficiently explanatory; sociological maximalism threatens to become conceptually and analytically disconnected from the specific social pathologies at issue. What we would seem to need rather are convincing, contextually specific descriptions and explanations appropriate to different socially experienced second-order disorders, accounts that can fulfil the various tasks of symptomatology, epidemiology, etiology, and prognosis and therapy. I would suggest that the social diagnoses Honneth has so far engaged in have fulfilled the first two sets of tasks to a much greater extent than the third and fourth ones. In short then, this essay is a call for more attention to the explanatory tasks of social theory to complement the theory of recognition’s ontogenetic and normative strengths, and render the provocative diagnoses of social pathologies useful for a reinvigorated critical social theory.19

19 â•‡ Research for and writing of this essay was supported by a research fellowship generously granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. I am also grateful to Joel Anderson, and to the insightful comments and criticisms made on an earlier version by the participants in the workshop ‘Sozialphilosophie der Anerkennung’, Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt am Main, 15 July 2005.

Chapter thirteen

The Nugget and the Tailings. Reification Reinterpreted in the Light of Recognition Alessandro Ferrara Over the past two decades, Axel Honneth has been pursuing a quite complex philosophical project, centred around the notion of recognition, which sets him out as one of the most interesting philosophers on the scene. Throughout the sequence of his major works – from the ‘pre-recognition’ Critique of Power to the paradigm-establishing The Struggle for Recognition, to the dialogue with Nancy Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition, to Suffering from Indeterminacy to the most recent Reification: A Recognition-Theoretical View – a number of significant motifs can be found to which I am very sympathetic. Underneath his attempt to work out, from a reconstruction of Hegel’s concept of recognition, a set of normative consequences that are relevant for the understanding of contemporary social conflicts, for making sense of the evolution of contemporary societies, for understanding the pathologies entwined with this development, for charting an understanding of justice and democracy thicker than procedural liberalism, we can find: • a quest for an understanding of society fully normative in a not merely procedural sense, yet independent of given communitarian forms of ethical life • an effort to grasp the moral progress of society as related not so much to evolutionary dynamics or individual invention but to the outcome of the struggle of concrete social groups over the establishment of prevailing normative frameworks • an effort, indebted to the Hegelian insight into the nature of philosophy as the grasping of one’s epoch through concepts, to The present paper has appeared as “Das Gold im Gestein. Verdinglichung und Anerkennung” in eds. R. Forst, M. Hartmann, R. Jaeggi & M. Saar, Sozialphilosophie und Kritik, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009, pp. 40–63. Thanks are due to Suhrkamp Verlag and the editors for their permission to publish this English version.

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highlight the intrinsic relation of the normativity of recognition with the horizon of meaning that defines a certain epoch • an attempt to develop a post-metaphysical social ontology true to the idea that every society is characterised by structures of shared meanings and practices, the violation of which cannot be perpetrated for long without engendering empirically observable pathologies • an attempt to develop a critical theory of contemporary society anchored (a) in the reconstruction of the normative infrastructure of a post-conventional ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and (b) in the analysis of the social pathologies generated by the neglect or outright violation of that normative infrastructure or ‘grammar’. In Honneth’s essay Verdinglichung. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie,1 these motifs all come to fruition. Thus I will basically engage that work as a prism that enables one to come to terms with several relevant facets of Honneth’s theory of recognition. After briefly reconstructing Honneth’s revisitation of ‘reification’, I will highlight three problems that call for further reflection and perhaps for the integration of a slightly different set of premises. These three problems are: (1) the issue of the causal source of reification; (2) a certain tension arising between the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis and the understanding of validity underlying Honneth’s argument; (3) the problem of the methodological import of the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis. 1.â•‡ Reification Reinterpreted in the Light of Recognition Honneth’s critical theory of society belongs in that family of theories of modern society that purports to unveil the unfulfilled promise at the basis of modernity. Apologists of modernity tend to convey the narrative of a progressive individuation, secularisation, democratisation, industrialisation and urbanisation of the medieval and renaissance forms of sociality. Apocalyptic critics of modernity, on the other hand, tend to dismiss the same process as a descent into the hell of a totally administered society, into an atomised mass society, or into an impersonal market-type web of functional interdependencies. Honneth (not unlike Habermas) takes distance from these positions. He belongs in 1 â•‡A. Honneth, Verdinglichung. Eine anerkennungstheoretische Studie, Frankfurt a/M, Suhrkamp, 2005.

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the company of those wishing to develop a critical theory that embeds a positive appraisal of the post-traditional individualised core of the modern form of life, while exposing the dangers and pathologies ensuing from a certain contingent form of the coming into being of modernity. Honneth’s philosophy of recognition is thus part of the family of critical views that seeks to envision ways of redressing the distortions, and healing the pathologies, of modernity – critical views that in the footsteps of Hegel displace all normative foundations onto a future community or form of life yet to be established, and develop the figure of the ‘completion of a yet incomplete modernity’. Within this context, Lukács’ concept of reification, as developed in History and Class Consciousness, appears to Honneth as a “philosophically unprocessed nugget”.2 For it allows us – as Honneth deems important – to connect our reconstruction of normativity with a Zeitdiagnose, to connect conflict and moral progress, and it is ‘critical’ in that it exposes certain fundamental pathologies of the modern form of life. In a way, reification is the key social pathology of the modern world. However, Honneth warns us that the Lukácsian concept of reification cannot be utilised ‘as is’. The wager is to reconstruct a view of reification not premised on the controversial comprehensive view of the good embedded in the ethical life of just one community. The structure of Honneth’s reconstruction of Lukács’ view of reification proceeds by excluding two equally implausible interpretations of its meaning. First, he discards the hypothesis that reification should be equated with just an epistemic categorical mistake. On this problematic reading, the actor, enmeshed in the capitalist market economy, comes to consider all objects, actions and persons he comes in contact with solely under the aspect of their economic advantageousness, but then soon comes to extend this ‘objectivating’, observer-like stance to all areas of social interaction. In the end the actor ceases to act like a first-person co-participant in social interaction and turns into a selfinterested, detached, observing and calculating monad. The whole social world becomes petrified into a world of things. As Adorno and Horkheimer wonderfully put it in Dialectic of Enlightenment, whereas “animism had endowed things with souls, industrialism makes souls into things”.3 According to Honneth, understanding reification along

â•‡ ibid., p. 12. â•‡ M.Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), edited by G. Schmid Noerr, tr. by E.Jephcott, Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 21. 2 3

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this line – basically as an improper replacement of all ‘interpretation’ by ‘explanation’ – misses the thickness of the concept and reduces its significance for developing a critical theory of modern society. Second, Honneth discards the hypothesis that reification should be understood as the perpetrating of a moral wrong. Reification is not something done by an actor to other people in violation of some moral norm or principle. For Lukács, it does not fall under the category of intentional action but rather should be depicted as a social fact. According to Honneth, then, “the only remaining possibility is that [reification] be conceived as a form of praxis that is structurally false”.4 Reification, if reconstructed along these lines, is not a single actor’s intentional action but rather a pathological social fact of modern society, that is, a form of shared praxis that deviates from ‘true’ or ‘genuine’ praxis, and moreover a form of praxis whose deviant quality is ‘structural’ – a term that cannot mean ‘unavoidable’ (for Honneth wishes to show that a society without reification is possible) but should rather be translated as ‘objectively demonstrable’ or ‘beyond opinion’. This way of construing reification obviously calls for a normative flip side: we are led to a social ontology or a philosophical anthropology of genuine, undistorted social praxis and Honneth departs from the reconstructive path in order to embark on a path of his own. Conversely, Lukács would want, consistent with his idealistic premises, to understand undistorted social praxis as a praxis where all objectifications are linked to the will of the subject, no unintentional patterns hold sway, and mind and world “ultimately coincide”.5 Instead, Honneth takes distance not only from the idealistic premise of a desirable coincidence of mind and world, but also from the premise that reification is caused at the bottom by commodity exchange and that strategic action could be dispensed with. The rest of his essay is an exploration of the possibility of understanding reification “as an atrophied or distorted form of a more primordial and genuine form of praxis, in which humans take up an active and involved relationship toward themselves and their surroundings”.6 The concept of reification that Honneth seeks to construe is one that – in the light of the Habermasian critique of totalising critiques of â•‡ ibid., p. 25. â•‡ ibid., p. 26. 6 â•‡ ibid., p. 27. 4 5


modernity – fully admits the legitimacy of strategic action and of the standpoint of the observer in certain areas of modern social life. In developing his own version of the meaning of ‘reification’, Honneth looks for an interpretive foothold in those passages where Lukács seems to assess “the defect of reifying agency against an ideal of praxis characterized by active and existential involvement”7 – the existential attitude of engagement for which Heidegger adopted the term ‘care’. Both Heidegger and Lukács proceed from the assumption that in Western civilisation a conception has come to prevail that leads individuals to relate in a cognitive and emotionally neutral, detached way to the world, but vestiges and traces of a more fundamental mode of caring or involvement can be recovered and brought back to centre stage. As Honneth puts it, “even in the midst of the false, ontologically blinded present circumstances, the elementary structures of the human form of life characterized by ‘care’ and existential interestedness are always already there”.8 Having established this meta-theoretical point about the status of the notion of reification, Honneth then moves on to examine the substantive side of the concept. If a reified social praxis is a deviated form of praxis, what is it a deviation from? Recasting ‘care’ as a rough equivalent of a ‘first person’ or participant’s standpoint (as opposed to a third person or observer’s standpoint), we can first of all notice the presence, in ‘care’, of “the act of taking over the perspective of another person”.9 Both Lukács and Heidegger seek to overcome the subject-object paradigm underlying the predominance of the third person or objectifying perspective. They even go so far as extending the ‘care’ or ‘involvement’ type of relation beyond subject-to-subject relations, including relations to objects. Furthermore, the notion of care contains an affective connotation that goes beyond the mere understanding of the other’s motives. Unlike contemporary notions of communicative reason, which are devoid of all affective connotations, the idea of ‘care’ comes entwined with an affirmative or sustaining stance directed to the subjectivity of the other. This categorical connection between the sound human praxis and the ‘affirmative attitude’ vis-à-vis the social and the non-social world is a connection that becomes a condition of the possibility of neutral, objectifying ways of relating to the world. Indeed â•‡ ibid., p. 29. â•‡ ibid., p. 34. 9 â•‡ ibid., p. 36. 7 8

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this connection takes the form of a ‘chronological and logical priority’: it ‘comes before’ detached observation in both senses of the term. Aletheia, or the disclosive dimension of truth, must precede adaequatio intellectus et rei. At this juncture we encounter the first recognition-theoretical twist impressed by Honneth to his reconstruction of reification. In order to show not just the genetic, but the conceptual priority of care over observation in our human relation to the world, Honneth invites us to replace the Heideggerian notion of ‘care’ with the originally Hegelian category of ‘recognition’.10 So the claim to be defended becomes that recognition is prior to cognition, both ontogenetically and conceptually. Establishing this point, argues Honneth, will enable us to reframe and answer the question as to the enduring relevance of the notion of reification today. 1.1.â•‡ The Thesis of the Ontogenetic Priority To establish the ontogenetic or chronological priority of recognition over cognition Honneth draws on two distinct sets of resources. On the one hand, he points to the vast convergence of a number of differently situated philosophical authorities. Not just Heidegger and Lukács, but also John Dewey have worked out a critique of the ‘spectator model of knowledge’. From Dewey’s pragmatist perspective, ‘interaction’ with the context is the keyword. The attitude of detached observation, aimed at controlling the world, is made possible only once we bracket the larger web of involvements that direct and motivate us to modify the environment in the first place. This larger web of involvements, in turn, can be summed up in the notion of a mode of relating to the world, which is not self-centred but is characterised by our “taking care” of maintaining “a fluent interaction with our surroundings”.11 This “affirmative, existentially colored manner of caring comportment” – called by Dewey “practical involvement” and taken by Honneth as an equivalent of recognition – constitutes the inner infrastructure out of which the “affectively neutral, cognitive stance towards the world” can subsequently develop.12

â•‡Compare ibid., p. 39. â•‡ ibid., p. 41. 12 â•‡Compare ibid., p. 42. 10 11


On the other hand, cognition proper rests on, and is functional to, this primordial kind of experience, which must somehow be preserved in the background. Where we allow the awareness of this attitude of ‘practical involvement’ to disappear, we have the rise of misleading forms of positivism, premised on the ‘deceptive idea of the given’, which tend to treat cognition as the acquisition of knowledge about objective ‘facts’ that exist independently of this web of broader meanings. But philosophical language, far from being neutral, carries connotations that raise further questions. Thus when Heidegger’s ‘care’ and Dewey’s ‘practical involvement’ are equated with recognition, one immediately wonders: recognition of what? Honneth’s answer at this stage is: recognition “of the value persons or things have in themselves”,13 as opposed to the functional value for something external to them, especially for us. On the sensibleness of this view of the priority of ‘recognition qua involvement’ over detached cognition, several philosophical views also converge. For example, Quine’s holism and his questioning of the analytic/synthetic distinction; Wittgenstein’s view of rule-following as something that requires participation in the praxis of a life-form; Putnam’s questioning of the distinction between facts and values; Weber’s analysis of the entanglement of social scientific knowledge with values and his effort to redefine objectivity not as a detachment from these values, but as a coming to terms with them. Psychoanalytic and generally psychological evidence can also be mentioned, which suggests that the child’s ability “to relate to an objective world of stable and constants objects” is conditional on the child’s prior ability to take up the perspective of a second person. This ability, in turn, depends on the emotionally undisturbed quality of the child’s relation to the primary caretaker. As evidence from the study of autistic children indicates, whenever due to the caretaker’s own relational inability or for any other reason the child fails to develop emotional attachment to this figure and fails to be ‘moved, motivated and swept along’ by the caretaker’s presence, consequently identification with a second person’s perspective on the world fails to take place and the child remains ‘emotionally blind’ while their cognitive abilities also fail to develop. The impersonal view of a world of independent objects is thus strictly dependent on a quite ‘relational’ and ‘personal’ dimension 13

â•‡ ibid., p. 42.

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of ‘involuntary openness, devotedness or love’. “Emotional receptivity” can thus be said to “come before” the ability to cognise “intersubjectively given objects”.14 Here again more sources could be mentioned that support Honneth’s basic reconstruction. For example, Margaret Mahler has developed the innovative notion of the “psychological birth” of the human infant: the child needs to undergo a real second birth, from a psychological point of view, which is by no means an automatic consequence of the first biological birth. Such “second birth” can be experienced by the child only when they negotiate successfully their extrication from the symbiotic orbit of a primary engulfment and merging with a caretaking figure.15 Heinz Kohut’s psychology of the self supplies additional evidence for the fact that where the primary self-needs for mirroring and identification are not met by defective caretaking figures, the human self cannot develop and the boundary line between external world and inner representation becomes systematically blurred. Kohut explicitly uses a recognition language: the child is able to develop psychological autonomy and a sound relation to the external world if and only if the child has experienced unconditional recognition as an autonomous source of agency on the part of the primary caretaker. If the child, on the contrary, has been merely the target of the narcissistic and manipulative fantasies of a caretaker incapable of recognition, then the child will be condemned to oscillate between the search for unconditional mirroring and the dream of merging with omnipotent figures.16 For all the distance that separates developmental-psychological theories from the kind of existentially coloured involvement that Heidegger and Dewey had in mind, both kinds of accounts share one fundamental feature: the world is disclosed to us as an inhabitable reality, as opposed to remaining an opaque realm of phantoms, not via a solitary confrontation of our mind with independent objects and facts, but via emotionally charged relations of love where recognition plays a fundamental role. Consequently, Honneth sums up his ontogenetic case for the priority of recognition by affirming that, “our efforts to

â•‡ ibid., p. 52. â•‡See M. Mahler, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation, New York, Basic Books, 1975 and Infantile Psychosis, vol. 1 of On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation, New York, International Universities Press, 1968, Chapter 3. 16 â•‡See H. Kohut, The Restoration of the Self, New York, International Universities Press, 1977, pp. 185–186. 14 15


acquire knowledge of the world must either fail or lose their meaning if we lose sight of this antecedent act of recognition”.17 1.2.â•‡ The Thesis of the Conceptual Priority of Recognition Such ontogenetic argument, however, is supplemented by Honneth with a conceptual one. To this effect, he draws on Stanley Cavell and Jean-Paul Sartre. According to Cavell, what dooms to failure the traditional antisceptic defences of the possibility of acceding to another person’s emotional states is the couching of the argument in predominantly cognitive terms: for we can never attain the same degree of certainty about knowing other people’s mental states as we do our own mental states. Sartre, in the third part of Being and Nothingness, concurs and proposes a solution that in turn is accepted by Cavell: namely, a better way of establishing that the existence of other minds rests on our conceiving of our relation to a person in the same terms as we conceive of the relation of this person to their own mental states. For “just as we do not in this case speak of knowledge, but of affectedness and involvement, neither should we conceive of a communicative agent as an epistemic subject, but rather as an existentially involved subject that doesn’t merely neutrally take notice of other persons’ emotional states, but is rather affected in its own self-conception”.18 To put it in the bluntest terms, the way in which I can achieve certainty about the existence of other people’s minds is by becoming aware that I love some of these minds and I hate others. Going back to explaining how access to others’ emotional states is possible at all, Cavell points out that the speaker “brings the listener’s attention” to his own internal states directly, “without recourse to knowledge”, and the listener participates in a successful conversation by responding with “sympathy” or attuneness rather than with the attestation of a new cognitive state. So then when we react to a speaker’s expression of pain by saying ‘I know you’re in pain’ we do not intend to express our ‘knowledge’ in a cognitive sense – namely, our knowledge of what pain is – but to express sympathy to our interlocutor: I know what it means to experience pain is what we are conveying to the other.19 â•‡Honneth, Verdinglichung, pp. 53–54. â•‡ ibid., p. 56. For a similar critique of a cognitivist understanding of the relation of the self to its own subjectivity, see C. Larmore, Les pratiques du moi, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2004, Chapter 3. 19 â•‡ Compare Honneth, Verdinglichung, p. 57. 17 18

