Professional Documents
Culture Documents
of Recognition
The Philosophy
of Recognition
Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives
Edited by
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
and Christopher F. Zurn
L EXINGTON B OOKS
A division of
ROW M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D P U B L I S H E R S , I N C .
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published with generous support from the Hans-Böckler Foundation.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage
and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
1 Introduction 1
Christopher F. Zurn
2 Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition
(Amour Propre) 21
Frederick Neuhouser
3 Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 47
J. M. Bernstein
4 “The Pure Notion of Recognition”: Reflections on the
Grammar of the Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit 89
Michael Quante
5 Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and
Contemporary Practical Philosophy 107
Ludwig Siep
6 Recognition, the Right, and the Good 129
Terry Pinkard
7 Producing for Others 151
Daniel Brudney
8 “Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 189
Andreas Wildt
9 Rethinking Recognition 211
Nancy Fraser
v
vi Contents
Index 369
About the Contributors 375
1
Introduction
Christopher F. Zurn
1
2 Christopher F. Zurn
moral, political, and social philosophy that the theory of recognition can
be seen as a response to (2), indicate how the paradigm addresses some
of the specific problems faced in continuing the project of critical theory
under current social conditions (3), before concluding with brief overviews
of the individual contributions collected here (4).
has now come into its own as a scholarly framework, to a large part due to
the integrative accomplishments of Axel Honneth’s theory.
Turning now to current constellation in value theory, there are three main
rival cognitivist paradigms, that is, paradigms that assert that some types of
evaluative claims are justifiable to others in some more or less robust sense
of ‘justifiable’: utilitarianism, Kantianism, and neo-Aristotelianism. In nor-
mative moral theory, broadly construed to include questions about what
individuals owe to others and about how one ought to live, this constella-
tion can be characterized in terms of three rival types of theory: consequen-
tialism, deontology, and forms of virtue ethics such as the ethics of care or
various forms of moral particularism and situationism. In normative politi-
cal theory, the prevailing constellation has a somewhat different realization.
Forms of consequentialism range here from economically focused theories
such as welfare economics to theories of liberal perfectionism; Kantian the-
ories are centered around the notion of justice with varying emphases on
liberty, rights, equality, democracy, and the social contract; neo-Aristotelian
themes have seen their greatest impact in political communitarianism.
As a moral theory, recognition theory seems most closely allied with
neo-Aristotelianism. It focuses on the constitutive connection between so-
cial circumstances, Bildung, and the development of a good, or at least not
deformed, life; it takes the development of a sense of personal identity as
an irreducible element in moral life; it does not radically separate questions
of moral motivation from those of justification; it stresses the central role of
affect and emotion in moral life; it claims that moral theory cannot ignore
the decisive import and role of commonly shared horizons of value and
meaning on moral identity; it turns its focus away from the philosophical
search for a code of rules and principles that should be applied in the same
way by all persons, and rather towards the cultivation of social forms of life
that will promote healthy self-realization; and it emphasizes the diversity of
practical considerations relevant to individual action choices, the develop-
ment of a plan of life, and the evaluation of organized social life.
Yet it is not indifferent to the concerns of consequentialism; even as
it rejects the simple preference-aggregation models assumed in classical
utilitarianism and welfare economics, it places central import, like liberal
perfectionism, on the degree to which the broadest number of individu-
als are not denied the opportunity for rich forms of self-realization. More
importantly still, recognition theory desires to retain some of the attractive
features of Kantianism, in particular the claim to be able to explicate and
justify normative standards of evaluation that are neither culturally nor
Introduction 5
models of social conflict and the social groups that expressed and carried on
those conflicts. The older tradition of critical theory had, of course, already
experienced significant problems in this area. Given that the commonly
shared Marxist-inspired social model focused on the economic sphere as the
central and defining locus of social conflict, and that it thereby looked al-
most exclusively to class struggles as the site of socially progressive struggles,
the demise of the revolutionary power of workers’ movements and activities
in the consolidation of liberal capitalism before, and especially after, World
War II led to theoretical conundrums and practical uncertainties for a theory
always oriented towards social emancipation. The upheavals of the 1960s
and their aftermath in the formation of new social movements—not to
mention the resilience and adaptability of the capitalist form of productive
relations—indicated deep problems in the shared sociotheoretic assump-
tions. The first generation of critical theory had already been forced to face
the fact that class struggles could not be confidently counted on to forward
emancipatory hopes and actions. Yet now, in addition to these disappoint-
ments, new social movements for liberation—anticolonial, antiracist,
antipatriarchal, antiheteronormative—had identified social problems not
obviously related to the ravages of capitalist modernization, and pointed
to a hitherto unnoticed landscape of sociomoral concerns and normative
claims. Unfortunately, the second generation critical-theoretic marriage of
functionalism and hermeneutics, though theoretically sophisticated and
highly developed, led again to a set of social diagnoses that seemed insuf-
ficient to “grasping the struggles and wishes of the age in thought.” To put
a complex claim about the second generation analysis briefly, the attempt
to connect the theoretical hypothesis of “colonization effects” to the forma-
tion, concerns, and aims of the new social movements seemed unsatisfac-
tory: both as an explanatory account of the rise and import of these new
forms of social struggle and contestation, and as a critical-theoretic thesis
that could illuminate the character of current social problems for social
movement participants themselves.
The theory of recognition, by contrast, presents an account that articu-
lates a straightforward connection between individual experiences of suf-
fering and their social causes, an account, furthermore, that also explains
the current prominence of many different actual social struggles: not only
those for the expansion of the content and application of legal rights and
entitlements, but also those for nondominating forms of personal life, as
well as those for a sociocultural environment free from denigration and
discrimination. Equally important, the recognition paradigm promises to
systematically connect these sociotheoretic analyses to a convincing norma-
tive account of the justificatory claims made in such struggles, and articu-
lates a differentiated set of normative standards for judging the cogency
and worth of particular claims. Finally, it also promises to make good on
Introduction 11
The fourteen papers collected in this volume take up the philosophy of rec-
ognition and its manifold themes and puzzles by approaching them from
both historical and contemporary perspectives. Although one might think
that the two-part division of the volume reflects two different philosophi-
cal methodologies—one a form of history of ideas and the other a form
of problem-based analysis—we hope that the individual selections belie
any such facile division of philosophical labor. For in fact, as the following
brief overview of the papers will reveal, the philosophy of recognition takes
real inspiration from the history of reflection upon recognition and allied
concepts, even as the careful study of that history reveals unsurpassable
insights for contemporary theory formation. Contemporary work helps to
bring insight into hitherto unnoticed nuance and subtly in historical texts,
even as careful study of historical texts can yield claims and arguments cru-
cial for contemporary discussions. As the selections in this volume show,
the best work in the philosophy of recognition occurs precisely where the
two perspectives meet and fruitfully interact. And this dialectical interaction
is crucial to the ongoing viability of recognition theory as a research para-
digm. As basic challenges are posed to the paradigm by both historical and
contemporary arguments, its strength is measured, in part, by the extent
to which it can productively integrate and adapt to puzzles and problems,
rather than allowing them to pile up as unaddressed anomalies. The papers
collected here, we believe, demonstrate that the theory of recognition is a
robust paradigm. Even if the recognition paradigm calls for further internal
development and refinement, these papers show that it is not yet time for
revolutionary theory change.
The volume opens with Frederick Neuhouser’s investigation of Rous-
seau’s account of amour propre as the essential human drive for recognition.
12 Christopher F. Zurn
Although recognition theory often looks to German idealism for its origins,
it is in fact Rousseau who is the first to place the struggle for recognition
at the very center of human life and so also as a fundamental concern for
moral, political, and social philosophy. By giving a comprehensive account
of Rousseau’s theory of amour propre—explaining exactly what kind of a
passion it is, how it can be at the root of the many evils of the human con-
dition, how those evils can be ameliorated through education and through
specific social and political arrangements, and how the very development of
human reason is dependent upon amour propre—Neuhouser suggests that
much of the following work on recognition through the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries can be productively regarded as “essentially a series of
footnotes to Rousseau.” Of particular interest, he shows that whereas previ-
ous thinkers had regarded the desire for regard from others as little more
than a troublesome manifestation of human vanity, Rousseau saw both its
destructive and constructive characteristics. Insofar as amour propre is not
only malleable in the light of education and particular social conditions
but also interacts with other social arrangements such as levels of inequality
and status disparities, Rousseau viewed it an essential precondition for both
spiraling competitions for symbolic ephemera and for the development
of practical reason’s capacity to adopt the viewpoint of the generalized
other and thereby enter into the normative space of reasons. According to
Rousseau’s theory, then, even as some of the most destructive aspects of
“civilization” itself can be traced to the core human drive for recognition,
that drive is nevertheless one requisite component that must be employed
to arrange moral and political life in ways that can overcome the tendency
of the drive toward producing evils.
In his piece, J. M. Bernstein argues that Fichte develops the first concep-
tion of rights as forms of, or modes of, intersubjective recognition. Insofar
as recognition—and by implication, having a right—is a matter of how
one stands in relations to others, in how one is taken and treated by those
others, in having a certain normative status in a social world, recognition
and rights appear to be paradigmatic versions of idealism: one’s being rec-
ognized as a person with rights is essentially mind-dependent. Of course,
in opposition to Kant’s transcendental idealism, the idealizations involved
in Fichte’s account of recognition are located in the concrete practices of
social communities rather than the solitary acts of consciousness of ab-
stract individuals. The question is then raised for Fichte’s account, as it is
for all forms of idealism: is the idealist price for securing normativity, even
recognitive idealism, too high, is such a mind-dependent account doomed
to tearing human beings away from their natural context, from their evolu-
tionary setting, from the thick materiality of their everyday existence? Bern-
stein argues that Fichte attempted to close this gap between idealism and
materialism by arguing that intersubjective recognition is essentially tied to
Introduction 13
in many recent struggles for the recognition of cultural differences, she wor-
ries at the same time that the focus on recognition threatens to displace
or even eclipse the traditional grammar of emancipatory movements for
distributive justice. In an age of globalizing capital markets and increasing
economic inequality both within the populations of nations and across
the globe, Fraser worries that recognition theory has nether the conceptual
nor normative tools necessary to address distributive injustice. Further-
more, to the extent that recognition theory appears to encourage not only
patently emancipatory struggles for cultural acceptance but also downright
reprehensible movements based in culturalistic and xenophobic chauvin-
ism, Fraser contends that a focus on identity and the politics of difference
threatens to simplify, reify, and so artificially solidify group identities. Thus,
even as social recognition may be a necessity in a multicultural world, it
also threatens to encourage separatism, intolerance, patriarchalism, and
authoritarianism. Fraser argues that contemporary theories of recognition
should turn toward a status-based rather than identity-based model in or-
der to combat the problem of reification, and that it should forswear mo-
nistic ambitions to be a comprehensive account of social relations in favor
of a multimodal analysis that analytically separates the cultural dynamics
of recognition from the economic dynamics of redistribution.
As one of the leading contemporary theorists of recognition, Axel Hon-
neth rejects Fraser’s preference for separating out a functionalist account of
economic dynamics from an hermeneutic account of the normative infra-
structure of recognition relations. In his article here, Honneth is concerned
to render the concept of meaningful, secure, and emancipatory work more
than a mere utopian ought in the face of what many intellectuals regard
as the obdurate reality of a globalized capitalist labor market. For even as
economic transformations have rendered work, and especially wage labor,
ever less dependable, well-paid, safe, and available, the world of work still
retains primacy in the social lifeworld—both in the organization of every-
day life and as the center piece of identity formation. This essay proposes a
new conception of the category of societal labor for the purposes of critical
theory. In particular, it shows first how certain normative demands con-
cerning work can be understood through a form of immanent critique that
highlights the way in which such demands are rational claims embedded
in the structures of social reproduction. It also argues that a critical theory
of the contemporary world of work cannot be based in a romantic uni-
versalization of the ideal of organic, holistic craftspersons, even as it must
go beyond the limits of functionalist accounts of the economy to explore
the moral infrastructure of the modern organization of work. Second, it
shows how societal labor can operate as an immanent norm only if it is
understood in terms of the conditions of recognition obtaining in mod-
ern exchange relations. Finally, when the market is conceptualized from
Introduction 17
the point of view of social integration rather than system integration, the
connection between work and recognition is shown to give rise to a robust
normative conception of the division of labor, thereby providing a substan-
tive reservoir of moral principles for the evaluation and transformation of
contemporary social life.
Emmanuel Renault explores similar terrain concerning the relationship
between recognition theory and the economy in his piece through an ex-
ploration of whether and how Honneth’s philosophy of recognition can be
understood as renewing the initial program of critical theory elaborated in
the 1930s by Max Horkheimer. Yet because the original term “critical the-
ory” referred only euphemistically to Marxism, Renault contends that the
controversial question of the relationship between the theory of recognition
and the initial program of critical theory can only be solved by solving the
problem of the former’s relation to Marx. The paper analyzes several of the
key components of the theory of recognition in order to assess the degree to
which it is capable of renewing the critical tasks laid out by Marx by means
of its own sociotheoretic framework. It focuses on questions concerning:
1) whether the proper role of the theory is as normative philosophy or as
social theory; 2) the specific conception of social struggle employed; 3) the
analysis of and interrelations between interpersonal interactions, institu-
tions, and social structures, especially as they relate to the explanation of
capitalism and of social evolution; and 4) the relations between different
historical diagnoses and specific critiques of contemporary society evinced
in competing models of contemporary social theory inspired by Marx.
In the end, Renault contends that recognition theory can save the proper
inheritance of critical theory—that is, as an interdisciplinary theory that in-
tends to transform the abstract questions of political philosophy into issues
best addressed by a materialist social theory—but only if it seriously con-
nects its critical acumen to a comprehensive social theory more convincing
than either original Marxism or the theory of communicative action.
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch contends that the best way to carry
forward a simultaneous analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism is
in fact a suitably tailored recognition theory. He supports this by first out-
lining the basic contours of Honneth’s recognition theory, reconstructing
the criticisms it has received (most prominently from Nancy Fraser) con-
cerning its analysis of capitalism, and then showing how careful attention
to the relationship between social esteem and economic activities can allay
these criticisms while simultaneously giving more convincing answers to
pressing sociotheoretic questions. In particular, Schmidt am Busch argues
that theory must carefully distinguish between different senses of social es-
teem, self-esteem, and their particular relationships to one’s economically
relevant work if critical theory is to accurately explain how current practices
of meritocratic esteem lead to endless striving for wealth and professional
18 Christopher F. Zurn
success, conspicuous consumption, and the decline in support for the social
welfare functions of the state. With such explanations, however, the sup-
posed need for a separate functionalist account of the economy is obviated,
and the way is cleared for developing a rich, recognition-based analysis and
critique of capitalism.
In his contribution, Jean-Philippe Deranty also argues that Fraser-style
critiques of recognition-theoretic approaches to political economy miss
their mark, though he attempts this defense from a different direction.
Going right at the allegedly greatest weakness of recognition theory—its at-
tempt to employ a moral, psychological concept of recognition to explain
the sources of distributive injustice—Deranty first reconstructs the criticisms
before arguing that it is only the sensitive hermeneutical apparatus of recog-
nition theory that can properly detect social pathologies at the level, and in
the grammar within which, they are experienced in the everyday lifeworld
by those who suffer from the depredations of economic injustice. While
this “critique through experience” shows that recognition theory possesses
greater critical acumen for detecting social pathologies than that provided
by alternative functionalist accounts of economic phenomena, it does not
yet show the explanatory advantages of the former. For purposes of expla-
nation, Deranty suggest that contemporary forms of unorthodox political
economy including institutionalism and especially regulatory theory have
important overlaps with recognition theory and thus hold out the promise
of integrating recognitive forms of social theory with economic theory.
With the prospect of such an integration, critical theory need not settle for
a bifurcated analysis that separates off the moral from the economic and
that, at least tacitly, concedes that contemporary capitalist markets consti-
tute a relatively norm-free block of social reality resistant to emancipatory
transformation.
The last two articles turn back to fundamental problems in ontology, ac-
tion theory, moral psychology, and ethics by giving careful analyses of acts
of recognition themselves. In his contribution, Arto Laitinen sets out to
make sense of exactly who or what can count as an object of recognition,
who can count as a recognizer, and what the proper scope is for features
that may be responded to through recognition. This analysis is accom-
plished in the light of the basic insight of recognition theory: namely, that
recognition matters to individuals and in social life precisely because recog-
nition has an important connection to individuals’ practical self-relations,
in particular to their individual sense of self. However, Laitinen detects a
tension that has arisen in recognition theory between those who focus on
one of two distinct insights. On the one hand, some stress that successful
acts of recognition occur when a recognizer properly responds to some
normatively relevant features of an object, such that successful recognition
can go forward without any normatively governed reciprocity on the part
Introduction 19
NOTE
21
22 Frederick Neuhouser
It is important not to confuse amour propre and love of oneself [amour de soi-
même], two passions very different in their nature and their effects. Love of
oneself is a natural sentiment that inclines every animal to watch over its own
preservation and that, directed in man by reason and modified by pity, pro-
duces humanity and virtue. Amour propre is but a relative sentiment, artificial
and born in society, that inclines each individual to think more highly of him-
self than of anyone else, inspires in men all the evils they do to one another,
and is the true source of honor (DI, 221–22/OC 3, 219).3
The first thing to notice is that Rousseau distinguishes the two forms of
self-love in terms of the object, or good, each inclines us to seek: amour de
soi-même is directed at self-preservation,4 whereas amour propre is concerned
with judgments of merit and honor, with how highly one is “regarded.” As
Rousseau tells us elsewhere, a being that possesses amour propre is moved
by the desire “to have a position, to be a part, to count for something”
(E, 160/OC 4, 421); such a being, in other words, feels a need to be es-
teemed, admired, or thought valuable (in some respect).
A second feature of amour propre, according to this passage, is its “relative”
nature, in contrast to the “absolute” character of amour de soi (E, 215/OC
4, 494). “Relative” here means relative to other subjects, and Rousseau’s
point is that the good that amour propre seeks is defined by certain rela-
tions one has to subjects other than oneself. In fact, amour propre is relative
in two respects. First, the good it seeks is comparative in nature; to desire
esteem is to desire to have a certain standing in relation to the standing of
others.5 In other words, the esteem that amour propre seeks is a positional
good, which implies that doing well for myself (finding the social esteem
I seek) consists in doing well in comparison with others. This means that
the extent to which I find my need for recognition satisfied depends on
how well—or how badly—those around me fare with respect to theirs. It
is important to note that a relative standing is not necessarily a superior or
inferior one. If what my amour propre leads me to seek is simply the respect
I deserve as a human being—respect I am willing to grant to others in the
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 23
he does not believe that it leads to evils necessarily, in all its possible forms.
Thinking more highly of oneself than of others is certainly one common
way that amour propre manifests itself, but because of amour propre’s artificial
character—because the forms it takes are always the effects of contingent
circumstances that depend on human will—it is by no means necessary
that it do so.
Emphasizing the artificial character of amour propre helps to clarify the
source of its great plasticity. In short, amour propre is capable of assuming
highly variable forms because of the extent to which an individual’s “opin-
ions”—more precisely, his conception of himself—mediate his pursuit of
social esteem.7 The self-conceptions at issue here consist not only in beliefs
about the extent of one’s own merit or worth, but also in the ideals one
measures oneself by and aspires to achieve. Because these self-conceptions
are themselves highly malleable, amour propre, too, is capable of assuming a
remarkable variety of concrete forms. Moreover—to underline, as Rousseau
does, the link between the artificial with the social—one principal reason
self-conceptions are highly malleable is that they are shaped by historical
and social circumstances that are themselves highly variable. Since processes
of socialization give particular shape to the desires and ideals that motivate
individuals, and since social institutions encourage certain ways of finding
esteem while ruling out others, different societies will tend to instill in their
members different conceptions of personal worth and, with them, different
configurations of amour propre.
One further characteristic of amour propre that will figure heavily in Rous-
seau’s account of its capacity to wreak havoc in human society is the ferocity
and power with which it grabs hold of individuals and moves them to act.
The fierce and passionate character of amour propre is explained by the fact
that something of great importance is at stake in its activity. Its ferocity, its
power to consume those who have it, its ability to infect every human enter-
prise with its own meaning are all signs of the overriding significance with
which the aims of amour propre are invested. It is no accident that Rousseau’s
account of human motivation gives amour propre roughly the same funda-
mental status it accords to the self-preservative drives of amour de soi. This
equal status is a reflection of the fact that what is at stake in both forms of
self-love is, in some sense, the very being of the self. This is obvious in the
case of amour de soi, for which physical survival is the first and overriding
concern, but it is no less true for amour propre, which aims at what might be
called the self’s moral or psychological survival. This is the idea Rousseau
means to communicate when he says that in being recognized by others
an individual acquires a “sentiment of his own existence” (DI, 187/OC 3,
193; my emphasis).8 The failure to find recognition from others does not,
of course, threaten one’s existence as a physical entity, and yet, as ordinary
language acknowledges, a person who lacks standing in the eyes of others
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 25
If, generally speaking, the capacity to produce effects in the world is the sign
of a being’s reality, then being recognized by others, especially when exhib-
ited in their speech and action, can be taken to confer on the self a being,
or reality, of a certain distinctively human kind: to achieve recognition is to
acquire a confirmed existence for others as a substantial, effect-producing
subject.10
scarce good since “everyone could not want preference without there being
many malcontents” (E, 215/OC 4, 494). If some are to achieve superiority,
others must end up in an inferior position, and so, rather than being acces-
sible to all, recognition becomes the object of endless competition, conflict,
and frustrated desires.
A further problem resulting from the desire for superior standing is the
“rat race” phenomenon, or the struggle to “keep up with the Joneses.” This
problem stems from the fact that superiority, even if attained, is insecure
and short-lived as long as it is achieved in relation to others who desire
the same for themselves. In order to outdo the competitor who has just
overtaken me or to maintain the position of preeminence I now occupy,
I must constantly be engaged in enhancing my own current standing. In
such a situation, individuals are burdened with a nearly limitless need
to better their own positions in response to or in anticipation of their
rivals’ advances, which results in a restless and unceasing game of one-
upmanship. The problem is not merely that the only satisfaction amour
propre can find will be fleeting and insecure but also that needs and desires
become boundless in a way that is inimical to human happiness. Whereas
“amour de soi . . . is content when our true needs are satisfied” (E, 213/OC
4, 493), amour propre, configured as the desire for superiority, quickly mul-
tiplies our desires and perceived needs beyond any plausible conception of
what our “true” needs might be.12 Such ever-expanding desires impose on
those who have them the need to expend vast amounts of labor and energy
in pursuit of the goods and honors they hope will satisfy their drive for
superiority. But no matter how elaborate and exhausting, such schemes are
doomed to fail, first because the labor they require typically outweighs the
satisfaction they bring and, second, because once individuals’ motivations
have been permeated to this degree by the drive for superior standing, they
lose the capacity to enjoy their possessions and achievements for the intrin-
sic (nonrelative) benefits they afford. This condition represents a genuine
perversion of human desire, for beings such as these “value the things they
enjoy only to the extent that others are deprived of them and, without any
change in their own state, . . . would cease to be happy if [others] ceased to
be miserable” (DI, 184/OC 3, 189).
The points just discussed demonstrate how the quest for superior stand-
ing tends to engender both conflict and unhappiness (frustrated desire)
among those who pursue it. There is, however, a further problem with this
manifestation of amour propre, namely, its tendency to produce vice, or im-
morality. In this context, vice is understood as a callous disregard for the
sufferings of others or, in its more pernicious forms, an inclination to harm
others or to take delight in their misfortunes.13 Defined in this way, vice
requires a suppression of our natural pity, and so the propensity to vice
that is so widespread among civilized beings is not simply a consequence of
28 Frederick Neuhouser
human nature but demands some further explanation. Rousseau finds this
explanation in the essentially comparative nature of amour propre: if doing
well for oneself is conceived as doing better than others, then it is possible
to promote one’s own well-being by doing harm to those with whom one
compares oneself. Once I measure my own standing in relation to others’,
I can further my standing either by improving my own lot or by worsening
yours. Thus, the desire to be recognized as superior provides humans with
an incentive they would otherwise lack to rejoice at, or even to seek, the
adversity of others (DI, 171/OC 3, 175).
As I have argued, amour propre is relative to others in a second sense as
well, and it, too, is a source of human ills. Because the good sought by
amour propre includes esteem from others—because it involves a concern for
how one appears to other subjects—beings who have this passion are directly
dependent on others for the satisfaction of one of their most keenly felt
needs. For such beings, relations to others are necessary not only as a means
to satisfying nonrelative needs but also because the favorable opinion of
others is constitutive of the good they seek. Some of the danger that springs
from this aspect of amour propre can be understood in light of Rousseau’s
larger view concerning the dangers of dependence in general.14 (Depen-
dence in this context is contrasted with self-sufficiency: an individual is de-
pendent when he has to rely on the cooperation of others in order to satisfy
his needs.) Rousseau’s social and political thought is founded on the idea
that any form of dependence carries with it the danger that individuals will
have to compromise their freedom in order to satisfy the needs that impel
them to seek the cooperation of others. If freedom consists in “not being
subject to someone else’s will” (LWM, 260/OC 3, 841)—or, equivalently, in
obeying only one’s own will15—then dependence poses a standing threat to
being free since it opens up the possibility that in order to get what I need
I may have no choice but to tailor my actions to conform to the (often ar-
bitrary) wills of those on whose cooperation I rely. When constantly faced
with a choice between getting what one needs or following one’s own will,
it will be no surprise if satisfaction frequently wins out over freedom.
Applying this principle to amour propre, Rousseau warns that depending
on others for esteem often results in the loss of freedom:
Even domination is servile when it is connected with opinion, for you de-
pend on the prejudices of those you govern by prejudices. To conduct them
as you please, you must conduct yourself as they please. They have only to
change their way of thinking, and you must perforce change your way of act-
ing (E, 83/OC 4, 308).
preferences of others and, so, to determine his will in accordance with their
wishes or values rather than his own. But this is precisely how Rousseau de-
fines enslavement, or loss of freedom, and it is for this reason that he views
amour propre as a serious threat to our capacity to be free.
There is a further danger following from the fact that amour propre seeks a
good that consists in the judgments of others. This danger is best described
as alienation (or self-estrangement), even though Rousseau himself does
not use the term in this context.16 “Alienation” as I use it here denotes the
phenomenon Rousseau has in view when reproaching the civilized indi-
vidual for existing “outside himself,” as in the following passage:
There is a kind of men who set some store by how they are looked upon by the
rest of the universe, who know how to be happy and content with themselves
on the testimony of others rather than on their own. This is, in fact, the true
cause of all these differences: the savage lives within himself; sociable man,
always outside himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others; and
it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his
own existence (DI, 187/OC 3, 193).17
The second reason amour propre by itself is not sufficient to generate hu-
man evils is that a host of other, nonpsychological conditions must be in
place before even the desire for superior standing can translate into the state
of war and degradation depicted at the end of the Discourse on Inequality. As
long as the quest to be recognized as better than others is confined to the
simple desire of primitive beings to be regarded as the best singer or the
most beautiful, significant moral inequality cannot arise. This is why Rous-
seau says that in order for inequality to gain a foothold in human existence,
it “needed the fortuitous concatenation of several foreign causes” (DI,
159/OC 3, 162). Included among these fortuitous causes are rudimentary
technological advancements, the development of latent cognitive faculties,
specialization occasioned by the division of labor, and, most important,
the origin of private property, of states, and of codes of justice, all of which
institutionalize and give permanence to the various inequalities that beings
driven by amour propre are led to create.
It would be too large a task to unravel the various ways in which each
of these causes contributes to moral inequality. One prominent theme
in Rousseau’s account, though, is the momentous effect of the increasing
interdependence among individuals that these developments bring with
them. The increase in dependence occasioned by an expanding division of
labor, for example, makes it possible for amour propre to seek new forms of
satisfaction that introduce more enduring inequalities than were possible
when individuals were self-sufficient (DI, 167/OC 3, 171). For alongside
the old strategies of striving to be merely the best singer or dancer, new
opportunities for achieving preeminence arise, including the possibility
of exploiting others’ dependence for the purpose of subjugating them. It
is easy to see that a peasant who produces only one of the many foods he
needs to subsist is more vulnerable to exploitation than his self-sufficient
counterpart. As Marx might put the point, dependence creates one of the
conditions necessary for inequalities in class. The interesting implication
of the Discourse on Inequality is that subjugation of this kind is rarely, if
ever, motivated by purely economic ends. For in addition to the economic
benefits it brings, establishing oneself as the exploiter of others—especially
when the roles of exploiter and exploited are publicly sanctioned by social
institutions—presents itself as an alluring strategy for finding enduring
confirmation of one’s high standing in the eyes of others.
The solutions Rousseau offers to the problems of amour propre fall into
two broad categories: those that focus on restructuring social and political
institutions and those that concern the formation of individual character.
The thought behind this dual approach is that although both factors—a
32 Frederick Neuhouser
society’s basic institutions and how the individuals within them are pri-
vately raised—influence which forms the quest for recognition will take
in a given society, neither by itself is sufficient to forestall the dangers of
amour propre. In other words, making amour propre benign requires not just
that the right social and political institutions be in place but also that indi-
viduals come to those institutions with the appropriate desires, ends, and
self-conceptions.
Rousseau’s sociopolitical response to the evils of amour propre is guided by
two main goals: countering the socially pernicious inequalities that the pro-
cess of civilization brings with it and promoting institutions that make stable
and benign forms of social recognition available to all. Since the first of these
goals cannot be achieved simply by eradicating inequality—this would also
abolish the conditions of civilization more generally—Rousseau’s remedy fo-
cuses on imposing limits on the extent and kinds of inequality that society
can permit. Its guiding principle is to minimize the opportunities available
to amour propre for seeking satisfaction through forms of superior standing
that tend to impede the society-wide achievement of peace, happiness, vir-
tue, freedom, and unalienated selfhood.
Rousseau’s approach to the problem of inequality is best illustrated by
two examples, one of which points to a kind of inequality his social phi-
losophy rules out altogether, while the other illustrates limits imposed on a
kind of inequality that Rousseau thinks cannot fruitfully be eliminated but
only held in check.
One type of inequality Rousseau is committed to prohibiting entirely is
what Marx would call class inequality. Class, as Marx conceives it, is defined
by the relation individuals have to the means of production. In capitalism,
for example, one class owns—and, so, controls—the material resources nec-
essary for production, while the other owns no such resources (other than
its own labor power). Even though Rousseau lacks Marx’s precisely defined
concept of class, the division of society into those who own productive
forces, such as land, and those who do not is an important part of the in-
crease in human dependence that the Discourse on Inequality chronicles and
laments (DI, 167/OC 3, 171). A class system, unlike the material division
of labor, represents for Rousseau (as for Marx) a species of dependence that
is both inimical to freedom and avoidable, and for this reason he is com-
mitted to its abolition. The principle Rousseau relies on in rejecting class
inequality is set out explicitly in the Social Contract and implicitly in the
Discourse on Inequality’s account of the origin of human enslavement. In the
former Rousseau asserts that “no citizen should be so opulent that he can
buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself” (SC,
II.11.ii); in the latter he points to private property in land (a productive
force) as the true source of the “crimes, wars, . . . miseries and horrors” that
plague the human race (DI, 161/OC 3, 164).
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 33
It is important to note that what Rousseau calls for is not so much the
elimination of economic dependence as its equalization, for whenever
there is a material division of labor of some kind, individuals will rely on
the cooperation of others in order to satisfy their needs. In the absence
of class divisions, however, mutually dependent laborers encounter one
another on essentially equal footing, and the structural basis for relations
of domination is dissolved. The example of class, then, illustrates a general
principle of Rousseau’s social philosophy: since the dangers of dependence
are vastly multiplied when it is conjoined with inequality—one could even
say that the former becomes truly dangerous only in the presence of the
latter19—the economic dependence necessary for civilization can be both
preserved and rendered tolerable by equalizing as much as possible the
basic terms of social cooperation.
Of course, class inequality is relevant to Rousseau’s treatment of amour
propre because it is the source of not just economic benefits but also social
esteem: occupying a position in society that empowers one regularly to
command and profit from the labor of others is a compelling way of dem-
onstrating the exalted standing one has both for and in comparison with
others. The first principle that Rousseau’s social philosophy adopts from his
analysis of amour propre, then, is that good institutions must be structured
such that the main opportunities they offer for achieving social standing do
not depend on the systematic subjugation of others; in a good society the
strategies social members standardly pursue for winning recognition must
not presuppose fundamental asymmetries in social power that, in effect,
enable some to find esteem (and enrichment) at the expense of others’
freedom.
The second example of how Rousseau responds to economic inequal-
ity involves a type of inequality he thinks ought to be held within certain
bounds but not eliminated altogether. The point here is expressed in the fol-
lowing statement: “Do you, then, want to give the state stability? Bring the
extremes as close together as possible; tolerate neither opulent people nor
beggars. These two conditions, naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the
common good” (SC, II.11.iin). This type of inequality differs from the pre-
vious one in that it concerns inequality in wealth rather than class. Even if
class differences in Marx’s sense are done away with, significant disparities in
wealth are still likely, assuming that such factors as luck, determination, and
innate talent are not completely divested of their power to affect individu-
als’ fortunes. Rousseau’s general recommendation that society’s extremes be
brought “as close together as possible”20 is meant to authorize a wide variety
of state policies, tailored to specific circumstances, whose aim is to hold in
check the “natural” tendency (in the absence of government regulation)
for the gap between rich and poor to grow ever wider (SC, II.11.iii). Three
policies of this sort that Rousseau explicitly endorses are progressive taxation
34 Frederick Neuhouser
(PE, 30–31/OC 3, 271), taxes on luxury goods (PE, 35/OC 3, 275–76), and
restrictions on inheritance (OC 3, 945). The most important reason Rous-
seau has for regulating material inequality is akin to his reason for outlaw-
ing economic classes: great disparities in wealth endanger the freedom of the
less advantaged. Such disparities intensify the economic dependence of the
poor and, so, increase the likelihood that they will have to submit to the
wills of others in order to satisfy their needs (SC 2.11.1).
The second major class of Rousseau’s sociopolitical remedies focuses
on devising institutions that make a sufficient range of stable and benign
forms of recognition available to all. If one of the conditions that inflame
amour propre’s malignant potential is a general lack of nondestructive op-
portunities for acquiring a recognized standing, then it ought to be possible
to curb much of the mischief amour propre is capable of unleashing by estab-
lishing healthier alternatives to the forms of recognition individuals are led
to seek in a society that has not yet been reorganized by reason’s principles.
Once the problem is viewed in this light, it is easy to see the Social Contract
as playing a central role in Rousseau’s strategy for remedying the evils of
amour propre. For one of the main accomplishments of the legitimate state
is to guarantee all its members a substantial form of social recognition: the
equal legal respect accorded to citizens of a republic. In other words, this part
of Rousseau’s solution makes the political community itself a major source
of the recognition individuals seek as a consequence of amour propre.
In a true republic—in any state ruled by the general will (SC, II.6.ixn)—
law is the source of three types of recognition, each of which consists in a
mode of treating individuals that proclaims the equal worth of all citizens.
The first of these is enshrined in what is usually called equality before the
law, or the equality of citizens as subjects (SC, I.6.x). This type of recogni-
tion derives from the fact that legitimate laws must be universal in the sense
of applying equally to everyone: no individual citizen stands outside their
reach. A state that upholds the universality of law in this sense confers a
kind of equal standing on its members by insisting, as it were, that no indi-
vidual is “above” the law.
The second type of legal recognition a republic affords its members is the
equality they enjoy as the collective sovereign, or author, of the law: legiti-
mate laws not only “apply to all” but also “issue from all” (SC, II.4.v). The
most obvious sense in which the laws of a republic come equally from all is
that all citizens are accorded the same rights of political participation: equal
say in the assembly, equal right to vote, and equal access to political offices.
There is, however, a further respect in which legitimate laws come equally
from all citizens. The laws of a republic also originate in the wills of its
members in the sense that, insofar as those laws are grounded in the general
will, they are obliged to protect the fundamental interests of each citizen.