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To be a competent subject means then to be enmeshed in a web of relations with others, to grasp their expressions of inner states and their demands not just as soliciting a testimony, on our part, of having cognitively understood their reference, but as soliciting a ‘proper reaction’ on our part – where by ‘proper reaction’ is meant one that shows recognition of the other person’s claim on me and of the other person as another mind like me. If we are not able to take up this recognitional stance we are unable to be part of such a web of social relations. If this is the case, our understanding of society must change accordingly: the fabric of social interaction is not made of the exchange of cognitive statements, but is made of the exchange of acts of reciprocal recognition. What Cavell gives us, contends Honneth, is a way to go beyond a mere ontogenetic argument for the priority of recognition over cognition. From a conceptual point of view “the acknowledgment of the other constitutes the non-epistemic prerequisite for linguistic understanding”.20 We simply fail to fully understand what others mean by what they say if we are unwilling or incapable of adopting this acknowledgment or recognition stance. Honneth, however, points out that for Cavell this priority of recognition as existential involvement only is relevant with respect to the social world but in no way applies to the natural world. 1.3.â•‡ Reification as Forgetfulness of Recognition Honneth moves on then to sum up the results of his reconstruction. Reification cannot be equated with a categorical mistake or with a moral wrong: it refers both to a process and an outcome.21 As for the causes of reification, whereas Heidegger could point to “the deforming effect of ontological world-pictures”22 that induces “SeinsverÂ�gessenheit”, Lukács is induced by his own framework to resort to social causes. In several passages we encounter the thesis that certain social conditions – the capitalist economy, the cash nexus, the exploitation of wage labour and the ubiquitous spreading of the market orientation – compel a kind of neutralisation of our necessarily antecedent stance of involvement and recognition. Honneth finds this explanation â•‡ ibid., p. 59. â•‡ ibid., p. 63. 22 â•‡ ibid., p. 64. 20 21


implausible and tries to develop a notion of reification that does not convey the counterintuitive point that any instance of neutralisation and objectification – including those in the service of life-saving or life-enhancing problem-solving – should count as reification and as undermining the fabric of social life. He wishes to mitigate the opposition between recognitional and non-recognitional forms of knowledge and, after distinguishing two modes of the relationship that recognitional or objectifying forms of knowledge and stances toward the world can have with each other,23 he presents his own reconstructed notion of reification. Reification is best understood as “forgetfulness of recognition”, that is, a loss of the “consciousness of the degree to which knowledge and cognition owe their existence to an antecedent stance of involvement and recognition”.24 This forgetfulness comes in three forms. First, “when our relation to other persons is at issue, reification signifies our having lost sight of our antecedent recognition”.25 Second, when our relation to the objective world is concerned, reification instead signifies “our having lost sight of the multiplicity of ways in which the world has significance for those that we have antecedently recognized”.26 The third form is ‘self-reification’ or inauthenticity, a relation of the person to their own self that embeds the same forgetfulness. But how is it possible to have a nonrecognitional relation to one’s own self? Drawing on different sources, from Winnicott to Frankfurt to Bieri, Honneth argues that this defective self-relation can come in two ways. First, one may take a merely cognitive-instrumental attitude toward one’s inner nature – what Finkelstein calls a ‘detectivist relation’. Among the authors who have exposed the indefensibility of this cognitivistic understanding of one’s relation to oneself Honneth cites Searle, but a number of additional important sources – from Pascal, to Valery, to Girard, to Luhmann – are explored in Larmore’s Les pratiques du moi.27 The other kind of defective relation to one’s inner world is a stance called “constructivism” by Honneth: namely, the idea that we create ourselves, our inner nature, by virtue of self-description solely.28 This hyper-voluntaristic model of the relation of the person to the self is â•‡ ibid., pp. 67–68. â•‡ ibid., p. 68. 25 â•‡ ibid., p. 78. 26 â•‡ ibid., p. 78. 27 â•‡See Larmore, Pratiques, pp. 53–89. 28 â•‡See Honneth, Verdinglichung, p. 86. 23 24

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equally oblivious of the recognition moment. Honneth tries to steer a middle course, called “expressionism”, according to which “neither do we merely perceive our mental states as objects, nor do we construct them by manifesting them to others. Instead, we articulate them in the light of those feelings which are already familiar to us … It is thus advisable for us to speak here as well of the necessity of an antecedent stance of recognition”,29 by which Honneth understands that the subject must regard their desires and feelings, and psychic experiences in general, as worthy of articulation, must develop an affirmative attitude of “care of the self ” or of “self-love” (Frankfurt), which I have called authenticity in the past.30 We are now in need of a new explanation for the rise of such a distorted attitude towards one’s own self. Lukács imputed reification to the influence of market attitudes, failing to distinguish between mere depersonalisation (for local, temporary and functional purposes) and reification. He also failed to acknowledge the counterbalancing moment of the legal recognition of the person. Honneth mentions further reifying developments as (a) the increasing hollowing out of the legal substance of labour contracts, (b) practices in which children’s potential talents have begun to be regarded solely as an issue of genetic measurement and manipulation,31 and (c) institutionalised practices that are functionally tailored to the presentation of our own self and emotion-work, practices where the pretence of having certain feelings is part and parcel of the activity (for example, job interviews, organised dating services). 2.â•‡ Reification Assessed: A Threefold Benchmark In the remaining part I would like to discuss three areas of Honneth’s theory of recognition where I think further reflection would be important. The first area has to do with the concept of reification and the explanation of the social basis of reification. The second area concerns the relation of the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis to the notion of

â•‡ ibid., p. 88. â•‡See H. Frankfurt, The Reasons of Love, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004 and A. Ferrara, Reflective Authenticity. Rethinking the Project of Modernity, New York & London, Routledge, 1998. 31 â•‡See Honneth, Verdinglichung, p. 102. 29 30


validity to which Honneth appears to be committed. The third area concerns the potential for Honneth’s theory of recognition to present itself as the core of what in Rawlsian parlance is called a ‘political conception of justice’. 2.1.â•‡ Three Kinds of Reification and the Explanation of Inauthenticity ‘Reification’ should be best understood, from Honneth’s own point of view, as a general concept that designates a pathological, distorted or life-stifling, ‘anti-eudaimonistic’ modality of our relation to the external, the social and the internal world. With respect to the external world, in its dual meaning as the world of nature and the world of man-made physical and non-physical artefacts and processes, reification means a loss of the perception of the priority of the intersubjective segmenting of the world, the intersubjective assignment of relevance and finality to our knowledge. Call this form of reification technical fetishism. As in the classical theory of commodity fetishism, in this more general attitude we are led to neglect the intersubjective dimension prior to cognition: we see things and processes in lieu of the intersubjective web of actions and goals underlying them. We see things and processes within their proper boundaries, but we lose sight of the practices in terms of which those boundaries are drawn. With respect to the social world, reification means the neglect or disregard of the intrinsic worth of the other person, treating the other ‘as a means’, valuing the person in terms of some functional benefit and not as an autonomous source of meaning and action. Call this form of reification misrecognition (but also the term ‘alienation’ could be rescued). Finally, regarding the internal world, reification means a loss of the sense of how the single mental states and affects that we experience neither occur to us like external facts nor are mere products of our will, but come together in a more or less coherent pattern (partly modifiable by us, but not at our entire disposal), which individuates us as a single person. Call this form of reification inauthenticity. Why should we then expect that one and the same set of social factors can explain the increase in reification in contemporary society across these distinct specifications of the concept? The social processes that foster technical fetishism may not be the same as those that cause alienation or misrecognition to gain ground, and these in turn may not coincide at all with the processes that induce inauthenticity. The social

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aetiology of reification should then be a more differentiated endeavour than Honneth makes it appear, and more should be said about what fetishism, misrecognition or alienation and inauthenticity share in common as species of the same genus. Let me focus then on the specific aetiology of inauthenticity. Honneth’s examples of practices potentially conducive to inauthenticity are all quite appropriate and his list could be expanded further. In a way, emotion-work as classically described by Arlie Hochschild – the sale, for a wage, of one’s ability to present credible emotions and to induce emotions in others (the flight attendant’s sale of their capacity to arouse a valuable sense of safety, the bill collector’s sale of their capacity to arouse a valuable sense of alarm)32 – has been supplemented by an even more insidious commercialisation of subjectivity. Television programs have become quite popular – Big Brother being the infamous epitome of them – whose appeal is not the manufacturing and sale of conceited emotions, but the display (and sale of the audience’s attention to the advertising agencies) of authentic feelings of rage, love, jealousy and the like. Couples, parent-child dyads, siblings, former friends rush to display their authentic emotions for the benefit of the audience and for the profit of the television stations selling time to the advertising industry. The enormous popularity of this form of entertainment causally contributes to blur the line between the self-abusing display of emotions and their display in the context of undistorted relations of recognition. The main constructive criticism that could be addressed to Honneth’s account of the aetiology of inauthenticity is that another explanatory model, distinct from the Lukácsian and Simmelian emphasis on the depersonalising influence of the capitalist market and of money as such, could be more useful: namely, Rousseau’s idea that inauthenticity is fostered by a social competition for intrinsically divisive, zero-sum goods – an idea underlying his critique of the pathologies of modernity in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.33 Ever since competition for rank, property or power made its appearance in primitive agricultural societies, contends Rousseau, “it became 32 â•‡See A. Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983. 33 â•‡ J.J. Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind” in J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and the Discourse on the Origin Inequality, ed. L.G. Crocker, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1967, pp. 223–30.


to the interest of men to appear what they really were not”34 in order to secure the rewards – wealth, power and prestige – afforded by a competitive mechanism for social reproduction and by a competitive kind of division of labour. These rewards are like zero-sum objects. In fact, in order for the acquisition of wealth to constitute a meaningful goal, there must exist others who are not rich. Similarly, people can take an interest in power only insofar as they see the possibility of gaining power over others. Furthermore, the outcome of any competition depends among other things on what the others believe of us. Thus, argues Rousseau, by rewarding conformity with the existent roles and participation in the division of labour with such zero-sum goods, all societies – and especially modern civil society – have indirectly put a premium on cunning, on the ability to mislead and induce fear, on envy and diffidence. On the other hand, through competition society induces not just insincerity, but also inauthenticity. The fear of losing ground in social competition makes it convenient for people to choose the solid ground of established, stereotyped forms of self-representation over a toilsome search for their true motives and identity. Under the pressure of competition people become so dependent on the opinion of others, argues Rousseau, that even their sense of self-cohesion is endangered and the self is gradually reduced to pure exteriority, a mere copy of what society requires. At the apex of social evolution, in the Parisian society of his times celebrated by Diderot as a source of new possibilities for self expression, Rousseau saw a gallery of masks under which persons no longer existed – total reification in the area of the relation to oneself, total inauthenticity.35 This insight into the relation between the mechanism of social reproduction and the dominant character traits is one of the most valuable elements in Rousseau’s legacy. Today, in a globalised world, such

34 â•‡ ibid., p. 224. For a reconstruction of Rousseau’s argument about modern society’s inducing inauthenticity in its members, see A.Ferrara, Modernity and Authenticity. A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albany, SUNY Press, 1993, pp. 47–50. 35 â•‡On this interpretation of Rousseau’s critique of modern society, see J. Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La Transparence et l’Obstacle, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, p. 15; M. Berman, The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society, New York, Athenaum, 1972, pp. 136–144 and A. Ferrara, Modernity and Authenticity. A Study of the Social and Ethical Thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 47–50.

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critique of a social reproduction based on competition retains relevance for us in an entirely new guise. The pressure toward inauthenticity, which threatened to thwart the relation of the individual to self, manifests itself now as an homogenising force exerted on every country in the world, and especially on the poorest and weakest ones. The matrix of incentives is exactly the same as the one affecting the individual. In a global economy where competition enjoins each stateactor to lower the cost of labour and increase ‘flexibility’ in labour contracts, no country, especially if peripheral and poor, can really afford the toilsome and uncertain search for original economic policies nor really refuse the incentive of success, or even simply survival, that comes with policies of flexibility and low labour costs. To sum up, the ‘social aetiology’ component of the theory of reification should follow the differentiation of the concept and should provide social-theoretical accounts – as opposed to such philosophical grand narratives as the dialectics of enlightenment, the rationalisation thesis, the Lukácsian process of reification, or the Heideggerian “Seinsvergessenheit” – of the causal processes that reinforce reification in contemporary society. 2.2.â•‡ The Priority of the ‘Priority of Recognition’ The second area where the theory of recognition might benefit from further reflection concerns the relation of the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis to the programmatic understanding of validity underlying Honneth’s philosophical position. Honneth’s position would be haunted by a performative contradiction if the thesis of the ‘priority of recognition’ were to be presented as a constative illustration of how things are in the world. Paradoxically, the ‘priority of recognition’ would be affirmed in the most classical ‘priority of cognition’ vein. And if the priority of recognition cannot be a fact of the world that we hit on or miss, what can it possibly be? Regardless of the substantive aspects of the theory, this is the juncture where I have come to think that not just my own effort to understand validity as linked with authenticity and judgement,36 but all

36 â•‡For an account of this intrinsic need for a post-foundationalist universalism to be ‘reflective’ in order to escape a performative contradiction, and of how this thorough reflectivity of our reconstruction of normativity is foreshadowed by Hegel and Heidegger, see Ferrara, Reflective Authenticity, Chapter 8.


philosophical theories that purport to be universalistic, or at least nonrelativist, and at the same time post-metaphysical or post-foundationalist, had better undergo a reflexive turn. We need to interrogate the subject of the philosophising, the constructed subject that, in Honneth’s view should embrace the theory of recognition as the best account of the intersubjective constitution of human subjectivity, of the nature of value, of the pathologies of modern life and of many other topics of interest. Who is that subject? That subject is all of us who live in the present philosophical context, the Rawlsian ‘you and me’. If we, namely ‘you and I’, put ourselves in the position of a philosopher who thinks about what a fictional collective subject comprising all human beings situated in our historical predicament could possibly accept as the best account of unreified subjectivity, then we can imagine that in reflecting on its own relation to itself this subject, no less than Honneth’s individual subject described in Reification, would wish to stay clear: • of a ‘detectivist’ conception of itself whereby the irrecusable, and therefore constitutive, ‘priority of recognition’ is discovered to be a factually true description of its own constitution • of a merely ‘constructivist’ conception of itself whereby the ‘priority of recognition’ stems from an act of choice and is validated by the mere fact of choosing or preferring to call it a true description. We are then left with the desired option of a ‘recognitional’ understanding of the ‘priority of recognition’. Staying within Honneth’s vocabulary, the vindication of the ‘priority of recognition’ cannot but take place (if we want to avoid the performative contradiction of claiming to have ‘discovered’ such priority) in the context of an envisaged relation of ‘care’, ‘affirmation’ and ‘expressive contact’ of this subject with itself and its own history. Drawing on a philosophical vocabulary closer to my judgement view of validity, we could say that ‘care’ and ‘affirmation’ demand that the human subject in question (or the philosopher who anticipates an argument for that subject) pass a reflective judgement as to which of our diverse notions of praxis best fits that paradigmatic relation of ‘care’ and ‘affirmation’. The priority of recognition over cognition, from this reflective point of view, amounts then neither to a discovery nor to an omnipotent delusion of self-construal: it itself stems from an act of care and affirmation. I wonder whether, at this precise juncture, we would not hit on the ineliminable role of judgement in the service of the optimal fulfilment

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of an identity. I wonder whether our adopting the ‘priority of recognition over cognition’ stance is not to be ultimately seen as an act of reflective judgement about what the relation of care and affirmation toward ourselves demands of us. Were this so, we would have discovered that a judgement moment – reflective judgement as to what is most conducive to the flourishing of an identity – plays a role also for the thesis concerning the priority of recognition over cognition.37 To put the point as a question: If the validity of the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis cannot be made to rest on its alleged correspondence to some discovered fact without thereby incurring a performative contradiction, on what other basis can it be claimed? Can such basis be other than the potential of the ‘priority of recognition’ thesis for leading to the flourishing of our shared identity, the identity of all individuals like ‘you and I’ who live within this historical and philosophical horizon? Can such basis be identified in ways other than passing judgement on the integrity or authenticity of individuals so situated? 2.3.â•‡ Recognition and Reification as ‘Political’ Notions Finally, underlying Honneth’s reconstruction of the concept of reification and his entire view of recognition is the ambition to contribute not simply to an inquiry into the intersubjective nature of subjectivity, but also to identify a normative core, anchored in the social ontology of subjectivity. This could then serve as a richer and thicker basis, relative to the various brands of proceduralism and political liberalism currently on offer, for developing a viable notion of justice and of the moral point of view. The just society – so I interpret Honneth’s aspiration – should be something more than a rule of law revolving around constitutional essentials agreed to by free and equal citizens in the context of the public use of reason. I am thoroughly sympathetic to his aim but at the same time believe that to bring the theory of recognition closer to constituting the core of a thicker-than-liberal view of justice for contemporary society and the core of our political-philosophical intuitions about legitimacy, further reflection is necessary on its core concepts. One of these is in fact ‘reification’ next to ‘social pathology’. Such reflection has to address the 37 â•‡For a general outline of the judgement paradigm, see Ferrara, The Force of the Example. The Paradigm of Judgment, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 16–41.


question, unavoidable for us after the modification impressed to our philosophical horizon by the work of John Rawls: Is the theory of recognition ‘political’? Is the notion of reification reconstructed in its light ‘political’? Is the diagnosis of certain ‘pathologies’ resting on images of positive and good social practices that are uncontroversial? How should we understand the image of a good social praxis embedded in the theory of recognition? Again, it seems that if we connect the theory of recognition with a comprehensive claim about the true nature of social life we fail to vindicate the potential inherent in the theory for offering us a viable yet thicker-than-liberal view of justice. That potential, it appears, is best vindicated by understanding the theory of recognition as a ‘freestanding’ projection – to be validated via the consensus of free and equal citizens – of what the image of ‘fair social cooperation’ is supposed to do within the scheme of a legitimate liberal rule of law outlined in Political Liberalism.38 We could understand the notion of a web of relations of recognition as including that of fair cooperation in a division of labour, and yet as including also richer elements of a developmental, affective, moral nature. So understood, the claims of a theory of recognition could also serve as the shared basis for the operation of public reason. I understand that there is something paradoxical about urging these considerations on an author who has in the past taken issue against the growing risk that a kind of irenic ‘left Rawlsianism’ may become an uncritical scholastic koiné and replace what once used to be called critical theory. Yet I find it difficult for any contemporary theory about society to escape the consequences of the presence of strong democratic intuitions within our philosophical horizon. For either we settle for our considerations on the ‘reification potential’ inherent in certain social practices (job interviews, commercialisation of feelings, media exploitation of authentic feelings) to remain just a critical denunciation, a matter for pamphlets and critical academic journals, or we have the aspiration to reshape the relevant practices through the medium of law. And to the extent that such aspiration is connected with the theory of recognition, it is hard in my opinion to escape the consequence that the various arguments grouped in the

38 â•‡See J.Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993), New York, Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 15–22. For the definition of a legitimate liberal rule, see p. 136.