Here legitimate laws recognize the equal worth of citizens by proclaiming
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 35
learned as a child. In the final phase, in Book V, the exclusive bond between
pupil and tutor is loosened, Emile is instructed in the roles of husband and
citizen, and he steps into the social world at last, equipped as well as one
ever can be to negotiate the tension between being-for-self and being-for-
others that, for Rousseau, defines the human predicament.
It is the second phase of this education that is most relevant to Rousseau’s
theory of amour propre. Its primary goal is to instill in the adolescent a cor-
rect understanding of the “rank” he takes himself to occupy relative to oth-
ers (E, 243/OC 4, 534). Not surprisingly, the rank that Emile must learn to
claim for himself is equality with all other human beings, where the core of
this ideal is the idea that no one’s interests deserve more consideration than
others’ in determining the laws that obligate us commonly.
The two educational principles with which Book IV begins concern, first,
the temporal order in which the adolescent’s new passions are allowed
to emerge and, second, the principal psychological resource—the pupil’s
imagination—that this educational phase will make use of in shaping
those passions. Rousseau makes a point of insisting that the emergence
and formation of pity precede the stirring of amour propre. His thought is
that since after the latter has occurred, the adolescent will necessarily care
about securing a favorable place in relation to others, having first acquired
a capacity to pity his potential rivals—to empathize with their pains and
sorrows—will make it easier for him to mollify and restrict the aims of his
drive for relative standing, which in the absence of such empathy can eas-
ily assume exaggerated, pernicious forms. In other words, if pity is aroused
and fortified before amour propre enters the scene, it is capable of turning
the adolescent’s emerging character “towards beneficence and goodness”
(E, 221/OC 4, 504) before it can be moved in the opposite direction by a
desire to outdo or harm.
Part of awakening pity is providing it with an object, and it is here that
imagination becomes important. The role of imagination in forming or
habituating the passions—making them “second nature”—is to fix their ob-
jects, which, in the present case, amounts to determining to whom and on
the basis of what Emile’s pity is to be directed. One reason imagination is
so important in the formation of pity is that sensitivity to the pains of other
creatures depends on a capacity for imaginative identification, on the abil-
ity to “transport ourselves outside ourselves and identify with the suffering
animal” (E, 223/OC 4, 505–506). Thus, the tutor’s task in forming Emile’s
pity is twofold: to stimulate the latter’s hitherto latent imagination so that
he is able to experience others’ sufferings as painful, and then progressively
to extend the scope of his newly acquired sensitivity so as to encompass all
human beings or, as Rousseau puts it, “humanity” itself.
The sense of equality that informs Emile’s pity before he is fully affected
by amour propre is able to serve as a necessary counterbalance to the imme-
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 37
diate tendency of the latter, once awakened, to seek superiority, even “the
first position,” in relation to others (E, 235/OC 4, 523). In the next step
of his education, coincident with the emergence of amour propre, Emile is
brought face to face with a feature of human life that stands in tension with
his newly acquired ideal of moral equality: the basic and, to him, startling
fact of social inequality—the existence of “artificial” inequalities in wealth
and power, which, though highly variable with time and place, are intrin-
sic to human society (E, 236/OC 4, 524). Beyond merely acquainting his
charge with the ubiquity and variety of social inequality, the tutor’s aim is
to get Emile to attach the proper significance to the real disparities in wealth
and power he finds around him. In this the main point is to bring Emile to
appreciate the superficial and arbitrary character of most actually existing
inequality. More precisely, he is to learn that even if the existence of social
advantages is (to some extent) unavoidable, those advantages are also for
the most part arbitrarily distributed—which is to say: existing disparities in
wealth, class, and power rarely correspond to differences in genuine merit
(DI, 131/OC 3, 131–32). Superior wealth, class, and power are, in other words,
mostly undeserved, and appreciating the distinction between occupying a
favored place in society and deserving to be there is crucial to the proper
formation of amour propre.
A further goal of this part of Emile’s education is to impress on him not
only that inequalities in wealth, class, and power are mostly undeserved but
also that having them (or having them alone) seldom brings genuine satis-
faction. Emile must learn to look beneath the public mask worn by the so-
cially successful in order to “read their hearts” and see that their riches and
power are frequently accompanied by insecurity, obsession, jealousy, and
pain (E, 237/OC 4, 526). Learning that superior wealth, class, and power
often stand in the way of true happiness is to have the effect of arousing
in him pity for the well off rather than envy or the desire to emulate them,
both of which can easily turn into a drive to compete or injure in order to
occupy a favored position for others.
Once Emile has learned to judge the true value of the more superficial
forms of superiority, the formation of his amour propre still requires one
major intervention (E, 244/OC 4, 536). Emile must learn that even those
who enjoy superiority with respect to genuine human goods—happiness,
wisdom, esteem from oneself and others—do not in any robust sense merit
their advantages. This lesson is especially important for Emile, who, having
had the good fortune to receive an exemplary education, will most likely
occupy a favored position of precisely this sort and, so, be especially vulner-
able to the type of vanity that Rousseau is concerned here to prevent. The
danger to be averted in this situation is not that Emile might delight in his
favored place or even desire it, but rather that he might “attribute his hap-
piness to his own merit” and therefore believe himself worthy of his good
38 Frederick Neuhouser
sufficient foundation for rational agency. (Pity is the ability to feel the pains
of others and to be motivated to alleviate them.) The brief answer is that
pity is a sentiment, and sentiments need to be guided by reason if they are
to be reliable producers of right actions. This is because pity, unrestrained
by reason, can prompt us to distribute our beneficence arbitrarily—to the
wrong objects perhaps, or to the right objects but in the wrong amounts.
While pity can be useful to morality by motivating us to care about the
good of distant and unknown others, unless it is subordinated to ideas that
only reason can supply, it remains “a blind preference” (E, 252/OC 4, 548)
and only contingently results in precisely the actions justice calls for. So,
even though reason relies on pity to inspire in us a concern for the good of
others, it also demands that we hold our pity in check—that we “yield to it
only to the extent that it accords with justice” (E, 253/OC 4, 548). It is only
when pity is ordered by an idea of reason—the idea of the fundamental
interests of each—that it can shed its character as blind sentiment and find
its way to its proper objects.24
Still, what role can amour propre play in this? What amour propre is able to
contribute to reason’s ordering of pity is an idea that originates in its char-
acter as a relative passion, namely: the idea of the comparative worth of hu-
man individuals. We saw earlier that in directing pity to its proper objects,
reason makes use of the idea of the equal moral worth of all individuals.
Rousseau’s claim, clearly, is not that a commitment to the equal moral sta-
tus of humans is a necessary consequence of merely having amour propre;
his claim, rather, is that without amour propre the very idea of comparative
worth—and so, too, the more specific idea of equal worth—would have no
foothold in the dispositions of human beings and hence no power to direct
their behavior as reason requires. In short, amour propre makes comparisons
and pity does not, and without comparisons (of the appropriate type) there
can be no reason.25
Let us turn now to the other sense in which amour propre is relative,
namely, that the good it seeks consists in opinions of one’s worth held by
other subjects. How might this feature of amour propre serve to cultivate ra-
tionality? As I noted earlier, Rousseau alludes to the idea that amour propre
compels us to give up our “natural” solipsism and to acquire a perspective
that takes into account the subjectivity of others. I also said that if amour
propre is to make a distinctive contribution to rational agency, this recogni-
tion of the subjectivity of others must involve more than simply anticipat-
ing their pleasures and pains. One respect in which amour propre differs
from both amour de soi and pity is that it makes one care about the points of
view others take, not just on the world in general, but on a specific object,
oneself. That is, someone who seeks the good opinion of others is moti-
vated to imagine how certain aspects of himself (his publicly visible actions
and qualities) will appear to differently situated subjects and whether what
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 41
they see of his public self will elicit their esteem. This suggests that amour
propre might foster rational agency by giving individuals an incentive to
view and judge themselves from an external perspective.
The importance of such a capacity for rational agency is evident. As we
have seen, reason requires an individual to abandon his own particular
point of view, where only his interests count, and to regard himself—his
intentions and character traits—from an external perspective that considers
only the fundamental interests of all. In other words, reason demands that
we make ourselves into a kind of object for our own consciousness—that
we view our own qualities as we would those of others, and that we do
so through the impartial eyes of a generalized other.26 Amour propre, then,
with its concern for how one appears to other subjects, seems especially
well suited to foster in human beings the capacity for self-objectification
that rational self-assessment requires. (Again, Rousseau is not claiming that
simply possessing amour propre suffices to enable individuals to take an ob-
jective view of their intentions and traits. Clearly, there is plenty of work for
education to do if individuals who start off caring only about the opinions
of actual others are to be transformed into subjects who judge themselves
from an impartial point of view. Rousseau’s claim, rather, is that the abil-
ity to make ourselves the object of reason’s gaze has its beginnings in—is
a refinement of—the original impulse, derived from amour propre, to step
outside of our own subjective vantage point in order to see how we appear
to the particular others whose good opinion we crave.)
Here again it might be objected that amour de soi itself provides indi-
viduals with a sufficient incentive to learn to assess their behavior from a
third-person perspective. For individuals who rely on others’ cooperation to
satisfy basic needs seem to have no trouble learning to discern and conform
to what “the market” desires in deciding what to produce, simply because
the consequences of failing to do so are so weighty. Even if this leaves room
for amour propre to work in tandem with amour de soi in fostering the capac-
ity to take an objective point of view on oneself, it should lead us to ask
whether amour propre has anything distinctive to contribute to this process.
In fact, it makes two such contributions.
One salient feature of amour propre is that it leads us to care about others’
opinions of our deeds and qualities not for instrumental reasons (because
meeting others’ expectations is necessary if my product is to command a
price in the marketplace) but because we value those opinions themselves,
as indicators of our worth as individuals. Thus, a being with amour propre
cares about how he appears to others because his publicly visible actions are
taken to reflect something that stands behind those appearances as the ulti-
mate object of his concern, namely, his “self” as a possible object of esteem.
Insofar as he is motivated by amour propre, the diligent craftsman desires
praise for his work not because a good reputation will increase his power in
42 Frederick Neuhouser
the marketplace but because his work is a reflection of himself, visible to all,
and the recognition of its excellence is a public confirmation of his worth
(as a craftsman). For this reason a being with amour propre is motivated to
consider how his own actions and qualities will appear to the other subjects
who count for him as the spectators of his self. Such a being will make the
publicly accessible aspects of himself into the object of his own gaze, while
asking himself, Are these qualities likely to be judged by my spectators as be-
fitting a person of merit (of whatever sort he aspires to be)? Because it leads
one to judge one’s own actions according to noninstrumental standards of
personal worth, the self-examination that amour propre impels individuals
to undertake is much closer to moral self-assessment than anything amour
de soi is capable of engendering. For one of the features of the moral stance
is that it judges an intended action with a view to how, in the eyes of an
impartial spectator, it would reflect on one’s “inner worth.” In short, amour
propre is the affective prototype of the standpoint of reason because it leads
individuals to adopt a kind of normative perspective on themselves—that is,
it leads them to assess themselves according to noninstrumental standards
of excellence that go beyond the self-interestedness of amour de soi, with its
exclusive concern for one’s nonrelative good.
There is a further feature of the normative perspective implicit in amour
propre that points to a second way this passion helps form the capacity to
judge oneself “objectively,” from the standpoint of reason. This feature con-
cerns the nature of the authority of the norms that amour propre acknowl-
edges, and not surprisingly, it is bound up with the fact that the good that
amour propre seeks resides in the opinions of others. Beyond providing non-
instrumental standards of personal merit, the evaluative criteria invoked by
amour propre differ from those of amour de soi in that they have their source
in something external to the person they apply to, namely, the judgments
of other subjects. By locating the measure of my worth in what others think
of me, I in effect make their opinions normative for me—that is, I take their
judgments to be valid criteria for my worth, and, by remaking myself in
conformity with those judgments, I recognize them as “laws” for my will.
Thus, by the very nature of the needs it engenders, amour propre compels
human beings to submit their wills to the judgments of their fellow beings
and, so, teaches them to accord a kind of normative authority to points of
view other than their own.
One way of expressing this point is to say that amour propre is the affective
source of the human impulse to objectivity, or rationality, and that what
Rousseau decries throughout his work as the “reign of opinion” is at the
same time a precursor to the reign of reason. This is because the desire to
make oneself conform to the opinions of others—the urge to measure up
to their perceptions of the good—is merely one (admittedly still primitive)
Rousseau and the Human Drive for Recognition 43
NOTES
1. When Rousseau denies in Part I of the Discourse on Inequality that amour propre
is part of “original” human nature, he means only that it is an inherently social
passion, not a possible feature of human individuals “in themselves” (apart from
their relations to others). In this sense, “human nature” refers to the basic capacities
and drives that nature bestows on human beings qua individuals, independently of
whatever social relations they may have. In ascribing amour de soi, pity, perfectibility,
and free will to our original nature (DI, 139–41/OC 3, 140–42), Rousseau means
only to claim that they, in contrast to amour propre, are qualities individuals could in
principle possess on their own, even were they to exist outside all society (which, for
Rousseau, no real human beings ever do). It is only in a more expanded sense of the
term, then, that amour propre can be ascribed to “human nature:” it is a fundamental
motivating force of human behavior that is active in some form whenever humans
exist as social beings (as they always do).
44 Frederick Neuhouser
for what constitutes false human needs: a need is false if the attempt to satisfy it
stands in conflict either with one’s own happiness or freedom, or with the system-
atic satisfaction of the fundamental interests of all. In other words, false needs are
(perceived) needs we would be better off without, either because they enslave us or
result in our frustration and misery.
13. Vice also includes dishonesty, hypocrisy, deceit, and dissimulation. That
Rousseau believes them, too, to be engendered by superiority-seeking amour propre
is evident at DI, 171/OC 3, 175.
14. For more on the threat that dependence poses to freedom, see Frederick Neu-
houser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2000), chapter 2.
15. This formulation is implicit in Rousseau’s statement of the fundamental
problem of political philosophy, which glosses freedom as “obeying only oneself”
(SC, I.6.iv). See also RSW, 56/OC 1, 1059, where freedom is said to consist in “never
doing what [one] does not want to do.”
16. The best recent treatment of alienation concurs that the concept of alienation
is implicit in and central to Rousseau’s thought: Rahel Jaeggi, Entfremdung (Frankfurt
am Main, Germany: Campus Verlag, 2005), 24–25.
17. Other references to the same phenomenon can be found at DI, 184/OC 3,
189; and E, 215/OC 4, 494.
18. See, for example, DI, 166/OC 3, 170.
19. For Rousseau the converse also holds: inequality without dependence would
have no serious consequences for human well-being. The fact that Rousseau places
greater emphasis on reducing inequality than on eliminating dependence reflects
his view that the latter is more fundamental to civilization than the former.
20. Elsewhere Rousseau offers an even vaguer formulation of this idea: laws regu-
lating economic inequality ought to produce a situation where “all have something
and no one has too much” (SC, I.9.viiin). For more concrete suggestions, see PE,
19–38/OC 3, 258–78.
21. As defined by the aim of civil society, which is to “assure the goods, the
life, and the freedom of each member through the protection of all” (PE, 9/OC 3,
248).
22. See Frederick Neuhouser, “Rousseau on the Relation between Reason and
Self-Love (Amour Propre),” Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus, 2003,
221–39 for a more detailed characterization of the standpoint of reason.
23. Rousseau’s position in the Discourse on Inequality is that amour de soi by itself
does not generate enduring relations of dependence, since in the “original” state
of nature, where amour de soi is active but amour propre is not, no such dependence
arises. Rather, dependence becomes a necessary part of human existence only when
amour propre is awakened and has impressed its character on the greatest part of
human desires.
24. These points are nicely formulated by Andrew Chitty, “Needs in the Philoso-
phy of History: Rousseau to Marx” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1994), 63–68.
25. The suggestion that comparison is essential to reason, perhaps even its central
operation, can be found at DI, 143–44, 148/OC 3, 165–66, 169.
26. The position I attribute to Rousseau overlaps considerably with George Her-
bert Mead’s account of rationality, Mind, Self, and Society, Part III (Chicago: University
46 Frederick Neuhouser
of Chicago Press, 1934). Moreover, Mead argues that it is precisely the ability to take
oneself as an object—to view oneself from the perspective of others—that is the
hallmark of selfhood. This suggests one potentially fruitful strategy for making out
Rousseau’s claim that amour propre is a necessary condition not just of rationality
but of selfhood in general.
27. Another version of this claim can be found at Chitty, “Needs in the Philoso-
phy of History,” 42–43.
3
Recognition and Embodiment:
Fichte’s Materialism
J. M. Bernstein
47
48 J. M. Bernstein
first thesis presupposes the second: to posit oneself as one among others
presupposes being an embodied being among other embodied beings
who can mutually influence one another causally and intentionally. Self-
consciousness is thus just as much interbodily as intersubjectively consti-
tuted. While there are curiosities galore to Fichte’s defense of both theses,
because in obvious and, I shall argue, unobvious ways he is seeking to
materialize idealism, to provide an account of recognition and rights that
fully acknowledges the material conditions of everyday life, his project is
worth further detailing.
Part of the difficulty in interpreting Fichte here is making sense of his
claim that the two central theses entail a transcendental deduction of right.
Transcendental rights and political rights are different sorts of things alto-
gether; how are they to be connected? If we can gain some clarity about
what he intends in providing a transcendental deduction of right, we might
thereby understand better his overall method of proceeding. I will therefore
begin with an interrogation of his transcendental conception of right before
examining each of his two core theses in turn.
te’s usage. Fichte conceives of right as the normative lining of the necessary
conditions for individuality; thus the force or authority or source of right
is to be tied to those minimum conditions through which human beings
become actual, self-conscious beings in a sensible world shared with other
like creatures. This presupposes a widening of transcendental inquiry. In ac-
cord with one line of Kantian thought, the deduction of a concept involves
demonstrating that it, or the cognitive action performing it, is a necessary
condition for the possibility of self-consciousness. For Kant, the necessary
conditions of self-consciousness must be a priori, knowable independently
of experience; and what can be known independently of experience can be
so known because it belongs to the furniture of the mind rather than to the
world apart from human mindedness. Fichte, however, is seeking to include
right as “an original concept of pure reason” on the ground that a rational
being cannot posit itself as a self-consciousness “without positing itself as
an individual, as one among several rational beings that it assumes to exist
outside itself” (9). Embodiment too is argued to be a necessary condition for
empirical self-consciousness. Neither possessing a body nor the existence of
others belong to the furniture of the mind in the way a cognitive category
might, yet they belong to self-consciousness’s necessary conditions of possi-
bility. Because they are necessary grounds for individuality, and individual-
ity necessary for self-consciousness, others and embodiment are considered
to belong to the transcendental inventory of subjectivity. Hence, what is
utterly outside and external to self-consciousness in its transcendental
locution—the immediate, prereflective self-awareness that is necessary for
consciousness in general—and is thus not a pure product of the spontaneity
of the mind is nonetheless to be considered as an a priori component of
subjectivity. It is this extension of the idea of transcendental inquiry that is
the cause of the conundrum about the status of right as the normative face
of individuality.
In the letter to Reinhold, Fichte presents this extension of transcendental
inquiry as arising out of what he considers two “gross deficiencies” in Kant’s
moral thought. First, even if a maxim fails the test of universalizability, what
is the rational force requiring me to adopt only universalizable maxims?
Kantian morality presupposes the very thing that requires demonstration,
namely, that my life as a free agent is necessarily bound up with and depen-
dent upon the lives of other free agents; others belong internally or intrinsi-
cally to my free agency, they are internal to my standing for myself as a free
agent, and thereby come to require normative regard. However shaky is
Fichte’s inference here, and however it is that rights and moral norms bind
and obligate, it seems prima facie plausible to urge that they can do so only
in relation to a material a priori of my existence—the conditionality of my
individuality on the individuality of others. On its own, we might say, the
categorical imperative testing procedures presume an emphatic distance
52 J. M. Bernstein
from others as the reason underlying morality’s reminder, its second reflec-
tion on a proposed maxim of action that operates formally as a mechanism
through which the existence of others is recalled. Kantian morality, whose
deliberative procedures bring others “back” into consideration, obscures
and distances us from those others whose intimacy to our agency is the real
ground of their claim upon us.
Second, when considering courses of action in relation to others, pre-
cisely which others must I take into consideration and on what basis? What
is the scope of necessary moral and political concern? Who deserves moral
regard and the ascription of rights? All rational beings? And how am I to
recognize who is one of them? Is sharing my skin color and language neces-
sary? Being a member of my tribe? Common opinion has certainly licensed
those restrictions. Fichte assumes that however the determination of the
scope of moral concern is to occur, it must occur through the presenta-
tion of features of individuality available to perceptual experience.6 Hence,
irrespective of what it is to be a rational being, in order to be counted as
a rational being there must be external, sensible evidence available for
perceptual inspection, and that evidence sufficient for real universality.
Fichte contends that we must acknowledge as a human being anything that
appears as a human being, that is, the mark of the human is the human
form (upright stature, opposable thumbs, an expressive mouth, etc.), and
it is the human body so understood that must be considered “inviolable.”7
In a sense to be elaborated below, Fichte considers the human body as the
necessary mode in which freedom and reason appear; but since freedom
would be as nothing without appearing, then freedom is conditional on
embodiment. Fichte’s thought here is something like: it is through the ex-
perience of another’s body as inviolable that I come to consider her an end
in herself. Here Kant’s focus on the purity of the will obscures the way in
which others ethically appear, and thus the actual inaugural terms of ethical
consideration (we must forbear from causing others pain, from injuring or
harming them by injuring or harming their bodies).
Part of what is motivating these critiques of Kant is the thought that there
must be a formation of normativity that is antecedent to and independent
of morality because what it is to be a self-conscious agent is in part de-
pendent upon how one is acted upon by others, where the form of such
acting is itself already implicitly or explicitly governed by normative con-
siderations. Transcendental right means to connect the necessity of right,
the necessity for one to be treated thus and so, with the conditions making
self-consciousness possible. Fichte is thus scrambling after the thought that
the emergence of self-consciousness and the emergence of norm-governed
behavior are two sides of the same process. Because “norm-governed behav-
ior” is thinner and more external than morality in its weighty Kantian sense,
Fichte thinks of it as what becomes, when formalized and made explicit,
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 53
political rights, that is, the minimal forms of normative regard necessary for
a community of self-determining equals.
All of Fichte’s theses here are aspects of a general furthering of Kant’s
claim for the primacy of practical over theoretical reasoning, and the
expansion of practical reasoning into perceptual experience. Theoretical
reason is dependent on, or a mode of, practical reason in part because
theoretical reason is also a form of spontaneity and thus agency; in part
because theoretical reason must, finally, realize itself in empirical experi-
ence (all knowledge is for the sake of action); in part because empirical
experience itself essentially involves the categorical differential responding
to things and persons. Finally, although he does not say so here, Fichte
is appropriating Kant’s late insight that the norms governing practical
reason cannot be logically deduced but depend on the “fact of reason.”
The notion of the “fact of reason” answers the question of why the moral
law binds by urging that it always already has bound us. Fichte thinks our
implicit awareness of the bindingness of the moral law is the wrong fact
of reason; it is the determining effort of the other, what he calls the “sum-
mons” of the other, the other inviting one to respond to an intentional
sign with an intentional sign because one has been so invited, that is the
real fact of reason. Once something like a fact of reason comes into play,
then the logic of transcendental inquiry must shift since in this case “the
indeterminate concept of something in general [as in “the concept of an
object in general”] is preceded by a determinate concept of a determinate
something as actual and the former is conditioned by the latter” (30).
And once the particular precedes the universal as its condition of possi-
bility, then the very idea of what is at stake in interrogating the necessary
conditions for the possibility of self-consciousness must also shift.
In the Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte wants to marry transcendental
inquiry, whose notion of a priori possibility presumes that possibility pre-
cedes actuality and universality precedes particularity, with an anti-Platonic,
Aristotelian procedure in which the actual precedes the possible and the
particular precedes the universal. The conundrum about the status of right
is precisely its status as, apparently, transcendentally necessary yet empiri-
cally bound. In truth, Fichte never does work out in any detail how this
marriage is supposed to occur. But he is aware that he is methodologically
transforming the very idea of transcendental inquiry, and that he must
account for the introduction of empirical conditions of possibility. To-
ward the end of §3 in which he has been discussing the summons of the
other—his new fact of reason—in quite abstract and formal terms, he sud-
denly baldly states that “The summons to engage in free self-activity is what
we call up-bringing [Erziehung; education]. All individuals must be brought
up to be human beings, otherwise they would not be human beings” (38).
Hence, what first appears as an abstract empirical condition of individuality
54 J. M. Bernstein
INDIVIDUALITY (I):
THE SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF FREEDOM
free beings that provide the minimal set of guarantees necessary to sustain
those powers that are constitutive for any actual self-determining subject.
Fichte’s suggestion, then, is that what has been considered external freedom
as opposed to moral freedom, what is the object of law as opposed to what
is the object of moral obligation, is best construed as the difference between
the minimum necessary features for being a subject and the various ideal-
izations of (minimal) subjectivity, where the minimum conception of the
subject corresponds to the necessary conditions for the possibility of actual
self-consciousness.
For Fichte, philosophy proceeds either dogmatically or idealistically.
By dogmatism he means what we now would call reductive naturalism
in which all objects, including human beings, have fixed features as de-
termined by the laws of nature. Idealism, conversely, begins with the idea
that rather than being determined (all the way up) we are self-determining
or free or self-active (all the way down); it is because an I is its acting that
practical reason is primary. In inquiring into the minimum necessary condi-
tions for self-consciousness, Fichte is thus asking after the conditions under
which an individual becomes conscious of her freedom. It is the required
components of free action that form the core of the concept of an indi-
vidual or person.11 To be a free agent one, first, must have “the capacity to
construct, through absolute spontaneity, concepts of [its] possible efficacy”
(9). Two thoughts are enjambed here: (i) acting freely involves acting in
relation to the concept of the object (state of affairs) to be realized; and it
is because free action is conceptually determined action that actions can be
considered as being done for a reason or purpose, for the sake of realizing a
concept in mind. (ii) Free agents are the kinds of beings who can determine
their own ends rather than having those ends be determined or imposed
from without. In some sense, the concepts or ends upon which agents act
must themselves be products of spontaneity, otherwise activity would be
the mere means or instrument for realizing external ends, ends that could
not be truly “mine.”12
Second, not only must one have the “bare capacity” for determining the
concepts of a possible efficacy, a rational individual can count herself as
free only if something in the world is made to correspond to her concept
through her activity. At this level, freedom is not only the possession of the
power to construct possible ends of action, one must be able to act on those
ends and realize them in the world. Being free in part involves the experi-
ence of imprinting one’s ideas on the world, of altering the world so that
it accords with those ideas. In this respect, third, to be an individual is to
be aware of oneself as individuated through one’s free activities. Fourth, in
order to act in the world and realize one’s ends, in order to materially trans-
form the world individuals must be like and a part of what they transform:
individuals must be embodied. Fifth, because one can actively individuate
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 57
thus not perceptual, not a matter of perceiving, from the outside so to speak,
regularities or constant conjunctions; it involves, on the contrary, being able
to distinguish between things happening, even with regularity, and the form-
ing of an intention and making an event happen. Further, in order to make
an event happen, the self must become aware that there is a sensible world
outside of itself. Indeed, becoming aware of one’s agency is discovering
that actions meet with resistances; resistances are effects. Hence, in order to
have the experience of bringing about an event in the world in accordance
with a concept, the infant must develop an awareness of the sensible world
as a “system of objects” (24) existing outside of and independent of itself;
objects must be cognized as having features and powers that are there in-
dependent of the infant subject’s agency. Becoming aware of its agency and
its accession to the world as a system of objects emerge simultaneously as
internal correlatives of one another: the infant learns its powers as it learns
how things can and cannot be changed.
One immediate corollary of this is that “the practical I is the original I
of original self-consciousness; that a rational being perceives itself immedi-
ately only in willing, and would not perceive itself and thus would also not
perceive the world . . . if it were not a practical being” (21). The practical I is
primary because it is only through interaction with objects (and persons) in
the world that an infant becomes self-conscious—one becomes self-aware
through becoming aware of one’s difference from objects together with
one’s (limited) powers to affect them. One is what one does. The practical I
here does not exclude or suppress the theoretical I, rather the practical I ab-
sorbs theoretical understanding (forming judgments and beliefs about the
world) as structured subroutines enabling its practical doing. One can only
form an intention to rattle the rattle in the context of having a belief that
there is an object in the world with certain dynamic properties which alter
in accordance with how they are affected. Practical activity is what installs
the human being in the world and generates its minimum self-conception.
Which is why Fichte says that the “practical faculty is the inner-most root of
the I” (21), and that the I cannot be deduced—these all now transcendental
claims that get their final authority from the developmental processes they
implicitly represent.
Fichte contends that coming to awareness of one’s agency through aware-
ness of one’s ability to bring about changes in the external world, while
certainly an awareness of individual powers, is not yet a self-consciousness
of free agency, an awareness of oneself as self-determining; in the exchange
between efficacious willing and object, “the subject’s free activity is posited
as constrained” (31), that is, efficacious willing presumes only knowledge
of what one is able to do or not able to do. There is nothing in this account
of awareness of the self as powerful agent that might not be ascribed to the
learning sequences of higher nonhuman mammals. Fichte supposes that
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 59
The object is not comprehended, and cannot be other than as a bare summons
calling upon the subject to act. Thus as surely as the subject comprehends the
object, so too does it possess the concept of its own freedom and self-activity,
and indeed as a concept given to it from the outside. It acquires the concept
of its own free efficacy, not as something that exists in the present moment . . .
but rather as something that ought to exist in the future. (32)
So it is insufficient to say, for example, that mother smiles for the sake of
having the infant smile in return since that exchange could be conceived as
a movement from stimulus to response; and, in fact, mimetic activity, how-
ever truly intersubjective, does begin through automatic reflex actions that,
we now think, begin in the first week of life. If actions inviting mimetic re-
sponse are as “bare” as could be, then in thinking of the summons as bare,
Fichte must be attempting to elicit a feature or structural aspect of agent-
other interactions rather than a particular type of action. Indeed, as we shall
see, Fichte comes to regard “every human interaction, not only the original
one, [as having] the form of a summons, of reciprocal recognitions.”15 To
think of the summons as a form belonging to all actual interactions (of a
certain type) explains how it could come to displace Kantian morality in
installing individuals into a normatively constituted sphere in which their
standing as self-determining agents is inscribed.
What is missing from the smile begets smile scenario? What needs to
be added to it in order for the child to experience its freedom and self-
activity? What is Fichte supposing in calling the new fact of reason a sum-
mons or invitation or calling rather than a demand or requirement or ob-
ligation? (Which is not to deny that the summons has some of the features
of a demand: it invokes a weak “ought.”) The summons, Fichte contends,
is essentially something which opens the possibility of refusal, of not act-
ing, of saying “no,” of negation (33). In becoming aware that a summons
may be responded to either by acceding to its requirements or by not acting
and so demurring, the agent becomes aware that it is free to respond or not
respond. But becoming aware of being free to respond or not respond is the
beginning of the awareness that for such types of objects, summons-type
objects, there is an indefinite number of different ways of responding, and
hence there is no necessary way in which the action or nonaction that will
come to be must be. Awareness that one can say “yes” or “no” is the condi-
tion for awareness of the openness of the future; and the openness of the fu-
ture is a condition of one’s awareness that what one is to do, and hence how
one is to be in relation to the one who summons is all undetermined.
In order for an agent to be self-conscious it must find itself as object, but
an active object; hence it must find itself determined to self-activity. The ex-
ternal check which determines the subject must nonetheless leave it in full
possession of its freedom and elicit that freedom as object of awareness. An
agent can be determined to exercise its efficacy only if it finds that efficacy
as something it could, possibly, exercise in some future, or not; and further,
to suppose one should smile in return is to be aware that there is a difference
between what should happen, what mother (authoritatively) wants to hap-
pen (where the wants of significant (authoritative) others are the precipi-
tates for “shoulds”) and what will happen, and that what should happen
may not happen because one wishes it not to happen. The summons, then,
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 61
must open a field, the minimum structure of which is the yes/no choice of
to act or not to act. A summons is a purposive action that determines but
does not causally compel a field of action. Summonses must then involve
the producing of a nonnatural sign of some kind (linguistic or nonlinguis-
tic), a sign whose fundamental character is that it is intentionally produced
in order that another respond intentionally to it, and the one to whom it
is addressed respond on the basis of being invited to respond and to do so
in a manner that enables the original summoner to understand that the re-
sponse given is intended as a response to the original summons even when
the response is negative (36–37).16 Formally, a summons-and-response
sequence satisfies the requirement of treating the other as also an end in
herself, but this is not the Kantian precedent that Fichte is here following.
Rather, it is the paradigm of the Third Analogy: a summons-and-response
sequence is intended as an instance of a noncausal (or not merely causal)
episode of mutual interaction and thoroughgoing reciprocity, coexistence
in thoroughgoing community, to use Kant’s phrasing. While mother’s smile
could simply be the trigger for generating a smile from the infant, in time
it will come to be understood as an invitation to smile in return, and the
return, be it a smile or (ironic) grimace or stone-faced refusal, becomes an
element in the bond connecting mother and child.17 It is because Fichte
recognizes the complexity of this exchange that he reframes the scene of
instruction into upbringing, the becoming bound to community through
the learning of non-natural modes of interaction.
How complex the material conditions are for noncausal modes of mutual
influence we shall come to shortly. What is significant here is that Fichte
deduces his concept of right directly from the conditions of mutual interac-
tion, which is to say, again, that right is being proposed as the normative
lining of that very process, its flip side, what the sequence is as seen from
a normative perspective. In order for mutual interactions to occur, the neo-
phyte must assume that beside objects with causal powers there also exist
rational beings, beings who summon it. And hence, for there to be human
beings at all, “there must be more than one” (37); all these are direct infer-
ences from the existence of episodes of mutual interaction. In participating
in such interactions, the neophyte must have a sense of its difference from
the summoner, and further a sense of a space under its control within which
it is free to choose—to say “yes” or “no.” Originally, that sphere is that of
the body as the material medium through which nonnatural signs (words
or gestures) are produced. Ignore the question of embodiment for the mo-
ment. The neophyte must come to recognize that in being summoned it is
62 J. M. Bernstein
being given a “free space” in which to respond, and that to respond in kind
it must likewise permit its other a free space.
What is meant by the neophyte comprehending the summons as the pro-
vision of a free space? It is the comprehension that another, non-summons-
type action was possible and not acted upon, and that a summons-type
action was deliberately chosen. Instead of smiling or saying “smile,” mother
could, with teeth bared and hand raised in a preparation to strike, utter
threateningly, “Smile.” This mode of action, while formally intentional and
thus formally leaving open the possibility that the infant may not smile,
does not presume that it is up to the infant as to whether it smiles or not;
it must smile—or else. Even more forcibly, after threatening, mother might
take the two corners of the infant’s mouth and roughly lift them—”See,
you know how to smile, don’t you?” A summons is not only something
affirmative, a call to free activity, it is in part defined by not being the use
of (causal) force. In midst of a world in which its body is routinely having
things done to it—fed, changed, carried, picked up, put down, etc.—sum-
mons-type activities emerge as a distinctive form of activity, ones that inter-
act with the infant in a non-(merely) causal way, aiming to elicit a sponta-
neous response. So the infant becomes aware that it has different kinds of
powers (to change the world or summon an other), and that which action
it chooses is up to it.
Fichte states this as a double requirement: free actions toward the
neophyte must be understood as done in relation to the always existing
possibility of transgressing the neophyte’s free space, and thus as a self-
limiting of the will by the issuer of the summons (41). Every summons, as
the paradigm of free action, is self-limiting in that it involves the treatment
of its object as a free, self-determining being, and the forgoing of the use of
force (or its intentional equivalents: deceit or threat). Because every sum-
mons, as the form of every free human interaction, implies a use of force
that has been forgone, that is, implies a choice has been made from within
the sphere of one individual’s freedom to take into consideration another’s
sphere of freedom by leaving a sphere of choice open to her, then every
summons qua self-limiting action is a recognition of the other as a free and
rational being. To issue a summons is to accord the other a normative status
(to be treated as a rational being and not a thing), and therefore to act in
ways consonant with the one summoned being given a status or standing
as free, as if she had a right to such standing—”only the moderation of force by
means of concepts is the unmistakable and exclusive criterion of reason and
freedom” (43; emphasis mine).
Fichte is aware how equivocal this notion of right is. After all, from the
perspective of the natural attitude it is almost invisible; one could regard the
choice between causal/instrumental modes of interaction and summons-
type modes to be simply a matter of choosing one of two modes of interac-
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 63
though it is also this for Fichte); rather, the human body is the very medium
of subjectivity itself, the actuality of freedom, the exteriority of the self to
itself that attaches it to objects and others. In decentering the subject, the
summons requires that the subject be placed in the midst of others; but
there is no “placing” or “midst of others” without spatializing the subject,
spatializing freedom as such; the spacing, determinacy, and individuality
of the subject all depend upon embodiment. Fichte, then, means to claim
that, even beginning from the high abstraction of transcendental self-con-
sciousness, the subject does not also have a body, but necessarily is its body.
Or better, keeping the language appropriately idealist, the human body is
the necessary form of appearance of the human soul (freedom, the subject),
where an essence that does not come to appearance would be “nothing.”
Materializing what Kant thought of as noumenal freedom, making freedom
bodily, is Fichte’s most persuasive gesture for collapsing the distinction be-
tween appearances and things in themselves.
Each of the theorems constituting Fichte’s deduction of the body is a
recapitulation of his original arguments for individuality, showing embodi-
ment to be a condition of possibility, the material presupposition, for the
efficacy and sociality of freedom. Fichte begins his argument by reminding
his reader that he has already shown that a rational being can posit itself as
a person only by “exclusively ascribing to itself a sphere of freedom” (53;
italics removed); in so doing, she becomes this person; possessing exclusive
dominion over a sphere and having a particular identity mutually entail
one another. But this, again, is still only an elaborate metaphorical chain:
to be free is to have a sphere of choice that is exclusively one’s own; in order
to have an exclusive sphere of choosing there must be some way of bound-
ing that sphere; bound spheres must have limits; and what is bound and
limited requires the positing of what is outside that sphere; so the particular
identity of the free chooser exists only in positing what stands opposed to
her. Fichte means this chain to remind the reader of the argument from
the Wissenschaftslehre that one can only posit the self through simultane-
ously positing the not-self. This new argument is the actuality of the earlier
argument.
Fichte begins in earnest by taking up a Kantian argument from §24 of the
B Deduction: “We cannot think a line without drawing it in thought, or a
circle without describing it . . . we cannot obtain for ourselves a represen-
tation of time, which is not an object of outer intuition, except under the
image of a line . . . and . . . for all inner perceptions we must derive the de-
termination of lengths of time or of points of time from changes which are
exhibited in outer things” (B 155–56). Kant is here beginning to consider
the conditions under which intellectual activity can possess objectivity.
Self-activity on its own is a purely temporal affair; because time is, at least,
passage, then on its own activity must be indeterminate, a passing away. In
66 J. M. Bernstein
order to make the self-activity determinate, it must become spatial, that is,
the temporal movement of activity becomes objective through the discovery
of spatial analogues, extended objects at rest or changing. The drawing of
a line is, one might say, the pure transformation of temporal action into
spatial figure.
For Kant, the issue here is, narrowly, empirical self-knowledge, and hence
only a certain application of the categories; for Fichte the transcendental
and the empirical are more tightly bound. He claims “the I that intuits itself
as active intuits its activity as the act of drawing a line. This is the original
schema for activity in general” (55). N.B., Fichte sets up the question to
which drawing a line is the empirical answer as patently transcendental: the
I intuiting itself as active. However hyperbolic, Fichte means to be urging
here that activity, time, and space are originally united in this movement of
drawing a line, and that it is only logically later that the different elements
become fully differentiated one from another. While from one angle this is
Fichte absorbing all objectivity into the activity of self-consciousness, from
the opposing angle he can be seen to be conceding that for human activity
to have any determinacy whatsoever space must be coeval with time. His
thought that transcendentally there can be no space without spatializing
activity entails that the body is an “extension that is at rest and made deter-
minate once and for all” (56). Following the Kantian signature that there
cannot be unity without unification, Fichte thus deduces the body as a
certain elaboration of the activity of drawing a line.
Viewing the body as the precipitate or sedimentation of transcendental
activity is philosophically preposterous. By borrowing Kant’s thought
about the line, Fichte was seeking within the narrow confines of tran-
scendental reflection to segue to the body—a route that Kant too tracked
in his notebooks. This constructive analysis, however, fails to adequately
track anything remotely genetic. Nonetheless, Fichte’s underlying thought
seems not altogether untoward, namely, to demonstrate, generally, that
even what might seem most remote from absolute self-consciousness
can belong to it intrinsically if it is a condition of the possibility for self-
consciousness becoming actual; and hence, to demonstrate specifically
the utter intimacy of self-activity and bodily movement, that is, to ensure
that self-activity is always actually an effort of material determination and
that the body is, from at least one perspective, nothing but the mate-
rial expression of free action. And this is just what Fichte does go on to
say: “The material body we have derived is posited as the sphere of all the
person’s possible free actions, and nothing more. Its essence consists in this
alone” (56). Recall that what we are attempting to do here is to take the
metaphoricity out of the idea that free action involves positing for oneself
an exclusive sphere. The claim now is that the body as transcendentally
specified is that sphere.
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 67
When Fichte says the body is “nothing more” than the sphere of a
person’s possible free actions he is transcendentally regimenting the mean-
ing of the body to its role of being the pure means through which the will
becomes efficacious in the world. Following the Kantian self-activity argu-
ment, Fichte immediately returns to the question of how a free will can be-
come efficacious in the world. At the very least this presupposes that there
must be something mediating the rational will with an idea in mind about
the material world, and the material world. And one way of thinking of the
body is as the mediating medium between will and world. But this cannot
be right: if the body were only a mediating function between will (self-
activity or the spontaneity of the intellect) and world, then the will would
need a further mediator to attach it to the body, and so on. Hence, on pain
of an infinite regress, the body cannot be merely an instrument or means
through which willing achieves worldly efficacy. The notion of the body is,
rather, what directly or immediately is at the behest of the will: “Immediately
by means of his will, and without any other means, the person would have
to bring forth in this body what he wills; something would have to take
place within this body, exactly as the person willed it” (56; emphasis mine).
In opting for an immediate realization of the will in a bodily movement,
Fichte is meaning to remove from action any idea of there being a mental-
istic shadow world of “intendings” or “tryings” or “volitions” that are then
realized in bodily actions. One raises one’s arm—and nothing else.
Lucy O’Brien, in developing what can be taken as a neo-Fichtean theory
of action, begins by reminding us that agents seem to be authoritative over
their actions in a way they are not over others’ actions, that our knowledge
of our actions appears to be relatively spontaneous, given with the action
itself, and that actions could not be what we suppose them to be unless
they were relatively self-intimating.21 Reconstructing a theory put forward
some years ago by Arthur Danto in order to explain these features of action,
O’Brien persuasively argues that there must be basic actions. Basic actions
are those actions “that a subject can carry out directly without having to do
anything else,” that descriptions of basic actions will be “in terms of bodily
movements” over which the subject is directly authoritative—actions like
“raising my arm” or “lifting my foot.” Without trying to document which
actions are basic, O’Brien contends that we are justified in supposing that
an agent “will have a non-conceptual grasp of the possible ways they can
act, which are in this way basic.”22 Basic actions have a perfect Fichtean
character: when an individual acts consciously, the actions she engages in
are something she can control; the directness of her control over the action
entails that she knows about the actions, knows what she is doing, through
the action, through participation, rather than through observation or reflec-
tion. Basic actions are instances of the I intuiting itself as active through
or in some bodily movement. Basic actions require a demanding intimacy
68 J. M. Bernstein
between will and body: the body is, from a transcendental perspective, the
immediate expression of the will; hence basic actions provide an outline
of the body—or what is the same, a schema of the will—as seen from the
perspective of self-activity. Bodily movements that are the concrete descrip-
tions of basic actions give precision to the claim for the body being “nothing other
than the sphere of the person’s free actions” (56; emphasis mine).
Fichte would need to demure from O’Brien’s account in only one respect:
he does not believe there can be a definitive inventory of basic actions. His
argument commences from the idea that there are an indefinite number of
possible conceptually mediated, nonbasic actions. Consider the complex
actions that go along with highly elaborated bodily activities like dancing
(doing a pirouette in ballet, or a shuffle hop in tap dancing), playing a mu-
sical instrument (the movement of the fingers involved in playing a piano
versus playing a saxophone), using a tool (turning a screwdriver), perform-
ing surgery, playing a sport, not to speak of more mundane activities like
cooking (slicing and dicing), writing, speaking, and singing. Assume, first,
that there is no definitive end to the possibility of such complex activities,
that new ones (X-game sports, for example) are continually being invented.
Second, for each complex action the body performs what is an indepen-
dent, moving part of the body changes: for some actions one or more fin-
gers move while the arm and shoulder remain steady, in others the whole
arm moves while fingers and wrist are firm, while in still others the wrist
and fingers move as the arm moves (say, in a jump shot). The relation of the
body to its parts is a whole/part relation, but one that continually changes
relative to the complex action being performed. Finally, to say that the no-
tion of part must be relativized to the complex action performed entails
that while the precise range of basic motions a part performs is not infinite
(there are severe physical/structural constraints), it is indefinite—the lifting,
bending motion of the arm while flicking the wrist, the fingers waving for-
ward seems unimaginable apart from the activity of shooting a basketball.
A body conforming to these three requirements is necessarily “articulated”
(58). A human body (Leib), then, is “a closed articulated whole . . . within
which we posit ourselves as a cause that acts immediately through our will”
(58).
Genetically, this is all to say that the infant acquires a consciousness of
itself as efficacious in the world not simply by having an idea in mind and
then bringing it about, but by having the idea in mind in virtue of having
an awareness that it possesses a body that it discovers to be directly under
its control, whose capacities are the condition through which its will im-
prints itself on the world. Making the rattle rattle involves kicking the leg;
hence necessary to discovering her will’s freedom is discovering that she has
a sphere of influence which she directly controls, and without which she
would be utterly disconnected from the world. She becomes herself, in part,
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 69
through discovering the range of movements over which she has direct con-
trol and over which no one else has direct control. As basic actions become
involved in more conceptually mediated actions, the range of possible
movements she can perform becomes the mirror image of the objects exist-
ing outside her, their powers, and the nature of her power over them. The
world as a system of objects is, in the first instance, the internal correlative
of the active body. So being an individual requires positing the articulated
body capable of basic actions as what makes free willing actual.
The body so understood is not a natural body, a body seen from within
nature, but rather, again, the body as understood from the transcendental
perspective of making self-consciousness possible. This body is fully active.
Hence, Fichte must now proceed to deduce the passive body, the body that
is exposed to the influence of others, the body that has been summoned,
giving both active and passive powers a transcendental denotation. Notori-
ously, this stretch of argument involves Fichte in distinguishing “higher”
from “lower” organs, and “subtle” from “coarse” matter. What is he sup-
posing in proposing these distinctions? Only this: if a subject is summoned
and so influenced by another, then unless we are to believe in telepathy
or magic, the influence of one person upon another must be some form
of material influence. There is no way in which another can affect my will
except through my body; if not every influence upon body is a direct causal
restriction upon my powers of willing, that is, a way of either prohibiting
or coercing certain bodily movements, then my body must have sensible
organs that are not directly subject to the influence of solid matter, and
there must be a kind of matter that can influence the body without causally
determining it. That, in a nutshell, is the argument.
Fichte was the first to admit that the details of his argument were less than
adequate (66n), but the underlying thesis looks persuasive. Fichte means to
be replacing standard accounts of the interaction of mind and body with
an account of two aspects of embodiment. In particular he is attempting to
understand how it is possible that my body can be “influenced” without
being mechanically determined. Perceptual episodes are of this kind; in
them there is a binding of my sensory apparatus that nonetheless leaves my
higher sense free in its response: “For example, if a shape in space is to be
perceived by sight, then the feel of the object (i.e., the pressure that would
have to be exerted in order to produce the shape by sculpting it) would have
to be internally imitated . . . ; but the impression in the eye, as the schema
of such imitation, would be retained” (66). Here there is a dialectic between
the physical impression of the object on the eye and the imaginative taking
70 J. M. Bernstein
up of that impression in a manner that could, but does not, become the
active determination to produce a further like object, hence a process in
which a sensory impression becomes an active repetition rather than simply
determining the repeating response. On this model, reception or (passive)
understanding has the structure of an active repetition. And this should
be familiar enough to us; for example, when one is learning to read one
repeats the words out loud, saying them, only later learning, first, to inhibit
speaking the words aloud, and then learning to inhibit one’s mouth from
moving until, finally, one simply reads. Fichte’s thesis is that this represents
a deep structure of understanding, with the movement from reception to
active repetition to silencing the repetition happening at lightning speed in
adults, but nonetheless happening still.
Equally, then, learning to hear understandingly (which is a component of
learning to speak) initially involves hearing words said to one by saying them
back; or grasping music by following the rhythm by moving a part of one’s
body in time or the melody by humming along; actions are learned by aping
the example of others, etc. Fichte is hence giving to understanding as a learn-
ing process a bodily mimetic aspect as the necessary antecedent to purer
processes of intellection. And while this passive-reception-becoming-active-
repetition model probably works less well for visual perception—although
Hogarth and Merleau-Ponty, among others, have argued that drawing an
object is the closest approximation to capturing the process of visual un-
derstanding, and hence itself an active model for conceptual understanding
generally23—what is being thought here is how material influence can incite
activity rather than coerced motion or physical inhibition. In the perceptual
case, Fichte is supposing that the light waves conveying the physical impres-
sion are a subtle matter, and the productive imagination is the higher organ
that is influenced but not determined by the movements of this matter. Not
surprisingly, Fichte takes the prime example of reciprocal interaction via
moveable subtle matter to be speaking with one another (71). What Fichte
does here is make mimesis operate both as a feature of the relation between
the subject and the world, and as part of the subject’s self-relation, model-
ing the relation between the higher and lower senses after the mimetic ex-
changes between subject and subject, and subject and object. While there is
obviously more than a mimetic relation between higher and lower organs,
inner and outer senses, mimesis is crucial to learning, and hence pivotal in
any genetic account of the development of self-consciousness.
By allowing there to be a dialectic between inner and outer sense,
imaginative activity (as still sensible action) and outer bodily action, Fichte
generates two forms through which the body is influenced and influences
the world. Once these powers are in place, he can then rewrite the original
scene of instruction in which the neophyte is awoken to self-consciousness
of her freedom in appropriately material terms.
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 71
If my body is composed of resistant, solid matter and has the power to modify
all matter in the sensible world and to shape it in accordance with my con-
cepts, then the body of the person outside me is composed of the same matter
and has the same power. Now my body is itself matter, and thus a possible
object that the other person can affect through mere physical force; it is a pos-
sible object whose movement he can directly restrict. If he regarded me as a
mere matter and wanted to exercise an influence on me, he would have exer-
cised an influence on me in the same way that I influence anything I regard as
mere matter. He did not influence me in this way, thus his concept of me was
not that of mere matter, but that of a rational being, and through this concept
he limited his capacity to act; and only now is the conclusion fully justified
and necessary: the cause of the influence on me as described above is nothing
other than a rational being. With this, the criterion of the reciprocal interac-
tion between rational beings as such has been established. They influence each
other necessarily under the condition that the object of their influence possesses
sense. (64–65)
For an object to possess sense is for its appearing and movement to have
more than merely causal significance. I shall turn to the issue of the appear-
ing body below. What is central here is that in light of this appearing the
other adopts an alternative mode of interacting with the beginner; this is
as before, only now each moment of the interaction has a corresponding
material character. The other will influence the beginner through material
signs rather than physical force: smiling as an invitation to smile in return,
or saying the physical sounds composing the word “smile.” For Fichte,
words as composed of phonemes are a paradigm of sense making. Mak-
ing such sounds with the mouth give the mouth its spiritual sense; just as
directing those sounds to human hearing entails that the ears are material/
spiritual organs. The mutual determination of the material and the mean-
ingful is what Fichte means by an object having Sinn.
To complete the thought, what constitutes an individual as an individual
is that it be able to affect the sensible world with movements whose me-
dium has a density corresponding to the density of ordinary physical ob-
jects (in which case the body is an instrument of the will), and that it also
be approached through being an object of sense rather than a mere physical
thing. The sheer approach by another is not sufficient: the beginner must
be so approached, and come to realize that in so being she could have been
physically coerced rather than summoned, hence that she has a capacity for
summoning in turn (doing certain types of bodily movements: gesturing
or speaking), and that the being that originally summoned and which is to
be summoned in response has the same complex dual material character
as she. Because reciprocal summons-type interactions deliberately forswear
the use of physical force, then willing in this manner is self-limiting, and to
act in a self-limiting manner is a fortiori to recognize the other has having
72 J. M. Bernstein
that even in the original scene there was at least something approximating
reciprocal interaction.
This sounds contradictory since Fichte is now proposing that in the very
scene in which I am made an individual by another, I am already summon-
ing the other. Well, certainly not summoning her through anything I do,
that is, not through engaging in summons-type activities for these as yet are
unavailable to me; so, to use Fichte’s own paradoxical formulation, there
needs to be the exercise of an efficacy without exercising it (70). Against
the background of the previous argument, we know where this is heading:
since my independence and efficacy in the world are dependent upon my
body, my body as the material inscription of my will making my individual-
ity possible, then the appearing of my body on the scene is the manner in
which I might exercise efficacy, “be active, without me exercising my efficacy
through it” (70). In providing a deduction of the necessity of embodiment
for self-consciousness, the body emerges as a series of active and passive
powers, as a material object with moveable parts that is capable of doing
and undergoing certain types of actions, which it is claimed has sense, but
that does not as yet look like anything in particular, does not, on the basis
of its powers, have a distinctive form or appearance.
But this is implausible: there cannot be anything that satisfies those re-
quirements that yet lacks sensible form. A living being capable of a certain
range of activities must have a distinctive shape, a distinctive relation of
whole and parts that enables it to carry out just those activities. From the
opposing angle, we have already argued that the inventory of basic actions
(that are to be read off from the expanding catalogue of complex actions)
provides a schema of the human will—precisely, its look. So we have to
imagine a being that can: speak, sing, eat, call, cry, scream, walk, run, jump,
balance on one foot, make love (kiss, stroke, fondle), give birth, suckle
its young, bow, do a triple Salchow, play the piano, dice onions, shoot an
arrow, throw a boomerang, draw, write, knit, make funny faces, etc. The
more extended and fine grained the list of actions, and hence basic actions,
the more evident it is that the human body must have a specific shape, a
particular organization of articulated whole and parts that enables it to
perform this diverse range of activities. There may be another shape and
organization of whole and parts made from another material that could do
all this, but certainly till now nothing like it has ever been imagined. But if
this is true, and the range of activities are the expression of the possession of
a rational will, then the converse must hold as well: the human body’s ap-
pearing just is the appearance of a rational being, that is, “this appearance
of my body must be such that it cannot be understood or comprehended at
all except under the presupposition that I am a rational being” (71).
Above, in saying that the human body is the necessary form of appearance
of the human soul (freedom, the subject), I was functionally refashioning
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 75
human body, its formability and indeterminacy, its readiness for unknown
possibilities, which might lead one to engage such a body in a battle for
recognition. Without the assumption of equality in the proposed nonmoral
sense, the battle could not be one for recognition. The recognition of equal-
ity is the ground for subsequent misrecognition; hence, Hegel’s dialectic
presupposes the attaching of recognition to embodiment.
Second, deepening this thought, Fichte contends that taking into account
the whole of his analysis of the appearing body, not considered element by
element the way philosophers do, “but rather in their amazing, instanta-
neously grasped connection—as given to the senses—these are what compel
everyone with a human countenance to recognize and respect the human
shape everywhere . . . The human shape is necessarily sacred to the human
being” (78–79; emphasis mine). Perhaps the word “respect” is more mor-
alized than the argument can support, although it is now clear that Fichte
means the appearance of the human body to be the fact of reason. What compels
recognition in the first instance is the appearing body; hence the human
body in its appearing is what institutes the possibility of individuality and
so self-consciousness, that is, through the manner in which the appearance
of the human body compels perceptual attention, individuals enter imme-
diately into interaction with others, summoning through appearing the very
recognition which will give back to them the standing necessary to be one
who (actively) summons. The visual spectacle of the human body inscribes
the kind of agency and rationality human beings possess, and therefore on
its own initiates the communication between each self and its others whose
floundering and flourishing compose the history of the race.
Fichte’s claim here cannot be a discovery—it is too universalist in its scope
for that. His transcendental anthropology must be functioning as a kind of
reminder. The reminder can have the force it does because the argument
for it is in reality a step-by-step dispelling of the illusions, repressions, and
fantasies that have permitted us to daily forget or deny what is there right
before our eyes: the human body is the appearance of the human. Fichte
accomplishes this by: closing the gap between (material) mind and body;
making the (basic) doings of the body the necessary and direct expressions
of the rational mind; while focusing its materiality, he detaches the body
from determinate nature; reconfiguring the meaning of whole/part logic so
that it is tailored to the diversity of human action; revealing how the vari-
ous aspects of the body can be bearers of our humanity; making the experi-
ence of embodiment a source of dignity and standing in the world rather
than something to be despised, overcome, repressed. Is Fichte the first on
the scene here? Well, he does not have any obvious modern predecessors;
but there have been other forms the reminder has taken. Most evidently,
as Fichte’s requirement that we view the body as a whole, in its “amazing,
instantaneously grasped connection—as given to the senses” underlines,
80 J. M. Bernstein
it is the history of sculpture and painting that has sliced through ideology
and repression to render unavoidable the claim of embodiment—perhaps
nowhere more poignantly and contradictorily than in the endless images
of Christ on the cross. The body as the image of the soul, the appearance
of the human is patent in every idealization of the body in Greek sculpture,
every Michelangelo torso, every inscrutable Raphael face, in the level gaze
of every Holbein portrait, in the mere toes of every large Rubens figure, in
the eyes of every Rembrandt self-portrait, and on and on.
What is shocking, perhaps, is that we should need this reminder at all.
But once Platonism, Christianity, and scientific naturalism got their teeth
into culture, the obvious became less so—at least for reflection. Nothing is
a surer sign of this than the yawning gap that exists between philosophical
and artistic accounts of the body. The recurrent and virulent repudiation of
art—nothing but “illusion,” merely “aesthetic”—a not very subtle continua-
tion of the repudiation of the body, its insistent appearing, and the willful-
ness necessary to make nothing of that appearance.
at the basis of all voluntarily chosen reciprocal interaction among free beings
there lies an original and necessary reciprocal interaction among them, which
is this: the free being, by his mere presence in the sensible world, compels ev-
ery other free being, without qualification, to recognize him as a person. The
one free being provides the particular appearance, the other the particular con-
cept. Both are necessarily united, and freedom does not have the least amount
of leeway here . . . Both recognize each other in their inner being, but they are
as isolated as before. (79)
What is surprising here is how Fichte moves seamlessly from the necessary
unification of subjects through—compulsive—mutual recognition to, in
that recognition, each being as isolated as before. It is this isolation that will
lead Fichte to construct his state on the basis of a scenario that is logically
closer to Locke and Hobbes than Rousseau and Hegel.
The crux of Fichte’s isolation argument turns on the fact that while
the norms of mutual recognition would be sufficient to compel rights-
respecting behavior if no other options were available, in fact because each
person is also a material object composed of coarse matter, then in each
interaction between subjects they must choose whether to act on the basis
of recognitive norms or through the use of (material) force. Because the
82 J. M. Bernstein
an animal. It has often been thought that the free spirit existed for the sake
of caring for animal nature. Such is not the case. Animal nature exists for
the sake of bearing the free spirit in the sensible world and of binding it
with the sensible world” (76). If to be an animal is to have a permanent and
determinate structure of body and behavior, then the human is no animal.
Reason is not an evolutionary device to compensate for and satisfy survival
needs in place of instincts and mechanized routines, but a self-determined
world of ideas, values, and norms that employ the body for acquiring sen-
sible presence in the world.
One could argue that Fichte’s idealist extremism here is a necessary con-
sequence of his transcendental approach. But that claim is not compelling.
Rather, the source of the extremism is Fichte posing the structural issue in
sharply dualist terms, as the exclusive alternatives of either reason being for
the sake of animal life or animal life for the sake of realizing an autono-
mous rationality. It is this false either/or that ruins Fichte’s argument. There
is an obvious third alternative, namely, that the very character of reason as
providing nonmechanical means for satisfying survival imperatives simul-
taneously enables it to generate ends, norms, values, and ideas that outrun
and even supplant on occasion the ends of individual survival and species
reproduction; which is why the societal mechanisms that allow for species
reproduction also enable the reproduction and expansion of rational cul-
ture more generally.
Once rational culture is viewed as an extension and development of the
reasoned reproduction of species life, and species life hence seen as a per-
manent ingredient within rational culture, then the genetic conditions for
the emergence of individual self-consciousness must simultaneously facili-
tate the emergence of a being whose bodily powers are sufficient to secure
the needs of its animal life. The preservation, continuation, and elaboration
of animal life are a component of each human life. Because it is function-
ally necessary that each human individual acquire the bodily powers that
make it a good animal, an animal capable of living, and because the ac-
quisition of these powers is a matter of socializing the body, then there is a
wholly nonoptional, functional necessity to recognitive norms. Recognitive
norms are first norms sufficient for animal life, and as sufficient for animal
life thereby potentially sufficient for the indefinite cultural elaboration of
human animal life that is a consequence of reason being the medium of
survival.
Again, as argued above, it is the genetic location of the empirical and
normative conditions of self-consciousness that gives them their prima
facie authority. In failing to follow through his genetic approach when trac-
ing out the role of embodiment, Fichte can construct a scenario in which
each separate human encounter involves the participants in deciding in a
groundless manner whether to treat the other as person or object. But the
84 J. M. Bernstein
any being to whom they apply. Of course, the way culture comes to express
those prima facie demands, as Fichte insists it must, does not deny the pat-
ent fact that most cultures are provincial, thriving on forms of repression
and fear that lead to collective and individual blindness and prejudice. But
that is only to say that the possibility of misrecognition is ever present, all
but inevitable. Being ever present is not, however, the same as being legiti-
mate: there is a flagrant irrationality in every denial of universality.
Fichte’s account of the transition from proto-right into political right is
flawed because it fails to find a natural, empirical locus for the actualiza-
tion of proto-rights, and hence an empirical set of circumstances in which
efforts of mutual recognition that already exist come to evolve into law and
political right. The communal setting that enables the development of the
infant into a socialized member of the community provides such a locus, a
juncture in which the good of the bare life of the individual is taken up into
the mechanisms through which the life of the society, and so the species, is
transmitted across generations. What Fichte insists upon, as no else, is that
all this transpires in and through the human body, making the vision of
the human body itself the pulsing insistence of the dignity of human life
generally.
NOTES
ideal socialization process for individuals in a culture in which the values such as
individual freedom and autonomy hold an important place” (83). I am certainly
adopting Wood’s notion of an ideal socialization, but I will argue that it can have
the depth and transcendental quality Fichte aspires to only if it does not presume
the values of a liberal society.
9. Paul W. Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and
Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2005),
321–25 argues that Fichte’s lectures from 1796/1799 suggest a different method-
ological resolution to the puzzle, namely a transcendental argument complemented
by an account of how the transcendental items become actual—say, by becoming
political rights. Hence, the thought is that there be an “isomorphism” between the
transcendental and the empirical, with the acknowledgement that transcendental
right, as opposed to actual political right, has “no normative import whatsoever”
(325). This is hermeneutically suggestive, but leaves the normative problem un-
solved: what work is isomorphism doing? On the account I am propounding, the
necessary conditions for becoming an individual precipitate normativity, demonstrat-
ing how the conditions for individuality are realized as normatively structured
modes of interaction. This, of course, entails a weaker than Kantian conception of
norms—categorical declaratives rather than categorical imperatives—but that seems
to me part of Fichte’s revolution. Part of the reason why Fichte adopts the notion
of individuality rather than moral autonomy, and further generates a defense of
right that does not draw on antecedent moral norms, is that he intends an account
that goes below and outside morality, and is thus in a sense more necessary than
morality.
10. Frederick Neuhouser, “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Moral-
ity,” in Fichte: Historical Contests / Contemporary Controversies, ed. Daniel Breazeale
and Tom Rockmore (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1994), 176. Neu-
houser’s essay is a powerful defense of Fichte’s separation of right from morality. I
consider the argument of this paper as a further inflection of his defense of Fichte’s
nonmoral conception of right.
11. Neuhouser, “Fichte and the Relationship between Right and Morality,” 163–
67, carefully elaborates the elements of Fichte’s conception of the individual. My
account here is partially indebted to his.
12. Frederick Neuhouser, Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge, Mass.: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990), chapter 4.
13. For a less generous construal of this transition, see Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical
Thought, 79.
14. I always imagine the Fichtean summons becoming, also, Laplanche’s “enig-
matic message,” which in summoning the infant to what it cannot comprehend
becomes the precipitating moment of the unconscious. That the Fichtean summons
might be two-sided in this way—the route to both self-consciousness and the un-
conscious—makes it more rather than less plausible. See Jean Laplanche, Essays on
Otherness (London: Routledge, 1999).
15. Paul Franks, “The Discovery of the Other,” 89.
16. Instead of the language of a nonnatural sign, Fichte here uses the language
of an exchange of cognitions that must be understood as cognitions and responded
to in kind. I am, of course, borrowing that idea of nonnatural sign from Paul Grice
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 87
and P.F. Strawson. For a translation of this material into an account of mutual
recognition see J.M. Bernstein, “From Self-Consciousness to Community: Act and
Recognition in the Master-Slave Relationship,” in The State and Civil Society, ed. Z.A.
Pelczynski (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 14–39.
17. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988),
chapter 1.
18. Showing how these are not just metaphorical expressions is the effort of the
next section.
19. G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philoso-
phy, trans. Walter Cerf and H.S. Harris (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1977), 145.
20. These two objections are from Paul Franks, “The Discovery of the Other,”
90. Franks is aware that Fichte regards his notion of body as the centerpiece of an
answer to such questions, but is not persuaded. My assumption is that by showing
the role of the body in the constitution of both freedom and otherness, license to
play the role Fichte intends for it can be granted.
21. Lucy O’Brien, “On Knowing One’s Actions,” in Agency and Self-Awareness: Is-
sues in Philosophy and Psychology, ed. Johannes Roessle and Naomi Eilan (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 359.
22. O’Brien, “On Knowing One’s Actions,” 363.
23. For a defense of mimesis along these lines see Tom Huhn, Imitation and Soci-
ety: The Persistence of Mimesis in the Aesthetics of Burke, Hogarth, and Kant (University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), chapter 2.
24. Hegel, of course, acknowledges that the combatants must already recognize
one another as persons [Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), § 187]; but this is something he simply takes for
granted rather than feeling the need to explain it.
25. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe
(New York: Macmillan, 1958), 178.
26. The full reason that Fichte assigns the analysis of the appearance of the hu-
man body to anthropology is that it necessarily involves regarding it as an organism,
and so a natural product, and hence standing in very specific relations of likeness to
other natural organisms like plants and animals (72–74). But for Fichte, to provide
an explanation of anything distinctly human through referencing the givenness of
the natural world is dogmatism—the very opposite of idealism. The term “anthro-
pology” thus covers over a multitude of philosophical sins.
27. For a more sophisticated version of the same argument which possesses a
remarkable number of overlaps with Fichte, see Erwin W. Straus, “The Upright Pos-
ture,” Phenomenological Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 137–65.
28. For a nice handling of this criticism, see Robert Williams, “The Displace-
ment of Recognition by Coercion in Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts,” New Essays
on Fichte’s Later Jena Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 47–64.
4
“The Pure Notion of Recognition”:
Reflections on the Grammar of the
Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
Michael Quante
The Phenomenology of Spirit is not only one of Hegel’s most influential works,
it is indisputably one of the most seminal works in the history of philoso-
phy altogether.1 Without doubt, Hegel’s masterpiece has lost nothing of its
thought-provoking attractiveness to this day.2 It is certainly not exaggerated to
claim that the section Hegel entitled “Selbständigkeit und Unselbständigkeit
des Selbstbewusstseins; Herrschaft und Knechtschaft” [in Miller’s translation:
“Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bond-
age”] has attracted interpreters’ attention to a great extent. Whether as the
grammar of social conflicts, as the basic structure of self-consciousness or as
a discrete principle of practical philosophy, the conception of recognition
Hegel develops in this section still enjoys ample interest by philosophers
who seek a systematic foundation for their own reflections in Hegel’s work.
The spectrum of rather work-immanent interpretations that are rather as-
sociatively connected with Hegel’s reflections is just as broad as is the the-
matic accentuation that is affiliated with this part of Hegel’s argumentation
in the Phenomenology of Spirit.3
It would be presumptuous to try to add a new strand to the great tradi-
tions of interpreting the dialectic of lordship and bondage. And it would
be just as presumptuous to claim to undertake a philosophical assessment
of the various approaches to Hegel’s text with the aim of deciding which
direction the accurate interpretation should take. Both would not just go
far beyond the scope of a single contribution, but it would also exceed my
philosophical potential considerably. Therefore, the aim of this contribu-
tion is far more modest. Basically, I want to try to obtain clarity about the
meaning and scope of some central claims that concern the connection
between self-consciousness, spirit, and recognition Hegel conceives. The
89
90 Michael Quante
If one looks for a concise definition of the concept “spirit” at the beginning
of the sixth section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, which is dedicated to the
92 Michael Quante
spirit, then one realizes first of all that Hegel does not try hard to define
this concept that is central for his philosophy. But in the sentence that sum-
marizes the first section, we do find something like a succinct definition:
“But essence that is in and for itself, and which is at the same time actual as
consciousness and aware of itself, this is Spirit” (438).
One of the reasons why Hegel does not have to introduce the concept of
spirit explicitly anymore, but that he can explain it with this statement—as
we shall see—in terms of the structure of self-consciousness, is that the
concept of spirit has already been introduced in the context of the self-
consciousness chapter. This expository procedure of Hegel can be justified
in view of the overall composition of the Phenomenology of Spirit, for the
concept of spirit is introduced on the narrative level of philosophical con-
sciousness. But there remains the question about the systematic reasons
that have prompted Hegel to include the concept of spirit in the interplay
of the concept of self-consciousness and the pure concept of recognition.
In the passages that are relevant for the present purposes, this anticipa-
tion to the concept of spirit occurs twice. Both times Hegel refers to his
conception of spirit, in order to characterize the intersubjective structure of
self-consciousness that manifests itself in the relation of recognition. In this
vein, he almost casually refers to the concept of spirit: “The detailed exposi-
tion of the Notion of this spiritual unity in its duplication will present us
with the process of Recognition” (178). A more exact interpretation of the
content of this statement can only be given in the third step of our reflec-
tions, when we turn to the “pure Notion of recognition” (185).
Hegel’s second reference to his conception of spirit can be found in the
context of his explication of the concept of self-consciousness and is more
extensive. After having developed, as we shall analyze in detail in our second
step, that the structure of self-consciousness can only manifest itself in the
interaction of two self-consciousnesses, Hegel writes: “With this, we already
have before us the Notion of Spirit. What still lies ahead for consciousness
is the experience of what Spirit is” (177). Hegel here distinguishes precisely,
as I want to point out, between the level of conceptual connections, as they
are present for the philosophical consciousness, and the experience of (natu-
ral) consciousness itself. The first paragraphs of the section “Independence
and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage” (178–84)
also belong to the level of philosophical consciousness. This becomes clear
through the fact that Hegel afterwards leads over to the other level, by saying
that the “pure Notion of recognition, of the duplicating of self-consciousness
in its oneness”, that has been described up to that point, must now be seen
as its process “appears to self-consciousness.” (185)
Hegel’s description of the nexus between self-consciousness, recognition,
and spirit as objects of experience of the natural consciousness is, as said at the
beginning, not the subject of this contribution. The following is focused on
The Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 93
To bring light into the darkness we must now get clear on the concept of
self-consciousness while blinding out two aspects of Hegel’s remarks which
he introduces in a complicated way in the first paragraphs of the chapter
“The Truth of Self-Certainty.” Neither Hegel’s justification that the concept
of self-consciousness must manifest itself as “Life” (168), nor the connec-
tion between self-consciousness and “Desire” (174), can be reconstructed
in the following.10
94 Michael Quante
and B that will later in the text be the subject, for instance, of the dialectic of
lord and slave, is not yet relevant to the context of our discussion.