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theory should be submitted to the test of being not just another comprehensive conception of the human being, but part and parcel of a political view of the person and of social life, compatible as such with a plurality of other, also reasonable, conceptions. While in several respects Honneth is very careful to jettison the aspects of the Lukácsian theory of reification that no longer appear to fit with our present philosophical horizon, one of the challenges that remains for his theory of recognition to meet, but which arguably is within reach, is that of taking distance from the comprehensive quality of the original formulation of the theory in order for the insights therein contained to become fully part of our understanding of the basic structure of a democratic society. As with all nuggets, the theory of reification needs to have all the tailings removed from it before its gold reflections can truly shine.

Chapter FOURTEEN

Rejoinder Axel Honneth Every author, if he is lucky, is repeatedly compelled by his readers to reexamine his own work. Past formulations aimed at solving a certain problem or sketching a new idea return to him in the shape of objections or queries, which prevent him from being satisfied with what he has written and drive him to make further clarifications. For the most part this is a wholly spontaneous process, in which scattered conversations and reviews give impulses for further consideration. But on certain rare occasions this impulse takes the shape of a book in which a whole collection of critical reflections is contained. I owe this very fortunate experience to Danielle Petherbridge, who has taken the trouble to convince a handsome number of authors to engage in a written discussion of my work. My sincere gratitude goes to her for the care and endurance with which she has pursued this project. Of course, it would not have been a success had the authors not managed to formulate interesting and fruitful objections, and I would like to thank them by discussing a few of the more persuasive points they have raised. For the sake of simplicity, I have not addressed the concerns of the various authors individually, but have instead sorted them into different topics. Although this means that in some cases I have not done justice to the comprehensive and interdisciplinary ambitions of the individual contributions, the advantage for the reader and for myself is a greater degree of substantive value. I begin with the essays that focus on the themes of socialisation and microsociology in my theory of recognition; this will involve a discussion of the concerns and proposals offered by Johanna Meehan, Carl-Göran Heidegren and (to some degree) Alessandro Ferrara (1). I go on to address the reflections on my writings on the social-theoretical status of the concept of recognition, for which the essays contributed by Emmanuel Renault and Nicholas H. Smith are representative (2). I then turn to the numerous concerns about the political-ethical thrust of my theory of recognition. Objections of this kind can be found in the essays by Max Pensky, Bert

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van den Brink, Robert Sinnerbrink and Antti Kauppinen – a daunting number of authors indeed! (3) Finally, I discuss objections to the methodological problem of how I justify my normative perspective. Although it may seem artificial to separate this issue from the preceding questions, I have found it useful to distinguish the more substantive objections from those of a more methodological nature. In this connection I will deal with the contributions provided by Rainer Forst, Christopher Zurn and Alessandro Ferrara (4). It was most valuable for me to read the more survey-like essays by Joel Anderson and Jean Philippe Deranty, which continuously deliver material for the background of my rejoinder. 1. In my book Struggle for Recognition I attempted to trace the emergence of different relations of recognition to the successful management of conflicts that regularly arise in the course of individual socialisation. Although I essentially focused on the dimension of love,1 in principle I was convinced that all of our recognitional expectations must possess an ontogenetic prehistory. Whoever maintains that humans are social beings cannot avoid outlining an individual educational process through which subjects acquire the vocabulary to justify and differentiate their claims to recognition. Therefore, the reciprocal claims raised not only in relationships of love, but also in modern legal relationships and social contexts of solidarity, must have been previously learned through a process of socialising interaction, at least rudimentarily. Probably the most complex instance concerns relationships of love, because it is only then that a child begins to grasp the fact that he is a member in a community of beings that recognise each other. The behavioural schema of recognition must be learned here first, and it is merely filled out at later stages through the acquisition of conceptions about the reciprocal ascription of abilities and rights. The ancillary processes remain for the most part unexplored, as there are but few investigations into the socialising mechanisms through which children learn to see themselves from the perspective of concrete others as capable subjects with rights. Nevertheless, these processes are not as 1 â•‡Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 95–107.

rejoinder393 obscure as those very early interactions that place the infant into the human sphere by sensitising him to the experience of mutual recognition. Originally I based my description of these socialising processes on the object-relational theory by Donald Winnicott. While working on Struggle for Recognition I still believed I could draw exclusively on an intersubjective form of psychoanalysis in order to gain a complete picture of the initial steps toward mutual recognition. Johanna Meehan objects to this conviction by referring to recent empirical research on infant development, and accuses me of basing my theory on assumptions long since disproven by these groundbreaking investigations. The initial state of infant development is now interpreted very differently from when Winnicott undertook his psychoanalytic studies. The infant is no longer viewed as a wholly detached entity who believes himself to be master of his environment, without any awareness for other centres of action. Instead the infant is viewed as an interactive entity seeking to make contact with his or her immediate care-givers and expects to be accepted by them.2 In my recent essays, which Johanna Meehan will hardly have been able to take into consideration, I have already taken into account the revisions that she points out. Daniel Stern’s empirical investigations have occasioned me to at least partly abandon the notion of a primitive symbiosis between infants and their primary care-givers.3 In addition, the splendid studies by Michael Tomasello and Peter Hobson have motivated me to introduce a stage of elementary recognition that precedes all other forms of normative recognition.4 In the face of all these points of agreement, the dispute between Johanna Meehan and myself comes down to the degree to which the experience of “being with” (Meehan) is present in the earliest stages of human life. Because it will be difficult to find an answer via purely empirical means, it might be helpful to recall a basic idea presented by Jean-Philippe Deranty in this volume. As is the case of many other theories, in my own theory there is a “circular 2 â•‡See a summary of this issue in Martin Dornes, “Psychoanalyse und KleinÂ� kindforschung: Einige Grundthemen der Debatte”, in Die frühe Kindheit. Entwick lungspsychologie der ersten Lebensjahre, Frankfurt/Main, Fischer, 1997, pp. 18–53. 3 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Facetten des vorsozialen Selbst”, Psyche, 2001 (55), pp. 790–802; also published in Martin Altmeyer/Helmut Thomä, eds., Die vernetzte Seele, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 2006, pp. 314–333; see also “Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Supposed Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis”, Philosophical Explorations, 2(3), 1999, pp. 225–242. 4 â•‡Axel Honneth, Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 41–46.

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interlocking” of its various axioms, such that solutions offered in the various subsections converge with each other to a large extent. Therefore, my theory of socialisation cannot be grasped wholly independent of the other building blocks of my theory. It was in this spirit of theoretical holism that I have always sought the roots of the individual’s capacity for resistance – which has always been a crucial claim of Critical Theory – in the early child’s developmental process. After all, the idea that the individual with all of his or her psychic motivations could be seamlessly integrated into society would have contradicted my interest in a permanent potential for resistance and emancipatory change.5 This insistence, which derives from a hardly destructible “partiality” (Deranty) of the theory, leads me to interpret Johanna Meehan’s research results in a somewhat different light than she herself proposes. Where she suspects an infant form of the experience of “being with”, I see the infant’s painful compulsion to break with the merely momentary states of symbiosis with the primary care-giver and become an independent entity, despite my acceptance of “primary intersubjectivity” and thus of an infant “self ”. This antecedent, perhaps not traumatic, but certainly frightening experience of separation awakens a permanent striving for intersubjective bonding within us and prevents us from ever being content with any of the later forms of recognition. All social manners of “being with” are marked by a fault line that derives from the schematic memories of a merely sporadic state of primary symbiosis.6 While the dispute between Johanna Meehan and myself is of a more theoretical-political nature, when it comes to the constructive criticisms presented by Carl-Göran Heidegren, the dispute goes a bit deeper. I have difficulty locating the exact theoretical point at which we go our separate ways. Over long stretches in his text, Heidegren describes the developments my theory has undergone since Struggle for Recognition with great expertise and impressive circumspection. Not only has he taken note of small changes to the original architecture of my theory of recognition (e.g., how I have distanced myself from

5 â•‡Axel Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason”, in Rush, Fred, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 336– 360, esp. 352–357; an extended version has been published in Moran, Dermot, ed., The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, London/New York, Taylor and Francis, 2008, pp. 784–813. 6 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Facetten des vorsozialen Selbst”.

rejoinder395 G.H. Mead or how I have historicised the notion of “love”), he also recognises that the basic thrust of all these revisions consists of a stronger emphasis on the evaluative character of recognition. At a certain point, however, Heidegren begins to draw conclusions that appear to go far beyond what I have intended. The change-over takes place as soon as he begins to describe recognition as an individual act that can be performed with more or less skill. He thus suddenly grasps the stance in which we ascribe to each other a normative status as something whose execution – in terms of duration and expression – is subject to certain standards of excellence. The inevitable consequence is that he treats recognition as a virtue that must maintain a kind of Aristotelian mean between two different extremes: too little duration and emotional forthrightness and too many gestures and too much intrusiveness. The danger of turning recognition into a virtue is that it saddles us with a greater moral burden than most can carry. If we speak of the “art of recognition”, as does Heidegren, then we will be easily tempted to classify members of society according to whether they have learned to recognise others with the appropriate moderation. Yet we know all too well that different social milieus and ethnic groups possess very different behavioural schemata for expressing the same form of recognition. The only way to avoid the anti-egalitarian consequences of this reformulation of the theory of recognition is to grasp the socially differential forms of recognition as being anchored institutionally and acquired through socialisation, and thus can be expected as an average attitudinal pattern. Anything that falls above or below the average lands in the behavioural repertoire for which each individual is responsible, and which is morally insignificant. Of course it would be desirable if in our societies people clearly and publicly displayed attitudes of legal respect, care for those they love and forms of social esteem, but this should not lead us to elevate the “art” of recognition to a norm that all members of society should strive to attain. A just society requires no more than that subjects learn the various patterns of mutual recognition “well enough”. Besides, the main burden of securing justice does not lie with individuals, but with the institutionalised practices and norms which they have grown up with and mostly take for granted. This last sentence illustrates what I take to be the task of the theory of socialisation and developmental psychology within my concept of recognition. By making reference to these individual disciplines, I first seek to explain the nature of the elementary mechanisms by which

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infants learn to grasp other people as intentional entities. The first necessary steps can be understood according to the pattern of “elementary recognition”, which consists in the acquisition of a second-stage intentionality and of initial schemata of collective intentionality.7 Although I made no mention of this initial, elementary stage of recognition in my earlier studies, I now regard it as the ontogenetical precondition for placing oneself in the human lifeworld. The investigations carried out by Peter Hobson, and especially the contributions to comparative developmental psychology carried out by Michael Tomasello, proved especially helpful in this regard. However, these processes of learning elementary recognition merely constitute a first step, because the human lifeworld also consists of historically contingent norms and practices. In the process of socialisation, therefore, children must also learn to acquire these norms that determine how they are to treat other people. This represents the starting point of those ontogenetical processes to which I had originally restricted my focus. My aim was to illuminate the mechanisms by which we acquire a “grammar of recognition” with the aid of the theory of object relations. Small children learn that other humans possess a “normative status” that demands specific attitudes on their own part through interaction with their emotional care-givers, and later with their peers. It is through this kind of socialisation that children acquire what I have termed a society’s “recognition order”. This means that subjects acquire the capacity to move about within the normative structures of their social lifeworld by treating each other in accordance with the specific kind of recognitional relationship they maintain with each other. Unlike Johanna Meehan, I assume that the subject retains an antisocial tendency in spite of its socialisation into the lifeworld. Because socialised individuals preserve a basic recollection of early bonding, they constantly strive for more social collectivisation than is possible under given social conditions. And unlike Carl-Göran Heidegren, I take the average acquired norms of recognition to be sufficient for ensuring the normative integration of society. Anything beyond that derives not from the “art” of recognition, but from the art of “resistance” in which the transcendent substance of these norms are disclosed and advanced against the established order of recognition. â•‡Axel Honneth, Reification, pp. 41–46.

7

rejoinder397 2. In my remarks on the theory of socialisation, I have made mention of some of the concepts underlying my attempt to develop a theory of society on the basis of the concept of recognition. I realise of course that I have not made much progress on this front. At the moment I have little more than an intuition, based in part on Talcott Parson’s system concept, that societies must be understood as normative systems of order comprised of various spheres of institutionalised relations of recognition, in which necessary tasks of social reproduction are managed under the condition of reciprocal, if not necessarily symmetrical recognition. In essence this normative conception of society represents an attempt to find a place for Hegel’s idea of “objective spirit” within modern social theory. This means primarily that the many different social subsystems represent spheres of action in which a basic mechanism of mutual recognition asserts itself in different ways depending on the function of that particular subsystem. The structure and content of these different spheres of recognition change depending on the core values according to which societies interpret their relationship to themselves and their surroundings. Although I must still develop these ideas further before I can confidently present them as the basic assumptions of a theory of society, two of the authors in this volume have already raised doubts that are worthy of consideration. Emmanuel Renault objects to the categorial apparatus I employ here, while Nick Smith casts doubt on my definition of the relationship between culture and the economy. I would like to begin with the more specific objections advanced by Nick Smith, before turning to the more general remarks made by Emmanuel Renault. Smith first of all gives an impressively clear and precise description of the problem at the heart of the debate between Nancy Fraser and myself on the relationship between recognition and redistribution.8 Our debate centred around a question that arose in great part due to the work of Jürgen Habermas. Given the clear opposition he set between the sphere of the economy and that of the social “lifeworld”, it was no longer clear how injustices within each of these spheres are related to one another. Although our debate assumes that this question first arose in connection with my theory of recognition, instead it had 8 â•‡Nancy Fraser/ Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, London/New York, Verso Books, 2003.

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already emerged in Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action. Can we describe the social injustices that occur either in the sphere of the economy or the social lifeworld as both being instances of “disrespect”, or must we place them in two distinct categories? Smith’s analysis makes clear that this rather normative question cannot be separated from the social-theoretical question of how the economic sphere and the cultural sphere, system and lifeworld, relate to each other. Whether we like it or not, both Nancy Fraser and I are compelled to deal with the problem bestowed upon us by The Theory of Communicative Action. Therefore, Smith is correct to describe our contributions to this debate as two different proposals for dealing with this fundamental conceptual issue. I agree with Smith’s doubts about the proposals offered by Nancy Fraser, as I am also uncertain as to how we can analyse the unequal distribution of advantages and burdens in the economic sphere without reference to some criterion of desired recognition between economic actors. In order to know what is false or unjust about the pattern of distribution within the economic sphere, we must possess a normative criterion for judging that distribution of goods. This in turn is only possible if we have already determined the normative status or value economic agents should grant each other. When it comes to formulating a theory of society, it would be unwise to analyse the economic sphere without taking into account the normative patterns of recognition that necessarily underlie this sphere in one kind or another. There should not be a conceptual gap between the economic sphere and the cultural sphere, between the economic system and the lifeworld, for this would prevent us from perceiving the norms of recognition inherent in economic activities. As far as I can see, Nick Smith and I are in total agreement up to this point. Our differences begin when he turns to the theoretical proposals with which I have sought to answer this sociological question. He raises two questions intended to point out certain limits of my approach; both objections are social-ontological in nature and concern what he terms my “anti anti-normativist” approach. Smith doubts first of all whether various different (recognitional) norms truly have the historically formative power I ascribe to them. He is not convinced that normative insights can create social facts representing incontrovertible realities and thus immune to conflicting political developments. He demonstrates his doubts by referring to the social rights granted by the Western welfare state; just in the last few years we have seen how quickly these rights can be scaled back in

rejoinder399 favour of boosting the capitalist economy. Indeed it would be naïve to claim that established norms of recognition cannot ever be revised. Even in cases where such norms have already taken on a positive legal character, the example of the barbarity [Zivilisationsbruch] of NaziGermany makes all too clear that under certain circumstances normative achievements can be dramatically rescinded.9 I have investigated such “relapses” in two different essays. In my short piece on reification I attempt to describe the circumstances in which even the most elementary form of interpersonal recognition can be undermined;10 and in an essay co-authored by Martin Hartmann I investigate the socioeconomic conditions leading to a “paradoxical” transformation of social-democratic achievements into a series of repressive behavioural norms.11 So it would be highly misleading if I also claimed that normative insights about the need to expand relationships of social recognition lead to incontrovertible social facts. Therefore, what I describe as a “social fact” in the places cited by Smith is not meant to indicate an “institutional” reality, but mental or social attitudes that have not yet taken the shape of sanctioned institutions. These are second-order facts that belong no less to reality, because they exercise constant pressure to make changes to first-order social facts. This is what I intend when I say that normative insights have the capacity to generate “incontrovertible” facts of social reality. These kinds of advances represent attitudes or convictions shared by the members of the society that can be “forgotten” only under very special circumstances; they therefore have a power to create permanent expectations that is just as much a part of social reality as other officially sanctioned modes of comportment. Wherever these “existing” norms have been harmed or rescinded, at least a portion of the people concerned will have the impression of a social regress – just as Kant spoke of the French Revolution as an irreversible symbol of history [Geschichtszeichen].12

â•›â•›â•›â•›9 â•‡Rolf Zimmermann, Philosophie nach Auschwitz. Eine Neubestimmung von Moral in Politik und Gesellschaft, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2005, Ch. I.1. 10 â•‡Axel Honneth, Reification. 11 â•‡Martin Hartmann/Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalist Modernization”, Constellations, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, pp. 41–58. 12 â•‡Immanuel Kant, “Der Streit der Fakultäten”, Königsberg 1798; Axel Honneth, “Die Unhintergehbarkeit des Fortschritts. Kants Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Moral und Geschichte”, in Axel Honneth, Pathologien der Vernunft, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 2007, pp. 9–27.