Hegel sets off four “ambiguities” in this process of recognition.22 The first
three concern the basic dialectical structure of the self-consciousness that
is conceived within the subject-object model—first the need of an object
as an object, whose independence is secondly negated, and this negation
is therewith, thirdly, to be performed autonomously in itself. We have al-
ready come across this structure in the analysis of the pure concept of self-
consciousness, so it does not help us here. But the fourth ambiguity Hegel
then explicates (182–83) is of a different kind than the first three are. Hegel
himself emphasizes this by pointing to the fact that up to that point (with
respect to the first three ambiguities) recognition has only been imagined
“as the action of one self-consciousness” (182). But since the third constitu-
tive condition for self-consciousness requires that the self-consciousness
that is made object performs its negation itself, it is conceptually necessary
that this recognition on the part of A “has itself the double significance
of being both its own action and the action of the other [—B—] as well”
(182). Now Hegel takes up the perspective of A and B on their own doing
and the doing of the other, in order to explicate the interdependence of the
two recognitive actions of A and B as “parts” of a process of recognition. I
will come back to the talk about “parts” at a later stage. At this point I would
first like to explicate the grammar of the We that I think can be found in the
following statement: “Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does
itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does
only in so far as the other does the same” (182).
In order not to make the structure more complicated than it already is
factually and in order to be able to articulate the first-personal self-reference
explicitly, we describe this process from A’s perspective:
A and B here meet one another with the attitude of conceiving of them-
selves and their interaction partner as autonomous self-consciousnesses.
The interaction thus implies on the one hand the recognition of the free
self-determination of the respective other, so that the interaction implies a
self-confinement on both sides. On the other hand, because A and B con-
The Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 99
Das Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem, und dadurch, daß es für ein
anderes an und für sich ist; d.h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes (127, 33–35)
Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists
for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged. (178)
In the passage after the semicolon we find the thesis that self-consciousness
is constituted by recognitive relations. Only within a recognitive relation
is an entity a self-consciousness. To put it in Fichtean terms: its being
consists in its being recognized. Miller’s English translation is, although it
does capture the constitutive relation, not quite precise at this point, for
it formulates only a necessary condition. It says: “it exists only in being
acknowledged” (178).
A smaller interpretive challenge lies at the beginning of this statement.
We can read the sentence as saying that Hegel is here talking about “an
empirical self-consciousness A” which is recognized by another empirical
self-consciousness B. Another possible reading would be to look for a recog-
nitive relation between the self-consciousness as a universal and something
that is another for the universal. But this reading does not seem to me to
make sense in the context at hand, for it refers to a development that is only
accomplished in the spirit chapter.26
Let us thus take Hegel’s statement in such a way that it is about the recog-
nitive relation between two empirical self-consciousnesses A and B. Now,
the central point for my purposes is that Hegel distinguishes between two
recognitive relations in this sentence: the when-relation and the by-relation.
This way we get two statements:
(RR-1) A self-consciousness exists in and for itself when it so exists for an-
other.
(RR-2) A self-consciousness exists in and for itself by the fact that it so exists
for another.
It could be held against the thesis that Hegel here distinguishes between
two kinds of recognitive relations that this formulation is only a rhetorical
intensification or an explicative phrase. This simple interpretation is sup-
ported by the fact that the semantic content of the term “when” is a proper
part of the semantic content of the term “by”.27
I want to put forward three reactions against this objection. First of all
there is, as far as I know, in Hegel’s entire oeuvre no statement to be found
where he uses the terms “when” and “by” together. In view of the promi-
nent place of this statement I take this not to be a mere coincidence. Second,
the semantics of these two relations is only partial, so that one can rightly
The Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 101
ask whether Hegel does not exactly activate the semantic difference. And
there are, third, good systematic and from Hegel’s point of view suggesting
reasons to employ this semantic difference in order to express his specific
thesis concerning the intersubjective constitutedness of self-consciousness
through recognition.
Miller, the translator of the English edition of the Phenomenology of
Spirit, saw this similarly and translated the sentence as follows: “Self-con-
sciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists
for another” (178). Even if one has to say that the English translation
rather points to the meaning of the German than reflecting it, regard-
ing the translation of the term “indem” as “when” and “dadurch, dass”
as “by the fact that,” Miller has certainly captured something essential.
“Indem” indicates a contemporaneity Miller reflects with “when.” This
corresponds to the Latin origin interim or interea: the first of these refers
to the falling of an event within the stretch of time of an action; the latter
refers to the occurrence of an action contemporaneously with another.
I suppose that Hegel’s use of “indem” goes back to “interea”, since he
envisages a constitutive relation between two contemporaneously occur-
ring actions.
The expression “dadurch, dass” can instead, in the meaning that does not
coincide with the meaning of “indem,” reflect a temporal succession and
it especially stands for a causal relation. Even this is expressed in Miller’s
translation, for he uses “by” which—especially when it is distinguished
from “when”—indicates a causal relation. This is not contradicted by the
fact that Miller, in reflecting the “dadurch, dass” construction of the Ger-
man original, shifts to the phrase “by the fact.” For in everyday causal ex-
planations we frequently appeal to facts as causes.28
Thus I want to suggest understanding Hegel’s core thesis in such a way
that a self-consciousness A is constituted when it is firstly—actually, con-
temporaneously—recognized by a self-consciousness B. Furthermore, self-
consciousness A needs the recognition of self-consciousness as a trigger, to
say it with Fichte: an impulse or a request, in order to be able to constitute
itself as self-consciousness.
Hegel takes up Fichte’s theory of recognition with the “by” relation.
This is grounded in an eventually causal and therefore diachronic rela-
tion: an entity B that has already conceived of itself as a self-consciousness
activates an entity B that formerly disposed only over a potential or latent
self-consciousness, by way of a request (thus self-consciousness B is tempo-
rally prior to self-consciousness A). This element of the theory of recogni-
tion can be called its individual-genetic aspect. But this aspect of initializa-
tion is for Hegel, at least on the level of the analysis of the pure concept of
recognition, not in the foreground because this constellation is asymmetric
and it presupposes the existence of an actual self-consciousness.
102 Michael Quante
At the same time we have found in view of Hegel’s analysis of the inten-
tions of A and B that A treats B in a certain way because A identifies B’s
intentions and beliefs as the right ones. This can also be conceived as a
causal relation, so that in any case we have to integrate causal elements into
the movement of recognition.29 Because of the requirement of symmetry we
thereby obtain a synchronic structure of mutually conditional elements that
instantiate the required structure of recognition as a whole.30 If I am right
this causal dimension concerns the motivational side of recognition, that
is, the causal interaction of A and B is necessary for A and B to develop the
intentions and beliefs necessary for recognition.31
In order to establish his thesis about the social constitutedness of
self-consciousness as a holistic conception, Hegel must go beyond this
individual genetic and motivational causal relation that is expressed by
the “by relation.” This is achieved, so I suppose, through his indication of
a “when” relation that through delineation from the “by” relation is first
determined in its particularity only ex negative. From our analysis of the
We structure we know that we are here dealing with the contemporaneity
of two actions that are constitutive for one another in the sense that be-
ing moments of an overall structure is part of their identity conditions as
individual doings.
Jaegwon Kim and Alvin Goldman have shown in contemporary ana-
lytical philosophy of action and ontology of events that there are such
constitutive, noncausal dependence relations between events.32 When I,
for instance, greet a friend by raising my arm I have performed two ac-
tions that stand in a constitutive relation to one another. I suppose that
Hegel has discovered precisely this kind of ontological dependence rela-
tion in his analysis of the relation between self-consciousness and spirit,
a relation that presupposes a social space of rules and conventions—an
ethical life—in which an action of one kind can only be performed by
performing an action of another kind.33 Alvin Goldman has rediscovered
and systematically adapted this kind of relation for the philosophy of
action and has depicted the dependence relations that are constituted by
social contexts as act trees.
As far as I see, Hegel does not provide a further analysis of this kind of
constitutive relation in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This is only developed
in the later theory of the will in Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
There we also find vertical recognitive relations in which at least one of
the two recognizing self-consciousnesses conceives of itself as a We.34 The
movement of recognition in the Phenomenology is instead limited to hori-
zontal recognition of entangled I attitudes. But these provide, so I want to
conclude, a great social ontological potential which Hegel realized system-
atically in his later theory of objective spirit.35
The Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 103
NOTES
1. I wish to thank David Schweikard and Andreas Vieth for their critical reading
of earlier drafts of this essay and numerous suggestions.
2. Cf. the contributions to Dean Moyar and Michael Quante, eds., Hegel’s
‘Phenomenology of Spirit’: A Critical Guide (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008).
3. Cf. Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main,
Germany: Suhrkamp, 2000).
4. Cf. Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg,
Germany: Alber, 1979); Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung (Stuttgart, Ger-
many: Klett-Cotta, 1982); and Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung (Frankfurt am
Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1998).
5. Cf. Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes, and Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s
Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
6. I quote from the following edition of the Phenomenology of Spirit by giving the
section numbers: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (New York:
Oxford University Press 1977), and from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: Encyclopaedia
of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Part II, translated by A.V. Miller (New York: Ox-
ford University Press 2004) (cited as E).
7. Cf. exemplarily Manfred Frank, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbsterkenntnis (Stutt-
gart, Germany: P. Reclam, 1991), 31 and 415; and Jürgen Habermas, “Arbeit und
Interaktion” in his Technik und Wissenschaft als‚ Ideologie’ (Frankfurt am Main, Ger-
many: Suhrkamp, 1968), 9–47.
8. Cf. Michael Quante, “Personal Autonomy and the Structure of the Will,” in
Jussi Kotkavirta, ed., Right, Morality, Ethical Life: Studies in G.W.F. Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right (Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä Press, 1997), 45–74.
9. Cf. Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung (Frankfurt am
Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1979), 349; for a critical answer to this reproach that
can rely on a profound knowledge of Hegel’s texts, see Ludwig Siep, “Kehraus mit
Hegel?” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 35, (1981): 518–31, and Siep, Prak-
tische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp,
1992), 217–39.
10. Cf. Robert Brandom, “Selbstbewusstsein und Selbst-Konstitution” in Hegels
Erbe, ed. C. Halbig et al. (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004), 46–77.
11. An examination of Hegel’s argumentation would inevitably have to deal with
the question as to whether this connection is conceptually necessary or contingent,
which brings up the question about the possibility of “artificial life” and machines
that are equipped with self-consciousness.
12. In his later system Hegel interprets the natural philosophical relation be-
tween single organisms of the same kind as a preliminary stage to processes of
recognition; see E § 367 and § 369.
13. In the overall course of the Phenomenology, self-consciousness is introduced as
an epistemological model. But this is compatible with the above statement because
according to Hegel the volitional structure has a cognitive dimension; I thank Rolf-
Peter Horstmann for requesting this clarification.
104 Michael Quante
25. With this Hegel goes beyond both the individualist analysis of communica-
tion and collective actions and Searle’s treatment of the We as a primitive that can
not be analyzed further.
26. It does indeed correspond with Hegel’s explication of the concept of spirit (cf.
177) and materially belongs to the context of dealing with the question as to how
empirical self-consciousnesses relate to their own social constitutedness. To put in
the words of the previous section: how empirical self-consciousnesses move from
the entanglement of their I intentions to the explicit formulation of We intentions
in which the intersubjective presuppositions are given for themselves.
27. For the following cf. the entries in J. Grimm and W. Grimm, Deutsches Wörter-
buch, electronic version prepared by H.W. Barz, Frankfurt am Main: 2004, and for
the Latin origins of the expressions of relations: K. E. Georges, Handwörterbuch
Lateinisch-deutsch (Berlin: Digitale Bibliothek: 2002), 69.
28. Cf. the analyses in Jonathan Bennett, Events and Their Names (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1988), chapter III.
29. If one assumes that Hegel (as today for instance Jaegwon Kim or Alvin
Goldman do) subscribes to a fine-grained ontology of events in which events are
conceived as instantiations of generic properties in spatiotemporal locations, then
his distinction between the “when”—and the “by”—relation opens the possibil-
ity of combining a causal theory of action with noncausal dependence relations
between actions to which noncausal explanations of actions can refer; cf. Quante,
Hegel’s Concept of Action, 177–85, for the rejection of the thesis that Hegel accepted
the logical-connection argument and therefore could not endorse a causal theory
of action.
30. This is about a logical-semantical conditional relation (the entanglement
of I intentions) and a causal conditional relation between the single moments of
the interaction between A and B. For this reason one cannot analyze the causal
moments in Hegel’s conception of recognition in the sense of causal generation
as proposed by Alvin Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1970). Presumably a reconstruction of Hegel’s theory that is oriented
towards contemporary ontology of events must, on the premise of a fine-grained
criterion of individuation, allow for the possibility that events can be proper parts
of events; see Lawrence Lombard, Events: A Metaphysical Study (Boston: Routledge
Kegan Paul, 1986). This is why in the previous note I said that such a fine-grained
ontology of events opens only the possibility of connecting causal with noncausal
dependence relations.
31. This presupposes that there is a causal component inscribed in Hegel’s theory
of perception. I do not see a principled obstacle in attributing to Hegel a complex
theory about the acquisition of beliefs in which causal and noncausal relations
are equally called on. Unfortunately I can here discuss neither Hegel’s ontology of
events nor his theory of perception; for the latter see C. Halbig, Objektives Denken
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2002), and Willem de Vries, Hegel’s
Theory of Mental Activity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988).
32. Cf. Kim, “Noncausal Relations,” Nous 8 (1974): 41–52, and Goldman, A
Theory of Human Action.
33. Cf. in general Robert Pippin “Taking Responsibility,” in Subjektivität und
Anerkennung, ed. B. Merker (Paderborn, Germany: MENTIS, 2004), 67–80, and
106 Michael Quante
Pippin, “Hegels praktischer Realismus,” in Hegel Erbe ed. C. Halbig et al. (Frankfurt
am Main, Germany: 2004), 295–23. Hegel’s critique of Observing Reason’s theory
of action verifies clearly that he conceives of actions as entities that are constituted
within social practices; cf. Michael Quante, “‘Reason (. . .) apprehended irrationally’:
Hegel’s critique of Observing Reason,” in Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’: A Critical
Guide, ed. D. Moyar and Michael Quante (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 91–111.
34. Cf. Quante and Schweikard, “‘Leading a Universal Life’.”
35. A detailed ontological reconstruction of causal and noncausal dependence
relations would have to show which entities stand in temporal succession and in
a causal relation, and which entities stand in a simultaneous (or atemporal) and
noncausal dependence relation to one another. That will without doubt require
distinguishing more clearly between logical-semantical, noncausal, and causal de-
pendence relations than Hegel himself does.
5
Recognition in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
and Contemporary
Practical Philosophy
Ludwig Siep
107
108 Ludwig Siep
1
Hegel enlarges Fichte’s structure of mutual recognition between self-con-
scious individuals by adding a superior form of recognition between indi-
viduals and forms of community or social systems and institutions. This re-
lation of recognition develops between “I” and “We.” On the one hand it is a
necessary precondition for the interindividual relation—without integration
into a primary group such as a family, individual self-consciousness could
not be adequately developed. On the other hand, without recognition be-
tween individuals certain forms of communities and the development of a
“we consciousness” would not be possible. Such a mutual presupposition
is according to Hegel’s Logic of Essence no logical circle but a structure of
self-organizing and explicating relations.
2
Hegel understands the relations of recognition on both levels as dialecti-
cal, in the sense that every party at the same time postulates and negates the
other (constituting itself through the negation). This contradictory structure
must be overcome by an increasing differentiation of the relation, in which
terms and relations are being transformed into more complex ones, which
are also simultaneously inclusive and exclusive relations. With regard to in-
terpersonal relations, Hegel calls this a double significance (“Doppelsinn”).
This means that in a certain way, every self-conscious being has its identity
in another self-conscious being. It attributes features of consciousness to
this other being, which confirms its own feature of consciousness. But the
first one has to “negate” this otherness of self by reverting to itself and at
the same time setting the other free.
This is not possible simply through its own action; rather the other has
to undergo the same process for itself or “through itself.” This is what Hegel
calls the double sense of action, “being both its own action and the action
of the other as well” (112).6 And this, again, in a twofold manner: the ac-
tion must be an action against oneself and the other, as well as an action of
oneself and the other. Self-consciousness demands to recognize oneself in
the other by differentiating oneself from the other and this through mutual
(cognitive and emotional) affirmation and liberation.
110 Ludwig Siep
3
This structure not only applies for the “I-other” but also for the “I-we”
relation. However, in the Phenomenology it is not being demonstrated sys-
tematically according to the different forms of spirit but according to the
process of experiencing the history of conscience. This process consists of
the fact that the understanding of the world and of the self—in religion
and art, morality and science—includes one-sided theses about true reality
and human knowledge corresponding with it. They form both a historical
and—sometimes in a reverse order—a systematical sequence. Belonging to
these one-sided figures of conscience are a variety of social relationships,
which try to realize recognition, but get trapped in practical contradictions.
Hegel only deals with few of these under the explicit term recognition. But
in many other forms the structure of the attempted and failed recognition
could also be exposed.
At his point I will only refer briefly to the well-known stages of the
struggle of recognition and the master-slave relationship.7 Its function in
the Phenomenology is to test the ontological thesis of self-consciousness
claiming that true reality is not on the side of objects but within self-
consciousness or being-for-itself. This test has two components: on the one
hand the self-conscious individual is obliged to confirm the significance
of this pure being-for-itself in its “inner” relation to itself. This means that
it has to show that this self-consciousness means everything, whereas—in
a case of conflict—all other sides of its existence are without importance.
Secondly, one has to demonstrate this to someone else, who is merely there
to confirm the first individual’s freedom.
Now Hegel follows the procedure of the Phenomenology in presenting the
failure of this attempt at confirmation and its reversal (“Verkehrung”) into
the opposite of the intended. He demonstrates this first by those, who, in
battle, have actually put their self-consciousness above their life and have
therefore become masters; then, Hegel demonstrates this from the point of
view of those, who, having lost the fight, due to fear for their own life, have
become slaves. The failure of the ontological position of the master-slave
relationship holds true on both sides. The master’s attempt to govern the
“otherness” by his self-consciousness ends in the impasse of neither being
independent from objects (to be “prepared” by the servant) nor being able
to bring free recognition about by force. The servant, on his part, reaches
a first form of confirmation of the self’s freedom in the opposing other: in
the object transformed by his labor and the master’s “spiritual” superiority.
But working on nature only contains the precondition, not the certainty of
experiencing freedom. As Hegel mentions at the beginning of the following
section (cf. 119–20), the servant (“the serving consciousness”) still sepa-
rates the objectivity of his independent actions in the things being worked
on and the conscience of freedom, which he observes in the master.
Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 111
The actual step to the “consciousness in a new shape” (120) is being in-
troduced only by the analyzing philosopher who recognizes that the union
of the two components of free self-consciousness and his dominion of the
things lies in a self-consciousness, for whom the actual reality of things
manifests itself their conceptual form (119–20).
In the spirit’s development this ontological thesis corresponds with
classical philosophical positions such as stoicism and skepticism. In the
writings of the Jena philosophy of spirit, the struggle for recognition was
followed by the legal relationship. In historic perspective, this also ap-
plies to the Phenomenology, because for Hegel stoicism is the foundation
of Roman law. However, in the Phenomenology this topic is dealt with at
a much later level: in “Status of Law” (Rechtszustand), the last paragraph
of the first part of the chapter on spirit. But here also the interpersonal
legal relationship is just one aspect. In this chapter Hegel illustrates above
all that the concept of the legal person as content of a system of state and
society (for Hegel as manifested in the Roman Empire) is not sufficient
and that its one-sided implementation must result in the opposite, that is
to say absolute despotic rule. But also in this case the lacking interpersonal
recognition, which is especially embodied in the structure of ownership in
Roman family law (the pater familias as the owner of the members of his
house), is only one aspect of the insufficient recognition of individuality
in the system of the state.
In the Phenomenology of 1807, after the chapter on the master-slave rela-
tion, Hegel does not develop the concept of mutual recognition between
self-conscious individuals further under the heading of mutual recognition.
He does not mention recognition until the chapter dealing with moral
spirit and here he focuses especially on the relationship between conscience
and the moral community, that is to say “I” and “we.” This does not mean,
however, that the relation of recognition does not play a role in other
chapters. But it is subordinated to the principal topic of the Phenomenology,
which is the overcoming of the ontological and epistemological dualism
between consciousness and object as well as between individual and gen-
eral self-consciousness, or rather spirit.
Pursuing this aim, Hegel focuses on two kinds of processes: first, on the
increasing “subjectivation” of reality in terms of reason and the objective
conceptual order, “coming to itself” in the knowing and acting subject
(chapter “Reason” section A: “Observing reason”). Secondly, on the el-
evation of the principle of self-conscious individuality and personality to
the standard of social order (self-examination of the forms of practical
reason in section B). In the last chapters of the Phenomenology on Spirit,
Religion and Absolute Knowledge, the two processes of subjectivation and
self-realization converge in the content of what is considered to be final,
absolute truth.
112 Ludwig Siep
During the past decades, the term recognition has been the subject of lively
philosophical debate.11 Not only do interpretations of German Idealism
focus on this subject, but also further systematic developments such as
Charles Taylor’s, Axel Honneth’s or recently Paul Ricoeur’s. In the following
I will distinguish between three different thematic complexes:
1
Many modern theories of mutual respect between persons, which is
often expressed with the term “recognition,” sort of trace back the way
from Hegel to Fichte. Hegel regarded the concrete relationships of love,
battle, mastership or in communities such as family, profession, or state as
a process of gradual fulfillment of recognition. In many modern theories,
however, the basic recognition of the other as the origin of a right to respect
(self-originating claims, second-personal authority, etc.),12 which cannot be
declined, forms the standard for all other social relations. The norms and
activities of love and care, both in the family and in the state may lead, ac-
cording to this view, to paternalistic patronizing, claiming objective values
and institutions as pretexts in order to ignore the supposedly “irrational”
wishes of the other.
Today, such considerations have a particular significance in the discus-
sions of applied ethics, especially medical ethics. In the medical context
there has been a change of paradigms: from the asymmetrical relation of
a paternalistic physician to the incompetent patient to the symmetrical re-
lationship between autonomous partners. Crucial for this change was the
principle of informed consent of the patient concerning therapeutic meth-
ods or medical research. However, there has been a similar development in
the realms of education and professional relations.
Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 115
The theory of moral and legal recognition states that the attitude of
respect for other people’s autonomy must generally be separate from the
emotional relations and evaluations of their wishes and reasons. For in-
stance, the declaration which has to be signed by participants in clinical tri-
als contains a clause that they are allowed to withdraw at any time without
having to give any reason and without having to fear reprisals, although in
doing so they may harm the examining doctor and the research or therapy
project.13 The “incomprehensibility” of the reasons for an action of the per-
son affected is no reason for denying this person respect. In medical treat-
ment, as another example, one might have to respect the renunciation of
life-saving measures by members of a certain religion, even if this makes the
obligation of appropriate medical therapy impossible.14 Or in the realm of
education: if young people at the age of consent refuse religious education
or a healthy diet, parents might have to accept decisions which in their view
endanger the physical or spiritual future well-being of the adolescent.
The fact that respect for persons takes its form in legal relations, which are
directed at the legitimate interests and viewpoints of the persons in ques-
tion, is certainly not contrary to Hegel’s concept. However, the question
remains whether recognition in different social relations and institutions
must and can always be judged by the same standards of rational relations
between persons, or whether such an abstract criterion must be broadened
by another which is more complex and grasps all forms of human life.
The above-mentioned examples from medical treatment and education
support the latter position: it is not possible to acknowledge the other as
an autonomous patient without the physician’s benevolence, helpfulness,
and care. Of course, such care must not turn into disregard or manipulation
of the patient’s wish—including the wish to die. But respect must itself be
coupled with an emotional regard for the other and adapted to the patient’s
history and the distinctive features of an institution or group—such as hos-
pitals or nursing homes. Finally one must, in memory of Hegel, be aware
of the fact that humans are not independent monads, but the mutual rela-
tionship, the actions of the one or the other, changes its actors constantly
and in dependency on each other. The same is true for the educational
environment of people, such as family, living community, or educational
institutions. The fact that in the professional realm, nondiscrimination can-
not simply be reduced to a general legal and moral respect, but depends on
a variety of other conditions—from the design of the local surroundings to
emotional regard and enrichment through cultural diversity—has been the
subject of many debates concerning the politics of antidiscrimination.
In the concrete analysis of these problems, one has to find out whether
mutual recognition between persons or rational beings as such is more
than a negative criterion or a line of prohibition. But even if one favors a
more concrete and differentiated theory such as Hegel’s, it is not definite
116 Ludwig Siep
2
The second stream of appropriation of the theory of recognition to be
discussed here focuses, since the time of Hegel, with growing significance,
on an aspect of interpersonal relations, namely the conditions of self-
realization in the sense of becoming a unique and irreplaceable character.
Since Herder and Romanticism—consider for instance Friedrich Schlegel
or Kleist—the question of individual self-discovery and self-expression has
gained a meaning which surpasses the old ideals of fulfilling social duties
or gaining everlasting peace of mind through the succession of Christ. The
romantic translation of artistic creativity into morality, the antibourgeois
ideals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the existential-philosophi-
cal rejection of “somebody” (Heidegger’s “man”) in favor of authenticity
(Eigentlichkeit) and the contemporary popularity of terms such as self-
choice and self-realization continue a tradition which has been interpreted
in depth by Charles Taylor (on a partially critical note), Jürgen Habermas,
and Richard Rorty.15
Since Fichte and Hegel also understand recognition as a condition for
the consciousness of one’s own individuality, recognition has been re-
peatedly understood as a condition for the development of a particular,
irreplaceable, authentic state. As far as Fichte is concerned, this is only
partly true. Although he ascribes a special significance to conscience in re-
alizing one’s own moral destination, this remains in the realm of an ethics
containing a canon of general duties. The same is true for Hegel, who is
even more skeptical about conscience and the translation of the concept
of genius to morality. In the Phenomenology, however, he has shown that
recognizing the particularity of conscience, even in its possible deviation
from social rules, belongs to the spirit of the community. Such a devia-
tion, however, does not grant any rights and does not suspend any laws.
And in the social life of professions and institutions, individuals have the
more “reality,” the more they take up, integrate into their behavior, and
consciously act out, the spirit of these institutions and the character of a
people (“Volksgeist”) which these institutions are founded on. However,
this can include an actualization of the rules and a kind of creative inter-
pretation.16
The dissolution of the traditional corporative society, the pluralization
of value systems, and the doubt concerning an overall linear progress of
reason in history have made the ideal of the individual’s education into a
fully legitimate member of class and state look pale. In modern theories of
Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 117
3
According to Charles Taylor, there is a tension between the two themes
mentioned above: recognition of universal equality of moral subjects and
legal persons on the one hand (1) and recognition of their “unique iden-
tity” (38), which derives from the “dialogue and struggle with significant
others” (37) on the other hand (2).25 Above all, when both are being dealt
with in politics. The first form is made possible by the politics of “univer-
salism” or “equality”; the second requires the “politics of difference” (38).
Minorities, whose group identity is determined by ethnic, religious, histori-
cal, or linguistic belonging, or members of traditionally discriminated sexes
must be the subject of a “differential treatment” (39) in pluralistic, tolerant,
and democratic legal states. This practice can be built on allowing for col-
lective rights (e.g., collective lawsuit from associations or citizen’s initiative,
provision of financial means, compensative (“reverse”) discriminating
rights of access) or on obliging the individual to fulfill certain duties (such
as sending their children to certain schools or having them learn a certain
language). Through this the principle of the equal treatment of all citizens
as well as the principle of autonomous individual rights, for example, pa-
rental rights, is restricted to some degree.
This tension can, according to Taylor, only be resolved by weighing up
the “importance of certain forms of uniform treatment” (56), on the one
hand especially the warrant of individual defensive rights, and the “impor-
tance of cultural survival” (61). For this reason suitable institutions have
been created in the modern legal state, alternatively in “cultures of judicial
review” (61). However, a prerequisite for this is that the existence of the
variety of cultures in a community is considered to be a value and a right.
120 Ludwig Siep
1
If the claim to completeness of the conditions of identity formation
or human socialization is no longer plausible, one needs, especially with
regard to applied ethics, “framework ideas” instead of principles: ideas
which can be specified to certain forms of autonomy and recognition in
different social contexts—especially concerning the levels of emotional,
cognitive, and voluntary relationships. At the same time one has to be
open to the experience of new forms and enrichments of recognition. But
such forms must be compatible with the framework and its concretization
in established relationships of social recognition, even if certain forms of
them might be outdated.32 Applying this method one can to some degree
lean on the weaker, nonteleological holism in Hegelian tradition—but also
on other nondeductive procedures such as Rawls’s reflective equilibrium
mentioned above.
122 Ludwig Siep
2
An analogous but further-reaching frame idea is necessary for a pluralistic
society. The recognition of cultural-historical forms of life and the legal and
political means of stabilizing them require a justification of the value of
pluralism and diversity, which cannot simply be deduced from individual
rights and relations of recognition. According to which standards, for in-
stance, should active freedom of religion be limited nowadays—consider-
ing the number and size of religious buildings, the sounds of church bells
or prayers, the ritual ways of daily actions such as slaughtering animals or
wearing specific clothes, and so on?
Prerequisites for this are tolerance in the sense of mutual endurance, rec-
ognition of equal claims, and mutual appreciation. But it is also the idea of a
social cosmos, in which traduced multifariousness of ways of life, just distri-
bution of opportunities of self-realization, and the flourishing of individuals
in their individual and cultural identity are being supported. Which restric-
tions in their publicly perceptible way of life can be placed on groups of
which size? How important are certain religious rites of groups in relation to
common public goods such as periods and places of silence, common daily
or weekly routines, common education, public symbols and monuments
etc.? How is the history of a certain group related to state history or—in case
of confederacies—the common history of a group of states?33
Here we are, in my view, in need of the concept of a well-ordered soci-
ety, which exceeds Rawls’s principles of justice as well as the relations of
recognition between individuals and groups (“I” and “we”).34 One could
think of a holistic constellation of cultural spheres in the sense of the Hege-
lian philosophy of spirit—but without its strong systematic prerequisites.
The focus is on a public understanding concerning the weight of values,
which extends as far as the question of reconciling different ideas of hu-
man life—consider the quarrel about the beginning and the permissible
ways of ending human life (modern embryology research and euthanasia).
Philosophers cannot make these political debates redundant simply by a
priori decisions. But they may develop ideas and criteria of a well-ordered
pluralistic society and of a possible or rather bearable size of agreement and
disagreement. This includes suggestions concerning the weighing of public
goods such as health, education, security, entertainment, art etc., without
unnecessarily restricting the freedom of private and group preferences,
against basic rights.35 The question remains as to whether the concept of
recognition will turn out to be sufficient.
3
Practical philosophy needs such framework ideas of a well-ordered
whole with the possibility of concretization in science and society even for
Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 123
the human relation to nature, since we are today faced with basic options
concerning the human body as well as concerning nonhuman nature. The
focus is on the attitude towards naturalness in general and towards our
natural heritage in natural but also in cultural history. Genetic engineering,
cloning, and human-machine-interface technology (electronic implants in
micro size etc.) bring human beings considerably closer to a biotechnologi-
cal “re-invention” of mankind and a profound change of nature.36
In order to develop normative criteria for these options, interpersonal
rights and criteria of recognition are not sufficient—not even in their discur-
sive ethical transformation (J. Habermas) or neopragmatism (R. Brandom).37
The relationship to nature cannot be a symmetrical one. Neither can it, as
in Hegel,38 be determined alone by the appropriation of the unconscious
nature through the conscious spirit manifesting its rational domination of
nature. Even if one replaces the “spirit” with the general speech community
or the concrete communication community, as in some forms of modern
Hegel perception, one still remains in interpersonal relationships and re-
duces, at the same time, the relationship to internal and external nature to a
question of social convention.
Contemporary debates about the use of genetic engineering and cloning
in the breeding of plants and animals as well as in technology concerning
human reproduction and enhancement cannot simply be resolved accord-
ing to the standards of interpersonal obligations and rights or according
to the needs of recognition. But we can already observe the development
of intercultural agreements about principles concerning the treatment of
nonhuman nature—such as sustainability, preservation of biodiversity,
ideas of adequate keeping of animals, etc.—which are influenced by a view
of those parts of natural heritage which are valuable and worth keeping.
In practical philosophy they would have to be conceptually reconstructed
and examined concerning their consistence, their consequences, and their
justification.
Even with regard to the biotechnological treatment of human beings,
there are partly intercultural agreements, especially concerning the rejec-
tion of genetic changes or reproductive cloning in the interest of private or
even public “breeders.” On the other hand, there are unresolved conflicts
concerning “liberal eugenics,” which refer to the interests of future children
or the reproductive freedom of parents.39 This applies even more to the
possibilities for somatic self-modification as far as the choice of sex or the
enhancement of cognitive and physical abilities. In order to establish limi-
tations and standards in this context, one can indeed lean on the concept
of recognition, for example, to answer questions such as: How about the
equality of opportunity in an increasingly divergent society with regard to
human abilities, especially when access to such improvements depends
on private financial means? How about the conditions of communication
124 Ludwig Siep
NOTES
31. See A. Honneth, „Eine soziale Pathologie der Vernunft. Zur intellektuellen
Erbschaft der kritischen Theorie,” in Axel Honneth: Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik
und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante (Münster, Germany: LIT, 2004),
9–31.
32. Just as for Hegel already the fight for honor or nowadays old-fashioned forms
of professional recognition.
33. An important condition of reconciliation, for instance between Greek Cy-
priots and Turkish Cypriots, or maybe even between the Basques and the other
ethnic groups in Spain, is the self-critical confrontation with historical memories
and “cultures of memory,” which are shaped by the opposition between groups and
their image of themselves.
34. Concerning the idea of a “well-ordered society” see J. Rawls, Political Liberal-
ism, 35–40. The idea suggested here must also include the “distributive dimension”
N. Fraser insists on (see above note 21).
35. See note 22.
36. See L. Siep, „Die biotechnische Neuerfindung des Menschen” in No body is
perfect. Baumaßnahmen am menschlichen Körper—Bioethische und ästhetische Aufrisse,
ed. J. S. Ach and A. Pollmann (Bielefeld, Germany: transcript, 2006), 21–42.
37. For Brandom’s reception of Hegel’s theory of recognition see R. B. Bran-
dom, „Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstkonstitution,” in Hegels Erbe, ed. C. Halbig, M.
Quante, and L. Siep (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2004), 46–77.
38. In any event after the „Schellingianizing” period of his natural philosophy
1801–1803.
39. See A. Buchanan, D. W. Brock, N. Daniels and D. Wikler, From Chance to
Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 2001).
40. Not in the sense of a postmodern overcoming of subjectivity, however. Rather,
the modern idea of subjectivity as the basis of the rights of freedom and relations of
recognition in the Hegelian sense must be preserved (“aufgehoben”) and integrated
into a comprehensive view of the “position of man in the cosmos.” See L. Siep, „Die
Aufhebung der Subjektivität in der Konkreten Ethik,” in Ethikbegründungen zwischen
Universalismus und Relativismus, ed. K. Engelhard and D. H. Heidemann (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2005), 253–74.
41. For the following see L. Siep, Konkrete Ethik (Frankfurt, am Main Germany:
Suhrkamp, 2004).
6
Recognition, the Right,
and the Good
Terry Pinkard
129
130 Terry Pinkard
legal order which both incorporates basic rights within itself and integrates
into a cohesive whole the dynamics of a free market, administrative bu-
reaucratic power, and the moral demands of the “right.” The “right” is thus
supposed to retain its nonempirical, normative force as that which makes
various contingent conceptions of the good acceptable or unacceptable.8
As was noted, the idea of bringing in recognition to explain this would
seem to drag the Rawlsian/Habermasian view back in the direction of
something like Hegel’s own philosophy of “right.” Like Kant, Hegel takes
the most basic, ground level conception of what is to be chosen for its own
sake to be that of relating the free will to itself as an end in itself, or, in his
words, to be “the free will which wills the free will.”9 If we take Hegel at his
word, then the “free will” and the conditions under which the will can be
free is thus what counts as right, that is, as the condition that takes priority
over all other considerations about other goods or how to balance those
goods. But, as I hope to show, once recognition is brought into the ground
level conception that unites the right and the good, we also get a much differ-
ent conception of what moral and political theory should be doing, and we
get a better picture of how “critical theory” fits into a more or less Hegelian
picture of recognition.
Both Hegelians and Kantians share the basic commitment to freedom as
the principle of “the right,” the normative condition under which all other
goods must be comprehended. Although Kant toys with the idea of reducing
what might look a plurality of goods—having to do with, say, health, happi-
ness, success, friendship, and the like—to one basic set, namely, those which
satisfy what he generically calls our inclinations, it would not be hard to
imagine how even the most rigidly orthodox Kantian could validly entertain
a more complex picture of human psychology than the one Kant actually had
and could make that list more plural than perhaps Kant himself would have
allowed.10 For both Hegelians and Kantians, the “right” has to do with the
conditions for the realization of freedom, and thus whatever constitutes the
right also constitutes the conditions under which something can count as
a legitimate good; thus, there could be possibly be many different “goods”
that fit under the rubric of the “right.”11 Once one has the issue framed in
these terms, then the real bone of contention among Kantians and Hege-
lians can be more easily put on the table: How are we to conceive of the
“realization” of freedom?
One model is obviously individualistic: freedom would be a capacity
an individual has to bind himself to some principle, some reason, and act
in light of that principle, and freedom is thus realized when an individual
agent is able to form intentions and act on them in light of his or her re-
sponsiveness to the reasons for that action (with its accompanying worry
about whether that would require something like a Kantian doctrine of
self-causality). On that view, although the need for recognition may be a
132 Terry Pinkard
our practical receptivity presents us with various goods for action. Such
goods can spur one to action directly in that one simply sees what needs to
be done: the faucet with running water must be turned off, the person who
has slipped and fallen must be helped up, and so forth. (This kind of direct
knowledge, as Hegel says, “consists in having the particular knowledge or
kind of activities immediately to mind in any case that occurs, even, we may
say, immediate in our very limbs, in an activity directed outwards,” at the level
of activity that is, as we noted, informed by but does not involve the exercise
of conceptual capacities.16) Or the goods put on view by our practical sen-
sibilities can become the first premises of further deliberation; they present
the individual agent with a sense of, say, what is both best for humans in
general and in particular what is best for the kind of individual they are.
This conception of dialectic underlies Hegel’s most widely used diagnostic
tool for evaluating the status of certain types of problems widely acknowl-
edged as “philosophical,” namely, the distinction between “the understand-
ing” and “reason.” “The understanding” is that of ordinary rational thought
and is perfectly appropriate for almost all cases of matters that range from
natural scientific investigation to practical deliberation. As a shorthand, we
might say that “the understanding” classifies and seeks causal explanations
of objects (paradigmatically, natural objects). Reason, on the other hand, is
pushed to consider the “whole” of both subjectivity and objectivity since it
deals inferentially with the conditions for the assertion of the claims of “the
understanding.” The “understanding” falters when it attempts to give an ac-
count of such subjective matters in the terms appropriate for objects; left to
its own, it construes everything as an object of some sort and is thus pushed
by its own success in understanding the objective natural world to construe
subjectivity as either consisting in a special set of objects (as, for example,
“inner,” “mental” objects) or as a deep-seated illusion of some sort.
Seen in that light, the very ordinary arena of human action itself displays
the necessity for a more dialectical conception of the world since human ac-
tion is, in effect, subjectivity making itself effective in the natural world. The
tendency of “the understanding”—that is, of our most ordinary reflective
involvement with the world and ourselves—leads us to think of the relation
between matters such as intention and action along the lines of the way we
think of everything else, namely, as a relation of some sort between two
things (say, between an “inner” thing, such as an intention, and an “outer”
thing, the action itself), and in a more explanatory mode, to construe that
relation as a causal one (thus mirroring the most rational way to construe
relations between things in the natural world). If one takes that standpoint
and tries to construe action in terms of two “things” (inner intentions, outer
behavior), one quickly finds the very idea of a free act to be more or less un-
intelligible. The natural result of such very ordinary reflection leads one to a
very familiar result: one is pushed, so it must seem, to see one “thing” (an
136 Terry Pinkard
inner intention) as somehow wholly different from all other such “things”
so that it cannot itself be a causal result of other “things” (something which
prompted Kant to think that freedom could only be salvaged by making
its causality different from that of natural causality and using the critical
philosophy’s distinction between appearances and unknowable things-in-
themselves to underwrite that).
Instead, Hegel proposes to understand intentions and actions are sepa-
rate constituents (or “moments”) of a whole; an intention is thus an action
in its “inner” aspect (an action on the way to being realized), and an action
is the intention in its “outer” aspect (the realized intention). Intentions can,
of course, fail to be realized—one can be prevented, change one’s mind,
etc.—and they can become altered as they are being realized (in the sense
that one often alters one’s intentions in light of the way the action is tak-
ing shape). (There is also the distinction between the action and the deed,
but that is another story.17) There is thus a philosophical issue involving
the dialectic between intentions and actions that is separate from more
ordinary moral and legal issues about imputing responsibility to people; it
is a striking feature of Hegel’s account that the latter issues do not in them-
selves necessarily raise any dialectical issues on their own. One might, as
American law currently does, hold people responsible for the consequences
of their actions independently of their intentions (as in findings of strict li-
ability in tort law); such matters are entirely independent of the dialectical
issues about how subjectivity makes itself effective in the natural world.
Second thesis: Social goods are social facts instituted and sustained in
patterns of mutual recognition; the most basic social facts provide indi-
vidual agents with orientations over a life.
If anything, the social, dialectical account of agency rejects the more
orthodox Kantian idea that anything like pure practical reason on its own
could provide the right content or the right kind of motivational efficacy for
action. With the more dialectical conception of agency, we are required to
understand the “objective ends” of free action as instead having to do with
the factual makeup of human agents; or, to put it another way, if there are
any objective ends for agents, these ends must provide agents with goods
that are attractive, that is, which form “incentives” for the agent to act and
which thus form part of each agent’s own subjective motivational set which
gives them, as individuals, reasons to act, even sometimes in opposition to
their own more immediate desires.18 On that view, how could there be any
unconditional ends?
There are obviously natural facts that play a role in the makeup of such
goods. Humans are born, they age, they die; they require food and water
and sleep, and some kinds of affection and bonding with others is required
for them to form stable psyches. (One could extend the list.) However, not
all such human goods are such natural ensembles of basic, animal needs
Recognition, the Right, and the Good 137
and desires. Some are to be found in various positions in social space that
form the social facts of an individual’s world. Nonetheless, social facts are
just that—facts. On Hegel’s account, for such social facts to provide any set
of normative ends for modern agents, those facts must be able to function as
realizations of freedom, and they can do so only if they provide agents with
goods, incentives for action (and for appreciation, devotion and the like)
that can also be grasped as giving them good overall reasons for acting and
which can be grasped as fitting into the conditions under which freedom
is realized; and to be initiated into a form of life is to acquire a practical
sensibility for “seeing” such goods and for understanding the various types
of social moves required by them, appropriate to them and so forth.
The “Idea” of a world and social order in which the key social facts
about that world would be such that they harmonize with each other
(keeping in mind that harmony almost always includes some dissonance
within itself) would be the “Idea” of a reconciled normative and factual
order, that is, one in which the various ways in which some kinds of
commitments (such as those commitments bound up with family life,
with careers, with one’s standing in society and in one’s more local com-
munities, with the demands of citizenship, and with the more general
demands of being a good, or a moral, person on one’s own) would in fact
harmonize with each other even though holding fast to some or all of them
most likely involve losses of very different types—desires and dreams fore-
stalled, career aims put off for reasons of family, personal advancement
forestalled by the claims of citizenship, and the like.19 Nonetheless, for
them to be genuine goods in the modern sense would be for them to con-
stitute the conditions under which those agents can lead meaningful lives,
and reciprocal recognition would be the condition under which such goods
can come into view for our practical sensibilities. One is, for example, a
citizen by virtue of being recognized as a citizen; one is a spouse by virtue
of being recognized as a spouse.
One cannot be an agent for whom the right is prior to the good without
also being motivated by such social and historically shaped goods, and a
full explication of such goods would have to take into account what I have
elsewhere called Hegel’s “disenchanted Aristotelian naturalism,” the way
in which the goods that are natural to our being organisms are themselves
both the basis for and are transformed by our historically thick practices.20
Such goods play a role in the way a life is lived out over time; they function in
different ways as integral components—Hegel would say, “moments”—in
having one’s life projects achieve satisfaction for individuals and thus the
ways in which such individuals and communities can flourish. They pro-
vide us not with “roles” as, say, some of modern sociology understands
it—that would be too theatrical—but, to take up a Kantian phrase, it pro-
vides us with orientations.21
138 Terry Pinkard
To summarize the theses laid out thus far: Hegel has a general metaphys-
ics of agency that is encapsulated in his dialectical understanding of agency
(a position which he summarizes, among other places, in the “Introduc-
tion” to the Philosophy of Right). However, on his own dialectical terms, such
a general metaphysics of agency is necessarily abstract and incomplete; it
requires its realization in a social theory of the right and the good. The out-
line of the moves he makes is thus: (1) We must have first principles from
which to reason practically, but these cannot themselves be deduced from
“the understanding,” nor can they be the result of “pure practical reason”;
(2) Such principles ultimately are realized and knowable in the form of
social facts (that is, there is an element of “positivity” to them); (3) These
social facts are collectively instituted by agents from within a form of life
through structures of mutual recognition, but as social facts, they stand in
an independent relation to each individual agent and to his or her own acts
of deliberation.
Hegel holds that such a view generates within its own terms an at least ab-
stract view of what a reconciled social order would look like. It would be that
of “true spirit” (der wahre Geist) in which (a) the social facts offer orienta-
tions to individual agents who take those orientations to provide them with
unconditional obligations; (b) the results of individuals following out the
demands of their station—realizing their unconditional obligations—are
themselves always harmonious; (c) each individual station in such a life is
itself satisfying, that is, providing the agents with valuable ends that can ac-
tually be achieved. In such an order, individuals can thus be fully involved
or absorbed in the daily activities of their lives while at the same time main-
taining a sufficiently self-conscious distance from their own activities; such
a state of affairs would be a full realization of the freedom that is part of the
dialectical conception of agency: self-conscious critical reflection coexistent
with a full absorption in the activities of a good life.23
In the 1807 Phenomenology, Hegel offered his own somewhat idiosyn-
cratic account of how the modern reliance on reason when construed as a
capacity solely exercised on the part of individual agents itself provoked a
deeper conception of the sociality of reason—of Geist itself—from out of
the constellation of problems in which early nineteenth-century European
society had landed itself. It is the conception of a form of life as realized
freedom—of “realized Geist”—that draws out of itself its conception of
what “true spirit” would look like as the union of self-consciousness and
full absorption. In one of his more provocative moves in that work, Hegel
empirically identified “true spirit” with the Polis of ancient Greece (at least
in its idealized form); such an ancient form of “true spirit” is character-
ized as a kind of quasi-Leibnizian harmony in which each agent mirrors
the whole in himself; what secures the harmony of the whole is, however,
140 Terry Pinkard
not something external to the system (such as God in Leibniz’s own view
of the matter); rather, the actions of the individuals in that form of life in
following out the necessity of acting in terms of their stations inevitably
but spontaneously produce a kind of harmony of the social order (which
therefore embodies a kind of Kantian beauty within itself).24 What disturbs
that harmony is the way that on its own terms it provokes the development
of a form of individuality which at the same time it must suppress. Hegel fa-
mously takes this to be paradigmatically exemplified in the tragic dilemma
facing Antigone in Sophocles’s play: Antigone must obey Creon, which
means denying her brother his proper burial rites, and she must give the
burial rites to her brother, which means disobeying Creon, and, most im-
portantly, she herself must not make an autonomous choice between these
two conflicting duties. Given that the duties to obey Creon and perform the
burial rites for her brother are both absolute and mutually exclusive, and
given that she is forbidden from exercising an autonomous choice between
them but in fact must do so, whatever she does is wrong.
That conception of “true spirit” and its own self-incurred ruin sets the
stage for Hegel to take up what he saw as the two central challenges of
European life after the self-incurred ruin of the ancient Polis. The first had
to do with the self-consciousness of inevitable conflicts that pervade social
life. In any form of life where there are conflicting duties—and where the
duties specify a form of rational compulsion, what one must do—there will
be a dialectical pressure for individuals to step back from them and evalu-
ate them by some other measure, although what that other measure might
be must remain rather abstract and, to the extent that it itself is necessary,
inevitably be involved in the kinds of contradictions that emerge when a
form of life tries to give a comprehensive, unconditioned account of itself.
The second challenge for early modern European life concerned how,
in its pre-1789 phases, it was to deal with the “thinning” out of its form
of life such that the set of authoritative goods shared within it had been
progressively emptied out into being a rather abstract and slender set
of goods having to do with the social facts surrounding ideas of honor,
nobility, baseness, and the related ways in which power and economic in-
fluence were understood to be appropriately distributed in early modern
European life. Within the medieval and postmedieval understanding of
society as ideally divided ultimately into three estates which corresponded
to the three vital functions of social life—I fight for you (the aristocracy),
I pray for you (the priests and other ecclesiastical figures), I work for you
(all commoners)—only nobles (and some ecclesiastical figures), so it was
argued, could possibly be suited for the exercise of state power. Only the
aristocracy was, so it was assumed, capable of the kind of self-distancing
and capacity for self-sacrifice that were essential to the exercise of state
power; wealthy bourgeois were too self-interested and thus too base to
Recognition, the Right, and the Good 141
be able to make a similar claim. Yet in the growth of the market society
in early modern Europe, as the distinction between noble and commoner
(especially wealthy bourgeois) began to fade, a kind of logic impelled
monarchs all over the leading states of Europe to begin ennobling wealthy
bourgeois who simply could not be kept out of the realm of the select any
more. Once that new social fact was at work in life, it gradually became
clear to virtually any reflective agent that the old order was not based on
any kind of natural set of functions in social life but merely on recogni-
tion and power itself. The continuing hold of the aristocracy over the le-
vers of power began to seen for what it was; it was simply a way in which
those in power engaged in a ritualized score-keeping with each other and
with those below them. The claims of the nobility to have in their own
“nature” the basis for identifying their interests with the real interests of
the state lost its authority, and what thus became more evident was the
mere division of points of view between commoner and aristocrat, not an
intrinsically normative difference.
The result which went hand in hand with the division between aristo-
crats and commoners was therefore a deep-seated alienation of each from
the other, from himself and from the “spirit,” or form of life in which they
lived. In fact, in such a thinned out spiritual world there is nothing for such
“individuals” to do but engage in something like score-keeping, in which
each individual starts with a set of established propositions and then recip-
rocally judges the claims made by others in terms of whether they match
up or contradict one’s own list of approved claims.25 Where such recogni-
tion consists only in negotiation over such norms without there being any
thicker substantiality to the form of life, it can only result in a thinned out
alienation of agents from each other and the form of life in which they
interact since whatever social facts serve as orienting goods can only be the
result of power or class, not of truth. The mark of authority becomes that of
who wins the game, but the winners in that game always have to appeal to
something else besides their own success at structuring the rules to legiti-
mate their claim to be setting the standards.
Now, to be sure, Hegel had his own separate and quite obviously contro-
versial historical thesis about how such an individualist model of practical
reality as score-keeping—as the form of alienation experienced by both
noble and bourgeois—led to the breakdown of that way of life both in its
exposing of the very thinness of the social order itself as providing orient-
ing goods for life and in the way that its score-keeping practice of mutual
recognition itself exposed the very instituted nature of such social goods.
Once particular agents were recognized as free-standing individuals—once
the status of being the final authority in such practical matters was seen as
falling upon individuals and the resources those individuals could muster
on their own—then within the logic of such thinned out individualism,
142 Terry Pinkard
them,” and in which the truly normative, the “ethical,” is “lost in its ex-
tremes.”28 However, he thought that the basic coordinating mechanisms
that are internally generated in civil society (laws, the “police,” etc.) would
be enough to temper it and make it suitable for a kind of full identification
with the “people” or the “nation” that fleshes out the contours of a politi-
cal state. The opportunities for a career in civil society and for participation
in a variety of associations—his own examples were those of the rapidly
expiring postmedieval “corporation” and the estates—itself, so he thought,
expressed a set of concrete orienting goods that were compatible with the
political unity of the whole.29
On his view, since such freedom amounted to a reflective identification
with a political state in which one was given full sway to pursue one’s
own life in the terms best suited to one’s temperament and abilities, there
was no need for any kind of democratic participation in such a state; if
it were run well by well-trained civil servants, mere acknowledgment of
its rationality would, so he argued, suffice. There is no need here to go
into any detail about why that conception of the administrative state
turned out to be both dangerous and to be incapable of actualizing the
aims that Hegel himself laid out as the touchstone of his own theory,
namely, that of how an agent could in such a form of life be at one with
himself, bei sich selbst, particularly in being “at one with himself in an
other.” Most importantly, it failed to sustain what Hegel regarded as the
most basic normative status of modernity, that of being an individual with
what he called a “right of subjective freedom.” On the Hegelian view of
agency, the liberal individual—outfitted with the traditional liberal rights
of life, liberty, and property and the other great modern right to freedom
of conscience—could not be such an individual outside of the conditions
under which others could be such individuals. The rights enshrined in the
constitutional state (the embodiment of the right) could only be sustained
in the patterns of mutual recognition if individuals could find the goods in
that overall form of life satisfactory and not alienating.
It is not difficult to see where, for example, an Adorno-style criticism of
Hegel would be telling. (This is independent of Adorno’s actual criticisms
of Hegel.) Hegel thought that the goods offered by the package of modern
life were ultimately compatible with each other; Hegel never denied the
tensions that existed among them but instead argued that unlike the case
in ancient Greek life or prerevolutionary France, the tensions were not such
as to bring the whole down with them. The Adorno-style of criticism takes
Hegel and stands it on its head: the kind of alienation engendered in a
consumerist society is simply a new version of the alienation experienced
under the ancien régime. The whole exhibits a form of rational compulsion
at odds with itself. How a Hegelian might reply to this would be the topic
of another paper.
144 Terry Pinkard
NOTES
supplying the missing content for the otherwise formal principle of the “right,” the
categorical imperative. See Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
9. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nis-
bet (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1991). §27.
10. That Kant already had a more complex picture of human psychology at work
in his writings is defended by Nancy Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
11. One should add the qualifier, “legitimate,” if only to sidestep the misleading
issue of whether it would make sense to say that something might be “good” for
an individual if it were abstracted from out of the conditions of the right, that is, if
it conflicted with the right; and the answer is: Of course. Abstracted away from all
conditions of the right, lots of things may be good in various senses for agents.
12. The case for this as at least an interpretation of Hegel is made more in fully
in Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert Pippin in his The Persistence of Subjectiv-
ity: On the Kantian Aftermath (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
discusses the idea of agency as a norm as the ongoing question of modern philoso-
phy, not just as a matter of interpreting Hegel.
13. That Hegel’s own conception of dialectic is itself a development (and naming
of) key Fichtean ideas is not in dispute here. This feature of the relation between
Hegel’s and Fichte’s approaches has been noted often enough in the literature so
that references to it are hardly worth noting.
14. When we begin to make such explicit judgments and then reflect on them
to the point that we note the contradictions at work, for example, in the concept of
the perceptual object, we are pushed to construct an unconditional account of such
matters; this is where the dialectic of perception starts. On its own, perceptual expe-
rience is not problematic in that way; it becomes so only under the pressure of re-
flection. One possible reaction to this is a Wittgensteinian “quietist” approach, that
is, the idea that if we simply refrained from putting that kind of reflective pressure on
our ordinary perceptual experience, everything would be in order. Self-interpreting
animals cannot do that; the dynamic created by any kind of reflection pushes itself
onward to such unconditional accounts.
15. One obvious way is to construe such deliberation is as some form of means/
ends reasoning (where the rationality of the norm is associated with its efficiency).
However, that is not the only way practical reasoning can proceed; it also be a mat-
ter not of seeking the most efficient means to achieve an end but that of seeking to
specify the ends in question. See Henry Richardson, Practical Reasoning about Final
Ends (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Democratic Autonomy: Public
Reasoning about the Ends of Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
16. Hegel, Enzyklopädie, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl
Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1971), vol. 8, §66
(emphasis mine). As with all such direct knowledge, it rests on a background mediacy,
a way in which certain mediated concepts can be learned and then employed in im-
mediate ways. In the passage cited, Hegel goes on to add, “In all these cases, immediacy
of knowledge not only does not exclude mediation, but the two are so bound together
that immediate knowledge is even the product and result of mediated knowledge.”
146 Terry Pinkard
[“Die Geläufigkeit, zu der wir es in irgendeiner Art von Wissen, auch Kunst, techni-
scher Geschicklichkeit gebracht haben, besteht eben darin, solche Kenntnisse, Arten
der Tätigkeit im vorkommenden Falle unmittelbar in seinem Bewußtsein, ja selbst
in einer nach außen gehenden Tätigkeit und in seinen Gliedern zu haben. - In allen
diesen Fällen schließt die Unmittelbarkeit des Wissens nicht nur die Vermittlung
desselben nicht aus, sondern sie sind so verknüpft, daß das unmittelbare Wissen
sogar Produkt und Resultat des vermittelten Wissens ist.”]
17. The most succinct discussion of this is in §118 of the Philosophy of Right,
where Hegel distinguishes (as he does in several places) between actions and deeds,
that is, between the consequences of the action that are an internal part of its shape,
that is, part of what one intends to do (scare somebody, write an article, turn on the
light, etc.), and the consequences that fall outside of the intention/action complex
but which are causally related to it (such as the athlete who wins a competition on
which somebody, Mr. X, has bet a large amount and makes Mr. X a wealthier man,
even thought Mr. X’s becoming wealthy was never part of the athlete’s intention).
There is thus a distinction between the action as the “intention/action complex”
and “what one ends up doing” (the “deed”), which can be more extensive than the
intention/action complex itself. Hegel realizes that this raises difficult issues for as-
signing responsibility, but those issues need not be deeply philosophical; they have
to do with the legal, social, and political ramifications of holding people respon-
sible for more than what they intend and involve evaluations of what a reasonable
person should have foreseen.
18. There is another issue at stake in this, namely, as to whether this is a condition
on all agents or only for agents who for very determinate historical reasons have come
to think of the structure of their thought and willing as, in Hegel’s words, “infinite,”
that is, as normative “all the way down” and not as intrinsically tied to any particular
facts or givens. For such historically determinate modern agents, the “right” and the
“good” pull apart. That must be qualified. Whereas it would indeed be odd to think
that considerations of “the good” could be indifferent to biological facts about birth,
death, the nature and length of human maturation, health and illness, the reproduc-
tion of the species as depending sexual reproduction, and to other social, cultural,
and economic facts, what nonetheless counts as right depends on how these various
facts are appropriated into a conception of what would be the right and best way to
lead one’s life and how that appropriation then enters into one’s conduct and emo-
tional life. The point about the basis of such evaluation being found in the purposive
structures of “life” is also a generally neo-Aristotelian point that has found recent ex-
pression in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Thompson. See in particular
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues
(Chicago and LaSalle: Open Court, 1999), and in particular chapter 6, “Reasons for
Action,” where MacIntyre argues that the idea of becoming an independent practical
reasoner only makes sense by virtue of our starting out life already oriented to some
goods; on p. 56, he notes, “The first step in this transition takes place when a child
becomes able to consider the suggestion that the good to the achievement of which
it is presently directed by its animal nature is inferior to some other alternative good
and that this latter good provides a better reason for action . . . this is possible only
if there is indeed some good at which the child has been aiming.” See also Michael
Thompson, “The Representation of Life,” in Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and
Recognition, the Right, and the Good 147
Moral Theory, ed. Rosalind Hursthouse, Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
19. This is, I take it, part of the point behind Hegel’s otherwise puzzling state-
ments about the nature of truth. Any fair explication of Hegel’s conception of truth
would require much more space, but in summary form it can put as the following.
Since nature is external to mindedness—nature is the other of Geist—making true
statements in the context of natural facts means molding our ideas, at least in the
sense of Vorstellungen, to nature’s contours, and that is only possible if they are also
ruled by concepts (scientific theories of nature). In the realm of social facts, however,
some facts may be said to be false because, although they are real and exist, they are
not in accordance with what the practical demands of agency require; a true social
fact is one that, at least for moderns, is a realization of freedom. Thus, as Hegel con-
tinually notes, whereas the criterion of correspondence of idea to fact is crucial where
natural facts are at issue, in the cases where social facts are at issue, what is at stake
is the correspondence of the fact to the adequately worked out concept.
20. See Terry Pinkard, “Liberal Rights and Liberal Individualism Without Liber-
alism: Agency and Recognition,” in German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed.
Espen Hammer (London: Routledge, 2007), 206–224.
21. The temptation to speak of these social facts as social roles is real enough,
and I myself have succumbed to it in the past. This is, however, potentially very
misleading, since it might well suggest an overly theatrical version of the view of
modern life, as if we were all self-enclosed monadic agents who, as it were, conduct
ourselves by putting on masks and pretending to be various characters to each
other. Instead of seeing these orientations as “roles,” it would be better to describe
in terms of something more like an overall set of orientations. As Robert Pippin has
noted, particularly within forms of life that are anchored in modern individualis-
tic conceptions, it is all too tempting therefore to construe sociality on an “I-We”
model (as, for example, in game theory), which in turn provides an incentive to
“theatricalize,” if not compromise, with the “We” (to play the game well while at
the same time not identifying with it). What looks like the opposite temptation,
namely, to revolt against the “We,” is simply the other side of that coin. See Robert
Pippin, “Authenticity in Painting: Remarks on Michael Fried’s Art History,” Critical
Inquiry 31 (Spring 2005).
22. One important caveat should be attached to this. Although these kinds of
statuses are social proprieties, their normative content need not be “up to me”
any more than the meanings of linguistic terms are “up to me.” Indeed, as Hegel
remarks, to the extent that such a social propriety is only “my own,” it counts for me
as deficient. (See Philosophy of Right, §8.) Although it belongs to another story, it is
worth noting that part of the emphasis on subjectivity and individuality in modern
life creates a kind of natural dynamic that suggests we view all these proprieties as
somehow matters of individual choice, and that in turn is part of what pushes the
dynamic to a conception of social life in terms of theatricality, of “role-playing,” as
if these proprieties were forced on us and we at best only learned to manage them,
not to live in them. This is a major thrust of the section in the 1807 Phenomenology
titled, “Individuality, which in its own eyes is real in and for itself” where Hegel tries
to show that without a robust conception of the “what is at stake,” or “what really
matters” (die Sache selbst) as social proprieties, there can only be a form of bad faith
148 Terry Pinkard
theatricality in social life. See Terry Pinkard, “Shapes of Active Reason: The Law of
the Heart, Retrieved Virtue, and What Really Matters,” in The Blackwell’s Guide to
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Kenneth Westphal (London: Blackwell’s, 2008).
23. See Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hans Friedrich Wessels and Hein-
rich Clairmont (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988), 236. Hegel says
there of such “wahre Geist”: “Aus diesem Glücke aber, seine Bestimmung erreicht zu
haben, und in ihr zu leben, ist das Selbstbewußtsein, welches zunächst nur unmittel-
bar und dem Begriffe nach Geist ist, herausgetreten, oder auch - es hat es noch nicht
erreicht; denn beides kann auf gleiche Weise gesagt werden.”
24. This is, strikingly, Hegel’s way of reformulating the Kantian idea of freedom
as rational compulsion and situating it socially and historically. For Kant, a free
action is one where the maxim necessarily produces the action; of course, such
necessity is possible, so Kant argues, only if reason itself is the noumenal and not
phenomenal cause of the action, and the agent can acknowledge the reason as a
reason (make it causally effective). (On maxims necessarily producing the action,
see Jens Timmermann, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Hegel interprets the social statuses
of ancient Greek life as giving the respective agents something like “maxims” which
necessarily produce the actions they undertake. That the result is supposed to be
harmonious shows the conceptual affinity of Greek life with what Kant would call
the “kingdom of ends,” where each agent mirrors the authority of the whole within
him- or herself. What Greek life shows is that in those cases where the structure
of social rationality is itself at odds with itself, then there can be no spontaneous
harmony (as there would be in the “kingdom of ends”); the whole cannot sustain
itself in its self-contradiction.
25. The term “score-keeping” is used by Robert Brandom to explain how concep-
tual contents can both perspectival and shared and to generate a conception of ob-
jectivity. On Brandom’s account, objectivity itself is a structural feature of discursive
intersubjectivity, which he characterizes as a coordinated set of “I-thou” relations
(those relations between commitments undertaken by a scorekeeper in interpreting
others and commitments attributed by that scorekeeper to those others). See Rob-
ert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 599. He contrasts these with
what he calls “I-we accounts” which mistakenly postulate a privileged perspective,
that of the community; in an “I-thou” relation, each perspective is at most locally
privileged: see Making It Explicit, 600. On Brandom’s account, “deontic statuses”
(such as “knowing”) amount to counters in terms of which discursive score is kept,
and the “deontic attitudes” amount to the activity of score-keeping as instituting
these statuses: see Making It Explicit, 593. The individualist stance of score-keeping
would amount to the alienated stance Hegel describes in those sections of the
Phenomenology. To be sure, Brandom disavows the idea that score-keeping is only a
matter of coordination; to see it as such a matter would make it a form of the “regu-
larism” which he criticizes in the first part of Making It Explicit; but it is hard to see
how the later account of score-keeping in the same book (at the end of his exposi-
tion) does not fall into exactly the position he has criticized in the first part.
26. “In jener Seite der Rückkehr in das Selbst ist die Eitelkeit aller Dinge seine
eigene Eitelkeit, oder es ist eitel. Es ist das fürsichseiende Selbst, das alles nicht nur
Recognition, the Right, and the Good 149
zu beurteilen und zu beschwatzen, sondern geistreich die festen Wesen der Wirk-
lichkeit wie die festen Bestimmungen, die das Urteil setzt, in ihrem Widerspruche zu
sagen weiß, und dieser Widerspruch ist ihre Wahrheit.” Phänomenologie des Geistes,
347.
27. The phenomenon of alienation as Hegel describes it has the same kind of
initially puzzling shape to it as do the phenomena of weakness of the will and
of self-deception; it is very difficult to state just exactly how any of them are even
possible.
28. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §182: “. . . ist das Ganze [der bürger-
lichen Gesellschaft] der Boden der Vermittlung, wo alle Einzelheiten, alle Anlagen,
alle Zufälligkeiten der Geburt und des Glücks sich frei machen, wo die Wellen aller
Leidenschaften ausströmen, die nur durch die hineinscheinende Vernunft regiert
werden. Die Besonderheit, beschränkt durch die Allgemeinheit, ist allein das Maß,
wodurch jede Besonderheit ihr Wohl befördert.” See also Elements of the Philosophy
of Right, §184: “Das Sittliche ist hier in seine Extreme verloren.”
29. There is another crucial element of the story which must be treated all too
cursorily here. This has to do with Hegel’s own reworking of Kant’s insistence on
the dignity of humanity. Hegel clearly accepts large parts of Kant’s conception of
dignity as “beyond price,” that is, (in Hegel’s language) “infinite.” For example,
in his lectures on the philosophy of world history, Hegel notes, “Die Religiosität
die Sittlichkeit eines beschränkten Lebens—eines Hirten, eines Bauern—in ihrer
konzentrierten Innigkeit und ihrer Beschränktheit auf wenige und ganz einfache
Verhältnisse des Lebens hat unendlichen Wert und denselben Wert als die Reli-
giosität und Sittlichkeit einer ausgebildeten Erkenntnis und eines an Umfang der
Beziehungen und Handlungen reichen Daseins. Dieser innere Mittelpunkt, diese
einfache Region des Rechts der subjektiven Freiheit . . . bleibt unangetastet und ist
dem lautern Lärm der Weltgeschichte . . . [entnommen].” [Hegel, Vorlesungen über
die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte: Band I: Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Johannes
Hoffmeister (Hamburg, Germany: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1994), 109.] What Hegel
criticized in Kant’s theory was his move from that of an agent’s having an uncon-
ditional value for himself to that of recognizing other agents as also having such
unconditional value. What Kant failed to see was it was possible to acknowledge
that other agents do indeed have unconditional value in their own eyes without, as a
matter of pure practical reason, having to acknowledge that they have unconditional
value for oneself also; that is, that they have the same essential properties as oneself
(freedom, rationality, the ability to regard themselves as ends in themselves) does
not require as a matter of pure practical reason that one is thus rationally compelled
to acknowledge that those properties be respected. Hegel’s point is that for such
genuine reciprocal recognition to be actual, the mutual recognition of each other
as creatures with dignity must itself be mediated by a complex historical process
involving the Christian conception of all of humanity being equal in the eyes of
God, such that in the institutions and practices of a post-Christian form of life, this
becomes something nonoptional, a required good for such agents.
7
Producing for Others
Daniel Brudney1
In this paper I detail the structure and workings of what I call the social-
recognition activity of true communist society (TCS), the society sketched
briefly by the 1844 Marx, that is, the Marx of the “Comments on James Mill,
Élémens d’économie politique” and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844.4 I then argue that this activity provides the social basis for commu-
nists’ sense of their own worth. Since the publication of A Theory of Justice
the existence of such a social basis has been seen as a desideratum of an
acceptable society. It is worth showing that the young Marx can satisfy it.
Rawls remarks that a central concern of political philosophy is the con-
struction and comparison of well-ordered societies: the construction and
comparison of complex wholes composed of ideals of the person, of basic
institutional arrangements, and of citizen-citizen relations.5 This chapter is
a first step toward constructing a well-ordered society for the young Marx.
151
152 Daniel Brudney
For the 1844 Marx, agents in TCS see one another as beings whose self-
realization consists in transforming nature as a way (i) to realize one’s
personal aims (e.g., to be a hunter, fisher, etc.), (ii) to provide the objects
needed for the species’ continued survival and development, and (iii) to
provide the objects that others need to pursue their personal aims. Central
to Marxian self-realization is to have one’s activities under (ii) and espe-
cially (iii) confirmed by others, that is, others acknowledge and endorse
one’s engagement in the activity so described. In fact, one can realize one’s
nature only if others do acknowledge and endorse one’s production activi-
ties. Thus not only must producers produce with particular intentions (to
make something for others); consumers must consume with a particular
set of beliefs (about the intentions of producers); and producers must have
particular beliefs about consumers’ beliefs (about their, the producers’,
intentions). Only then, Marx says, “would [I] become recognized and felt
by you, yourself, as a completion [Ergänzung] of your own nature and as a
necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be con-
firmed both in your thought and your love.”6 In the production/consump-
tion process communists must continually recognize each other as certain
sorts of beings engaged in a certain kind of activity.
“Recognition” here is demanding. It is not enough for B to register that
A is producing something that B will use. That could obtain under capital-
ism. It is also not enough for B to register that A is producing something
that he intends B to use where B’s use is instrumental to some other goal
A has, for example, A intends B to use his product because then not just B
but C and D will buy A’s product, making A rich. It is not even enough for
B to register that, for A, B’s use of A’s product is the endpoint of A’s goal in
producing. For B might not care about this fact. B must both register this
fact and, as Marx puts it, “affirm” it.7 Moreover, both A and B must see the
production/consumption process as, itself, fundamental. They must see
production for others not as some trivial activity but as the basic way in
which human beings realize their natures: under proper conditions, it is the
good life. Thus A and B must have certain normative beliefs and know this
about one another. Only if B both registers A’s activity and affirms it for the
Producing for Others 153
right reason can her consumption count as “completing” that activity, and
so as contributing to A’s realization of his nature.
Let’s take two things from this. First, communist self-realization is a form
of self-realization-through-others. It is not merely that my activity is done
with others (for example, with my coproducers) and for others. In addition,
others’ responsiveness to my activity is a condition of the activity’s success.