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Smith’s second objection refers to my basic social-ontological assumptions. At issue is the difficult question of how we can adequately describe the interactions of the market without making use of a normfree language of self-regulated processes. As we have already seen, Smith agrees with me that it would be fatal to abstain completely from normative-moral termini in describing markets (for labour and goods), because this would make us incapable of immanently criticising certain developments on the labour market. However, this desire for immanent criticism should not lead us to stitch together an arbitrary categorial arsenal for analysing markets. And yet that is precisely the tendency that Smith appears to find in my line of argumentation. Although he agrees that labour markets can be saturated with certain norms of recognition, he accuses me of forbidding the question as to whether markets might have an inherent tendency to undermine these very norms. His objection, therefore, is that I ignore a theoretical possibility that makes up the innermost core of Critical Theory’s Marxist legacy. It is not easy to get a clear picture of what is meant by the claim that this is a social-ontological question. If we take everything that might contribute to the explanation of invariable components of social reality and subsume it all under this category, then we can easily conceive of the existence of labour markets along the lines of a new, contractual relationship of recognition. These markets will emerge as soon as subjects contractually ascribe to each other the normative capacity to exchange services fairly and in keeping with the agreed-upon terms. Of course, much depends on which normative elements we understand as making up fairness; on this point I follow the rich analyses by Hegel and Durkheim, who assume that labour markets can only function in a socially compatible manner if agents make strong normative concessions.13 However, all these questions are to be separated from the issue as to whether these markets’ conditions of existence contain a tendency to hollow out their own initial rules of fairness. I am very unsure about the methodological character needed to answer this question; obviously capitalist labour markets tend to lower the value of labour-power, make working conditions more precarious and raise demands for worker flexibility. By the way, this is a phenomenon Hegel

13 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Arbeit und Anerkennung. Versuch einer Neubestimmung”, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 56 (3), 2008, pp. 327–341.

rejoinder401 already described in his Philosophy of Right. Nevertheless, the status of these claims remains uncertain, because it is still unclear whether this is a necessary dynamic or instead the result of social conflicts. I personally prefer the latter view, according to which the conditions on the labour market, including the latter’s inherent conditions of fairness, are never more than the temporary result of social struggles. This implies that it would also be wrong to ascribe to the capitalist labour market any kind of “inherent” tendency to undermine its own initial normative conditions. The degree to which specific norms of recognition determine the social exchange of services is always the result of a social conflict in which different collective actors – employer’s associations, governmental institutions, and labour unions – are involved. The question I would pose to Nick Smith, therefore, is whether he would be willing to ascribe to capitalist markets an inherent tendency to hollow out rules of fairness and norms of justice. It is true that under capitalist conditions in each transaction on these markets, the sole interest of one of the parties involved necessarily consists in maximising profits. But hasn’t economic sociology recently made clear that even this party, formerly indicated by the over-simplifying term “capital”, must have an interest in maintaining certain norms in order to guarantee certainty of information, good skills and the worker’s motivation.14 At any rate, the fact that there are many different “varieties of capitalism”15 suggests that we should grasp the state of capitalist markets as the result of negotiations over market norms, which are carried out between different actors under culturally-specific conditions. Whereas Nick Smith’s objections are of a more immanent nature, Emmanuel Renault formulates his concerns from a much more external perspective. He has serious doubts as to whether I have succeeded in appropriately analysing the relationship between institutions and recognition. He disagrees both with the idea of an “institutionalised recognition order” and with the notion that some institutions are only indirectly linked to the generation and mediation of social recognition.16 In short, he calls for a comprehensive rethinking of the role of 14 â•‡Jens Beckert, et al, eds., Märkte als soziale Strukturen, Frankfurt/Main, Surkamp, 2007. 15 â•‡Peter Hall/David Soskice, eds., Varieties of Capitalism. The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. 16 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in Bert van den Brink/ David Owen, eds., Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 323–347, esp. 334â•›f.

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institutions in terms of mutual recognition. Here I will only discuss his considerations up to the point at which the basic differences between our accounts become apparent. My main objection to his considerations is that he appears to abandon the action-theoretical approach of a concept of recognition in favour of a structuralist interpretation. Renault begins his argument with an opposition I take to be both unclear and misleading. He claims that we can distinguish between an “expressivist” and a “constitutive” concept of recognition; while the former conceives of social institutions as “expressions” of an antecedent form of mutual recognition, the latter can be viewed as “constitutive” for the various forms of recognition. Renault claims that I defend two versions of the former model (an anthropological strategy and a theory of modernity), while he is a proponent of the latter model. He criticises what he takes to be my “expressionist model” because it implies that the chain of influence between institution and recognition can only run in one direction, namely that only recognition can influence institutions. Whether we think in terms of “anthropology” or a “theory of modernity”, institutions are constituted to various degrees by forms of mutual recognition. In his opinion, however, this robs us of the possibility of analysing the influence of institutions on social recognition in terms of how the former is manifested in processes of “subjectivisation”, of forming social identities and corresponding patterns of behaviour. Therefore, an “expressionist” model does not provide us with the theoretical tools for interpreting the “power” of institutions over subjects and thus the “institutionalised violation” of moral claims. It is not easy to precisely locate the mistake in this line of argumentation, which in my view leads to a distorted representation of my intentions. If I belonged to the “old school”, perhaps I would say that the relationship between institutions and recognition must be conceived in a more “dialectical” fashion. It is true that in the first instance we should think of the act of recognition on the model of reciprocal action, in which two subjects ascribe to each other a certain normative status allowing them to treat each other in accordance with norms of respect and consideration. If we ignore this action-theoretical core of recognition, we will no longer be capable of drawing the consequences for a theory of morality and justice. Ever since the writings of Fichte and Hegel, the whole point of the notion of recognition has been to find an explanation for how moral norms have been able to take root in human beings’ “unsocial sociality” (Kant). But the fact that my

rejoinder403 model has its point of departure in reciprocal action should not lead us to speak of acts that are external to institutional reality, or even of a kind of “presocial” act. By granting each other a normative status, we are always referring to a generalised “other” who informs us of corresponding obligations and norms of consideration. Fichte and his Kantian successors (Karl-Otto Apel, Stephen Darwall) regard this intersubjective act as the foundation of a universalistic morality of respect, while Hegel’s approach historicises it by assuming historically contingent and changing “media” that determine which normative status subjects grant each other. For Hegel, “institutions” are to be understood as a preexisting mean between two interacting subjects – not as an “expression” but as an element of the process of mutual recognition. The historical shape that these media take on in a specific social formation are what I term “recognition orders”. This does not mean that each institution merely reflects the content of intersubjective recognition; rather, subjects draw upon institutionalised norms in the course of recognition, because it is only in light of these institutions that they grant each other a normative status. These “recognition orders” consist of institutionalised normative structures that have grown up around the main tasks of social reproduction, while making the latter dependent upon the mutual fulfillment of obligations and roles. By taking on the appropriate roles, subjects grant each other a normative status that obligates them to respect their partners in interaction. Although this means that institutions exercise a certain kind of power over subjects, it would be wrong to ascribe to them a purely “constitutive” role in the formation of processes of recognition. Although Renault is right in pointing out that we mustn’t conceive of institutions as mere “expressions” or reflections of intersubjective recognitional acts, he makes the mistake of simply inverting this relationship and claiming that forms of recognition are merely the result of institutions. Just as normative structures of action must precede any recognitional stance, subjects under the influence of new experiences and higher demands can also alter the structure of the institutions that surround them. This is the case whenever individuals, after having gained enough security in an existing recognition order, begin to question their normative status and feel restricted by the given normative structure. These learning processes, which are an intersubjective form of what Hegel regarded as advances in the consciousness of liberty, influence existing institutions by shifting their normative structure in the direction of the desired

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expansion. And after these transformations, revisions or revolutions of their normative structure have taken place, institutions once again take up their familiar role as media of intersubjective recognition. Therefore, the relationship between institutions and recognition is not marked by one-sided dependency in either direction, but by “co-evolution”. On the other hand, this only applies to those institutions which, because of their centrality and their widespread effects on society, are capable of founding and preserving social relations of recognition across all categories of belonging for a certain period of time. Hegel regarded the family, civil society and the state as examples of such institutions. Today, that might include “postmodern” intimate relationships, the democratic public sphere and a not-yet existent “just” organisation of social labour. Renault, however, has yet another series of institutions and organisations in mind, which do not take on central, society-wide tasks, but are linked to individual clienteles, e.g. schools, prisons, military institutions – in short, social installations that only comprise social sub-groups and take on related specialised functions. Whether such institutions can mediate self-images that deviate from the dominant recognitional patterns or generate a process of subjectivisation is a question I believe cannot be answered in any fundamental way. History teaches us that we can expect both possibilities. There have been attempts to democratise schools and the military; and there is also a current trend toward reforming the prison system along the model of retribution and confinement.17 It seems that the question as to whether the manner in which subjects are “addressed” in these organisations will fall behind or cross over the threshold of generally institutionalised forms of recognition cannot be answered theoretically, but only empirically. The forms of recognition practiced in schools, the military or the prison system are not immutable, but are the product of constant social conflict and debate. In short, Emmanuel Renault poses an extremely important question, but his search for an answer takes him in the wrong direction. A comprehensive analysis of society should not be content merely to normatively reconstruct those forms of recognition inherent to the central media of social reproduction. In order to grasp the pattern according to which subjects are integrated into society, we also require an analysis of the forms of

17 â•‡See David Garland, The Culture of Control. Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001.

rejoinder405 recognition practiced in other public or private organisations.18 It would be fatal to simply assume that we will only find forms of recognition that fall below the normative level of general forms of interaction. The question as to which patterns of interaction should be implemented in such organisations is always decided in conflictual processes of social negotiation. The results cannot be anticipated theoretically, but can only be explored with the aid of empirical investigations.19 3. While the contributions discussed above all deal with whether I appropriately explain processes of individual socialisation or social reproduction, the essays I turn to now address my work from a more normative perspective. The main question in this context is whether and to what extent the theory of recognition is capable of furnishing the normative prerequisites for a critical theory of society. For the sake of clarity, I want to make a distinction between questions of theoretical application and those of moral justification – admittedly, one that is perhaps too strong. The former set of questions deal with the problem of how fundamental normative concepts should be anchored in social reality, while the latter concerns how to justify the normative perspective of theory in general. Unfortunately, this means depriving myself of the chance to summarise this set of contributions so as to be able to respond to all at once. Even in the first set of problems, under which I subsume the essays by Max Pensky, Bert van den Brink, Robert Sinnerbrink and Antti Kauppinen, the topics and questions are so widespread that I will have to briefly address each author individually. In a remarkably clear and cogent essay, Max Pensky argues that my attempt at a social-theoretical rescue of Hegel’s notion of ethical life and social solidarity is bound to run into normative difficulties because of the irreconcilability of all substantive values with the legal requirements of ethical neutrality. If we conceive of social solidarity as a social 18 â•‡Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society, Cambridge/Mass, Harvard University Press, 1996. 19 â•‡ Luc Boltanski/Laurent Thévenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006; see also Axel Honneth, “Verflüssigungen des Sozialen. Zur Gesellschaftstheorie von Luc Boltanski und Laurent Thévenot”, WestEnd, 5, 2/2008, pp. 84–103.

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relation of recognition in which mutual esteem is based on the fact that people perform services for each other in the light of shared aims, then we will require a measure of agreement on ethical values that is irreconcilable with the principle of neutrality at the heart of liberaldemocratic societies. Unlike other authors that have criticised my attempt to reformulate the notion of solidarity,20 Pensky agrees with the social diagnosis constituting my point of departure. It was not because of a nostalgic clinging to Hegel’s notion of ethical life that I – even in Struggle for Recognition – claimed that even modern liberaldemocratic societies have a need for a kind of integration based on “solidarity” that rests on norms of general respect, but rather my observation that (mature) members of such societies generally suffer at the fact that their individually acquired skills and competencies are neither perceived nor “made use of ” by society. The existence of universal and equal rights, which guarantee individual autonomy via mutual respect, is too abstract and detached from our everyday experience to give individuals the certainty of being part of society. Therefore, as long as modern capitalist societies do not generate and secure media of mutual respect for individual actions and contributions, a substantial lack of social recognition will remain. At this point, there are two different alternatives for contemporary social theory. Either we can claim that the necessary type of esteem can only be cultivated in small, culturally integrated milieus, or we can uphold Durkheim’s notion that this kind of reciprocal recognition can only be generated by a transcendentally institutionalised medium. In all my writings, it is clear that I am a resolute proponent of the second alternative. For various normative reasons I do not see why we should leave the recognition of individual contributions and capacities up to coincidental and porous mechanisms of small-group formation, instead of grasping this as a common duty. The principle of individual achievement underlying social esteem in modern societies is not wrong just because in the past history of capitalism it has always been interpreted one-sidedly in favour of certain social groups. Nevertheless, in Struggle for Recognition I made the mistake of confounding this kind of social esteem based on individual achievement with the recognition of the différend between individual life aims. This 20 â•‡ See David Owen, “Self-Government and Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation”, in Bert van den Brink/David Owen, eds., Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory, pp. 290–320.

rejoinder407 gives the false impression that solidarity in our highly ethically pluralised societies requires a comprehensive normative consensus on the basis of which all individual life aims (that are in conformity with that society’s constitution) can be not only tolerated, but esteemed. Pensky is right in objecting that modern ethical pluralism excludes the possibility of reconciling all the many divergent life aims under one common idea of the good. The “overlapping consensus” between the various cultures within a society consists in an agreement upon constitutive constitutional principles, but not upon ethical values. Yet, if social esteem is linked conceptually to the exchange of services, then this problem will not necessarily arise, at least not directly. Wholly independent of the ethical aims that individual members of society might pursue, they must share an interest in securing the material conditions of their social existence. It is for this reason that in my debate with Nancy Fraser I detached solidarity from the recognition of “individual particularities” and linked it to the performance of individual contributions in economic exchange.21 I also proposed that we conceive of meritocracy or the principle of individual achievement as a third source of social recognition in liberal capitalist societies. Although I express the issue in different terms, I agree with David Miller that subjects involved in economic exchange stand in a relation of recognition that requires them to recognise each other’s individual work.22 At this point another problem arises, for even this type of esteem is not wholly independent of the values upheld by individual social groups. From a sociological perspective, however, it quickly becomes clear that the degree of esteem for certain specific deeds varies in relation to ethical or cultural background assumptions. Here we might think of the notorious degradation of housework in male-dominated Western culture or the public’s ignorance of the unpaid services performed by the elderly. Yet, in the social conflicts that arise out of these problems, we are not faced with a collision between two competing ideas of the good. What is at issue is not the ultimately unanswerable question as to which ethical notions are superior, but the much more “concrete” [sachbezogene] question of which activities are necessary and indispensable for society’s material â•‡ Nancy Fraser/Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? â•‡David Miller, Grundsätze sozialer Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt/Main/New York, Campus Verlag, 2008; see also my introduction: Axel Honneth, “Philosophie als Sozialforschung. Die Gerechtigkeitstheorie von David Miller”, ibid., pp.7–25. 21 22

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reproduction. “Material” reproduction itself does not bear any objective criterion for deciding this issue, because very different activities will be required depending on our ethical perspective. Yet it does give us a more objective point of reference that allows us to settle these debates rationally; therefore, the proposal that we link solidarity in the form of mutual esteem to a fair system of social exchange appears reconcilable with modern ethical pluralism.23 I have already presented a significant part of my answer to Bert van den Brink’s contribution to this volume in my response to Max Pensky. Van den Brink not only objects to my attempt to resuscitate the concept of social solidarity, but also to the idea of a formal concept of the good. In some places his considerations overlap with those of Alessandro Ferrara, which I deal with further below. Van den Brink’s essay revolves around my (and not only my) claim that a formal concept of the good can be developed abstractly on the basis of generally accepted intersubjective preconditions of individual identity formation. If we abstract from the ethical additives these preconditions must bear in the lifeworld, then we are left with a structure of relatively pure, “naked” recognitional patterns that combine to make up the normative infrastructure of a good society. For the sake of clarity, we might compare the methodological procedure for doing so with Rawl’s reflexive equilibrium, even if in our case the procedure is not limited to determining legal constitutional norms. By mutually correcting our historically contingent everyday intuitions and the much more abstract insights we have gained thanks to various philosophical disciplines, we can eventually gain insight into the overlaps between social forms of recognition generally regarded as desirable for a good society. What I do not wholly understand is whether van den Brink objects to such a formal concept in general, or only toward the specific shape I have given it. In some places, he claims that a formal concept of the good is fundamentally irreconcilable with the irrevocable pluralism of our ethical ideals, while in other places he states that we certainly could formulate such a concept when it comes to expanding “full respect” for alternative life aims, as long as they conform to a society’s constitution (176â•›f ). If the latter is the case, van den Brink would object that I also include an aspect of social esteem (and love) in my own concept of the good. Although for reasons of normative orientation it is possible to â•‡ See also Axel Honneth, “Arbeit und Anerkennung. Versuch einer Neubestimmung”.

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rejoinder409 develop an idea of a “good” life for the dimension of legal recognition, this is not true for the dimension of social esteem, which on my account contains a much stronger dose of ethical pluralism. Van den Brink lists a series of convincing examples intended to illustrate the impossibility of finding a neutral position for formulating such an idea of “full” respect. Any attempt to clarify normatively how respect for all (constitutionally reconcilable) ethical ideals can be possible without violating any subcultures always involves a specific value horizon, often one that is socially dominant. The question I would pose to Max Pensky is whether this characterisation might be altered if we sought to restrict the dimension of social respect to the system of economic exchange. Is it not true that under such altered conditions we would be capable of largely detaching ourselves from our own values in order to approximate patterns of social recognition that would have to reign in the sphere of economic exchange, such that no participant would feel that his (justified) claims to respect have been violated? It is probably obvious by now that I regard the normative anticipation of such patterns of mutual respect as being identical with the draft of a fair system of social division of labour. Of course, even after these corrections to my own account, there remain a few questions that Bert van den Brink could shoot back at me. For example, there is the problem that although respect in the exchange of services is linked to the “objective” challenge of social reproduction, it is influenced by ethical convictions that also play a role in determining how we interpret the tasks of social reproduction and evaluate the corresponding contributions. As mentioned above, we can help our cause by pointing out that there is always a prospect of rational decidability in such issues, because competing notions must prove viable in the light of existing requirements of social reproduction. Van den Brink could also ask what remains of elements of social respect linked not to economic exchange, but to individual aims within the horizon of ethical convictions. Here I am inclined to give an answer that resembles the one offered by van den Brink himself; I thereby restrict myself to the sphere of legal recognition and grant each subject the degree of individual autonomy and self-respect needed to articulate individual aims.24 Robert Sinnerbrink’s essay considerably alters the theoretical terrain of my rejoinder, because it focuses on questions that refer to my very 24

â•‡ Nancy Fraser/Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?