Purely qua individual, I might find my work intrinsically satisfying, and in
that sense my self-realization might not go through others. However, qua
human being, for Marx my self-realization is dependent on others, on their
appropriate responsiveness.
The structure instantiated here can be found elsewhere. (For instance,
it obtains in the well-ordered society of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, where
citizens give each other not products but justice.)8 Moreover, and not sur-
prisingly, it is a means to social bonds. Marx puts this point by saying that
each of us would become “the mediator” for the others with “the species”
and that through producing for one another each of us would realize his
“communal nature.”9
The second thing to note is that in TCS the production/consumption
process is what I will call a social-recognition activity.10 Most societies have
ways by which social recognition—positive or negative—is conveyed. Joel
Feinberg notes that the criminal law has an expressive function. It articu-
lates the community’s moral condemnation of the criminal and his act.11 If
a person has been convicted of a crime, it is expected that other citizens will
recognize (both register and affirm) society’s moral judgment. This negative
judgment will be conveyed in large and small ways, most obviously within
the correctional system but also as part of ordinary citizens’ response to
the fact of the agent’s criminality. Indeed, if citizens don’t tend to respond
this way, there is probably a shortfall in their belief in the legitimacy of the
society’s criminal justice system.
In a more positive vein, the public understanding that all citizens are
equal before the law has been thought to express affirmation of all citizens’
fundamental equality. For instance, suppose I attempt to register to vote
and, on presentation of the proper credentials, I am treated as of course
entitled to vote. This counts as recognition of my equal status in the com-
munity. Alternatively, if this kind of context is fraught with the possibility
of rejection—if due to race, religion, gender, etc., a citizen justifiably fears
that she won’t receive an of course response—then here, too, there is a worry
about institutional legitimacy.
It is obvious enough that equality under the law expresses social affirma-
tion of citizens’ equality. However, one could imagine a Calvinist-egalitarian-
totalitarian regime, in which no one enjoys individual rights and this is
understood and accepted as flowing from the utter but equal worthlessness
154 Daniel Brudney
Marx seems to take for granted that communists would care about one
another’s well-being. After all, they would produce objects for one another
and see one another’s needs as a reason to do so. These are surely markers
of mutual caring.
Interestingly, Marx is explicit that communists would feel with and for
one another. He says that in TCS, “[n]eed or enjoyment” will have “lost
their egoistic nature.”14 My satisfactions will give others pleasure, and recip-
rocally. “[T]he senses and enjoyment [Genuß] of other human beings have
become my own appropriation [Aneignung]”;15 and “[i]nsofar as the human
being, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation [Bejahung]
of the object by another is likewise his own enjoyment [Genuß].”16 In TCS
I would not envy another’s delight in using this or that object; on the con-
trary, I would share her delight.17
It has gone unnoticed that Marx thus overlaps a bit with the British sen-
timentalist tradition. Of course, Marx is not concerned with the source of
moral judgments, and the actual line of influence here is through Feuer-
bach. Nevertheless, like the sentimentalists, the 1844 Marx puts weight on
our capacity to feel with and for others. Moreover, he is on the optimistic
Producing for Others 155
The most obvious reason I might not share another’s enjoyment is envy.
This is the emotion that both the 1844 Marx and Wilde, that incorrigible
cynic, believe a new society will tamp down, allowing our natural pleasure
in others’ well-being to come to the fore. It is a commonplace that others’
accomplishments cast me down. One measure of optimism about human-
ity is how far one thinks this trait is not ingrained in our nature.22
Now, I don’t want to put too much stress on Marx’s statements about
feelings. Apart from the infrequency of such remarks, feelings, more par-
ticularly, occurrent feelings, are merely one element of a specific kind of
social relation; the important thing is to characterize that relation. I return
to this point shortly.
both the real nature of our relationships and our understanding of those
relationships, that is, the descriptions under which we relate to others and
to the objects we produce and consume.
That in TCS producers have a broad and deep identification with one
another is vital. Nevertheless, it handles only one issue. It handles the claim
that B’s use of the product confirms A’s activity: through broad and deep
identification, A sees as “his own” the product that (some notional) B con-
sumes. However, a further fundamental feature of communist production
is that A wants to provide for B’s needs—that is an essential feature of A’s
productive activity. And this, too, needs to be understood in the context of
mass, indeed global, production and consumption. What, precisely, is the
stance that A is supposed to have toward B? Does A have affection for B?
Is that the central feature of the producer/consumer relation in TCS? Marx
does talk of being confirmed in “your love.”28 So would all producers in
TCS have feelings of affection for all consumers—including unknown and
distant consumers? Isn’t this highly implausible?
I want to approach this issue through a brief look at J. S. Mill. The aspi-
ration to a broad and deep identification with others was no rarity in the
mid-nineteenth century. Most notably, J. S. Mill’s utilitarian agent would
be motivated by identification with the pleasures and pains of other hu-
man beings. Such an agent, Mill says, would “identify his feelings more
and more with their good.”29 Mill stresses our impulse to identify with
others: the “natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality,” he says, is
“the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures.”30 And he thinks that
under proper social conditions this desire could be satisfied. “This noble
capability [to identify with others] implies indeed a certain cultivation,
but not superior to that which might be, and certainly will be if human
improvement continues, the lot of all.”31 Mill even declares himself in
favor of (and believes in the possibility of) a “Religion of Humanity.”32
For its devotees, Mill says, “the sense of unity with mankind, and a deep
feeling for the general good, may be cultivated into a sentiment and
a principle capable of fulfilling every important function of religion
and itself justly entitled to the name.”33 He goes so far as to claim that
identification with humanity can substitute for personal immortality.34
Feuerbach, Comte, George Eliot, and a host of minor Victorians make
similar professions.35
Note that here identification is with the beneficiaries of utilitarian con-
duct. Our motivation to benefit others is supposed to be our feelings for
and with them. In effect, we are said to be capable of caring strongly about
the well-being of all of humanity.
This mid-century movement evoked mid-century resistance. There are
three standard complaints. First, there is the widespread charge that pur-
ported love for humanity tends to mask indifference to actual, nearby indi-
Producing for Others 159
viduals. “Thy love afar is spite at home,” declares Emerson, and Mrs. Jellyby
in Bleak House is a telling caricature of such a person.36 Here, I will ignore
this charge. If feelings for and with unknown, distant others are possible,
then we can worry about how such an ideal might be abused.
The second worry has already been mentioned. In the eighteenth century,
Butler held that we throb readily to others’ miseries but not to their joys,
remarking that we have many words for the first feeling (“pity, compas-
sion”) but “scarce any single one, by which the [other feeling] is distinctly
expressed.”37 In the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer makes a similar
claim.38 The worry here is about the content of our feelings. This is in fact an
interesting issue that deserves attention; however, as the next issue is more
pressing, this one will have to wait for another day.
The third and fundamental worry is, of course, about the scope of our
feelings. Can they really extend to humanity as a whole? Mill, Comte, et.
al. think that they can, but perhaps this is nineteenth-century naivety. More
recent writers have been chastened by the awful twentieth century. Stuart
Hampshire remarks that Mill’s optimism “has been lost, not so much
because of philosophical arguments but perhaps rather because of the
hideous face of political events.”39 Anyway, just as there are limits to our
physical possibilities, no matter how ideal the social arrangements, aren’t
there limits to our emotional possibilities? Can we really care for billions
of unknown, distant others? Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide an
answer to this last and basic worry. What I will attempt to do is to determine
what the nature of the worry actually is.
is true of both love and sympathy; however, I suspect that it is more clearly
true of the former, and as that is the feeling that Marx himself invokes, my
argument will be directed only to it. I will argue that love simply cannot be
central to the kind of stance that Marx has in mind. However, something
else—what I will call concern—can. And this will make more plausible the
thought that, pace Fitzjames Stephen, we can have the desired stance toward
all human beings.
The issue is my relation to strangers—to unknown, distant others. Now,
one way to imagine my relation to such people is that I extend to them the
affection that I have for those known and near. I care for beings other than
myself: for my family, my friends, and so forth. So I just expand the circle
of my affection—in principle, to all human beings.
If this is our model, there is a worry. After all, it is not merely that I am
personally unacquainted with these distant human beings. It is rather that
I don’t know anything about them: what they look like, whether they are
male or female, old or young, anything. For me, they are altogether unindi-
viduated. I might be disposed to have contentful feelings for them were I
to know something of them, but the nineteenth-century claim is that I can
love others who are in fact utterly unknown and distant. On the model of
the extension of my affection for my family, friends, etc., this seems not so
much unlikely as without content. A Saul Bellow character refers to “potato
love”—an easy, empty affection, something vague and essentially meaning-
less: “[a]morphous, hungry, swelling, indiscriminate.”41 Love for unknown,
distant others seems to be of this kind.
Suppose I sit at my desk and call to mind, deliberately focus on, my
spouse and children. I might find myself strongly moved. Similarly, I might
be moved by the thought of distant friends, their sad condition, and so
forth. So now I extend my thoughts and become moved by the plight of un-
known, distant others, say, the victims of a disaster somewhere. The worry is
that this last step involves a category mistake, that real affection is targeted.
When it becomes insufficiently so, it becomes vapid—mere potato love. In
Middlemarch, George Eliot insists that we need “the deep-seated habit of
direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.”42 Yet how can I have a
feeling for unknown, distant others that is “direct” and “individual”? That
seems impossible.
When Marx talks of “shared enjoyments,” he probably has in mind, at
least in the first place, a fellow-feeling that is in fact direct and individual:
in TCS, I would share Joe’s enjoyments. To some extent, as it were, locally,
TCS would likely satisfy Eliot’s desideratum. Locally, communists would
have something like affection for one another.
Still, we shouldn’t let Marx off the hook. For the most part, in any image of a
modern TCS communists will produce primarily for unknown, distant others.
We need a grasp of communists’ fundamental stance toward these others.
Producing for Others 161
The best way to reconstruct Marx’s view here is in terms of concern rather
than love.45
A word of caution about my talk of “feeling.” This is the usual nineteenth-
century term. However, these days the talk would be of “emotion,” and it
would be stressed that to have emotion E need not involve any occurrent
feeling. In addition, there would be discussion about whether, how far,
and in what sense emotions are cognitive. As this is too vast an area to deal
with here, I am sticking to the nineteenth-century talk of feelings, but the
reader should keep in mind that this is, in effect, a strategy of avoidance, a
way to restrict the range of issues to be addressed. And I want to stress that
my claims about love and concern are limited. I think that neither love nor
(especially) concern needs constantly or even frequently occurrent feelings;
and each requires an object. Where I claim they differ is with respect to the
individuation of their objects. I see no need to discuss other issues here.46
Actually, I want to go one step further. In the end, for the issues at stake,
the terminology of neither feeling nor emotion is optimal. I think the bet-
ter category here is practical attitude, a category that includes such things as
trust in or confidence in. I take concern for others to be a particular practical
attitude toward them. It involves a disposition to act in certain ways toward
others (and to do so for their sake), to have beliefs (e.g., about the value
of these others), and surely at times to have feelings with regard to others,
but, as with trust, the issue of what I feel is not crucial.47 If I trust Peter, I
live my life with regard to Peter in a certain way. Positive feelings for Peter
might obtain but are not the central feature of a life in which I trust him.
In the same way, when we think of communists as being concerned for one
another’s well-being, the issue is less how they feel toward one another than
how they live with one another. This is not to say that concern reduces to
actions. I can act as if I trust Peter without actually trusting him, and I can
act as if I am concerned for Paul without being so. A practical attitude is
a real feature of our psychology, not a mere summary of our conduct. The
point is that my practical attitude is not to be reduced to my feelings for
the object of that attitude. Clearly, much more should be said about these
matters. Here, all there is space to do is to recast the claims that I have been
pressing. They are first, that love (whether or not it is seen as a practical atti-
tude) requires an individuated object; and second, that for Marx’s purposes,
concern should be seen as a practical attitude, and that as such an attitude
it does not require such an object.48
It may be useful to introduce the concept of “someone” as a substitute
for George Elliot’s “individual.” In TCS, I would produce with the intention
that “someone” use what I produce, and the consumer would know that
“someone” produced the object with that intention. In TCS, I would care
for—be concerned for—this “someone” who would, in the end, use what I
have produced, but this need not involve any fluttering of my feelings.
Producing for Others 163
an analogy, Marx compares the perceptions of the Greek and the fetish-
worshipper. “The sensuous consciousness of the fetish-worshipper is different
from that of the Greek, because his sensuous existence is different.”53 In see-
ing a certain piece of wood, the fetish worshipper sees an object with occult
powers, registers the object under that description, sees it as that sort of thing;
the Greek merely sees a piece of wood. In TCS, the communist would have a
new and quite different “sensuous existence” and so also a new and quite dif-
ferent “sensuous consciousness.” She would see produced objects as having
certain properties, namely, that they are the embodiment of essential human
powers and produced by human beings for human use. Moreover, she would
see them as manifestations of our concern for one another. That we would
see things under a new description is Marx’s point when he says that in TCS,
“[t]he senses have . . . become theorists directly in their practice.”54 What ap-
pears to the senses is different from under capitalism.
It should be acknowledged that there are echoes here of the Christian
tradition that understands the person of faith as living in a transformed
world. (Feuerbach gives an atheistic spin to the idea of transformation: the
atheist’s world is filled with meaning but it is human rather than divine
meaning.55 Here, too, the 1844 Marx is Feuerbachian.) And Marx could also
be placed within a different tradition. Utopian thought tends to present hu-
man beings whose responses differ radically from ours. In More’s Utopia,
gold and gems are used as toys for children and as fetters for slaves. When
distinguished visitors come to Utopia decked in finery, the Utopians take it
as a mark of disgrace.
[The Utopians] therefore bowed to the humblest servants as lords, and took
the ambassadors, because of their golden chains, to be slaves, passing them by
without any reverence at all. You might have seen children, who had themselves
thrown away their pearls and gems, nudge their mothers when they saw the am-
bassadors’ jeweled caps, and say, “Look at that big lout, mother, who’s still wear-
ing pearls and jewels as if he were a little kid!” But the mother, in all seriousness,
would answer, “Quiet, son, I think he is one of the ambassadors’ fools.”56
man beings live within a produced world, within a material world that is
substantially the result of the production/consumption process, daily life,
almost in its entirety, would be filled with a particular set of social expres-
sions. Agents would interpret the objects of daily life as having been pro-
duced with particular beliefs and intentions and, most importantly, with a
particular practical attitude. They would move within what they take to be
the physical expression of their fellow workers’ concern.
Daily life would thus have a certain resonance. One’s concern for others
and one’s recognition of their concern would permeate one’s life without
necessarily being at the forefront of consciousness. A’s concern for un-
known, distant B would be an of course relationship, something that both
take for granted.
Mill puts great weight on the way that Rome and its needs were omnipres-
ent to the patriotic Roman. He claims that there can be a similar commit-
ment to humanity.58 However, the Roman expressed, sustained, and made
manifest his patriotic commitment via a range of activities, from serving
in the legions to participating in civic festivals. Mill, in contrast to Comte,
does not push for humanist rituals. But this leaves Millian commitment to
others purely personal and internal. For Marx, the recognition activity of
production/consumption as communists understand it—that is, as carried
on with particular beliefs, intention and attitude—picks up the slack. It is
what expresses, sustains, and makes manifest one’s ordinary, daily concern
for others.
We can push the thought that life in TCS would be different by looking
at two metaphors Marx uses. Each is supposed to extend our sense of the
proper form of the production/consumption relationship and so of the
contrast to the current form.
The first metaphor is that of a language. Here, Marx seems to be making
two related points. First, in TCS our exchange relations, the reciprocal provi-
sion of needed objects, would be a kind of conversation.59 Our exchange of
objects would have the structure of offer and uptake. Second, this conversa-
tion with one another would involve shared beliefs about the meaning and
purpose of the activity, as well as shared commitments to the activity so
understood. Such beliefs and commitments would be part of what would
be constantly communicated and reinforced.
Under capitalism, exchange also has the structure of offer and uptake but
the beliefs about its meaning and purpose are different. The resonance is
not of reciprocal concern but rather of reciprocal indifference. The under-
standings that permeate the exchange relationship are altogether different.
This is how Marx characterizes the distorted present.
The only intelligible language in which we converse with one another consists
of our objects in their relation to each other. We would not [under capitalism]
166 Daniel Brudney
And the consumer would believe that someone has produced for her, not
for humanity. Marx clearly believes that this can generate something that
could be called social bonds. Still, the nature of such bonds would be im-
portantly different from those of the patriotic citizens of Sparta.71
respect) along with one’s sense of oneself (and of what one is entitled to
from others) in virtue of one’s capacities and what one has accomplished
(self-esteem). For almost everyone, a healthy psyche involves having some
combination of both self-respect and self-esteem. No matter how great
one’s accomplishments, I doubt that one could have much of a sense of
self-worth if one didn’t believe that one’s fundamental social identity and
life ideals were worthy and generally believed to be so; and at least in the
modern age most people, regardless of their social identity, need to believe
that they have valuable capacities and have done or are doing something
of value with their lives. When Rawls talks of an agent sinking into apathy
and cynicism, what is missing in the agent is not, I think, self-respect rather
than self-esteem or vice-versa but a sense of self-worth.78
I want to look now at the mechanism in TCS that is supposed to sustain
self-worth. I will do so through comparison to the way that self-worth is
supposed to be sustained, at least in significant part, in a society that em-
phasizes rights.
As an example of this latter view we can use Joel Feinberg’s imaginary
town, Nowheresville. In Nowheresville, Feinberg says, agents are benevo-
lently motivated, highly so. As in TCS, they care about one another’s well-
being. No doubt, they also believe that there are things that they ought to do
for others and that others ought to do for them—and, as it happens, out of
benevolence, they want to do these things. However, what, the inhabitants
of Nowheresville do not believe is that they have a right that others do these
things for them or that others have a right against them that these things be
done. In Nowheresville, the concept of a right is missing. Feinberg’s claim
is that in the absence of that concept something of great importance is
missing in Nowheresville, namely, the ability to engage in a particular kind
of self-assertion. “Having rights enables us to ‘stand up like men,’” he says,
“to look others in the eye, and to feel in some fundamental way the equal
of anyone.”79
As we have seen, Marx is explicit that a certain kind of appeal to rights
that obtains under capitalism—one that sounds much like Feinberg’s—
would be missing in TCS.
We can ignore (iii). Neither Marx nor Feinberg sees that relation as desir-
able. As for (i) and (ii), they involve different goals for X and call for differ-
ent responses from Y. With (i), when X looks Y in the eye, her assertion is
that she is equal to Y, not an inferior. Now, I take this to be not just, indeed
not primarily, the assertion of a mere abstract equality of value. I take it to
be an assertion of a basic functional equality, the assertion that X is not de-
pendent on Y, does not need Y in any fundamental way. And while it would
be fine for Y to acknowledge such facts, the point is precisely that X does not
need acknowledgment from Y. Looking others in the eye in this sense seems
to be what Feinberg hopes that having legal rights will enable us to do. It
also seems to be the attitude that Philip Pettit associates with not having to
“truckle” or “pull the forelock.”81
With (ii), the goal is different. Here, the focus is on my claim to value
and on the thought that I need others to validate this claim or, as Marx
would say, to confirm it (I will use “validation” and “confirmation” inter-
changeably).82 With looking others in the eye in sense (ii), X is asking Y for
validation. Here, X is psychologically dependent on Y: Y’s validation helps
sustain X’s self-worth.
There is an obvious model of how these two ways of looking the other
in the eye might fit together, namely, social arrangements might instantiate
(ii) in such a way that the agent does in fact receive the needed validation
and can now look others in the eye in sense (i). Assume, for instance, that
some social-recognition activity provides affirmation of the agent’s value.
(As noted earlier, this is often seen as part of the expressive role of equal-
ity before the law.83 Equality of legal rights expresses the social belief in
my equal value; normally implicit is the social belief that each of us has
great value. Moreover, and crucially, this validation comes via many differ-
ent interactions with many different people, and so does not involve X’s
dependence on any particular Y.)84 If the social-recognition activity is well-
Producing for Others 171
functioning, X will have received the validation she seeks and can now feel
herself the equal of anyone. A society with effectively enforced legal rights
satisfies one condition for looking others in the eye in sense (i) (that is, in
Feinberg’s sense), namely, that one is physically protected when one does
so. However, successfully looking others in the eye in sense (ii), say, via a
well-functioning social-recognition activity that sustains one’s self-worth,
is, as a matter of human psychology, a second condition for looking others
in the eye in sense (i).
Note that, on the model that I have sketched, the point of the social-
recognition activity, qua social-recognition activity, is to facilitate looking
others in the eye in sense (i). On this model, that is the social relation-
ship we are trying to reach. Here, sustaining self-worth is in service of
nondependence.
In this context, note some key differences between TCS and a rights so-
ciety. First, TCS assumes away a pair of standard reasons for needing rights.
(1) Communism would be beyond material scarcity. “From each according
to his abilities, to each according to his needs” is a description of what com-
munists would do and obtain, not a moral standard for production and
distribution.85 (In this respect, TCS is even more ideal than Nowheresville.)
And (2) in TCS, mutual concern would forestall most conflict (as it would in
Nowheresville). In effect, two sources of subordination—differential ability
to bring financial or physical force to bear—would be either missing or not
a potential source of subordination.86 Two reasons not to feel one can look
others in the eye in sense (i) would be absent.
Second, in TCS, the point of looking others in the eye would be sense
(ii). In TCS, agents would in fact see themselves as others’ equals, though
this would not be something requiring self-assertion. (The conditions that
would make asserting one’s rights a sensible thing to do would be absent.)
In TCS, the point of looking others in the eye would be validation—and
this would not be seen as instrumental to anything else. The relationship
involved in sense (ii) looking others in the eye would be valued for its own
sake. That relationship would be the goal.
This contrast needs to be stressed. In many images of a rights society (say,
Feinberg’s), self-worth is about individuals standing on their own. Valida-
tion from others is purely instrumental. If we could tinker with our brain
chemistry so as to obviate the need for others’ validation, nothing would
be lost. By contrast, in TCS, such changes would destroy the point of valida-
tion, namely, the instantiation of the right kind of relationship of mutual
dependence.
In TCS, I would have a belief in my own value qua human being, that is,
qua having a certain status. In that sense, I could be said to have self-respect.
However, there would be no need to express it by looking others in the eye
in sense (i). Consider Marx’s reference to “human dignity.” This phrase is
172 Daniel Brudney
The most interesting issue appears if we weaken the idealization with regard
to agents’ beliefs and practical attitudes. To function well, any social-recogni-
tion activity requires that certain beliefs and practical attitudes be widespread,
have something like an of course status. In comparing two such activities, one
basis for comparison would be the plausibility of the relevant beliefs and
the likelihood of the relevant attitudes. In this way, it can be instructive to
compare two completely ideal societies, say, TCS and a well-functioning market
society that highlights rights possession and equality under the law. A stan-
dard Marxian, but not only Marxian, question about the latter might be
whether injuries to self-worth inflicted in the sphere of market relationships
are likely to be made good via the social affirmation of equal rights and
citizenship.97 On the other side, there might be skepticism either about the
truth of the claim that the transformation of nature to provide products for
others is the essential human activity or about the realism of the premise
that human beings can have significant mutual concern.
This comparison would be instructive. Yet perhaps more instructive
would be a different one, a comparison between not completely but only
more or less ideal societies. The distinction is not that between a society of
beings who are angelic, that is, fundamentally better than human beings,
and a society inhabited by beings who are recognizably of our species.98
Completely ideal TCS would be inhabited by human beings but involve
institutional and material conditions that, although they would not make
us angelic, would reliably and pervasively bring out the better angels of our
nature. The difference between this and a more or less ideal society is that,
in the latter, agents would be importantly but far from completely shaped
in this way. I think of a more or less ideal society as what Rawls calls “a
realistic utopia.”99
Clearly, a variety of social arrangements could be of this kind. What
they would have in common is a shortfall in how pervasively institutions
form agents in the desired way. And to the extent that institutions fail to
do so, there might be a tipping point at which crucial features of the ideal
society would be endangered. And this means that the comparison of ideal
societies might come out differently depending on whether we compare
completely or merely more or less ideal societies.
Different ideal societies highlight different positive features. Mutual
respect, mutual concern—these are both good things but different ideal ar-
rangements give pride of place to one rather than the other. Now, the pres-
ence of each of these goods depends on widespread beliefs (for example,
about individual rights or about the essential human activity) and each
good might be undermined if its connected beliefs become insufficiently
widespread. But what counts as insufficiently widespread is likely to differ
across beliefs and goods. Moreover, among the key beliefs will be citizens’
beliefs about other citizens’ practical attitudes toward them, for example,
Producing for Others 177
that these are in fact attitudes of respect or concern. A basic way in which
such beliefs become less widespread is that other citizens’ conduct comes
to seem at odds with the relevant practical attitude. But here, too, there
are likely to be differences across ideal societies. The amount of conduct
C needed to sap my belief B (about other citizens’ attitudes toward me)
might differ from the amount of conduct C* needed to sap my belief B*.
The point in more or less ideal Alpha at which conduct and beliefs become
such as to undermine the presence of highlighted good G is likely to dif-
fer from the point in more or less ideal Beta at which conduct and beliefs
become such as to undermine the presence of highlighted good G*. Thus
the likelihood of successfully attaining G in more or less ideal Alpha might
differ from that of successfully attaining G* in more or less ideal Beta. The
consequence is that the comparison of completely ideal Alpha and Beta
and of more or less ideal Alpha and Beta might give different answers as to
whether Alpha or Beta is the society we ought to aim for.
It is important to imagine a completely ideal society. It is worth knowing
the conceivable best. But it is also important—probably more important—
to imagine the second best society in order to see the pitfalls along the way
to serious social progress. The issue is not the dramatic danger of the first
steps, that is, the worry that these might concentrate political power in the
hands of profoundly fallible individuals or groups. That danger is real and
worrisome but the issue here is something else. It is the drawbacks of a so-
ciety that is, along many axes, much better than ours and yet not completely
ideal—and so not obviously superior to some other more or less ideal soci-
ety. To illustrate the issue, I consider, very briefly, some differences between
mutual respect and mutual concern in more or less ideal societies.
In more or less ideal TCS the norms would be norms of mutual concern,
and my confidence that I am embedded in a web of mutual concern would
help sustain my sense of self-worth. In a more or less ideal rights society, the
web would be one of mutual respect. In both, the web could be fragile—it
could break, leading to a shortfall of self-worth. Might one such web be
more fragile than the other?
Here, I make two (very) speculative claims about differences between
respect and concern. First, I think that respect is the more belief sensitive
attitude. If Jack genuinely believes that Joe has respect-warranting property
P, then Jack will almost certainly respect Joe. The respect might be grudg-
ing, but respect seems so tightly tied to belief that if Jack manifestly doesn’t
respect Joe we are entitled to conclude that Jack doesn’t really believe that
Joe has property P (or else doesn’t believe that this is a respect-warranting
property). Concern doesn’t seem to be like that. It is a commonplace that
there are no properties such that, if Ann has them, they will inevitably elicit
affection from Beth. I suspect the same is true with concern. Ann may have
the properties that Beth concedes are concern-warranting but Beth might
178 Daniel Brudney
still be unmoved, find she has no concern for Ann. Though different in
other ways, concern is like affection in not being something to be mustered
at will or to be automatically triggered by beliefs. (To be acknowledged to
be lovable does not entail being loved.) Keep in mind that we are imagining
more or less ideal societies in which citizens have certain positive beliefs
about one another. Respect seems more likely than concern to be generated
by such beliefs. And so, to the extent that agents’ self-worth is dependent
on other agents’ practical attitudes, a society stressing mutual respect might
seem to offer more stable backing for self-worth than one stressing mutual
concern.
Second, when I want someone to respect me, I want more than that she
behaves as if she respects me. And when I want someone to be concerned
for me, I want more than that she behaves as if she is concerned for me. In
both cases, I want not just particular conduct but a particular attitude. How-
ever, there seems to be this difference. Suppose I know that Gwen doesn’t
respect me but that she will reliably conduct herself exactly as she would if
she did respect me; and suppose I know that Sarah has no concern for me
but that she will reliably conduct herself exactly as she would if she did have
such concern. Offhand, Gwen seems less undermining of my self-worth
than Sarah. The importance of conduct seems larger in the case of respect,
the importance of attitude larger in the case of concern. I think that most
of us take a lack of concern more personally.
It might be objected that in more or less TCS the issue is strangers’ lack
of concern for me, and few of us take that seriously. But this is to forget that
in TCS it is precisely strangers’ concern for me that is supposed to sustain
my self-worth. In TCS, such concern, or its absence, would be taken very
seriously.
Consider one further possible difference. Hume remarks that “[w]hen
any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person,
who feels his heart devoid of that motive, may hate himself upon that ac-
count.”100 Imagine Bob in more or less TCS. He knows he does not have
concern for unknown, distant others—he knows he does not have a fun-
damental, widespread, and socially approved motive. (He is a bit like a
mother who finds she doesn’t love her child; for the mother, too, this is
terrible.) Rawls remarks of those without a sense of justice that “their na-
ture is their misfortune.”101 But the likelihood that citizens’ natures are their
misfortune might be an axis along which to compare ideal societies. If it is
more likely that Bob in TCS will fail to have a fundamental, widespread,
and socially approved motive (concern for others) than will Bill in a more
or less ideal rights society (respect for others)—well, that might be a mark
in favor of the rights society.
In both more or less TCS and a more or less ideal rights society, there
would be social-recognition activities tied to beliefs and attitudes that vali-
Producing for Others 179
NOTES
that would survive the rational consideration of all feasible conceptions and all
reasonable arguments for them. . . . [T]he various moral theories incorporate dif-
ferent conceptions and ideals of the person . . . the feasibility of moral conceptions
is settled largely by psychological and social theory, and by the theory of the cor-
responding well-ordered societies. The reasonableness of these conceptions, given
that they are feasible, is then settled by their content: that is, by the kind of society
their principles direct us to strive for, and by the kind of person they encourage us to
be.” See Rawls, Collected Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),
288, 289, 296.
6. Marx, “Comments on James Mill, Élémens d’économie politique,” MEW, E, i,
462/MECW, iii, 228; hereafter “Comments.” For further discussion of this theme
in the 1844 Marx, see my “Justifying a Conception of the Good Life: The Problem
of the 1844 Marx,” Political Theory, vol. 29, no. 3 (June 2001), §2, and my Marx’s
Attempt to Leave Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998),
chapter 5.
7. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 227.
8. On this topic, see my “Community and Completion,” in Andrews Reath,
Barbara Herman, Christine M. Korsgaard eds., Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays
for John Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 388–415.
9. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228.
10. Given the rich and ramifying role of the production/consumption process
in TCS, it is tempting to think of it as not a mere activity but a “practice.” Unfor-
tunately, this concept has become sufficiently protean that to use it here would
require so much discussion that the cost in space and complication would, I think,
outweigh the benefit in deeper analysis of the phenomena.
11. See, for instance, Joel Feinberg, “The Expressive Function of Punishment,” in
Feinberg, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1970), 95–118. For a general account of law as expression,
see Elizabeth S. Anderson and Richard H. Pildes, “Expressive Theories of Law: A
General Restatement,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 148, no. 5 (2000):
1503–1575.
12. Michael Gill presents a Calvinist catechism from seventeenth-century Eng-
land. See Michael Gill, The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular
Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 8:
‘What doest thou believe concerning man and concerning thine own self?’ And to this
the child must answer, ‘All men are wholly corrupted with sin through Adam’s fall and so
are become slaves of Satan and guilty of eternal damnation.’ . . . Corruption and sin, the
child must continue, is in ‘every part of both body and soul, like as a leprosy that runneth
from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot.’
27. Here, Marx is ringing a change on a theme from Bruno Bauer, who insists
that, via proper identification with “universal self-consciousness,” I could see myself
in its outputs, that is, in everything, including the products of “geniuses.” Bauer
claims that I come to “know myself as universal, but then to know even geniuses
and their creations as my own determinations, as determinations of my universal
self-consciousness.” See Bruno Bauer, “Leiden und Freuden des theologischen Be-
wußtseins” (1843), in Hans-Martin Sass ed., Feldzüge der reinen Kritik (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), 173.
28. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228.
29. Mill, Utilitarianism, CW, x, 231, emphasis in original.
30. Mill, Utilitarianism, CW, x, 231.
31. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 420–21.
32. See Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 422. Mill also endorses a religion of
humanity in Auguste Comte and Positivism; see CW, x, 333. See also the passage to-
ward the end of Utilitarianism, chapter 3, where Mill says of Auguste Comte’s Traité
de politique positive that “it has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to
the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, both the
psychical power and the social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold of human
life, and colour all thought, feeling, and action, in a manner of which the greatest
ascendancy ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste.” See Mill,
Utilitarianism, CW, x, 232.
33. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 422.
34. Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 426: “[I]f the Religion of Humanity were as
sedulously cultivated as the supernatural religions are . . . all who had received the
customary amount of moral cultivation would up to the hour of death live ideally
in the life of those who are to follow them.”
35. On this topic, see my “Grand Ideals: Mill’s Two Perfectionisms,” History of
Political Thought, vol. 29, no. 3 (Autumn 2008).
36. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841), in The Collected Works of Ralph
Waldo Emerson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), vol. ii, 30.
37. Butler, Sermon V, Works, ii, 94–97.
38. See Arthur Schopenhauer, “Über die Grundlage der Moral,” Sämtliche Werke
(Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1986), iii, 771; On the Basis of Morality,
E. F. J. Payne trans. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), 174: “[T]he
expressions of that pure, disinterested, objective participation in the lot and condi-
tion of another, which are the effect of loving-kindness [Menschenliebe], are reserved
for him who in any way suffers. For the lucky man as such we feel no sympathy.”
39. Stuart Hampshire, “Morality and Pessimism: The Leslie Stephen Lecture,”
1972, reprinted in Hampshire, Morality and Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1972), 84.
40. See James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in Stephen, Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity and Three Brief Essays (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1990), 241.
41. See Saul Bellow, Herzog (New York: Viking Press, 1964), 91.
42. George Eliot, Middlemarch, chapter 61. I thank Uri Pasovsky for calling this
passage to my attention.
Producing for Others 183
Of course, these remarks are merely preliminary. The relation between concern
and benevolence needs a good deal of investigation.
49. My stress on mutual concern raises the question of how such concern relates
to recent work in the ethics of care. See, among others, Eva Kittay, Love’s Labor: Essays
on Women, Equality, and Dependence (New York: Routledge, 1999), Joan C. Tronto,
Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge,
1993), and Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care (New York: Oxford University Press,
2006). The relationship between concern and what these writers mean by “care”
certainly needs study. There is, however, a basic difference in the two areas. As I have
been at pains to stress, communists are concerned for the well-being of people about
whom they know little or nothing. The literature on care-giving tends to focus on in-
timate relationships, for example, parent to child, the relatively able-bodied caregiver
to the relatively disabled person being cared for. Political philosophy is largely about
relations among strangers, most of whom will not even know of one another’s exis-
tence. How far this structural difference ramifies is what needs investigation. For an
interesting discussion of the philosophical implications of human dependency, see
Alasdair MacIntrye, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues
(Chicago: Open Court, 1999). For a fine discussion of political friendship among
strangers, see Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown
v. Board of Education (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).
50. The substitution of concern for love has implications for the issue of our
stance toward others’ happiness rather than their misery. We tend to talk of concern
in the context of others’ misery. It is not clear what phrase to use to talk of one’s
stance toward unknown others’ happiness. Perhaps “happy for” is the positive ver-
sion of “concerned for.”
51. Elizabeth Anderson, “John Stuart Mill: Democracy as Sentimental Education,”
in Philosophers on Education, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (New York: Routledge,
1998). See also Maria H. Morales, Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill on Well-Constituted
Communities (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), chapter 3,
and Wendy Donner, “John Stuart Mill on Education and Democracy,” in J. S. Mill’s
Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, ed. Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
52. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 546/MECW, iii, 305.
53. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 552/MECW, iii, 312.
54. Marx, Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 540/MECW, iii, 300. Hence, for Marx, the
proper justification of claims about the human essence occurs in practice, that is,
through living a certain kind of life: “the solution to theoretical riddles is the task
of practice and effected through practice.” See Manuscripts, MEW, E, i, 552/MECW,
iii, 312. For more detailed discussion of these issues, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave
Philosophy, chapter 6, and “Justifying the Good Life.”