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early study of French poststructuralism. Sinnerbrink undertakes the impressive attempt to reconstruct my discussion of the poststructuralist challenge up to the point at which a series of problems within my theory of recognition become apparent. Much of the essay is highly instructive for me, because it illustrates how many insights I owe to my critique of Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard. The question with which he concludes his illuminating reconstruction opens up complex problems to which I can only hint at a solution. Indeed, I have rethought my relationship to Foucault’s works many times over the years, because I have never been wholly satisfied with the results of my critique.25 It is probably an inherent quality of grand, productive theories that they constantly reveal surprising elements preventing any conclusive judgement. One issue I have not conclusively dealt with is his insistence on the inevitability of social struggle and his revised notion of power. Both concepts contain theoretical challenges that have not been taken into account sufficiently by contemporary social theory. Although it is true that, as Robert Sinnerbrink demonstrates so clearly, I arrived at Hegel’s theory of recognition via a study of Foucault’s idea of “strategic intersubjectivity of struggle”, I have largely lost sight of the concept of “struggle” in the course of the development of my own theory of recognition. Although I now realise that the notion of a “normative surplus” or “surplus of validity” in all recognition orders holds the key to a proper understanding of social struggle, I have not yet considered the consequences for the structures and dimensions of our “fractured” intersubjectivity. This is most likely closely linked to the normative structure of our lifeworld, which could be expressed in Foucaultian terms as the permanently contested nature of societies. Because we can only live in social orders that we regard as normatively justified,26 and because the principles of recognition used to justify these orders always contain a constitutive surplus of validity resulting from the fact that their moral promises are fundamentally irredeemable, every social

25 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Afterword to the Second German Edition (1988)”, in Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power, Cambridge/Mass., MIT Press, 1991, pp. xiii–xxxii; Axel Honneth, “Foucault und die Humanwissenschaften. Versuch einer ZwisÂ� chenbilanz,” in Axel Honneth/ Martin Saar, eds., Michel Foucault. Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption. Frankfurter Foucault-Konferenz 2001, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 2003, pp. 15–26. 26 â•‡ Luc Boltanski & Laurent Thévenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth; see also Axel Honneth, “Verflüssigungen des Sozialen. Zur Gesellschaftstheorie von Luc Boltanski und Laurent Thévenot”.

rejoinder411 arrangement must eventually become an issue of dispute between two opposing parties. The explanation I offer for the social inevitability of struggle obviously differs considerably from that of Foucault. Where desire or an unbounded striving for liberty constitutes his explanation for constant conflict, I refer to moral feelings of injustice. Nevertheless, I have come to agree with Foucault that all social orders are permanently disputed and cannot achieve stable and permanent validity, because their normative principles always create moral discontent, which sooner or later must contribute to their own social undermining. This casts yet another light on the formal concept of the good criticised by Bert van den Brink. It does not serve to explain a direction of social development, but to provide a normative criterion that helps us to distinguish developments that are desirable from those that are problematic. The concept of power indirectly sketched by Foucault in his various writings also exercises a measure of influence on my own thought. I have arrived at my own explanation of what he means when he writes that certain modes of thought and praxis exercise power not in terms of repression, but in the “productive” encouragement of social potentials for action. Foucault’s interest concerns a deeper layer of social power that we can only grasp if we abstain from any associations with repression.27 “Power” indicates the result of a process in which individuals are subjected to a network of social rules by learning to translate this network into their psycho-physical habitus via repeated forms of disciplinary practices. All other determinations Foucault develops in connection with his analyses of power can easily be understood as elements of a “regulative” type of power – to use the elegant phrase of Wolfgang Detel.28 For instance, to claim that every historical form of power supposedly has “productive” effects merely means that “scopes of social action” [Spielräume sozialen Handelns]29 are only created via individually trained rules. Foucault’s programmatic use of the term “microphysics of power”30 nicely illustrates the fact that successful 27 â•‡In what follows I draw heavily from my account in “Foucault und die Humanwissenschaften”, in Axel Honneth/Martin Saar (Hg.), Foucault und die Humanwissenschaften. Zwischenbilanz einer Rezeption, pp. 20â•›ff. 28 â•‡Wolfgang Detel, Macht, Moral, Wissen. Foucault und die klassische Antike, Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp, 1998, pp. 55â•›ff. 29 â•‡ ibid, p. 57. 30 â•‡Michel Foucault, Mikrophysik der Macht: Über Strafjustiz, Psychiatrie und Medizin, Berlin, Merve Verlag, 1976.

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disciplining can only be achieved by repeatedly imposing very corporeal modes of behaviour. And finally, the anticentralist thrust of his model of power derives from the fact that the production of rulebound practices must take place in very different, pre-state locations of socialisation in order to be successful. If we understand Foucault’s concept of power as a model of “regulative power”, then perhaps we would be justified in claiming that it represents an attempt to develop a “materialist” transformation of the ideas about social life-forms found in Wittgenstein’s later works. The establishment and exercise of social power consists in the “microphysical” imposition of a form of life that is determined by an entire network of social rules through which a subject is forced to develop a certain relationship to himself, a kind of willing subordination [Herrschaftsbereitschaft] and form of social contact. If, however, the model is to go beyond Wittgenstein’s relativism, then there is a series of normative questions that need to be answered. After all, we need to explain in what sense a specific form of life can be superior or inferior to another system of rules. I have given one possible answer in my essay “Recognition as Ideology”, in which I attempt to conceive of orders of recognition in the Foucaultian sense as dispositifs of socially constitutive rules, in order to identify criteria for distinguishing between recognition orders that merely stabilise systems of domination and those that truly create identities and expand our normative status [statuserweiternd].31 These brief considerations on Foucault’s concept of power also touch on a point in the conclusion of Sinnerbrink’s essay. I have never fully understood why we should emphasise the “corporeality” of all social actions so strongly. For someone with a background in philosophical anthropology and the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty,32 I almost take for granted that processes of social integration and intersubjective conflict always represent a psycho-physical unity, just as do processes of individual socialisation and identity formation. Perhaps owing to my speech-theoretical background, I have not sufficiently emphasised this connection, but I have never doubted the enormous importance of 31 â•‡See Jean-Philippe Deranty, Beyond Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy, Leiden, Brill, 2009, Ch. 4. 32 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Embodied Reason: On the Rediscovery of Merleau-Ponty”, in Axel Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social. Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, Albany/NY, SUNY Press, 1995, pp. 150–157.

rejoinder413 the body in processes of social recognition. Every recognition order represents an ensemble of institutionalised practices containing a corporeal element (gestures, physical stances and bodily interactions) and are dependent on the emphasis and representation provided by physical objects. This only becomes problematic if we overemphasise the interweaving of mental attitudes and corporeal existence in one or the other direction, such that in our social interactions we encounter either a disembodied spirit or an unsocialised, spiritless body. The essay by Antti Kauppinen represents a profound challenge to my entire approach, one that I cannot do justice to in the context of this short response. He clearly sees that by developing a recognitional version of the concept of autonomy, I seek to expand the liberal conception of justice in the manner outlined by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right. I will not be able to address the many smaller objections that Kauppinen advances in footnotes or on the margins of his main line of argumentation; instead I will focus on both of the main concerns that he names at the beginning of his essay and that both represent key reference points for the formation of my theory. His first objection concerns the role I ascribe to desires and psychic impulses in the exercise of individual autonomy. He claims that on my account, our “second-order” capacity to act autonomously is always also dependent upon our ability to discover our “own” desires and needs with the selfconfidence we have acquired intersubjectively. This gives rise to the misleading impression that we can have “desires” independent of reasons, whereas it would be much more plausible to regard desires as being mediated by reasons, in the sense that they react to something that is already regarded as valuable. We do not first have desires and needs to which we then subsequently react with reason, rather our desires and needs are always already constituted by reasons, because we thereby react to something “out there” that we take to be right, valuable or rational. I am willing to accept such a conceptual lesson. And in my debate with John McDowell, I have already indicated that we should regard the nature of our needs as part of our own rationality and thus view our desires as reason-based answers.33 However, I am uncertain whether this saturation of our impulses and yearnings with

33 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Between Hermeneutics and Hegelianism: John McDowell and the Challenge of Moral Realism”, in Nick Smith, ed., Reading McDowell. On “Mind and World”, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 246–266.

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rational reasons really extends into that layer of consciousness that Mead calls the “I” and Freud calls the “id”. Where does our experience of the discrepancy between our desires and what we consider to be in our best interest stem from? From what does our lingering sense of a gap between our desires and our rational convictions derive, if not from a source of still unsocialised and linguistically unarticulated desires and impulses?34 Kauppinen’s second objection, however, seems to be more serious for my whole theoretical undertaking. Either it constitutes a severe misunderstanding on his part or a momentous mistake on my part. Because I link the successful exercise of individual autonomy to the experience of social recognition, Kauppinen concludes that I exclude hindrances of autonomy that cannot be experienced. These are cases in which social domination, cultural marginalisation or emotional exclusion prevent a subject from exercising the capacities that constitute his or her autonomy, without the subject being able to access or experience these obstacles mentally. The objection surprises me all the more, because I agree entirely with Kauppinen’s line of argumentation. I, too, am convinced that the theory of recognition results in a “Hegelian” expansion of liberalism, which consists in adding social conditions of autonomy to the catalogue of rights that ensure autonomy.35 We even agree for the most part about the individual elements required for such “objective” recognition: A necessary condition for acquiring self-confidence is actual participation in personal relationships of love; for acquiring self-respect, actual involvement in democratic practices are needed; and for self-esteem, real access to cooperative community projects is indispensable. And needless to say, an elementary precondition for all these “objective” conditions of possibility is a level of income that allows a secure livelihood.36 Therefore, the dispute between Kauppinen and myself comes down to how we define the relationship between subjective experience and the objective conditions of recognition. I have always been convinced that I have never been in danger of “over-psychologising” the theory of recognition, because I link the â•‡ See my debate with Joel Whitebook in “Facetten des vorsozialen Selbst”. â•‡Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Stuttgart, Reclam 2001; Joel Anderson/ Axel Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice”, in John Christman/ Joel Anderson, eds., Autonomy and the Challenge to Liberalism. New Essays, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp.127–149. 36 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Arbeit und Anerkennung. Versuch einer Neubestimmung”. 34 35

rejoinder415 ability to experience recognition to objective chances and points of access. A subject can only achieve self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem if he or she actually participates in social practices that “objectively” guarantee corresponding forms of social recognition. Especially in my debate with Nancy Fraser, I have maintained that it is implausible to separate these two dimensions. Thus I have always agreed with Kauppinen’s proposal: the “status model” and the experiential concept of recognition go hand in hand. However, another more complicated problem is posed by cases of “objectively” withheld recognition, i.e. situations of gross domination or marginalisation that cannot be experienced as such. Can we theoretically speak of “domination” or “marginalisation” if the victims appear to consent to their social situation and don’t feel even the mildest form of injustice? I have dealt with these questions in my essay “Recognition as Ideology”,37 without, however, claiming to have offered a very satisfactory answer. 4. The remaining three essays, all of which discuss normative aspects of my theory of recognition, differ from the others in that they deal with the totality of the theory from various different perspectives. Although problems of social-theoretical application continue to play an important role, the focus lies on the question of how I attempt to construct an entire theory on recognitional premises. If I undertook to respond to all the problems raised in this connection, I would have to write an entire treatise justifying an approach that could be understood as “Hegelian liberalism” in Kauppinen’s sense. Because I cannot accomplish that in this context, I will once again have to restrict myself to a few brief and bare-boned remarks. Rainer Forst’s elegant attempt to resolve the dispute between Nancy Fraser and myself by recommending that we return to an antecedent “right to justification” ultimately fails because of its abstractness. It may be true that in a very general sense, the idea of justice can be understood as the principle that social arrangements be universally and reciprocally justifiable, but this would essentially mean that social orders can only count as “just” if they prove “justified” in accordance with a free and unrestricted discourse among all members of society. 37

â•‡Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”.

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In judging these arrangements or social relations, however, we must somehow take into account the social functions they are intended to fulfill. Participants to such potential discourses never encounter each other merely as abstract bearers of a “right to justification”, but always already in the social roles deriving from the task accorded to a given sphere of action. In determining whether a certain social relation is just or not, we cannot simply make use of the criterion of universal and reciprocal consensus, for this criterion is only applied under the condition that social norms and corresponding roles already exist and determine the elements of justification. In this fundamental sense, mutual recognition always precedes discourse, and the mutual ascription of normative capacities [Statuseinräumung] always precedes justification.38 When analysing whether a social arrangement is just or not, we must reflect upon the principle of recognition that underlies it in order to then be able to ask whether it is capable of universal and reciprocal agreement. In Rainer Forst’s essay, this antecedence of recognitional relationships emerges unnoticed whenever he speaks of “contexts of justice” (308), and even more so when he speaks of “constraints of social systems” (315). We cannot simply accept these overarching conditions of justification as merely given and immune to analysis, rather we must reconstruct them in terms of their normative genesis and structure, because they are what determine the elements of justice. I can only hint at the consequences of inverting the relationship between recognition and justification in this fashion; in essence, the hisÂ�toricity of contexts of justification must be given a much stronger role than Rainer Forst is willing to concede. Social contexts of justification are anything but secondary, because they already contain the moral norms that can be subsequently judged in terms of their appropriateness. A theory of social justice must therefore seek to uncover the normative content of these contexts. Only when the latter have been determined by means of a normative reconstruction of their historical contemporariness can we apply to them the standard of justifiability.39 38 â•‡ See my first thoughts on the issue in Axel Honneth, “Antworten auf die Beiträge der Kolloquiumsteilnehmer”, in Christoph Halbig/Michael Quante, eds., Axel Honneth. Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, Münster, Lit-Verlag, 2004, pp. 99–121, esp. 104â•›f. 39 â•‡ See Axel Honneth, “Gerechtigkeitstheorie als Gesellschaftsanalyse. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Hegel”, in Christoph Menke/ Julia Rebentisch, eds., Gerechtigkeit und Gesellschaft (Potsdamer Seminar), Berlin, Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag 2008, pp. 11–29.

rejoinder417 The reason why I have chosen to deal with the essays by Christopher F. Zurn and Alessandro Ferrara at the end of my rejoinder is not clear straightaway. After all, they do not deal directly with the problems of normative justification in my theory of recognition, but concentrate more on different aspects of my diagnosis of social pathologies. Nevertheless, their essays thematise the entirety of my theory in such a profound way that the connection between its various individual elements comes to light. This in turn gives me the opportunity to take stock of their separately developed arguments and synthesise them. Christopher Zurn opens his essay by boiling down my earlier writings on the social pathology of modern societies to a single common denominator. Whereas from my own contributions it does not become clear what “social pathologies” are in contrast to social injustices, Zurn proposes analysing both as “second-order disorders”. He suggests that we can only speak of “social pathologies” in cases where social causes lead subjects to be unaware of first-order convictions or practices at a second-order level of reflexivity. Zurn thus finds in my early, more social-theoretical writings on the diagnosis of social pathologies the common element that joins together the very different issues I address. Regardless of whether I speak of “recognition as ideology”, analyse unjust redistribution as a result of disorders in terms of social respect and esteem, discuss the invisibilisation of social groups, attempt to give a phenomenological explanation of the act of “reification”, or look into social paradoxes for traces of imposed self-realisation, in each case he takes me to be dealing with second-order social disorders, because subjects take up false, inappropriate stances toward their relatively intact “first-order” practices, habits and perceptions. I immediately agree to this surprising and extremely illuminating proposal in the case of my discussion of “reification”, “invisibilisation”, and “unjust distribution”. These are indeed all higher-level hindrances on the adequate judgement, classification and articulation of everyday practices, yet I have trouble applying this proposal to my attempt to reformulate the concept of ideology in recognitional terms or determine the paradoxes of organised self-realisation. In these cases my descriptions oscillate between observations of first-order and second-order disorders. But apart from these uncertainties on my own part, Christopher Zurn’s conceptual proposals not only seem to me to be very helpful, but allow progress in the theory: If in the tradition of the Frankfurt School we explain social pathologies on the basis of disorders or deformations of our capacities for reason, then the key for such a daring notion lies in

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the claim that these disorders are active misinterpretations or false assessments of our antecedent practices and habits.40 Furthermore, Zurn appears to have done a better job than I of characterising the meaning of the pathologies that Hegel diagnoses in striking parts of his Philosophy of Right. He, too, seems convinced that these “pathologies of freedom” have to do with the rational incapacity of subjects to adequately interpret and evaluate their antecedent ethical practices.41 Zurn’s attempt to define the unified character of social pathologies is only a prelude to the issue that is of a much greater interest to him: If we wish to remain true to the Frankfurt School and insist that such second-order disorders are neither merely contingent nor derive from anonymous forces of intellectual history, then we must assume the existence of social causes that social theory must explain. Zurn is right in observing that I have not yet arrived at such a unified etiology of social pathologies. Although I have made several attempts to take steps toward explaining the social causes for second-order disorders, no consistent pattern has emerged. In order to correct this weakness, Zurn distinguishes between three different strategies for giving a social-theoretical explanation of social pathologies, whose clear differences should make it easier to choose which is most appropriate. There is the method of “hermeneutical physiognomy” that he finds in my attempt to interpret the sociological theory of Adorno,42 a strategy of “sociological maximalism” in my explanatory theories on sociological classics, and a procedure of “pathology-specific eclecticism” that he sees at work in my explanation of “organised self-realisation”. While he finds various problems in the first two approaches (the first strategy does not offer an explanation in any strict sense, but at most a phenomenological illustration, while the second strategy relies so strongly on anonymous mechanisms that a retranslation into the experiential horizon of the life-world becomes impossible), the third method appears to offer a serious alternative. We explain the emergence of second-order disorders via a coincidence of very different economic, social and cultural causal chains, each of which we select with regard to the phenomenon at issue. This proposal appears convincing, but the justification for it is misleading. The strategy that Zurn terms “eclecticism” is not the result of a pragmatic modesty, but of another â•‡Axel Honneth, “A Social Pathology of Reason”. â•‡Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Ch. II.3. 42 â•‡Axel Honneth, “Eine Physiognomie der kapitalistischen Lebensform”, in Pathologien der Vernunft, pp.70–92. 40 41

rejoinder419 conception of social causes that can be grasped in Weberian terms as an “elective affinity” [wahlverwandtschaftliches Zusammentreffen] between different developmental processes. Whenever structural changes in different spheres of action form a synergetic unity, they develop the causal power to generate a new system of attitudes that can be viewed as the “spirit” or culture of an entire social formation. This is not “eclecticism” in the strict sense of the term, but an expanded concept of social causation. Changes in the state of social consciousness, even those concerning reflexive, second-order attitudes, never have one single cause, but can be traced back to an historical cluster of very different but matching processes of development.43 If we assume such a conception of social causation, which we also find in the work of Max Weber, then we would do well to follow Christopher Zurn’s proposal to refer to a bundle of factors when explaining social pathologies. We should abstain from monocausal explanations and instead make use of all the developmental processes that appear suitable for explaining second-order disorders. FurtherÂ� more, this multidimensional approach is best suited to the task Zurn views as a further demand on Critical Theory, namely that it offer practical proposals for overcoming such pathologies. As long as we rely on an approach that assumes a systematic and anonymous transformation as the cause of pathologies, we will find ourselves outside of all lifeworld experience and therefore be incapable of proposing initiatives for practical change. We can only overcome this break with everyday practices if we include among these causational developments occurrences that are comprehensible, interpretable and changeable from the perspective of those affected. Up to a certain point in his argumentation, Alessandro Ferrara develops the same proposal as Christopher Zurn. Ferrara likewise refers mostly to my thoughts on pathology diagnosis, but unlike Zurn he only finds these in my short treatise on “reification”. He makes many theoretical recommendations about how I can improve and develop my analysis of different aspects of reification – for which I am most grateful. Ferrara’s first objection largely overlaps with that of Zurn, i.e. that a multidimensional approach is preferable to a monocausal approach when it comes to explaining social pathologies. Instead of relying on “grand narratives”, we should make use of a whole palette of 43 â•‡ This concept of social causation, which centers around the idea of “elective affinity”, can be found in the writings of Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London/New York, Routledge, 2001.

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different processes of development. As explained above, I accept this proposal with the methodological reservation that this is not merely theoretical eclecticism, but a sophisticated approach presuming an “elective affinity” between different processes of development. Ferrara’s second objection to my analysis of reification is more difficult. Here he does not merely recommend a more discriminating approach, but addresses the theoretical status of my whole analysis. He claims that my theory would be marred by a “performative contradiction” if my claim that the “priority of recognition” over cognition was meant as an objective claim about how “things are in the world”. After all, to claim the “priority” of recognition implies anchoring all “objective” knowledge in a primary stance of practical involvement, such that even this claim is to be understood as a practical judgement. I am extremely uncertain as to how far I can follow Ferrara in this line of argumentation. I believe that his hermeneutical position only represents one extreme in an entire spectrum of possible views, the other extreme being a purely objective claim to truth. Certainly, as Heidegger and Dewey have taught us, cognition is always linked to a practical stance in which we are affected by our surroundings in some way. But this does not mean that we cannot undertake any subsequent efforts at objectification by attempting to assure ourselves of the general correctness of our judgements, thereby decentring our original perspective. There must be some difference between cognition as a mere expression of our antecedent interests, and cognition that possesses a higher degree of generality because it has been brought into agreement with a number of other convictions. Thus the claim that recognition is prior to cognition both ontogenetically and conceptually can be further objectified and generalised if it is proven true by a number of findings in other disciplines and theories, thus gradually expanding its validity. We will never be able to take this process of generalised decentring so far as to be able to claim “objective knowledge”, but with every reference to other perspectives, we distance ourselves from the point at which we could only speak of affirming our efforts at identity. If we were indifferent to differences in the degree of theoretical generality, we would no longer be capable of distinguishing between more or less justified knowledge claims. Therefore, I only agree with Ferrara up to the point at which he claims that it would be a contradiction in terms if I presented my thesis as the scientific discovery of a neutral object in the world. But I don’t believe this implies that all such cognition can therefore only be viewed as “reflexive judgements” about the conditions that are “conducive to the flourishing of an identity”.

rejoinder421 Ferrara only arrives at his main objection when he draws conclusions about the methodological status of a theory of justice in general. At this point he shifts perspective, no longer inquiring into the conditions of pathology diagnosis, but into the conceptual self-understanding of the theory of recognition itself. In a certain sense his proposal represents the antithesis of the proposal made by Rainer Forst, because he doesn’t suggest that I offer more universalist justification, but that I make my claim to justification more modest. He proposes that I conceive of the theory of recognition as a “political” view of the person and of social life, a view that competes with other views over how to best understand the notion of fair social cooperation under democratic conditions. This is linked to Rawls’ notion that a theory should not be burdened with cognitive claims, and that its expected practical effects should not be made dependent on its rational acceptability. Instead, theory should be judged as a “reasonable” proposal competing for the approval of citizens in the public sphere, without the aid of any epistemic reinforcements. What makes this suggestion odd is that I myself speak of a “theory”, i.e. of an ordered set of descriptive claims. The theory of justice I develop on the basis of insight into the socially constitutive role of recognitional relations relies on an ensemble of truth claims referring to an interest shared by all people. Of course, the elements of justice I have in mind go beyond what is normally placed in the sphere of “morality” (in contrast to “ethics”), but I wouldn’t think of concluding that my statements are to be understood completely as an articulation of the identity of a political collective. I also argue for the superiority of my theory of justice because according to our current, though obviously fallible, state of knowledge, it contains correct statements about the “neediness” of our social nature. And I am justified in expecting that citizens who must decide between competing models of justice not only consider their own common self-understanding, but the interests of all humans. Therefore, I continue to maintain that my approach to a theory of justice is a “theory”, not simply another articulation of our collective identity as democratic citizens.44 Translated by Joseph Ganahl

44 â•‡ See also Jürgen Habermas, “Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason”, in The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory, Cambridge/Mass, MIT Press, 2000, pp. 57â•›ff.

Notes on Contributors Joel Anderson was educated at Princeton, Northwestern, and Frankfurt Universities and taught at Washington University in St. Louis before joining the Philosophy Department of Utrecht University. His research focuses on philosophical anthropology (especially links between autonomy, agency, and normativity), ethics (especially discourse ethics and neuro-ethics), and social theory (especially “recognition theory” and the conditions for developing autonomy skills). He edited Free Will as Part of Nature: Habermas and His Critics (special issue of Philosophical Explorations, March 2007) and Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism (with John Christman, Cambridge UP, 2005), and is the translator of Axel Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition. His current book project is entitled “Scaffolded Autonomy: The ConÂ� struction, Impairment, and Enhancement of Human Agency”. Bert van den Brink is Professor of political and social philosophy in the Department of Humanities at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His research interests are in the normative foundations of liberalism, theories of democracy, social conflict as a motor of civility and forms of solidarity, and theories of intersubjectivity. He is the author of The Tragedy of Liberalism (SUNY, 2000), co-editor of Reasons of One’s Own (with Marc Slors and Maureen Sie, Ashgate, 2005) and Recognition and Power (with David Owen, Cambridge UP, 2007). Jean-Philippe Deranty has published extensively in contemporary French and German philosophy. His latest publications include: Beyond Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (Leiden, Brill, 2009). His current research is dedicated to work and its place in individual and social life. Alessandro Ferrara is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” and President of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. Recently he has published The Force of the Example. Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment (New York, Columbia, 2008) and edited a special issue of Philosophy and Social Criticism on The Uses of Judgment (Vol 34, 1–2, 2008). He is also

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the author of Reflective Authenticity. Rethinking the Project of Modernity (London & New York, Routledge, 1998) and Justice and Judgment. The Rise and the Prospect of the Judgment Model in Contemporary Political Philosophy (London, Sage, 1999). Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at GoetheUniversity in Frankfurt/Main, Co-Director of the Research Cluster on “The Formation of Normative Orders” in Frankfurt and of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Bad Homburg; he is also an associate editor of Ethics. He is the author of Contexts of Justice (Suhrkamp, 1994/University of California Press, 2002), Toleration in Conflict (Suhrkamp, 2003/Cambridge UP, forthcoming), The Right to Justification (Suhrkamp, 2007/Columbia UP, forthcoming) and Kritik der Rechtfertigungsverhältnisse (Suhrkamp, forthcoming). Carl-Göran Heidegren is Professor in Sociology at Lund University, Sweden. His research interests include Sociological theory, sociology of philosophy, recognition theory. Publications: Erkännande [Recognition], 2009. Livsföring. Ett sociologiskt grundbegrepp [Conduct of Life. A Key Concept of Sociology], 2006 (together with Mikael Carleheden and Bo Isenberg), Antropologi, samhällsteori och politik. Radikalkonservatism och kritisk teori [Anthropology, Theory of Society, and Politics. Radical Conservatism and Critical Theory], 2002. Axel Honneth is Professor of Philosophy at the Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, and Director of the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt am Main. His book publications include: (with Hans Joas) Social Action and Human Nature (1988); The Critique of Power. Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, (1991); Desintegration. Bruchstücke einer soziologischen Zeitdiagnose (1994); The Fragmented World of the Social. Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (1995); The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1996); Suffering from Indeterminacy: an Attempt at a Reactualization of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’ (2000); Unsichtbarkeit: Stationen einer Theorie der Intersubjektivität, (2003); (with Nancy Fraser) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, (2003); Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (2008); Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (2009); The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010.

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Antti Kauppinen is Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. His publications include “Reason, Recognition, and Internal Critique”, Inquiry, 2002; “The Rise and Fall of Experimental Philosophy”, Philosophical Explorations, 2007; “Working Hard and Kicking Back: The Case for Diachronic Perfectionism”, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2009; “The Pragmatics of Transparent Belief Reports, Analysis, 2010. Johanna Meehan is Professor at Grinnell College. She writes and teaches Critical Theory, feminism, infant development, and psychoanalysis. She is editor of the anthology, Feminists Read Habermas: Gender and the Subject of Discourse, and is currently working on a book tentatively titled, The Child of Discourse: The Intersubjective Constitution of the Self. Max Pensky is Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University, the State University of New York, and has had fellowships at the University of Frankfurt, Cornell, the University of East Anglia, and Oxford. He has published in critical theory, modern and contemporary social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of law and international relations. His recent works include a study of Habermas, The Ends of Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics (SUNY Press, 2008), and essays on amnesty and international law, Kant and Benjamin, and Habermas and the post-secular. His forthcoming book examines the ethics and politics of memory in the tradition of critical theory. Danielle Petherbridge is Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Dublin. She is Co-Editor (with Jean-Philippe Deranty, John Rundell & Robert Sinnerbrink) of the volume Recognition, Work, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory, (Leiden, Brill, 2007) and Contemporary Perspectives in Social and Critical Philosophy. She is also coordinating Editor of the journal Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory. Emmanuel Renault teaches Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Lyon). His publications include: Marx et l’Idée de Critique (Marx and the Idea of Critique, PUF, 1995); Hegel. La Naturalisation de la Dialectique (Hegel. The Naturalisation of Dialectic, Vrin, 2001); Où en est la Théorie Critique ? (Critical Theory at the Crossroads, edited with Yves Sintomer, La Découverte, 2003); Mépris social. Ethique et

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Politique de la Reconnaissance (Social Contempt. Ethics and Politics of Recognition, Editions du Passant, 2nd edition, 2004); L’Expérience de l’Injustice. Reconnaissance et Clinique de l’Injustice (The Experience of Injustice, La Découverte, 2004) and Souffrance Sociale (Social Suffering, 2008). Robert Sinnerbrink is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (Continuum, 2011) and Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen, 2007); and co-editor of Critique Today (Brill, 2006) and Work, Recognition, Politics: New Directions in French Critical Theory (Brill, 2007). He has published numerous articles on contemporary European philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, and philosophy of film, including recent essays on disclosing critique and the renewal of critical theory. Nicholas H. Smith is Professor in Philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of Strong Hermeneutics (1997) and Charles Taylor (2002). He is also editor of Reading McDowell (2002) and a coeditor of Critique Today (2006), New Philosophies of Labour (2011) and a special issue of Critical Horizons on Social Hope (2008). Christopher F. Zurn is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research interests include theories of democracy, constitutionalism, philosophy of law, institutional design, critical social theory, recognition, and social movements. He is the author of Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and co-editor (with Boudewijn de Bruin) of New Waves in Political Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and (with Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch) of Anerkennung (Akademie Verlag, 2009) / The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2010).

index Abendroth, Wolfgang, 36 achievement, 7, 14, 19–20, 27, 30, 121, 123, 203, 236, 240, 256, 342, 399 individual, 20, 147, 158, 272–273, 313, 338, 351, 406–407 personal, 201 achievement principle, 146, 147, 153, 338–339, 340–342 Adorno, Theodor W., 3, 4, 29, 68, 75, 81, 87–88, 178, 189, 192, 195, 205, 353, 355, 366, 418 bodily suffering and, 184–187, 203 concept of the non-identical, 51 Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno), 5, 84, 179, 182, 185, 373 Frankfurt School and 31–34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 52 theory of society and, 76, 364 view of capitalism, 87 affective experience, early, 92–100 Agamben, Giorgio, 73 Ainsworth, Mary, 90, 101 alienation, 34, 303, 384 Anderson, Joel Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition and Justice, (Anderson and Honneth), 270–271, 272, 276, 298 anthropology, 402 historical, 8, 9–10 philosophical, 2, 8–9, 68–69, 73, 74, 75, 212, 213, 217, 236, 374 Apel, Karl-Otto, 37, 41, 43, 45, 403 Aristotle, 233, 234, 261 attachment disorder, 99, 100–106 attachment-disordered children, 116–117, 120 attachment relationships, 100–106, 118 autonomy, 6, 16, 56, 65, 162, 306, 318 agent’s trust in themselves and, 266 capacities, individual, 256 concept of, 256, 257–261 contrast with heteronomy, 258 contrast with lack of self-control, 258 contrast with mechanism, 257–258 dependence on mutual recognition, 267–268

dependence on social environment, 256, 261–266 exercise of, social conditions of, 283–286, 291, 296 individual, 15, 158, 257, 414 individualist conceptions of, 259 monological, 178 moral, 15, 257 normative competence and, 280–282 personal, 150, 161, 164, 167, 174, 257 political, 257 psychological conditions for exercising, 256, 266–276, 296 purposive agency and, 258–260 recognition and, 266–276 social dimension of, 255–302 social standing and, 257 Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition and Justice, (Anderson and Honneth), 270–271, 272, 298 Baudrillard, Jean, 187, 189 Being and Nothingness, (Satre), 379 Benjamin, Walter, 33, 38, 41, 275, 318 Between Facts and Norms, (Habermas), 38 Bieri, Peter, 381 Bloch, Ernest, 303–304 bonding, 128 maternal-infant, 91, 96 Bourdieu, Pierre Pascalian Meditations, (Bourdieu), 227 Bowlby, John, 90, 103, 106, 121 Burlingham, Dorothy, 101 capitalism, 33, 77, 85, 87, 353, 365 contradictions of, 367 critique of, 86 decentered, 78 Fraser/Honneth debate and, 321–344 globalising, 54, 55 network, 241 paradoxes of, 55, 241 post-Fordist, 80, 360 predatory, 289 welfare-state, 315 capitalist society, 215, 237, 313, 321–322, 329, 332, 337–338, 343, 347, 366