55. For a discussion of Feuerbach in these terms, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave
Philosophy, chapters 1 and 2.
56. Thomas More, Utopia, Robert Adams trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991), 64.
57. Aristotle, Politics, 1262a.
58. See Mill, “Utility of Religion,” CW, x, 421.
Producing for Others 185
59. In his own way, Marx is thus making a point I made earlier, namely, that
participation in a social-recognition activity involves the giving and receiving of
messages. See above, p. 154.
60. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227.
61. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 447/MECW, iii, 213.
62. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 226.
63. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 226.
64. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 463/MECW, iii, 228.
65. See Aristotle, Magna Moralia 1213a, 13–26.
66. In TCS, mutual concern would be an of course feature of agents’ understand-
ing of their relations to others. TCS would thus satisfy Aristotle’s condition that
friends be aware of one another’s good will. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1155b–1156a.
67. See my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 5.
68. In his fascinating book, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? G. A.
Cohen urges that a just society fosters an “ethos” of justice: “a structure of response
lodged in the motivations that inform everyday life.” See G. A. Cohen, If You’re an
Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2000), 128. We could say that, in TCS, what is pervasive is an ethos of mutual con-
cern. I take Cohen’s focus on justice rather than concern to be, at least in part, a
concession to the common thought that, human nature being what it is, justice is
probably easier to come by than concern. That thought seems to me precisely what
needs further investigation.
69. In a recent paper on Aristotle’s politics, John Cooper says of citizens in a
proper Aristotelian polity “that as they go about their daily lives they will, and will
need to bear in mind the basic understanding they have acquired of the polis as an
overarching koinonia . . . they will even need to bear in mind their basic understand-
ing of their own polis as one with citizens equal in status. . . . In these as well as in
more detailed ways their practical understanding of political matters itself functions
in, and is needed for full and proper functioning of their moral lives, when those
are conceived as ones they live as an enterprise undertaken in common with their
fellow-citizens.” See John M. Cooper, “Political Community and the Highest Good,”
(available at www.princeton.edu/~johncoop/), 46–47.
The similanties to TCS are:
i. As in TCS, Aristotle’s citizens are engaged in a joint enterprise.
ii. As in TCS, there is a more or less constant mindfulness of the meaning of the
joint enterprise.
The differences from TCS are:
i. There is no specific social-recognition activity whose proper functioning re-
quires agents to have (and know others have) certain beliefs, intention and attitude
within that activity.
ii. It does not appear that agents’ self-realization requires any kind of endorse-
ment or uptake from others. Thus Cooper’s picture does not appear to instantiate
the model of self-realization-through-others.
For an important piece on Aristotle and civic friendship that is relevant to the is-
sue of mutual concern, see Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, “On Civic Friendship,” Ethics,
vol. 107, no. 1 (1996): 97–128.
186 Daniel Brudney
85. See my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 5. G. A. Cohen also makes
this point. See G. A. Cohen, “Marxism and Contemporary Political Philosophy, or:
Why Nozick Exercises Some Marxists More than He does any Egalitarian Liberals,”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume (1990): 381–82.
86. In effect, TCS is stipulated to be beyond the circumstances of justice. For clas-
sic discussions of the circumstances in which justice is necessary, see David Hume,
A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part ii, section 2, and An Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals, section III, as well as Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §22.
87. I should also be clear that rights could obtain in TCS. Suppose that respect
for others is conceptually tied to the concept of a right, and suppose that to accord
respect is simply to recognize a right. Suppose further that one has a particular right
as a bulwark to protect something of great value. On these premises, communists
could have rights and show respect for one another. After all, for the 1844 Marx
the status “human being” is of great value, and in TCS that great value would be
universally affirmed. Communists might even be said to have some sort of rights
against one another in virtue of the thought that certain things ought not to be done
to someone with great value. Presumably, communists would respect one another’s
“rights,” so understood. Of course, to stress this would be wildly misleading. In TCS,
the appeal to rights would be rare—in principle, entirely absent.
88. For a recent variation along these lines, see Honneth, The Struggle for Recogni-
tion.
89. See Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, MEW, xx, 262; MECW, xxv, 268.
90. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 462/MECW, iii, 228.
91. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosopie der Zukunft (1843), in Gesammelte
Werke, ed. Werner Schuffenhauer (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1967), vol. 9, 264; Prin-
ciples of the Philosophy of the Future, translated by Manfred Vogel (New York: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1966) 3, emphasis in original.
92. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227.
93. Marx, “Comments,” MEW, E, i, 461/MECW, iii, 227.
94. I have mentioned only physical and not cognitive disability. Marx’s account
seems to me incapable of finding an acceptable place for the cognitively disabled,
at least for those who are severely cognitively disabled. On the other hand, I think
no political philosophy has adequately addressed this issue. In general, this remains
an important but utterly unresolved problem.
95. Marx’s texts are unclear as to whether the central locus of self-realization is
in fact in necessary labor. In the work of 1844, Marx tilts strongly in this direction,
though not without some qualification. By the time of Capital, the tilt goes the other
way. On this topic, see my Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy, chapter 4.
96. See Marx, Manuscripts MEW, E, i, 546–52/MECW, iii, 306–312.
97. This worry goes back to Marx’s essay, “On the Jewish Question.” See Karl
Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (1843), MEW, I, 347–77/MECW, iii, 146–74.
Thomas Nagel makes a related point when he notes the “tension between [our
society’s] public impersonal egalitarianism and its encouragement of the private
pursuit of individual aims.” See Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991), 58–59.
98. This distinction is stressed by many writers. It is nicely discussed by Ben Lau-
rence in “The Thesis of Moderate Scarcity,” unpublished manuscript.
188 Daniel Brudney
99. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1999), 7. It is unclear whether the well-ordered society of A Theory of Justice
is a completely or merely a more or less ideal society. Rawls does stipulate “strict
compliance,” but (a) Rawls does not presume the absence of all criminal law (in
effect, “strict compliance” need not mean “exceptionless compliance”) and (b) his
concern for arrangements that minimize envy suggests a limit to institutions’ capac-
ity to form citizens’ psychologies in the desired way.
100. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part ii, section 1, 479.
101. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 576/504.
8
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis
Andreas Wildt
189
190 Andreas Wildt
The word “recognition” often appears in its colloquial form in Freud’s texts,
that is to say, in such a way that no idea specific to psychoanalysis is ex-
pounded as yet. In such passages, “recognition” only seldom denotes an at-
titude or behavior towards another person (as with “praise”). For the most
part, the word refers more generally to facts of all kinds, though of course
especially to facts whose recognition is characteristic for psychoanalysis, for
instance that of infantile sexuality and aggression. Here already it is clear
that the word “recognition” appears in Freud where affirmation and accep-
tance are at stake, which must first be asserted against reluctance, anxiety,
shame, pain, and so forth.
Freud’s use of the term accentuates a trait that is already characteristic of
its usual employment. One could put it this way: mere cognition [Erken-
nen] is not enough to arrive at recognition [Anerkennen]—also required
are voluntative [voluntativ] approval or affirmation, which must first assert
themselves against the countertendency to negate and reject. The way we
say that we “must” or “should” recognize something betrays this fact. The
act of recognizing is thus often “resistant [widerstrebend],”9 ambivalent or
ambitendent [ambitendent]. In Freud, this also corresponds to the affin-
ity of “recognizing” with “tolerating [Ertragen],” “enduring [Aushalten],”
“adapting oneself [Sich-Anpassen],” “resigning oneself [Sich-Abfinden]” and
“renunciation [Verzicht].”
The distinctive feature of the word “recognition,” namely that it expresses
an ambitendency [Ambitendenz] in affirmation, makes it seem particularly
suited to being a fundamental concept in psychoanalysis. Indeed, it gains
more and more importance in late Freud and obtains semiterminologi-
cal status as the counterconcept to “disavowal.” In the reception of Freud,
however, the phrase “recognition of reality,” as opposed to the “disavowal
of reality,” is practically the only usage that has survived.
According to Freud, the “recognition of reality” is what the “reality-
principle” achieves.10 As to its function, Freud only closely examined
192 Andreas Wildt
this end it is important for him that the recognition of the breast as the
highest good—together with the mourning [Trauer] over the transience of
its presence—enables or at the very least facilitates the recognition of the
parents’ sexual intercourse as the highest creative act.28 All these forms of
recognition are decisive for enabling psychological growth.
One can observe a peculiar inflection in Money-Kyrle’s use of the term
recognition. Up till then, “recognition” related primarily to facts that were
counter to the desires of the recognizing subject; in psychoanalytic discourse
after Money-Kyrle, these facts present positive values and direct themselves
precisely at the recognizing subject’s desires. Certainly, it is already difficult
for the small child in Kleinian theory to accept the exceptional goodness
of the breast and extraordinary creativity of the parents’ sexual intercourse,
because it has such impulses as archaic envy [Neid] and jealousy [Eifer-
sucht] standing in the way. Yet these aggressive impulses first acquire their
overwhelming power through the experience that the good breast is often
not present. As for the parents’ sexual intercourse, the difficulty primarily
lies not in the recognition of its creativity, but in the fact that the child is
excluded from this relation. For Money-Kyrle, the ambivalent character of
recognition, which till then was fundamental in psychoanalytic usage, is
secondary to this.
Because Money-Kyrle’s work is concerned not with the problems of
early childhood development, but with the aim of analysis, one could ask
whether his third form of recognition—that of mortality—is decisive. The
bitter fact here arises not from having to die at some point or at all, how-
ever, but rather from having to die in a short or foreseeable time—that is,
“soon.”29 My having to die soon confronts me—in a different manner from
mortality in general—with the omissions and transgressions in my life and
the narrow limits of my power to change anything about this anymore. This
consciousness of the absence of meaning, of guilt, and of impotence trig-
gers a specifically human anxiety, whereas the consciousness of transience
produces pain and mourning. What seems most difficult, however, is the
acceptance of facts that are threatening. Thus recognition as such is less
present in the acceptance of mortality in general than in the acceptance of
having to die soon.
I have found Kleinian and Freudian usages of the term “recognition” in
the work of Altmeyer, Bacal/Newman, Bollas, Bolognini, Britton, Eagle, Gat-
tig, Küchenhoff, Loewald, Reiche, Rosenfeld, Scharff, Schneider, Steiner and
Weiß. Finally, “recognition” has also gained programmatic importance in
nonanalytic forms of therapy, in particular in the systemic method, which
Bert Hellinger developed under the name “Familienaufstellungen”.30
Here in particular, but also in Money-Kyrle, I find the concept of recog-
nition therapeutically overworked and thereby inadequate. Already in the
work of Money-Kyrle, the term is used to denote the goal of therapy. In
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 195
my view, however, one can only speak of having reached this goal when
the hard and bitter facts of (one’s own) life are not only (ambivalently)
recognized, but also so completely accepted that there is no opposing ten-
dency remaining. As such, these facts are not transformed into something
positive, but remain negative, sorrowful, and painful. Despite the lingering
pain, however, they comprise the facts on which one may stand without
being swayed or torn apart. On the other hand, it would be a problematic
idealization to view the recognition of the reality of the bitter facts of life
as a fixed end state of psychic maturation. Since Bion in particular, it has
been emphasized in Kleinian theory that the depressive never ultimately
overcomes the paranoid schizoid position, but that it is characteristic of
creativity for there to be a flexible exchange of the fundamental positions
[Grundpositionen] of psychic functioning. To my knowledge, Bion never
employs the term “recognition” per se. But the movement between the
Kleinian positions is, at bottom, a swinging between the recognition and
nonrecognition (that is, disavowal) of reality. The “to and fro between dis-
avowal and acknowledgment” that, for Freud, characterizes a number of
psychic disorders,31 thus becomes a characteristic of maturation. Out of this
arises the question of what this movement facilitates. For this, we will see
that “recognition” is decisive in another, essentially personal sense.
this sense that Money-Kyrle speaks of the “recognition of the breast as a su-
premely good object” or of the parents’ sexual intercourse as “a supremely
creative act.” Often it is in the sense of “approval” that recognition refers to
the moral-legal character and value of facts. Of course, the recognition of
facts as morally-legally binding always also implies the recognition of the
rights of persons and thus also the recognition of these persons themselves,
though the accent lies on the recognition of factuality in this usage.
Besides this, there is a usage in which “recognition” pertains primarily to
persons. The model for this is praise or appreciation. Praise refers to actions
that involve effort or performance, and appreciation refers particularly to
contributions. Both are expressions of the estimation of a person. Because
abilities are manifest in performance, one also speaks of the recognition
and estimation of abilities.
The recognition of persons often has a particular, more complex sense,
that of the recognition of their rights. This sense of “recognition” is meant
mostly when one speaks of the “respect [Achtung]” of a person. Of course,
the “recognition of persons” may also mean the recognition or estimation
of his or her performance and abilities, but for the most part it refers to the
normative status of the person.
It must be admitted that the recognition of persons always implies the
recognition of certain facts in relation to these persons. When one person
is recognized in his or her performance, abilities, and rights, it is recognized
that he or she possesses these performance, abilities, and rights. Yet the
recognition of persons cannot be reduced to the recognition of such facts.
Rather, it is the person him- or herself who is recognized and positively
evaluated when we recognize that these facts are applicable to him or her.
A positive affect can be based on this estimation. This type of recognition
is, in this sense, intentionally, evaluatively, and in certain cases affectively
related to the person, and cannot be reduced to propositionality. We say, for
instance, not only “I recognize that P is such and such,” but also “I recog-
nize P” or even “I am filled with appreciation [voll Anerkennung] for P.”
In what follows, I would like to flesh out this distinction by drawing
out the differences between “personal” and “propositional” recognition.32
Please note that these terms are terminological abbreviations. To be precise,
one should differentiate between a form of recognition that refers not only
propositionally to persons, from a form which, if it refers to persons at all,
refers to them exclusively in a propositional manner. As such, one could use
the designations “only propositional” and “not only propositional” recog-
nition, but I find them too pedantic and unwieldy.
One could also ask whether the two forms of recognizing persons, as inci-
dentally differentiated as they are, ultimately describe one unified phenom-
enon, and thus whether rights may be understood as a special case of ability
or performance. In my work on “recognition” in contemporary practical
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 197
genetically clear that we can only learn to recognize the rights of others if we
ourselves have or have had the experience of being recognized in our rights.
Accordingly, one could understand Winnicott as saying that the infant’s
recognition of the mother as an “entity in its own right” presupposes a cor-
responding recognition of the infant in its rights by the mother.
An analogous reciprocity applies to the recognition of abilities. The rec-
ognition of one’s ability by another comes into its full value only if one
knows and recognizes that the other possesses the same ability. This reci-
procity is presupposed by Hegel’s dialectic of the struggle for recognition,
which Benjamin takes as a model for the reconstruction of ontogenesis.41
For Hegel, however, self-consciousness not only wants to be recognized in
its fundamental, person-specific abilities, that is to say as an “autonomous
being-for-itself [selbstständiges Fürsichsein]” or “will,” but also as “abso-
lute” and therefore must seek out a “struggle for life and death [Kampf auf
Leben und Tod]” with the self-consciousness of another.42 In this Benjamin
sees a parallel to Freud and Winnicott, insofar as their acceptance of the
consciousness of omnipotence as a primary state precludes a spontaneous
and voluntary recognition of the other. In Hegel, however, the struggle is
also a program that generates dialectics, because the absoluteness asserted
by self-consciousness and will necessarily collides with the striving for
recognition.
For Benjamin, Hegel’s dialectic of the struggle for recognition is, on
the contrary, not a universal anthropological model. Rather, she wants to
show that Hegel’s “paradox of recognition” leads to a type of master-slave
dialectic—that is, to a sadistic assertion of omnipotence or masochistic
submission and to a sadomasochistic symbiosis—only in the case of a
pathological striving for absolute independence. Nonetheless she speaks of
a “necessary tension” between recognition and independence. In the case of
healthy development, however, this tension could be preserved in the mu-
tual recognition of relative autonomy [Selbständigkeit], independence [Eigen-
ständigkeit] and individuality. The recognition of individuality would then
be necessarily reciprocal and thus often conflictual, but not “paradoxical.”
Here Benjamin draws once again on Winnicott for his model of the small
child’s conflictual recognition of the mother’s autonomy. In my opinion,
this is misleading for two reasons.
First, the autonomy that the small child must recognize in the mother
is not concerned with the loaded form of “autonomy” that is meant when
speaking of the autonomy and individuality of a person. Rather, it primarily
concerns the fundamental fact that the mother goes away or turns her atten-
tion to others. What is to be recognized here is not only the independence
of the mother and of her interests, but also the full dependence of the small
child on this independent person. Second, such recognition is not recipro-
cal. Since the mother does not take “revenge,” but rather understands and
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 201
all the recognition of his or her personal rights. Yet this type of recognition
is clearly not restricted to love. The same applies for the following attempt
at a definition: “Love is the recognition of the otherness of the other.”49 The
recognition of the otherness of the other is also characteristic for personal
respect, and is in no way restricted to love (and friendship). Here, interest
and readiness are specifically directed towards discovering the other in his
or her otherness as well, and then to recognize this other even if he or she
contradicts one’s own wishes. There is thus a dimension of recognition that
is specific to mature love (and friendship). But for the same reason, love
does not allow itself to be defined as recognition. What is more decisive
here is the interest in the individuality of the other, and that in itself is not
a form of recognition.
abilities and performance (or rights), then this thesis is misleading in the
case of the small child and formulated too narrowly in any case. The thesis
is generally convincing at most in the unspecified sense of being accepted
in one’s needs and feelings.
There is a further confusion to clear up. In the thesis “propositional recog-
nition requires personal recognition,” the former has an active sense, while
the latter has a passive sense. Not only should one ask how propositional
recognition relates to personal recognition in the passive sense of being rec-
ognized, but one should also ask how this relates to the active sense of one’s
(own) recognizing. Furthermore, the question extends to whether this act of
recognition expresses a spontaneous need or whether it is quasi-compelled
as the condition for being recognized or for other psychic necessities. With
its research in infancy, intersubjectivistic psychoanalysis tends towards a
positive answer, which manifests an optimistic conception of the human.57
A spontaneous tendency to discover, explore, and affirm the other cannot
convincingly be called “recognition,” however, because the term expresses
precisely the ambitendency [Ambitendenz] of affirmation. “Recognition”
results from the spontaneous exploration and affirmation of the other only
when it experiences the other as the limit of the self.
Finally, the propositional recognition that has been developed is not
only connected conditionally to personal recognition, but also directly and
intentionally. It is of central importance for a healthy self-understanding to
recognize the fact that one is dependent on personal recognition. In this
context, “recognition” has both a passive and an active sense. We must not
only recognize the fact that we are reliant upon being recognized by others,
but also that being recognized is only valuable to us if we recognize our-
selves. This form of self-recognition involves a renunciation of the merely
passive, quasi-obsessive form of recognition by others. The recognition of
reality, which is of central concern in Freud’s theory of psychic healthy and
maturity, is in essence the recognition of personal responsibility [Selbstver-
antwortlichkeit] in recognition. Recognizing personal responsibility in all of
one’s own actions, even the unconscious ones, is the elementary precondi-
tion for any far-reaching therapy. The recognition of personal responsibility
even in being recognized by others belongs, especially in narcissistic disor-
ders, to the goal of therapy.
NOTES
1. This text was given in abbreviated form as a talk at the conference Anerkennung.
Vom “Leben” eines hegelschen Begriffs [Recognition. On the “Life” of a Hegelian Concept]
in October 2004 in Basel. It elaborates on remarks that I made in the essay “‘Anerken-
nung’ in der praktischen Philosophie der Gegenwart” [“‘Recognition’ in the Practical
206 Andreas Wildt
11. Cf. for instance the letter to Romain Rolland dated January 1936 (“Eine Erin-
nerungstäuschung auf der Akropolis”): Stu, IV, 291 GW, XVI, 255 [“A Disturbance
of Memory on the Acropolis”: Standard Edition, XXII, 237–48; 246].
12. Freud, „Die Verneinung”: Stu, III, 377 GW, XIV, 15 [„Negation”: Standard
Edition, XIX, 233–40; 239]
13. Freud, „Die Verneinung”: Stu, III, 373 12 [Standard Edition, XIX, 233–40;
236]
14. Cf. Stu, V, 261 GW, XIV, 24f. [Standard Edition, XIX, 241–58: 253]
15. For example, V. Albertini, “Glauben als Dimension der Zuversicht?” in Karl-
Abraham-Institut, Semester-Journal (Sommersemester 2004).
16. In the longer treatise Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life
of the Infant [Theoretische Betrachtungen über das Gefühlsleben des Säuglings] (1952)
Klein speaks twice of the ability “to acknowledge the increasingly poignant [schmerz-
haft] psychic reality” [“die zunehmend als schmerzhaft empfundene psychische
Realität in höherem Maße anzuerkennen”] (English The Writings of Melanie Klein,
Volume III (London, 1975), 73 [German Klein 2000, 126]). In the essay On the
Development of Mental Functioning [Zur Entwicklung des psychischen Funktionierens]
(1958), she writes: “This makes it possible for the ego to integrate and accept the
super-ego to a greater or less extent.” [“Dies ermöglicht es dem Ich, das Über-Ich in
größerem oder geringerem Umfang zu integrieren und zu akzeptieren.”] (English
The Writings of Melanie Klein, III, 241). While some German editions translate “ac-
cept” with akzeptieren [“to accept”], others use anerkennen [“to recognize”].
17. Albertini, “Glauben als Dimension der Zuversicht?” 79: [“mit ihrem Konzept
der symbolischen Repräsentation die Notwendigkeit der Anerkennung der Eigen-
ständigkeit des Objekts deutlich gemacht, nämlich dann, wenn es zu einer Vermin-
derung der omnipotenten Identifizierungen des Säuglings kommt”].
18. Hanna Segal, “Notes on Symbol Formation,” International Journal of Psycho-
analysis, 38 (1957): 391–97; 391, 394 [German 211, 213].
19. German Hanna Segal, (1964), 127, 133ff. [English Hanna Segal, In-
troduction to the Work of Melanie Klein (1964) (London: Karnac Books, 1973), 95,
101f.].
20. German Hanna Segal, (1991), 134. [English Hanna Segal, Dream, Phan-
tasy and Art (London: Routledge, 1991): 2.] Here, as in some other places, the Ger-
man translation renders “acceptance” as “Anerkennung.”
21. German Segal (1991), 68; cf. also 82, 129. [English Segal, Dream, Phan-
tasy and Art 46, cf. also 58].
22. Roger Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” International Journal of Psy-
choanalysis, 52 (1971), 103a; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle,
ed. Donald Meltzer and Edna O’Shaughnessy (Perthshire, Scotland: Clunie, 1978),
442.
23. Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” in Collected Papers, 421.
24. Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” 420.
25. “The infant or some part of the infant, fails to recognize what is intolerable
to him” (Money-Kyrle, “Cognitive Development,” 421). In this statement Money-
Kyrle reiterates a thought from Freud’s 1911 essay Formulations of the Two Principles
of Mental Functioning [Formulierungen über zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens]
208 Andreas Wildt
(GW, VIII, 229–38 Stu, III, 17–24 [Standard Edition, XII, 213–26]). The concept
of “recognition” only appears in a footnote in Freud’s text, however (see footnote
9). E. Krejci proceeds in a fashion similar to Money-Kyrle’s: see E. Krejci, “Zur
Wahrnehmung und Transformation von projektiven Identifizierungen in der Über-
tragung,” in Was ist aus dem Über-Ich geworden? Depressive Position/Ödipales Gesetz
und jenseits davon. Arbeitstagung der Deutschen Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung in
Freiburg vom 15.–18. März 2001, ed. W. Kubisch (Frankfurt am Main, Germany:
2001), 353–64, 354.
26. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 103b Collected Papers, 443.
27. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 104a 444.
28. Money-Kyrle, “The Aim of Psychoanalysis,” 105a 446.
29. Cf. Ernst Tugendthat, Egozentrizität und Mystik. Eine anthropologische Studie
(München: Beck, 2003), chapter 5.
30. Cf. Bert Hellinger and Gabriele ten Hövel, Anerkennen, was ist. Gespräche über
Verstrickung und Lösung (München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1997), 40, 59, 115.
31. Freud, Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense [Die Ichspaltung im Abwehr-
vorgang] (Stu, III, 394 GW, XVII, 62 [Standard Edition, XXIII, 271–78; 278]).
32. The distinction that I draw between “personal” and “propositional” recogni-
tion is related to the semantic difference between “recognition” and “acknowledg-
ment” in English. But while “acknowledgment” coincides for the most part with
“propositional recognition,” “recognition” encompasses both personal and propo-
sitional recognition.
33. See footnote 13.
34. On the analysis of “respect [Achtung],” cf. Wildt “Recht und Selbstachtung,”
Part II.
35. Helmut Thomä and Horst Kächele, Lehrbuch der psychoanalytischen Therapie,
2nd edition, vol. 2 (Berlin: Praxis, 1997).
36. Cf. F. Frommer and W. Tress, “Primär traumatisierende Welterfahrung oder
primäre Liebe? Zwei latente Anthropologien in der Psychoanalyse” Forum der Psy-
choanalyse, 14 (1998): 139–50.
37. D. W. Winnicott, “The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifica-
tions,” in Winnicott, Playing and Reality, (London: Routledge, 2005 (1971)), 120.
38. Cf. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 163; Nar-
zissmus und Objekt, 144.
39. Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” in: Winn-
icott Playing and Reality, 18.
40. On the theories of recognition in Fichte and Hegel, cf. Wildt Autonomie und
Anerkennung, Wildt, “Recht und Selbstachtung,” Wildt, “‘Anerkennung’.”
41. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, 31ff. [Die Fesseln der Liebe, 34ff.]. Like
Benjamin, T. Ogden, “The Dialectically Constituted/Decentered Subject of Psy-
choanalysis. II. The Contribution of Klein and Winnicott,” International Journal of
Psychoanalysis, 73 (1992), makes reference to the theory of recognition in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit. For Ogden, however, the main issue is not the struggle
for recognition, but rather the interdependent constitution of self-consciousness.
For this reason, he also refers to Martin Buber’s concept of dialogism. Cf. Arnold
H. Modell, The Private Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993),
chapter 4.
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 209
211
212 Nancy Fraser
the language of distribution is less salient today. The movements that not
long ago boldly demanded an equitable share of resources and wealth have
not, to be sure, wholly disappeared. But thanks to the sustained neoliberal
rhetorical assault on egalitarianism, to the absence of any credible model of
“feasible socialism” and to widespread doubts about the viability of state-
Keynesian social democracy in the face of globalization, their role has been
greatly reduced.
We are facing, then, a new constellation in the grammar of political
claims making—and one that is disturbing on two counts. First, this move
from redistribution to recognition is occurring despite—or because of—an
acceleration of economic globalization, at a time when an aggressively
expanding capitalism is radically exacerbating economic inequality. In this
context, questions of recognition are serving less to supplement, compli-
cate, and enrich redistributive struggles than to marginalize, eclipse, and
displace them. I shall call this the problem of displacement. Second, today’s
recognition struggles are occurring at a moment of hugely increasing trans-
cultural interaction and communication, when accelerated migration and
global media flows are hybridizing and pluralizing cultural forms. Yet the
routes such struggles take often serve not to promote respectful interaction
within increasingly multicultural contexts, but to drastically simplify and
reify group identities. They tend, rather, to encourage separatism, intoler-
ance and chauvinism, patriarchalism and authoritarianism. I shall call this
the problem of reification.
Both problems—displacement and reification—are extremely serious:
insofar as the politics of recognition displaces the politics of redistribu-
tion, it may actually promote economic inequality; insofar as it reifies
group identities, it risks sanctioning violations of human rights and
freezing the very antagonisms it purports to mediate. No wonder, then,
that many have simply washed their hands of “identity politics”—or
proposed jettisoning cultural struggles altogether. For some, this may
mean reprioritizing class over gender, sexuality, “race,” and ethnicity. For
others, it means resurrecting economism. For others still, it may mean
rejecting all “minoritarian” claims out of hand and insisting upon as-
similation to majority norms—in the name of secularism, universalism,
or republicanism.
Such reactions are understandable: they are also deeply misguided. Not
all forms of recognition politics are equally pernicious: some represent
genuinely emancipatory responses to serious injustices that cannot be
remedied by redistribution alone. Culture, moreover, is a legitimate, even
necessary, terrain of struggle, a site of injustice in its own right and deeply
imbricated with economic inequality. Properly conceived, struggles for rec-
ognition can aid the redistribution of power and wealth and can promote
interaction and cooperation across gulfs of difference.
Rethinking Recognition 213
DISPLACING REDISTRIBUTION
Let us consider first the ways in which identity politics tend to displace
struggles for redistribution. Largely silent on the subject of economic in-
equality, the identity model treats misrecognition as a free-standing cultural
harm: many of its proponents simply ignore distributive injustice alto-
gether and focus exclusively on efforts to change culture; others, in contrast,
appreciate the seriousness of maldistribution and genuinely wish to redress
it. Yet both currents end by displacing redistributive claims.
The first current casts misrecognition as a problem of cultural deprecia-
tion. The roots of injustice are located in demeaning representations, but
these are not seen as socially grounded. For this current, the nub of the
problem is free-floating discourses, not institutionalized significations and
norms. Hypostatizing culture, they both abstract misrecognition from its
institutional matrix and obscure its entwinement with distributive injustice.
They may miss, for example, the links (institutionalized in labor markets)
between androcentric norms that devalue activities coded as “feminine,”
on the one hand, and the low wages of female workers on the other. Like-
wise, they overlook the links institutionalized within social-welfare systems
between heterosexist norms which delegitimate homosexuality, on the one
hand, and the denial of resources and benefits to gays and lesbians on
the other. Obfuscating such connections, they strip misrecognition of its
social-structural underpinnings and equate it with distorted identity. With
the politics of recognition thus reduced to identity politics, the politics of
redistribution is displaced.
A second current of identity politics does not simply ignore maldistribu-
tion in this way. It appreciates that cultural injustices are often linked to
economic ones, but misunderstands the character of the links. Subscribing
effectively to a “culturalist” theory of contemporary society, proponents of
this perspective suppose that maldistribution is merely a secondary effect of
misrecognition. For them, economic inequalities are simple expressions of
cultural hierarchies—thus, class oppression is a superstructural effect of the
cultural devaluation of proletarian identity (or, as one says in the United
States, of “classism”). It follows from this view that all maldistribution can
be remedied indirectly, by a politics of recognition: to revalue unjustly de-
valued identities is simultaneously to attack the deep sources of economic
inequality; no explicit politics of redistribution is needed.
In this way, culturalist proponents of identity politics simply reverse the
claims of an earlier form of vulgar Marxist economism: they allow the poli-
tics of recognition to displace the politics of redistribution, just as vulgar
Marxism once allowed the politics of redistribution to displace the politics
of recognition. In fact, vulgar culturalism is no more adequate for under-
standing contemporary society than vulgar economism was.
Rethinking Recognition 215
REIFYING OF IDENTITY
NOTES
1. This paper was originally published in New Left Review 3 May/June 2000.
2. Author’s note added in 2009: Subsequent to writing this essay, I have con-
ceptualized a third, “political” dimension of justice. This dimension harbors yet
another class of obstacles to participatory parity, rooted in the political constitution
of society, as opposed to the political economy or status order. These political injus-
tices, which I name “misrepresentation,” include decision rules that systematically
marginalize some people even in the absence of maldistribution and misrecogni-
tion, for example, single-district winner-take-all electoral rules that deny the voice
to quasi-permanent minorities; as well as the gerrymandering of political space to
exclude claims for justice that cut across borders. The existence of such political
obstacles to participatory parity brings out the extent of my debt to Max Weber, es-
pecially to his “Class, Status, Party,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. Hans
H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Oxford University Press, 1958). In the present essay,
I align a version of Weber’s distinction between class and status with the distinction
between distribution and recognition. Yet Weber’s own distinction was tripartite,
222 Nancy Fraser
not bipartite: “class, status, and party.” Thus, he effectively prepared a place for
theorizing injustices of “misrepresentation.” For a detailed account of the political
dimension of justice, see Nancy Fraser, “Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World,”
New Left Review 36 (November–December 2005), pp. 69–88; reprinted in Nancy
Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Columbia
University Press and Polity Press, 2008). Here, however, I confine myself to maldis-
tribution and misrecognition.
3. In this essay, I deliberately use a Weberian conception of class, not a Marxian
one. Thus, I understand an actor’s class position in terms of her or his relation to
the market, not in terms of her or his relation to the means of production. This
Weberian conception of class as an economic category suits my interest in distribu-
tion as a normative dimension of justice better than the Marxian conception of class
as a social category. Nevertheless, I do not mean to reject the Marxian idea of the
“capitalist mode of production” as a social totality. On the contrary, I find that idea
useful as an overarching frame within which one can situate Weberian understand-
ings of both status and class. Thus, I reject the standard view of Marx and Weber
as antithetical and irreconcilable thinkers. For the Weberian definition of class, see
Max Weber, “Class, Status, Party.”
4. For fuller discussions of the mutual irreducibility of maldistribution and mis-
recognition, class, and status in contemporary capitalist societies, see Nancy Fraser,
“Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and Capitalism: A Response to Judith Butler,” New
Left Review 1/228 (March–April 1998): 140–49; and “Social Justice in the Age of
Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition and Participation,” in Nancy Fraser
and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophy Exchange, trans.
Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke (London: Verso, 2003), 7–109.
5. For a comprehensive, if somewhat reductive, account of this issue, see Pierre
Bourdieu, Distinction: A Critique of Pure Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1984).
10
Work and Recognition:
A Redefinition
Axel Honneth
Never in the last two hundred years have there been so few efforts to defend
an emancipatory and humane notion of work as there are today. Develop-
ments in the organization of work in the industry and service sectors appear
to have pulled the rug out from under any attempts to improve the quality
of work. A growing portion of the population is struggling just to gain ac-
cess to job opportunities that can secure a livelihood; others work under
radically deregulated conditions that hardly enjoy any legal protection any-
more; still others are currently seeing their previously secure careers become
deprofessionalized and moved outside the workplace. So hardly anybody
will dispute Robert Castel’s diagnosis that we are now faced with the end of
that brief historical phase in which the welfare state accorded wage labor a
secure status.1 This development in the organization of work, this tendency
of a return to unprotected temporary, part-time, and home work is strangely
mirrored in a shift that has occurred in the intellectual focus and interests
of social science. Disappointed intellectuals, who forty years ago still placed
their hopes in the humanization or emancipation of work, have turned
their backs on the world of work in order to focus on other topics far from
the realm of production. In the face of these new circumstances, the criti-
cal theory of society appears to have occupied itself with issues of political
integration and citizens’ rights, without dwelling even for a moment on
the threats to what has been achieved in the sphere of production. Even
sociology, the scientific stepchild of capitalist industrialization, has largely
abandoned its erstwhile bailiwick and is focusing increasingly on processes
of cultural transformation.
However, these tendencies of intellectual retreat from the world of work
in no way correspond to the sentiments of the population. Despite the
223
224 Axel Honneth
many prognoses of an “end of the work society,” work has not lost its rel-
evance in the social lifeworld. The majority of the population continues to
attach their own social identity primarily to their role in the organized labor
process—and this majority has in all likelihood even greatly increased since
the labor market has been opened to women as never before. Not only has
work not lost its significance in the lifeworld, but it continues to retain its
normative significance as well. Unemployment remains a social stigma and
is still regarded as a personal fault; precarious employment is still felt to
be incriminating, and the flexibilization of the labor market has met with
reservations and general unease in broad circles of the population.2 The
longing for a job that provides not only a livelihood, but also personal
satisfaction, has in no way disappeared; it’s just that this longing no longer
dictates public discourse or the arena of political debate. However, it would
be empirically false and almost cynical to take this oppressive silence as
a sign that demands for a reorganization of work are a thing of the past.
The gap between the experiences of the social lifeworld and the topics of
social-scientific study has probably never been as wide as it is today.
Whereas societal labor has almost entirely lost its significance in the social
sciences, the hardships, fears, and hopes of those immediately affected by
societal working conditions revolve around this notion more than ever.