428

index

advanced, 324, 341, 366 bourgeois, 20, 162, 240 development of, 340 economic structure, 334 patterns of cultural valuation in, 321–344 Western, 205, 305 care, 27, 28, 236, 240, 354, 375–376, 387 ethics of, 178, 191–193, 196–202 of the self, 382 power and recognition and, 177–205 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 47, 51 Cavell, Stanley, 27, 355, 379–380 circularity, 73–77 Collège de France lectures, (Foucault), 180 colonisation internal, 324, 325, 328, 332, 336, 343 of subjectivity, 186 of the individual, 79 of the lifeworld, 10, 40, 72, 328, 368 theory of, 87, 328, 367 communicative action, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 39, 40, 133, 325, 328 critical social theory, 36, 40, 55, 75, 125–126 anti-normativism and, 339, 342 conception of capitalist society, 321–322 culturalism and, 321, 330 economism and, 321, 330 Frankfurt School and 32 ideology critique and, 348 market forces and, 54 material and symbolic reproduction and, 326 normative foundations of, 6, 39 reflective stages in, 3 social pathologies and, 345–370 theory of recognition and, 13, 17–22, 342 Critical Theory, 33, 192, 322, 394, 400 anti-normative bias in, 322, 340 connection between social critique and psychoanalysis, 84 first generation, 5, 35, 43, 62, 63, 76, 80, 81, 84, 146–147 Frankfurt School and 47, 50, 55 interest in emancipation and, 86 love as core of ethical life and, 99 models of, 72 modernity and, 73 pathologisation of social reason and, 85

political partiality of, 70 practical orientation, 323 reflexive, 59–88 sense of self and, 92 social dimension of, 48 social pathology and, 358–359 suffering and, 86 theory of communicative action and, 72 tradition of, 3–10 critical theory of society, 73, 80, 81, 85, 179, 228, 372, 405 Critique of Power, The, (Honneth), 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 46, 48, 75, 177, 178, 210, 230, 327, 330, 336, 339, 371 culturalism, 321, 330, 333, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344 culture, 13, 301, 312, 333, 361 as aspect of social order, 330 autonomy-supporting, 296 dominant, 44 Fraser/Honneth debate and, 321–344 mass, 34 modernist, 42 political, of society, 168, 171 relationship with economy, 322, 343, 397 wars, 146–147, 149 Western, 162 culture industries, 186, 188 Darwall, Stephen, 403 Davidson, Donald, 43 Death Without Weeping, (Scheper-Hughes), 96 Deconstruction, ethics of, 191–202 deinstitutionalisation, neo-liberal, 359–360 democracy, 300, 350–351, 371 liberal, 297 property-owning, 315 radical, 40, 41–44 reflexivity and, 351 Derrida, Jacques, 52, 177, 204, 410 ethics of care and, 178, 191–193, 196–202, 205 justice and, 198–199 Other of Justice, The, (Derrida), 197 Detel, Wolfgang, 411 Dewey, John, 27, 43, 168, 350, 351, 354–356, 376–377, 420 Dialectic of Enlightenment, (Horkheimer and Adorno), 5, 84, 179, 182, 185, 373 différend, 191–196, 406 Différend, The, (Lyotard), 193

index429 dignity, 18, 147, 204, 240, 303–304, 309, 318 Discipline and Punish, (Foucault), 11, 185 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, (Rousseau), 384–385 disrespect, 18, 53, 251, 354 expectation of freedom from, 155–156, 173 overt, 243, 245, 250–253 personal identity and, 165–172 unintended, 245–246, 248–250 Disrespect, (Honneth), 18 Division of Labor in Society, (Durkheim), 129 domination, 4, 10, 18, 36, 53, 348–349, 415 autonomy and, 286, 288 Dummett, Michael, 43 Durkheim, Émile, 131, 135, 141, 209, 360, 368, 400 division of labour and, 136 Division of Labor in Society, (Durkheim), 129 theory of the middle and, 233 Dworkin, Gerald, 259, 275, 297 economism, 321, 330, 343 Marxist, 360 economy, 227, 361 as aspect of social order, 330 capitalist, 83, 147, 326, 329, 339, 373, 380, 399 Fraser/Honneth debate and, 321–344 global, 386 neo-liberal, 359 political, 33, 130, 303 relationship with culture, 322, 343, 397 social lifeworld and, 397–398 Economy and Society, (Weber), 217, 219 emancipation, 33, 69–72, 74, 79, 86 moral, 185 Elias, Norbert, 8, 9 equal rights. See equality before the law equal respect, 147, 200, 338, 340, 342 equality, 78, 137, 150, 158, 175, 192, 197, 198–199, 310, 312 before the law, 17, 146, 181, 190, 197, 240, 306, 324 individual, 61 political, 174 radical, 55 social, 129 universal, 62

esteem, 90, 141–143, 148, 149–152, 158, 159, 161–162, 171 dispositives, maldistribution as distortions of, 350–352 full, 172, 176 mutual, 173, 175, 406 recognition, 351 social, 61, 143–147, 155, 163, 303, 312 unrestricted, 175–176 ethical life concept of, 14–15, 17, 30, 54, 121, 143, 149, 150–152, 155–176, 363, 371, 372, 405–406 free from pain, 155–176 intersubjective attachment and, 118–123 love as core of, 99 moral point of view and, 156–160 pluralistic conception of, 173–176 post-traditional conception of, 156, 163–165 sittlichkeit, 65, 129–130, 138, 140, 149 substantive, 173 ethics discourse, 178, 191, 193–196, 201 of care, 178, 191–193, 195, 196–202, 205 of Deconstruction, 191–202 of intersubjective encounter, 197–198 of the différend, 194 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 8, 9, 65, 69, 73 Fichte, Johann Gottleib, 63, 65, 75, 125, 268, 274, 402–403 exercise of free efficacy and, 261–263 Foundations of Natural Right, (Fichte), 261 Foundations of Natural Right, (Fichte), 261 Foucault, Michel, 3, 11, 48, 49, 52, 68, 177, 203, 279, 287, 339, 410–411 bodily suffering and, 184–187, 203 Collège de France lectures, (Foucault), 180 Discipline and Punish, (Foucault), 11, 185 genealogical analysis and, 183 historical anthropology, and 8, 9–10 theory of institutions and, 181–183, 221, 229 theory of power and, 12, 13, 76, 178–184, 189, 203, 412 theory of power-knowledge and, 180 theory of society and, 178, 181, 184 Frank, Manfred, 177

430

index

Frankfurt, Harry, 259, 274, 278, 381, 382 Frankfurt School, 1, 88, 180, 339, 353, 417–418 first generation, 3, 36, 51, 52, 53, 327 themes of, 32–36 pathologies, 34 second generation, 34, 51 emphasis on normative foundations, 37–41 radical democracy and modernist reason, 41–44 third generation, 44, 44–48, 54–55 tradition, Honneth and, 31–57 Fraser, Nancy, 59, 77, 223 autonomy and, 273, 289, 294–295, 300 debate with Honneth, 2, 7, 18, 21, 49–50, 55, 77, 273, 294, 303, 321–344, 397, 398, 407, 415 economy and, 331–332 Redistribution or Recognition? (Honneth and Fraser), 2, 7, 19, 21, 22, 146, 155, 295, 321, 371 participatory parity and, 309–310, 331, 335–336 perspective dualism and, 329–336 theory of justice and, 309–310, 313, 316–317, 319 theory of recognition and, 303–307 What’s Critical about Critical Theory? (Fraser), 325 freedom, 33, 56, 130 autonomy and, 291–293 bodily, 185 collective, 125 effective, 166–167 individual, 61, 65, 80–81, 126, 127, 359 intelligible, 245 intersubjective, 190 limitation of, 263 neo-Hegelian concept of, 190 Nietzschean-aestheticist concept of, 178, 187–188, 191, 204 objective, 136 of choice, 161 personal, 125 subjective, 60, 66, 136 friendship, 126, 129, 157, 159, 175, 190, 196–197, 241–243, 248, 252, 277, 293 Freud, Anna, 101, 104 Freud, Sigmund, 44, 76, 97, 100–101, 119–120, 269, 414 Friedeburg, Ludwig von, 36, 41 Fromm, Erich, 32, 38

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 35, 63 gender, 79, 100, 314, 325–328, 331 gender-conflicts, 326, 332 Gehlen, Arnold, 8 Gelassenheit, 195 Girard, René, 381 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 246 Goffman, Erving, 243–244 good life, 14, 15, 55, 85, 137, 159, 162, 304, 305, 306, 319, 356, 409 grammar of forms of life, 324–325, 329, 337 Grünberg, Carl, 32 Habermas, Jürgen, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9–10, 61, 67, 75, 84, 117, 177, 188, 263, 318–319, 328, 333, 353, 372, 397 approach to critical social theory, 36 analytic philosophy and, 43–44 Between Facts and Norms, (Habermas), 38 communication-theoretic account of social action and, 40 Dialectic of Enlightenment, (Horkheimer and Adorno) and, 5 discourse ethics and, 178, 191, 193, 194, 196, 201 discourse theory and, 39, 41 ego’s capacity for self-determination and, 51 ethical life and 129–130 Frankfurt School and 31–32, 34–41, 43, 45, 47–49, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 327 intersubjectivistic turn of philosophical methodology and, 62–64 Knowledge and Human Interests, (Habermas), 39 material and symbolic reproduction and, 326 reconstruction of history of modern philosophy and, 63 reification and, 40 reliance on Anglo-American philosophy, 43 social conflict and, 323–329 social critique and, 39 social interaction in infancy and, 111 solidarity and, 199 Sociology and the Theory of Language, (Habermas), 211 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, (Habermas), 36 Theory and Practice, (Habermas), 6

index431 theory of absolute Spirit and, 69 theory of colonization and, 87, 328, 367 theory of communicative action and, 4, 7, 10, 39–40, 72, 76, 133, 189, 324, 328–329 thesis of internal colonization and, 324, 336, 343 Theory of Communicative Action, (Habermas), 37, 39, 65, 323, 325, 328, 343, 398 theory of social evolution and, 73 theory of solidarity and, 134–137, 140 Harlow, Harry, 101 harmony, expectation of, 155–176 Hartmann, Martin, 78, 80 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 2, 12, 13, 24, 44, 47, 49, 52, 54, 63, 65, 69, 74, 75, 76, 99, 152, 158, 187, 204, 235, 257, 263, 313, 373, 397, 400 autonomy and, 267, 268, 293–295, 296, 298 civil society and, 131–133, 146 ethical society and, 138, 140, 405–406 freedom and, 135–136 Jena lectures, (Hegel), 6, 125, 135 Philosophy of Right, (Hegal), 125, 130–131, 149, 291, 295, 401, 413, 418 Sittlichkeit and, 65, 129–130, 138, 143, 216 theory of institutions and, 130–133 theory of recognition and 125, 126–127, 190, 244, 371, 402–404, 410 Heidegger, Martin, 41, 63, 75, 376, 380, 420 Gelassenheit, 195 notion of care and, 27, 28, 354, 375, 377 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 264 hermeneutic physiognomy, 364–365, 367, 370, 418 History and Class Consciousness, (Lukács), 28, 76, 81, 88, 373 holism, 377, 394 individualism and, 217–219 Honneth, Axel achievement principle and, 146, 147 affectivity in ontogenetic development and, 29 agnostic path to social justice and, 47, 48–50 anthropological reconstruction and, 8

anti anti-normativism and, 336–343, 398 autonomy and, 267–269, 274–276, 284, 294–295, 414 basic self-confidence and, 90 bodily suffering and, 184–187, 203–204 capitalist society and, 337–338 concept of ethical life, 14–15, 17, 30, 54, 66, 121, 150–152, 155–176, 371, 372, 405 concept of symbiosis, 25, 26 conception of desire in autonomous agency and, 256 constructivism and, 381 contemporary capitalism and, 77, 86 creative power of the unconscious and, 51 criterion of truth and 59–60 critical social theory and, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 48, 51, 54, 322, 327, 333 Critical Theory and, 1–30, 46, 56, 72, 85, 86, 87, 192, 322 critical theory of society and, 73, 80, 81, 85, 179, 372, 405 critique of Foucault, 10–13, 178–180, 191, 203 culturism and, 330, 333 debate with Fraser, 2, 7, 18, 21, 49–50, 55, 77, 273, 294, 303, 321–344, 397, 398, 407, 415 democracy and, 350–351 desires and, 278–279 detranscendantalisation of the subject and, 62 development of self/other awareness and, 94 discourse ethics and, 192, 196 disrespect and, 18, 53, 155, 166–168 ethics of care and, 196–202 exclusive opposition between care and equality, 201 expressionism and, 382 Frankfurt School tradition and, 31–57 freedom and, 189, 204 good life and, 15, 55, 306, 409 history of theory and, 63 ideals of relational development and, 91 identity formation and, 89, 165, 169, 172, 173 inauthenticity and, 384 individual autonomy, idea of, 15–16

432

index

individualism and, 359 infant’s experience of need and, 95 invisibilisation and, 345, 417 legal relations and, 17, 139, 158, 162, 163–164 lifeworld and, 7, 10, 16, 64, 72, 144, 180, 188–189, 328, 397 love and, 7, 14, 19–20, 23, 24, 27, 29–30, 98–100, 103, 121, 138–139, 141, 145, 157, 159, 190, 202, 236, 240, 244, 268–269, 270–271, 273, 277, 299, 306, 392, 395, 408, 414 maldistribution and, 345, 350–352, 368 mimetic reason and, 87–88 misrecognition and, 166, 170, 269–270, 304, 306, 312, 354, 383 model of affective care and, 24 morality and 159–160 multiculturalism and, 163 neglect of normative infrastructure and, 372 neo-Hegelian theory of intersubjective recognition and, 189 non-linguistic communication and, 211 normative foundations of subjective experience and, 47, 52–56 Other of reason and, 47, 50–52 paradox of capitalistic modernization and, 80 personal identity and, 166, 168–169 philosophical anthropology and, 2, 8, 9, 68–69 power and, 179–182 post-metaphysical social ontology and, 372 postmodernism and, 191 poststructuralism and, 202–205 poststructuralist approach to ethics and, 178, 195 poststructuralist social philosophy, critique of, 177–205 power and recognition and, 203 pre-theoretical basis for critique and, 21 primary affective relationships and, 23 priority of recognition and, 386–388, 420 psychoanalysis and, 22, 25, 52, 81, 92, 393 questioning of future of critical theory, 178 rationality distortion and, 345

recent writings, 77–88 recognition and, 70, 82–83, 89, 95, 113, 125–153, 155–76, 201, 208, 209–213, 230, 238, 244, 268, 277, 288, 304, 309, 312–313, 321–345, 348–349, 376–377, 380, 388, 393, 397, 403, 414, 421 redistribution and, 327, 336, 337, 343, 397 reconstruction of theory of communicative rationality and, 179 reflectivity and, 73–78 reification and 28, 52–56, 354–359, 372–372, 383–386, 388, 390, 417, 418 relationship between child and caregiver and, 90–91, 98, 122, 268–269, 393–394 self-realisation and, 306, 309, 345, 370 social critique and, 3, 5, 53, 55, 306, 346 social esteem and, 272–273 social institutions and, 11, 47, 125 social integration and, 7, 65, 68, 141, 144, 149 social interaction in infancy and 111–112 social membership and, 200 social pathologies and, 345–370 social philosophy and, 59–88, 230, 345 axioms, 59, 60–75, 86 struggle as paradigm of the social and, 10–13, 371 subjective experience and, 52–56 symbiosis and, 82 symbiotic relationship between mother and child and, 24, 95–98, 235–236, 275 system and, 7, 48, 64, 67, 69, 70, 180 systematicity and, 73–78 theory of communicative action and, 6, 7, 10, 13, 328 theory of intersubjectivity and, 5, 22, 89–123 theory of institutions and, 208 theory of justice and, 18, 199, 307–313, 316–317, 319 theory of modern society and, 7, 59–61 theory of modernity and, 213–217, 402 theory of ontogenesis and, 64, 67, 82–83

index433 theory of paradoxical contradiction and, 87 theory of progress and, 21 theory of rationality and, 64 theory of recognition and 5, 6, 13–17, 23–25, 27–30, 47, 48, 88, 179, 185, 191, 203–204, 207, 228, 231, 306–307, 319, 333, 336–343, 363, 372–373, 382–383, 387, 394, 397, 402, 410, 414 since Struggle for Recognition, 234–237 three patterns of, 16–17, 18, 20–21, 22, 138–139, 140–141, 173, 235 theory of social solidarity and, 125–153, 158, 164, 167 theory of socialization and, 394, 397 theory of societal rationalization and, 237 tradition of Critical Theory and, 3–10, 30 validity and, 20–21, 383 Honneth, Axel, works of: Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition and Justice, (Anderson and Honneth), 270–271, 272, 276, 298 Critique of Power, The, (Honneth), 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 46, 48, 75, 177, 178, 210, 230, 327, 330, 336, 339, 371 Disrespect, (Honneth), 18 Invisibility, (Honneth), 244, 251, 352 Organised Self-Realisation, (Honneth), 77 Other of Justice, The, (Honneth), 191, 202 Paradoxes of Capitalism, (Honneth and Hartmann), 47, 77 Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform, (Honneth), 84, 87 Pluralisation and Misrecognition, (Honneth), 187 Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society, (Honneth), 84 Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory, (Honneth), 81–82 Recognition as Ideology, (Honneth), 412, 415 Redistribution or Recognition? (Honneth and Fraser), 2, 7, 19, 21, 22, 146, 155, 295, 321, 371 Reification, (Honneth), 2, 24, 27, 29, 358, 371, 387

Rejoinder, (Honneth) 12, 25, 30, 391–421 Social Action and Human Nature, (Honneth and Joas) 2, 8–9, 178 Social Pathology of Reason, (Honneth), 84 Struggle for Recognition, The, (Honneth), 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 48, 50, 81, 82, 125–153, 155, 187, 207, 234, 236, 244, 250, 267, 295, 371, 392–394, 406 Suffering from Indeterminancy, (Honneth), 66, 291, 295, 371 Verdinglichung, (Honneth), 372 Horkheimer, Max, 3, 4, 12, 76, 81, 189, 353 Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno), 5, 84, 179, 182, 185, 373 Frankfurt School and, 32–36, 38–39, 43, 48 Hoschschild, Arlie, 384 Humboldt, Alexander von, 264 Huntington, Samuel, 150 Husserl, Edmund, 211 identity, 29, 65, 93, 113, 229, 264, 272, 277, 281, 284, 304–305, 330–331, 357, 368, 385, 388, 420, 421 claims to, 22 cultural, 51, 162–163, 236, 300, 334 ego, 37 formation of, 5, 14–15, 76, 89, 91, 168–170, 172–173, 190, 268, 408, 412 individual, 83 personal, 165–172, 226 politics, 49–50, 236, 343 psychic, 99, 106 recognitive expectations and, 225–226 social, 99 ideology, 39, 363 as social pathology, 348 ideological recognition and, 346–350 of atomistic individualism, 255 of instrumentalist reason, 53 of personal responsibility, 359 recognition as, 417 totalizing theory of, 62 inauthenticity, 383–385 individualisation, 22, 61, 79, 138, 144, 158, 162, 163, 240 paradoxes of, 359–361

434

index

individualism, 233 atomistic, 255, 361 empirical intersubjectivism and, 273–276 holism and, 217–219 institutionalized, 360 modern, 78 individuation, 66, 69, 70, 74, 77, 141, 233 inequality, 167, 248, 249, 300, 305 arbitrary, 348 harmonic, 240 political relations of, 303 social, 313 injustice, 18, 39, 53, 56, 76, 160, 305, 307, 310–313, 397 class, 331, 334 cultural, 331, 336 distributive, 311, 351 economic, 336 hermeneutics of, 71–72 institutions and, 221–222 maldistributive, 369 moral, 306 of misrecognition, 331, 334 of the status quo, 40 politics of redistribution and, 337 social, correspondence to denial of recognition, 207 theory of, 308, 316 Institute for Social Research, 31, 32, 34, 38, 46, 241 institutional effects identity and constitution of recognitive expectations, 225–230 norms and identification, 224–225 rules and evaluations, 223–224 institutionalised infants, 102–105 institutionalisation, 21, 102, 138, 146, 181 institutions affiliations to, 45 definition, 217–223 first species, 219 economic, 134, 332 just, 319 normative, 132 political, 34, 149 power-wielding, 11–12 reproduction of, 127 second level, 215 social, 11, 47, 125, 127–128, 130, 133, 134, 135, 149, 150, 181, 353 social/political, 117

state, 143, 146 theory of, 130, 208 theory of recognition and, 13, 14, 207–231, 402 total, 179, 184 intersubjective attachment, ethical life and, 118–123 intersubjective dependency, subject formation and, 22–27 intersubjective power relations, 181–182 intersubjective recognition, 345 social solidarity and, 125–153 intersubjectivism, empirical, 273–276 intersubjectivity, 4–5, 8, 10, 23, 47, 63–64, 68, 74, 345, 410 anthropology of, 9, 69 practical, 67 presocial, 211 primary, 88, 92–100, 108, 201, 394 primordial, 107 social, 204 invisibilisation, 345, 363, 417 group-specific, 352–353, 368 Invisibility, (Honneth), 244, 251, 352 Jena lectures, (Hegel), 6, 125, 135 Joas, Hans, 43, 52, 66–67 Social Action and Human Nature (Honneth and Joas) 2, 8–9 justice, 18, 46, 50, 74, 150–151, 161, 162, 174–175, 181, 230, 231, 298, 334, 389, 395, 401 administration of, 132 critical theory of, 303, 306, 307–311, 314 folk paradigms of, 307 fundamental, 309 grammar of, 307–308 maximal, 310, 313 Other of, 191–202 power and, 314–316 procedural, 150, 306, 310, 315 reciprocal recognition and, 313 recognition-theoretical concept of, 21, 304–305 redistribution and recognition and, 316 social, 35, 48–50, 55, 208, 307, 310, 312, 343 substantive, 314 theory of, 303, 306, 307–313, 314, 316–317, 319, 402, 421 justification, 303–319

index435 Kant, Immanuel, 15, 33, 39, 44, 63, 125, 140, 317, 399, 402 Kirchheimer, Otto, 32, 33 Klein, Melanie, 101 knowledge, 43, 86, 180, 193, 198, 229, 257, 379, 381, 383 certainty of, 41 empirical, 60, 67 objective, 420 power and, 183, 186 psychological, 275 social scientific, 377 spectator model of, 376 Knowledge and Human Interests, (Habermas), 39 Korsgaard, Christine, 278 Kymlicka, Will, 297, 301

love, 7, 14, 19–20, 23, 24, 27, 29–30, 96, 98–100, 101, 103, 121–122, 138–139, 141, 145, 157, 159, 160, 190, 202, 236, 239, 240, 244, 252, 268–269, 270–271, 273, 277, 299, 306, 355, 392, 395, 408, 414 Löwenthal, Leo, 32 Luhmann, Niklas, 138, 381 Lukács, Georg, 27, 28, 33, 38, 43, 54, 125, 375 concept of reification and, 354, 358, 373, 374, 376, 380, 382, 380 History and Class Consciousness, (Lukács), 28, 76, 81, 88, 373 Lyotard, Jean-François, 52, 187, 188, 191, 193–195, 204, 222, 410 Différend, The, (Lyotard), 193

labour, 3–5, 24, 33, 53 division of, 129, 131, 135–136, 144, 220, 334, 339, 342, 350, 351–352, 385 exploitation of, 72 productive, 333–334 social, 4, 6–7 Lacan, Jacques, 97 language games, 193–194 Larmore, Charles Practiques du moi, Les, (Larmore), 381 law, 7, 14, 19, 27, 30, 41, 42, 158, 162, 214, 337 application of, 197 equality before the, 17, 146, 181, 190, 197, 240, 306, 324 institutionalization of, 132 obedience to, 140, 160 rule of, 132, 139, 140 Left-Hegelian tradition, 1, 70, 73, 81, 88 legal relations, 17, 139, 158, 162, 163–164, 172, 240, 392 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 47 Levinas, Emmanual, 63 ethics of care and, 178, 191–193, 196–202, 205 ethics of intersubjective encounter and, 197–198 liberalism, 257, 298, 305 Hegelian, 297, 302, 414, 415 lifeworld, 5, 7, 10, 6, 48, 64, 133, 134, 136, 144, 149, 180, 324–325, 328, 329, 332, 344 colonisation of, 40, 72, 328, 368 disintegration of, 188–189 social, 16, 188–190, 397–398

Marcuse, Herbert, 32, 38, 353 maldistribution, 56, 294, 331, 334–336, 345 as distortions of esteem dispositives, 350–352, 363, 368 Marx, Karl, 6, 8, 9, 33, 38, 43, 44, 54, 62, 63, 67, 69, 73, 74, 75, 76, 339, 342, 346, 358, 367 Mead, G.H., 8, 22, 24, 28, 43, 52, 65, 69, 81, 82, 153, 158, 235, 263, 395, 413 Mele, Afred, 274 misrecognition, 18, 156, 160, 165–166, 229, 269–270, 276, 291, 295, 304, 311–312, 336, 349, 354, 383–384 emotional exclusion and, 288 experiences of, 169–170, 306 inadequate, 225 injustices of, 331, 334 marginalisation of identities and, 287 objective, 286, 288–289 reification and, 383 social, 204, 226 modern society, 7, 15, 59, 61, 63, 73, 76, 83, 125–127, 137, 141–143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 141, 150, 325 modernisation, 70 capitalistic, 77–78, 80, 86–87, 241 paradox of, 80 modernist reason, 41–48 modernity, 41, 73, 84, 129, 141, 188, 372–373 aesthetic critique of, 204 capitalist, 86–87, 205, 255 contemporary, 190 historical-conceptual thesis as historical fact, 60–62

436

index

history of, 71–72 late-capitalist, 34 moral dilemmas of, 5 normative core of, 74 post-metaphysical, 193 theory of, 402 monism, justificatory, 307, 316 morality, 5, 12, 15, 52, 159–160, 236, 421 cognitivistic account of, 157 deconstructivist ethics and, 192 discourse theory of, 38 universal, 191 mother/infant affective bond, 101 mother/infant symbiotic bond, 24, 95–98 Negt, Oskar, 37, 41 Neumann, Franz, 32, 33 Nietzsche, Freidrich, 52 nonrecognition, 251–252, 349, 381 object-relations theory, 22, 23, 26, 81, 83, 90, 113, 268, 393 Offe, Claus, 37, 41 Organised Self-Realisation, (Honneth), 77 Other of Justice, The, (Derrida), 197 Other of Justice, The, (Honneth), 191, 202 Other of reason, 47, 50–52 Paradoxes of Capitalism, (Honneth and Hartmann), 47, 77 Parsons, Talcott, 360, 397 participatory parity, 309–310, 331, 335–336 Pascal, Blaise, 381 Pascalian Meditations, (Bourdieu), 227 pathologies individual, 66 social, 66, 345–370 pathology-specific eclecticism, 364 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 43 Pettit, Philip, 286 Philosophy of Right, (Hegal), 125, 130–131, 149, 291, 295, 401, 413, 418 Physiognomy of the Capitalistic Lifeform, (Honneth), 84, 87 Piaget, Jean, 119–120 Plessner, Helmuth, 8 Pluralisation and Misrecognition, (Honneth), 187 pluralism diagnostic-evaluative, 307, 316

expectation of harmony and, 155–176 modern ethical, 408 Political Liberalism, (Rawls), 389 Pollock, Freidrich, 32, 36 Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society, (Honneth), 84 Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory, (Honneth), 81–82 postmodernism, 42, 51, 191 poststructuralism, 42, 177, 202–205 post-traditional communities, 63, 65, 70, 160 power as social struggle or control, 182–184 intersubjective-theoretic notion of, 10–11 justice and, 314–316 normative agreement and, 181–182 place of in social life, 220 pragmatic compromise and, 181–182 recognition and care and, 177–205 reflexive critique of, 10, 12 regulative, 411–412 socially determinate relations of, 348 priority of recognition thesis, 372, 382 priority of, 386–388 pluralism, 15, 46, 49, 61, 136, 142–143, 193–194, 307, 316, 407–409 recognition and harmony and, 155–176 Practiques du moi, Les, (Larmore), 381 praxis, 68, 355 engaged, 27, 28 intersubjective conditions of, 69 philosophy of, 67 shared cultural, 189 social, 374, 375 primary care-givers child’s affective attachment to, 29 forms of rationality between infants and, 24–25 recognition and intersubjectivity and, 89–123 psychoanalysis, 22, 25, 52, 81, 83–84, 92, 103, 121, 393 Putnam, Hilary, 377 Quine, Willard van Orman, 377 rationality, 2, 39, 43, 76 communicative, 40 distortions, 345 functionalist, 185

index437 instrumental, 63, 178, 185–187 modern, pathologies of, 353–354, 363 procedural, 42 Rawls, John, 43, 135, 137, 140, 161, 272, 297, 299, 310, 314, 315, 408, 421 Political Liberalism, (Rawls), 389 Raz, Joseph, 287, 298 recognition. See also theory of recognition as political notion, 388–390 autonomy and, 266–276 cognition prior to, 376 conception of ideal relationships of, 160–161 cultural, 306 denial of, 227 depreciating, forms of, 224 due, 245, 247 dynamics of intersubjectivity and, 89–123 economic realm as part of, 311 ethics of, 177 expectation of harmony and, 155–176 expressivist and constitutive concept of, 208–217 Fraser/Honneth debate and 321–344 ideological, 345, 348–350, 352 institutions and, 208, 223–230, 402 interpersonal, 349, 350 intersubjective, 125–153, 190, 355 language of, 65 legal, 139–140, 145–146, 149, 157, 163, 175, 190, 201, 312, 382, 409 misguided, 243 moral epistemology of, 82, 87 normative competence and, 276–277 normativity of, 372, 393 mutual, 62, 201, 295, 305, 342, 393, 402 objective, 257, 289, 291, 300 one or two concepts, 230–231 ontological interpretation of, 65 orders, 403 politics of, 337 produced by institutions, 207 reasons-responsiveness and, 282–283 reciprocal, 313 redistribution and, 303–319, 327, 329, 397 reification and, 371–390 self-creation and, 187–191 social, 207, 213, 413–414 social relations of, 188

social-theoretical philosophy of, 67 sound patterns of, 161 subjective experience of, 257 thesis of conceptual priority of, 379–380 unsatisfactory, 226–227 Recognition as Ideology, (Honneth), 412, 415 redistribution, 303–319, 327, 329, 397 politics of, 324, 337 Redistribution or Recognition? (Honneth and Fraser), 2, 7, 19, 21, 22, 146, 155, 295, 321, 371 reification, 34, 38, 40, 52–56, 354–359, 419 as political notion, 388 causal source of, 372 forms of, 383–386 priority of recognition thesis, 372 recognition and, 371–390 reflectivity, 73–77, 88 Reification, (Honneth), 2, 24, 27, 29, 358, 371, 387 Rejoinder, (Honneth) 12, 25, 30, 391–421 relation-to-self, 157, 166, 269 releasement, 193–196 reproduction cultural, 324, 326, 328 economic, 183 material, 324, 325–326, 328, 332, 344, 408 of institutions, 127 social, 39, 60, 74 symbolic, 144, 325 Rorty, Richard, 129, 187, 193 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 126 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, (Rousseau), 384–385 Sandel, Michael, 264 Satre, Jean-Paul, 64, 125 Being and Nothingness, (Satre), 379 Scanlon, T.M., 297 Scheper-Huges, Nancy Death Without Weeping, (Scheper-Hughes), 96 Schmidt, Alfred, 37, 45 Searle, John, 381 second-order disorders, social pathology and, 345–370 self authentic, 266 coherent, 113, 123

438

index

enduring, 113 identity, 114, 118 psychic, formation of, 100–106, 114 reflexive awareness of, 94 reification of, 355–356 sense of, 92, 94 self-confidence, 14, 16, 53, 89, 90, 157, 160, 170, 228, 230, 256, 268–270, 271, 273, 282, 289, 296, 415 self-determination, 15, 51, 54, 65, 157, 159, 190, 256, 258, 266, 295 self-esteem, 14, 16, 53, 89, 145, 149, 160, 167, 201, 228, 230, 256, 268, 271–273, 289, 296, 306, 350, 414–415 self-knowledge, 264, 279 self/other schemas, 106–117 self-realisation, 14, 15, 22, 54, 65, 66, 84, 144–145, 146, 147, 151, 156–158, 159, 164, 168, 190, 268, 294, 303, 309, 324, 345, 350–351, 359–360, 361, 368, 370, 418 self-respect, 14, 16, 17, 19, 23, 53, 89, 145, 149, 160, 171, 201, 228, 230, 256, 268, 270–271, 286, 296, 318, 414–415 Simmel, George, 360 Sittlichkeit, 65, 129–130, 138, 143, 149, 150, 190, 216, 372 social action, 4, 40, 223, 230, 411 definition, 217–218 Social Action and Human Nature, (Honneth and Joas), 2, 8–9, 178 social cohesion, 126–127 social cooperation, 156–157, 350–351 social critique, 40, 53, 55, 84, 213, 231, 306, 346 social integration, 7, 41, 61, 65, 66, 68, 72, 128, 133–136, 141, 144, 149 social interaction, 6, 72, 329, 332, 348 social invisibility, 225, 250, 251–252, 352 social pathologies as second-order disorders, 345–370, 417–418 critical social diagnosis and, 361–370 group-specific invisibilisation and, 352–353 ideology and ideological recognition and, 346–350 reification and, 354–359 Social Pathology of Reason, (Honneth), 84 social philosophy, 59–88, 217, 230, 345 poststructuralist, 177–205 social reality, 1–2, 70, 84, 189, 253, 306, 322, 364–365, 399–400, 405

social recognition, 16, 19–20, 123, 141–142, 203, 213, 244, 329, 338, 399, 401–402, 406–407, 409, 413–415 social theory, 4, 52, 67, 70, 75, 83, 88, 126–127, 364–365, 397, 418 functionalism in, 62, 64 materialist, 346 normativity in, 71 postmodern, 187 social suffering, 17, 72, 227, 229, 307 socialisation, 22, 68, 77, 112, 138, 167, 395 sociological maximalism, 364, 368, 370 Sociology and the Theory of Language, (Habermas), 211 solidarity, 165 local, 171 post-traditional concept of, 161 social, 12, 125–153, 159 Spitz, René, 104, 105 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, (Habermas), 36 struggle, 23, 26, 48–49, 165, 168, 410 as paradigm of the social, 10–13, 179–182 cultural, 164 distribution, 336 for justice, 304 for justification, 318 for power, 182–184 for social recognition, 329 political, 215, 216 social, 15, 18, 21, 30, 49–50, 53–54, 72, 80, 149, 155, 157, 160, 162–163, 182–184, 203, 207, 215, 304, 346, 366, 410–411 Struggle for Recognition, The, (Honneth), 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 22, 27, 48, 50, 81, 82, 125–153, 155, 187, 207, 234, 236, 244, 250, 267, 295, 371, 392–394, 406 subjective experience, 47, 52–56 subjectivity, 10, 50, 59, 63, 76, 78, 162, 191, 203, 388 body as living expression of, 185 ethical, 100, 121, 123 human, 65, 89, 387 psychic colonization of, 186 Suffering from Indeterminancy, (Honneth), 66, 291, 295, 371 system, 7, 48, 64, 67, 69, 134, 149, 180, 324, 328, 332, 344 systemacity, 73–77

index439 Tamil, Yael, 300–301 Taylor, Charles, 50, 264–265, 281–282, 298, 330 technical fetishism, 383–384 Theory and Practice, (Habermas), 6 theory of colonisation, 87, 328, 367 theory of communicative action, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 13, 39–40, 67, 72, 76, 133, 189, 324, 328–329, 368 thesis of internal colonization, 324, 336, 343 Theory of Communicative Action, (Habermas), 37, 39, 65, 323, 325, 328, 343, 398 theory of injustice, 308, 316 theory of institutions, 130–133, 181, 183 theory of intersubjectivity, 5, 22, 89–123 theory of justice, 18, 199, 303, 306, 307–313, 314, 316–317, 319, 402, 421 theory of modern society, 7, 59–61, 126–127 theory of modern solidarity, 127–128 theory of modernity, 213–217, 402 theory of ontogenesis, 64, 67, 82–83 theory of power, 12, 13, 76, 178–184 theory of recognition, 2, 5, 6, 12, 13–17, 23–25, 79, 170, 175, 207, 303–307, 319, 363, 387, 389, 394, 397, 414, 421. See also recognition as theory of the middle, 223–253 critical social theory and, 13, 17–22, 342 critique of institutions and, 207–231 culture and economy and 333, 336–343 democracy and, 350 neo-Hegelian, 179, 187, 191 poststructuralism and, 203, 204 reification and primacy of recognition, 27–30 social pathologies and, 345–346 struggle and, 25–26, 410

three levels of analysis of, 234, 237–244 three patterns of, 16–17, 18, 20–21, 22, 27 two level order of, 27 theory of social action, 3, 217 theory of social solidarity, 125–153 theory of socialisation, 23, 394, 397 theory of society, 7, 64, 68, 72, 74, 76, 88, 181, 182, 184, 204, 398 Theunissen, Michael, 69 Tugendhat, Ernst, 37, 43 Trevarthen, Colwyn, 108, 110 truth, 38, 39, 41, 43, 52, 59 Valery, Paul, 381 value consensus, 129, 142–143 Verdinglichung, (Honneth), 372 Weber, Max, 138, 147, 209, 223, 323, 360, 367, 377, 418 definition of social action and, 217–218 Economy and Society, (Weber), 217, 219 thesis of Western rationalization processes, 38 welfare state, 78, 324, 338, 341, 361, 398 Wellmer, Albrecht, 37, 41, 45 What’s Critical about Critical Theory? (Fraser), 325 White, Stephen K., 196 Gelassenheit, 195 Winnicott, Donald, 22, 169, 381 enduring self and, 134 infant’s experience of need and, 95 object-relations theory and, 23–24, 81, 90, 393 relationship between mother and child and, 90–92, 95, 97, 268, 275 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 218, 219, 377, 412 Wolf, Susan, 281

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