Yet, social theory’s renunciation of the issue of work is due to more
than merely opportunistic reasons. It would be exceedingly short-sighted
to suspect the silence of intellectuals and sociologists to be an expres-
sion of a lack of desire to deal any further with the real hardships of the
population. Rather, the disappearance of the realm of work from the fo-
cus of social theory is an expression of the realization that the currently
existing relations of production immediately reveal any proposals for
a thoroughgoing improvement of the organization of work to be mere
wishes [Sollensforderungen]. The gulf between social reality and utopian
expectations has become so deep, the distance between real conditions
of work and efforts at emancipation so large, that social theory has been
forced to concede the current futility of all its theoretical endeavors.3 It
is not in the spirit of opportunism or triumphalism that the intellectual
representatives of social movements have turned their backs on the sphere
of societal labor, but only grudgingly and embittered. Because the idea of
emancipating work from heteronomy and alienation has proven to be un-
realistic, from now on the organization of work is to be left to the global-
izing forces of the capitalist labor market. The path thus demarcated, and
most clearly so in Habermas’ notion of a “norm-free” self-regulation of
the economic system,4 has paved the way for the sobering situation with
which we are now confronted: the hardships of all those who not only
fear losing their jobs, but also the quality of their jobs, no longer resonate
in the vocabulary of a critical theory of society.
Work and Recognition: A Redefinition 225
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, there has been no short-
age of utopian visions for a reorganization of societal labor. The form of
what then became capitalistically valorized employment organized in fac-
tories and shops exerted such a formative power—one which penetrated
all spheres of life—that the normative expectations of the zeitgeist were
initially and primarily attached to the sphere of production. These eman-
cipatory ideas initially received their impetus from the perception of the
still visible modes of activity embodied by the craftsman. Whereas the
craftsman himself performed all the work and could creatively shape the
entire working process in familiarity with his materials, and then find the
objectification of his own skills mirrored in the finished product, workers
in the factory were utterly excluded from such a holistic work experience,
for their activity was determined by others, fragmented and independent
of their own initiative. Depending on the perspective, the craftsman’s ac-
tivity was taken as a model of free and self-determined cooperation or of
individual self-objectification. In the first case the new, capitalist form of
gainful employment was condemned for abrogating the interaction of work-
ing subjects; in the second case it was damned for dismantling the organic
226 Axel Honneth
existence of certain desires and demands as grounds for their moral jus-
tifiability. He countered that only practical discourses, and not presumed
moral demands, could morally justify decisions about which norms should
be valid in a given organization of labor.10 It took many years for me to
realize that this objection also held the key to a far better solution to this
problem if it could be incorporated into an appropriate critique. There is
no doubt that the purpose of immanent criticism cannot consist in merely
asserting claims and demands raised by certain groups at a certain time in
the light of their social situation or work situation. Although the fact that
these complaints are advanced from within society against existing rules
gives them a truly immanent character, they still lack any element of prov-
able reason that could make them into justified standards of immanent
criticism. At the time, I had sought to provide this rational amendment by
showing that employees’ subversive demands correspond to the autono-
mous structures “anthropologically” embedded in the performance of all
work. But regardless of whether such practices of resistance can in fact be
verified in each case, it now seems to me far-fetched to impute a craftsman-
like substance to purposive activity as such. With regard to most of the
activities performed in the modern service sector, for instance, we wouldn’t
even know what it would mean to say that these activities demand an au-
tonomous, purely objective, and objectifying execution. In this sector, no
product is constructed in which acquired skills could be mirrored, rather
the worker merely reacts with as much as initiative as possible to the per-
sonal or anonymous demands of those in whose service the respective task
is performed. In other words, it is a fallacy to claim that all socially neces-
sary activities are naturally constituted along the lines of an organic and
holistic form such as craftsmanship.
If we, like Habermas, let our view be steered away from the structure of
work activity toward the norms of the organization of work, we are faced
with a different issue. It isn’t surprising, after all, that the author of The
Theory of Communicative Action suddenly speaks here of “norms” that should
pervade the organization of societal labor, while otherwise only speaking
of a “norm-free system” for the economic sphere. What makes Habermas’s
formulation so significant is that this shift in perspective raises the question
as to whether the modern capitalist organization of work is based on moral
norms that are just as indispensable for its functioning as the norms of
mutual understanding are for the modern lifeworld. This is not to say that
this is the perspective from which Habermas brings such norms into play.
He doesn’t doubt for a moment that these norms are relatively arbitrary
and subordinated to the results of the conflict between capital and labor.
According to Habermas, the difference between “system” and “lifeworld”
consists in the fact that the coordination of action in the former only oc-
curs through the mediation of purposive strategic stances, while in the latter
Work and Recognition: A Redefinition 229
II
of the normative conditions of this new economic form, Hegel did not sub-
scribe to the idea of maintaining the impoverished classes “at their ordinary
standard of living” through charitable contributions by the rich. He was
convinced that as a result of such redistribution, “the needy would receive
subsistence directly, not by means of their work, and this would violate the
principle of civil society and the feeling of individual independence and
self-respect.”18 Instead, Hegel proposed supplementing the capitalist market
economy with two organizations whose task it would be to ensure the nor-
mative conditions of existence for mutual recognition and “self-respect.”
While the “police” would have the function of intervening in the economic
process in order to ensure a balanced relation of supply and demand, the
“corporations”—on the model of trade associations—would have the task
of aiding their members to maintain their skills and abilities, and of ensur-
ing their basic economic subsistence.
But these particular institutional solutions are not what is of particular
interest in Hegel’s description of the capitalist organization of work. Both
the so-called “police” and “corporations” constitute organizational struc-
tures whose formation and function are far too specific to the early phase of
capitalist industrialization to be very relevant for us today. For my purpose
here, what is more significant is that Hegel does not derive the directions
and design of these corrective institutions from some external perspective,
but from the normative principles of the very economic system he seeks to
correct. Hegel was convinced that the moral presuppositions of the capital-
ist organization of work required that the individual’s work not only be re-
munerated with an income that secured a livelihood, but also retain a form
in which it remained recognizable as a contribution to the common good
on the basis of the skills it entails. The whole idea behind the reciprocal
exchange of services demands that each individual societal activity embody
a sufficiently complex and visible display of skills to prove worthy of the
universal recognition linked to “self-respect.” Therefore, Hegel insisted that
in cases where as a result of economic developments a certain work activ-
ity had sunk below a certain required level of skills and independence, the
“corporations” had a task that the capitalist market economy should in fact
fulfill on its own. These trade associations were to ensure that the skills of
their members receive enough care and public attention to enjoy universal
esteem in the future. Thus Hegel has the corporations fulfill a task that con-
stituted a normative claim anchored within the conditions of existence of
this new organizational form of societal labor.
With such a normative conception of the capitalist organization of work,
however, Hegel stands in opposition to a conception that sees the opposite
process at work in this new economic form. According to this alternative
interpretation, the development of the capitalist economy leads not to a
transformation of moral relations, but to the dissolution of social ethics
232 Axel Honneth
all classes are able to entertain the expectation both of receiving a wage that
secures their livelihood and of having work that is worthy of recognition.
Hegel sought to prove that the new market system can only lay claim to
normative approval on two conditions: first, it must provide a minimum
wage; second, it must give all work activities a shape that reveals them to be
a contribution to the common good.
The greatest difficulty in understanding the status of these normative pre-
suppositions consists in the fact that on the one hand, they exert but mini-
mal influence on actual economic developments, while on the other hand
aspiring to universal validity. What does it mean to say that the capitalist
organization of work is embedded in a horizon of moral norms that ensure
legitimacy if Hegel takes these norms to be incapable of preventing the au-
tonomization of purely profit-oriented production? The only way to solve
this contradiction is to understand these norms as a counterfactual basis
for the validity of the capitalist organization of work. The claim that social
actors can only grasp the meaning of this new economic form and view it as
being in the “common interest” if they presuppose the norms Hegel reveals
implies that the market-mediated organization of work rests on normative
conditions that remain valid even if they are invalidated in practice. To
speak of “embedding” in this context thus entails making the functioning
of the capitalist labor market dependent on normative conditions that it
itself cannot necessarily fulfill. The events on the mostly opaque market
where labor is exchanged take place on a foundation of moral norms that
remain valid even if they are violated by actual developments. At the same
time, these normative certainties form the moral resource that social actors
can draw upon when questioning the existing rules of the capitalist organi-
zation of work. Thus what is needed is not an appeal to a realm of higher
values or universal principles, but the mobilization of those implicit norms
that constitute conditions of understanding and acceptance entrenched
in the modern labor market. All those social movements that have fought
against unreasonable wages or the dequalification of their professions would
in principle only need to make use of the moral vocabulary already found
in Hegel’s analysis. This would encompass goals such as the defense of suf-
ficiently complex and not wholly externally determined work, or the fight
for a living wage, all of which constitute thoroughly normative claims sum-
marized by Hegel in the term “self-respect.” However, his determinations
are certainly insufficient for the purpose of normatively explaining all the
deficiencies of the capitalist labor market that have ever been challenged by
workers. Although he focuses his attention on the new forms of recognition
that the capitalist market offers all male adults, the resort to the compensa-
tory device of the “corporation” causes him to lose sight of the fact that the
central experience of the majority of the employed would soon consist in
the emptying of their work of all qualitative content.
234 Axel Honneth
such that they included the entitlement to work that can be experienced
as being meaningful.27
III
haps assert themselves in a legitimate manner after all. It may have become
apparent in the course of this chapter that we cannot justify our criticism of
given relations of work on the basis of the judgments of employees. If we
did, we would have no argument for why such public complaints and lam-
entations should enjoy any kind of moral validity at all. Perhaps, however,
we can bring this malaise into play at a higher level, where it doesn’t func-
tion as a normative source of criticism, but as a device for facilitating our
choice between the two perspectives mentioned here. The choice between
taking up the perspective of system integration or social integration cannot
be merely left up to the arbitrary will of the individual theorist. Rather, the
latter must justify his choice with regard to which of the two perspectives
is more appropriate to the given issue at hand. But as long as employees
struggle against unreasonable labor conditions, and as long as the majority
of the population suffers under the existing work relations, there is little rea-
son to analyze the capitalist labor market from the perspective of capitalist
efficiency.29 At least the sons and daughters of civil society—to paraphrase
Hegel—seem to be convinced that the market has as many entitlements to
them as they do to it.30 In any case, the reactions of those that populate the
labor markets of modern capitalism can only be appropriately explained if
we take up the perspective of social integration instead of system integra-
tion. For we can only grasp the fact that people suffer under the currently
existing circumstances, and are not merely indifferent to them, if the market
continues to be analyzed as a part of the social lifeworld. If, however, we
adopt this perspective, we will get sight of all those moral conditions on the
capitalist labor market that I have reconstructed here with the help of Hegel
and Durkheim. And despite the overwhelming pressure of the currently
prevailing circumstances, there is little reason to abandon this reservoir of
moral principles.
NOTES
1. Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social
Question (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2002). I have reviewed this
book in Literaturen, 2 (2001): 58–59. See also Eva Senghaas-Knobloch, Wohin driftet
die Arbeitswelt? (Wiesbaden, Germany: Vs Verlag, 2008), Part I.
2. For example, see Christoph Morgenroth, “Arbeitsidentität und Arbeitslosig-
keit—ein depressiver Zirkel,” Das Parlament—Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 6–7
(2003): 17–24; William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New
Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
3. Jürgen Habermas, “The New Obscurity: The Crisis of the Welfare State and the
Exhaustion of Utopian Energies,” trans. Philip Jacobs, in The New Conservatism: Cultural
Criticism and the Historian’s Debate (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1989), 48–70.
238 Axel Honneth
241
242 Emmanuel Renault
Honneth is criticized for being unaware of the symbolic constraints and of the
relations of power that lead individuals to lay claim to forms of recognition
which do nothing but displace the dominations and injustices they endure.22
This type of objection was relayed notably by the sociology of work. Neoman-
agement can be described as a management of recognition, even though it
results in increased precarity. The restrained implication is that different forms
of domination that are more or less visible, and more or less accepted by indi-
viduals, in fact lead to a discussion of ideology of recognition.23
To respond to these objections, Honneth attempted to distinguish
ideological recognition from nonideological recognition. The argument es-
sentially consists in advancing that an institutional promise of recognition
is ideological when it cannot be truly honored by the institution in ques-
tion.24 It is not difficult to understand how this definition of recognition
as ideology applies to managerial promises of recognition of the creativity
and the autonomy of flexible labor, particularly in contexts where labor
collectives are fragile or even destructured, and where, additionally, the
margins of maneuver are extremely narrow. Although one can think more
generally about this definition of ideology,25 it must be conceded that the
idea of an ideological dimension of recognition does not necessarily imply
a refutation of the agenda of the theory of recognition. Rather, the idea of
an ideological dimension of recognition defines a challenge that the theory
raises in order to be at the height of its critical ambitions.
A third criticism concerns the manner in which the idea of struggle for
recognition joins a reference to conflict and a reference to reconciliation.
While some claim that Honneth pays too much attention to the conflict-
ing dimensions of recognition,26 others criticize him for always thinking of
social struggles in the Hegelian horizon of their reconciliation,27 thus lack-
ing the type of specific conflictuality that gave meaning to the concept of
class struggle in Marx, a concept that assumes at the same time that no true
reconciliation is possible between partners in the struggle, and that only the
transformations of the social conditions of the struggle can offer a fully sat-
isfying solution.28 This objection raises two distinct problems. The first is to
know if the struggles for recognition can be adequately conceived without a
deep analysis of the social conditions of the refusal of recognition. We will
return to this question in the next section. The second problem concerns
the relationship between the refusal of recognition and the individual’s will
to be recognized by others.
When one criticizes Honneth for giving a version of struggles for recogni-
tion that is too Hegelian by interpreting the struggles teleologically from the
viewpoint of their conciliatory resolution, one misunderstands Hegel’s own
thought,29 and one confuses the two levels of analysis in the theory of recog-
nition. In Honneth’s work, the need for recognition is founded on the inter-
subjective constitution of individuality, and struggles against the refusal of
recognition always take their meaning at the horizon of a reestablishment
246 Emmanuel Renault
But what exactly is the relation of this theory of social struggles to social
theory, properly speaking? This problem leads more generally to the fol-
Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory 247
A First Ambiguity
A first ambiguity is relative to the Habermasian distinction between
system and lifeworld. In Critique of Power, Honneth explains that no social
sphere can be totally free of the weight of normative anticipations, and that
the “administration,” as well as the “market,” is submitted to the moral
constraints of the lifeworld. But this objection can be understood in two
different ways. In the first sense, it can signify that the theory of recognition,
understood as an analysis of the normative components of interaction, is
in itself to describe all social relations because these always consist of in-
teractions. That is, the idea of systemic constraints can be rejected (under-
standing “systemic” in a large sense, in the sense of functional or structural
constraints in general). But this criticism can also be developed in a more
moderate way, and bears only on the idea according to which systemic
relations exist under the form of separate autonomous social spheres. It is
not about criticizing the idea of systemic constraints as such, but to contest
a given interpretation of this idea of functional or structural constraint. In
this sense, the theory of recognition can explain how normative and sys-
temic constraints combine in social interaction, and how social situations
determined or produced from such combinations can give rise to an eman-
cipatory potential.33 The fact that this ambiguity remains explains some of
the criticism raised by Fraser against Honneth.34
According to the first hypothesis, the theory of recognition should be
considered as a general social theory, and according to the second, it should
be integrated into a more general social theory. If one holds to the themes
treated explicitly by The Struggle for Recognition, it appears that the theory
of recognition has as its principal object the experience of injustice, and
that it does not furnish by itself a theory of the social causes of injustice.
On this point, the critics who take issue with Honneth for not proposing
a theory of power or a theory of capitalism partially miss their object: to
theorize the experience of injustice and to theorize the causes of injustice in
fact constitute two complementary objectives rather than two terms of one
alternative.35 To interpret a theory of recognition as a theory of the experi-
ence of injustice does not imply that the theory has no pertinence to the
248 Emmanuel Renault
question of social theory. Honneth does not content himself to describe the
forms of the refusal of recognition and their effects on individual experi-
ence. He also engages in an analysis of the forms of collective resistance to
disrespect, and in a reflection on the social effects that can result from it.
In this sense, he situates his intervention in the field of social theory, but
he proposes considerations that ought to be integrated into a larger social
theory, in order to take into account the causes of injustice, the specific
constraints that bear on protest action, and the social effects of resistance. It
is noticeable that Honneth also engages himself in this direction in articles
that articulate historical diagnoses from the point of view of the structural
changes of contemporary capitalism.36
It is perhaps useful to underline that the task of joining the theory of
experience of injustice with the theory of systemic constraints does not
only impose itself today on the partisans of the theory of recognition, but
also on all those who want to continue to maintain a reference to Marx.
Capitalist globalization in fact leads to the acceleration of the tendencies
motivating one of the most typical claims of post-Marxism: social and po-
litical struggles are too heterogeneous to be reeled in to the homogeneity
of a single material interest, such as that of the proletariat, according to the
schema that had served in the conception of proletarian internationalism.37
It is no longer possible to reduce political and social struggles to an imme-
diate expression of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production
in general, or of the current regime of accumulation. The question of the
unity of social struggles being for this reason relatively autonomized, it is
not absurd to attempt to respond by means of an analysis of the specific
normative content of the social and political demands. The theory of recog-
nition can be mobilized to this end.
In addition, the question of the characterization of the specificities of the
contemporary regime of accumulation, of its tendencies and its contradic-
tions, persists, and the problem of understanding how to move from ma-
terialist analysis of the social to the perspectives of social struggle remains.
In other words, the question of neoliberalism and that of antiglobalization
struggles are relatively independent of one another, and Marxist approaches
should attempt to join them without, however, reducing one to the other.
A Second Ambiguity
A second ambiguity resides in the role that social struggles play in so-
cial evolution. In Critique of Power, Honneth criticized the Habermasian
interpretation of social evolution, according to the model of a structural
process of moral rationalization of the lifeworld and of instrumental ra-
tionalization of the system. He disapproved that Habermas substituted, in
The Theory of Communicative Action, such a model of social rationalization
Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory 249
for another model, that of Knowledge and Human Interests, in which social
conflicts played a determining role. It is clear that one of the objectives of
the theory of recognition is to describe the contribution of social struggles
to social evolution. However, the pursuit of such an objective can take two
different paths. In one direction, the theory of resistance can be interpreted
as a model of social evolution, which is susceptible to be substituted purely
and simply for that of Habermas. It must then be argued that the institu-
tions can only continue to subsist if they satisfy the normative expectations
of individuals, and be added that their transformations always return to the
struggles aiming to bring recognition to the legitimacy of noninstitutional-
ized normative expectations. But the criticism of Habermas can again be un-
derstood in a more modest sense. It can indeed be understood as a model
complementary to that of Habermas, without attempting to propose a gen-
eral explanation, but only to describe a real, although limited, contribution
of social struggles to social evolution. In the framework of the first model,
the institutions tend to be reduced to the effect of struggles for recognition
within the framework of a social philosophy that places the responsibility
for the whole of social reality on the interactions. In the framework of the
second model, it is possible to argue, on the contrary, that the relations of
recognition always take place in the institutional frames that, as such, are
irreducible to simple effects produced by interactions. It is equally pos-
sible to add that, if the institutions are not reducible to the productions of
conflictual social action, it is because they foster functional and structural
relations among themselves; one finds here the first alternative relative to
the relations between interaction and systemic constraints.38
In the last texts, by proposing to develop a theory of the paradoxes of the
modernization of capitalism, Honneth seems to recognize the pertinence of
a macrosocial and systemic notion such as that of capitalism. He thus seems
to engage in an endeavor aiming to join a conception of recognition cen-
tered on the analysis of the normative conditions of interactions, and a con-
sideration of the consistency of these structural and institutional conditions
of recognition. However, Honneth did not yet make explicit the social theory
permitting the consideration of the social evolutions that are not directly
explained by struggles for recognition. To this end, it would be required,
for one thing, to describe the relationship between the calls for recognition
and the institutional mechanisms, and for another, to propose an analysis
of the relations between institutions, and finally, to clarify the nature of the
relationship between institutions and social structures (to the extent that
the term “capitalism” seems to designate a social structure). Here, still, these
tasks encounter the objectives of contemporary Marxist research projects.
Indeed, since the School of Regulation was established, one frequently rec-
ognizes one of the weak points of the critique of political economy is the
theory of institutions, and a theory of institutions is necessary, in order to
250 Emmanuel Renault
NOTES
1. See notably, Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the Loca-
tion of Critical Theory Today,” Constellations 1, no. 2 (1994): 255–69.
2. See, for example, Horst Müller, “Praxisphilosophie oder Intersubjektivitäts-
theorie? Replik zur Erhellung eines philosophien Grundlagenproblems,” www
.praxisphilosophie.de/honneth.pdf.
3. This was notably the position of J.-M. Vincent, see for instance “Nouveaux
regards sur l’héritage critique d’Adorno,” L’humanité (June 10, 2003).
4. Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Les horizons marxistes de la théorie de la reconnais-
sance,” Actuel Marx no. 38 (2005): 159–78.
5. Roger Forster, “Recognition and Resistance. Axel Honneth’s Critical Social
Theory,” Radical Philosophy no. 94 (1999): 6–18.
6. The question of the relationship to Habermas continues to split Critical The-
ory. From this point of view, nothing has changed since the situation analyzed by
Helmut Dubiel in “Der Streit um die Erbschaft der kritischen Theorie,” Ungewissheit
und Politik (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1994), 230–47.
7. Axel Honneth, “Domination and Moral Struggle: The Philosophical Herit-
age of Marxism Reviewed,” The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and
Political Philosophy, trans. Charles W. Wright (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995),
chapter 1.
8. See Axel Honneth, Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009) and Suffering from Indeterminacy. An Attempt
254 Emmanuel Renault
25. Classically, this concept does not only designate the mystifying justifications
immanent to social life, but also the legitimation of dominations and inequalities.
Yet it seems that the instrumentalization of recognition by neomanagement is not
only ideological because it does not offer a true recognition, but also because it in-
duces forms of domination, and of legitimation of this domination and inequality
(on this point, see Emmanuel Renault, “Reconnaissance et travail,” Travailler, no. 18
(2007): 199–35). Moreover, according to the common understanding of ideology,
it is not only a mode of justification inherent to particular institutions, but also to
the forms of macrosocial justifications. The question of the ideological dimension
of recognition would undoubtedly merit also being posed on this scheme.
26. See Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007).
27. Robin Celikates, “Nicht versöhnt. Wo bleibt der Kampf im ‚Kampf um Aner-
kennung’?” in Socialité et reconnaissance Grammaires de l´humain, ed. G. W. Bertram,
R. Celikates, Ch. Laudou, and D. Lauer (Paris: L´Harmattan, 2006), 153–68.
28. Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Mésentente et lutte pour la reconnaissance. Honneth
face à Rancière,” in Où en est la Théorie critique? ed. Emmanuel Renault and Y. Sin-
tomer, op. cit. 185–99.
29. See Emmanuel Renault, “Ricognoscimento, lotta, dominio: il modello hege-
liano,” Post Filosofie, Anno 3, (Gennaio-Decembre 2007): 29–45.
30. On this problematic, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern
Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1988), and Emmanuel Renault, “Le dis-
cours du respect” in La quête de reconnaissance. Regards sociologiques, ed. A. Caillé
(Paris: La découverte, 2007), 161–81.
31. For an attempt to apply the problematic of recognition to “urban violence,”
and for the description of the continuum of protest action that is implicitly presup-
posed here, see Emmanuel Renault, L’Expérience de l’injustice (Paris: La découverte,
2004), 108–117, and Renault, “Violence and disrespect in the French revolt of No-
vember 2005,” in Violence and the Post-Colonial Welfare State in France and Australia,
ed. C. Browne and J. McGill (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008).
32. In the Encyclopédie des sciences philosophiques there are three instances of Kampf
des Anerkennens, only one for Kampf um Anerkennung; the two expressions are absent
from the Phenomenology of Spirit.
33. On the question of the interpretation that is suitable to give of the inter-
actionism inherent in the theory of recognition, and on the relation to Marx that
is engaged in these texts, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Les horizons marxistes de la
théorie de la reconnaissance,” op. cit.
34. Christopher Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas
of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 1 (2005):
89–126.
35. On this point, see Emmanuel Renault, “What is the Use of the Notion of the
Struggle of Recognition?” Revista de Ciencia Política 27 (2007): 195–205.
36. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology,” op. cit, and “Organized Self-
Realization. Some Paradoxes of Individualization,” European Journal of Social Theory
7, no. 4 (2004): 463–78. See also Axel Honneth and Martin Hartmann, “Paradoxes
of Capitalism,” op. cit.
256 Emmanuel Renault
37. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London,
U.K.: Verso, 1985).
38. For an analysis of the tension in the conception of institutions in Honneth,
see Emmanuel Renault, “Theory of recognition and critique of institutions,” in D.
Petherbridge, ed., Honneth’s Critical Theory of Recognition (Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Brill, forthcoming). For a defense of these modest interpretations of theory of recog-
nition, see Jean-Philippe Deranty and Emmanuel Renault, “Politicizing Honneth’s
Ethics of Recognition,” Thesis Eleven, no. 88 (2007): 92–111.
39. See, for example, R. Boyer and Y. Sallard, Théorie de la régulation. L’état des
savoirs (Paris: La découverte, 1995).
40. Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformations of the
Social Question, trans. Richard Boyd (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2002).
41. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2000).
42. Axel Honneth, ed., Befreiung aus der Mündigkeit. Paradoxien des gegenwärtigen
Kapitalismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus, 2002).
43. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, op. cit.
44. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, Capital Resurgent: The Roots of the
Neoliberal Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). Gérard
Duménil and Jacques Bidet, Altermarxisme. Un autre marxisme pour un autre monde
(Paris: PUF, 2007).
45. On all these questions, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, Beyond Communication. A
Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer,
2009).
46. Axel Honneth, “Pathologies of the Social: The Past and Present of Social
Philosophy,” Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Malden, Mass.:
Polity Press, 2007), 3–48.
12
Can the Goals of the Frankfurt
School be Achieved by a
Theory of Recognition?
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
Some thirty years ago,1 shortly after Jürgen Habermas published Theory
of Communicative Action, some of his critics argued that he had failed to
acknowledge the importance of work for a good life in the modern world.
Habermas dismissed such criticism: “If we consider the trends towards
shortening working time and towards a corresponding devaluation of the
relevance of labour [. . .], then it becomes evident that the historical devel-
opment of industrial labour is cutting the ground from under”2 the above
objection. In light of the way in which most Western countries have de-
veloped in the last thirty years, the opposite of what Habermas predicted
seems to have taken place. In fact, both weekly and lifetime working hours
have been increased rather than diminished, a trend likely to continue.3
Moreover, if one takes into account the fact that women’s participation in
the working world has significantly increased throughout the last decades,
one must conclude that the scope of work has become much broader in
society as a whole. And finally, there are good reasons for assuming that,
at least in Western societies, work is central to the possibility for a good
life: as sociologists have shown, having work is valued by the majority of
citizens not only in terms of income,4 and an individual’s social status
continues to derive from his or her belonging to and role within the world
of work.
At the same time, the working world has undergone changes that a grow-
ing number of citizens perceive as problematic. In reaction to the crises
of Keynesianism (the dominant economic theory in North America and
Western Europe in the decades following the Second World War)5 new
257
258 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
Prognoses of human behavior made with the help of the simple model of the
homo oeconomicus have frequently been proven wrong. If one insists, on the one
hand, on the general model of behavior taking constant preferences as its starting
point, yet wishes to uphold restrictions whose alterations are the sole means of
inducing changes in behavior, then one would be well advised to examine the rel-
evant restrictions more closely than has often been the case thus far. Institutional
economics starts from the assumption that the exactitude of prognoses generated
on the basis of the simple economic model of behavior can be substantially
improved if restrictions based on internal institutions—habits, traditions, ethical
rules, etc.—are more thoroughly taken into account.26
On the other hand, Critical Theory has thus far not sufficiently eluci-
dated the relationship between recognition theory and economics. In light
of Honneth’s social-theoretical claims, one would have to show that—and
how—”the core institutions of capitalist society” can be understood as insti-
tutionalizations of specific forms of recognition. In this context it would have
to become clear why neoliberal markets can be analyzed and criticized in
terms of recognition theory. As I have shown elsewhere,28 Honneth has yet to
explain how the above-mentioned goals may be attained on the basis of the
categories of legal respect and social esteem he introduces. It does not follow,
however—as Nancy Fraser would have it—that it is impossible to understand
neoliberal markets in terms of recognition theory. Whether such an enterprise
can be carried out successfully rather remains an open question.
SOCIAL ESTEEM
model [of social esteem—SaB] emerging here. The acquisition of that form or
recognition that I have called social esteem continues to be bound up with the
opportunity to pursue an economically rewarding and thus socially regulated
occupation.”33
Table 12.1
Self-Relation Relation of Recognition Institutional Form
Esteem for possessing specific (Social) esteem for possessing Having work
skills socially valuable skills
require (lengthy) training in a specialized and technical field and can there-
fore only be acquired by participating in the work world. Moreover, due
to the demands that many professional activities make on time36 it would
be difficult for most people to acquire nontrivial skills outside of the work
world and thereby earn social esteem.
Meritocratic Esteem
In his debate with Nancy Fraser, Honneth analyzes “social esteem” differ-
ently than in the writings on which I base my reconstruction above.37 These
differences concern the relation of recognition social esteem constitutes as
well as its institutional form; however, they do not concern the self-relation
made possible by social esteem.
In “Redistribution or Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser” Honneth
says that social esteem refers to achievements that have “a quantifiable use
for society” (RR 141). The members of such societies then esteem one an-
other on the basis of the social usefulness of their achievements; the more
useful they are to society, the higher the social esteem they will enjoy. By
holding this view, Honneth explains “social esteem” along the lines of the
second kind of esteem I have distinguished above.38
According to RR, the world of work is the place where social esteem is
distributed. With regard to the greater or lesser amounts of social esteem to
which an individual has a claim, however, it is now the social usefulness of
his or her occupational work that is decisive. On the basis of this “gradual”
conception of social esteem, Honneth then asserts that income that is
commensurate to the social usefulness of the activity it remunerates is the
institution in which the society’s esteem of the individual “legitimately”
(RR 141) manifests itself. He adds that by establishing this form of social
esteem, bourgeois-capitalist societies have “meritocratized” (RR 141) the
premodern, feudal conception of honor.
This kind of social esteem—which I shall term “meritocratic esteem”—
has the following features:
Table 12.2
Self-Relation Relation of Recognition Institutional Form
Esteem for possessing specific More or less (social) esteem Level of earned income
skills for achievements that are
more or less valuable for
society
Table 12.3
Self-Relation Relation of Recognition Institutional Form
More or less esteem for More or less (social) esteem Level of earned income
achievements that are more for achievements that are
or less valuable for society more or less valuable
for society
Which of these two options does Axel Honneth endorse? As I see it, there
are good reasons to believe that he actually takes the view specified by op-
tion 1. Here are two of these reasons:
rises and/or when the incomes of other people sink. As a result, such an in-
dividual has a recognition-based reason to strive for an improvement of his
or her income and to contribute to the reduction of other persons’ incomes.
Moreover, since in the present context no maximum in the difference in in-
come can be established, such an individual has a recognition-based reason
to always strive anew for both an improvement in his or her own income
and for a reduction in other people’s incomes by virtue of participating in
the social practice of social esteem.
Let us assume that members of such societies have no other practical
reasons than those laid out above. Under this assumption, they will form
an egotistical, insatiable will to acquire wealth on the grounds of social
esteem, and they will also be eager to document how useful their work is
or has been for society. In such a context, striving for professional success
as well as for personal qualities on which such success is based,43 but also
phenomena such as conspicuous consumption,44 can be explained with
reference to the established practice of social esteem.
In societies where people are esteemed according to the social usefulness
of their work and in which this usefulness is determined by the market econ-
omy, a tension arises between social esteem and legal respect (in Honneth’s
understanding of it). On the one hand, every human individual has reason
given by the socially established form of social esteem to always contribute
to a reduction in the income of the other members of society. On the other
hand, his or her respect for these very others gives him or her a reason to
intervene on behalf of the other’s social rights. Assuming that these rights
include claims on material goods in the case of an earned income falling
under a certain threshold, every individual would have (1) a reason given by
recognition to intervene such that as many fellow citizens as possible would
receive such an (insufficient) income; and (2) a reason given by recognition
to support the financial subventions of the recipients of such income through
the welfare-state. Because of this, there is a tension between the forms of rec-
ognition Honneth calls “social esteem” and “legal respect.”
At this juncture one might raise the following objection: the tension de-
scribed above is unproblematic both (intra)personally and socially. For if
the members of a society accord one another a particular set of social rights
on the basis of the respect they have for one another as autonomous sub-
jects, they will support the fulfillment of these claims to social goods; under
this assumption, however, they will believe that only the remaining part of
the gross domestic product should be distributed according to the principle
of social esteem. Consequently, the “coexistence” of legal respect and social
esteem in one and the same society is unproblematic.
Certainly, it is not logically out of the question that the forms of recog-
nition Honneth terms “legal respect” and “social esteem” may “coexist”
272 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
Social-Theoretical Findings
My reflections above on the concept of meritocratic esteem are of great
importance with regard to social theory. As we have seen, the question of
“how critical theory should understand the social structure of present-day
capitalism” (DR 211) is the subject of much controversial debate. In accor-
dance with the socio-ontological premise of his theory, Axel Honneth seeks
to “interpret bourgeois-capitalist society as an institutionalized recognition
order” (RR 138). In contrast, Nancy Fraser purports that such an interpreta-
tion would make the analysis of capitalist markets impossible—in her eyes,
it is theoretically unfounded and politically naïve. Like Jürgen Habermas,
Fraser is of the opinion that capitalist markets can only be analyzed in
terms of systems theory.
My considerations make it possible to explain phenomena such as the
following with the help of the concept of meritocratic esteem: striving for
professional success as well as personal qualities necessary in this respect
(discipline, enthusiasm, etc.); striving for the highest possible income; dis-
playing professional success (for example through a specific consumptive
behavior); and calling into question social welfare policies and programs.
If my estimations are correct, then it is possible to trace dispositions and
behaviors that many social scientists regard as central to “the new spirit of
capitalism”53 back to a specific practice of recognition: meritocratic esteem
in a market economy.54 This can be shown with respect to the very phe-
nomena Fraser cites: “prioritiz[ing] maximalization of corporate profits”
is something that can be explained by the social practice of meritocratic
esteem, and such a practice would doubtless have considerable influence
276 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
As has already been said, these questions are at the center of a controver-
sial debate amongst Critical Theorists. Jürgen Habermas is of the opinion
that markets cannot be analyzed with recognition theory, and he holds
that the existence of markets can be legitimated only from a functionalist
point of view.60 On the other hand, Axel Honneth has worked out a theory
suggesting that the above questions can be answered in the affirmative.
If, as Honneth claims, capitalist societies are “institutionalized orders of
recognition” (RR 138), then markets—which doubtless belong to the “core
institutions” (RR 139) of such societies—must be able to be analyzed with
recognition theory; and if “the moral power of the equality and achieve-
ment principles” in fact provide “market societ[ies] with [their] legitimizing
framework” (RR 150), then the existence of markets should be able to be
legitimated by recognition theory. However, Honneth does not satisfacto-
rily substantiate this view.61
In my view, markets can be understood in terms of recognition theory,
and it is possible to legitimate their existence with recognition-theoretical
reasons. This can be shown with resources provided by Hegel’s Philosophy
of Right. In this work, Hegel analyzes market transactions as realizations
of a kind of recognition he terms “personal respect.”62 Moreover, in his
view such a social practice is part of a good human life in modern times.
This is why Hegel believes that the existence of markets can be legitimated
not only functionally but also normatively, namely, in terms of personal
respect.63 Since I examine these arguments elsewhere,64 I shall not go into
details here. I would like to note, though, that Hegel’s discussion of markets
is of great interest to a Honneth-style Critical Theory based on the notion
of recognition.
Social-Critical Perspectives
As I have pointed out above, contemporary Critical Theory aims to
provide a theory that is both an analysis and critique of present-day capi-
talism. So what interest do my considerations have with respect to the
278 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
NOTES
and the Social Bond, ed. J.-Ph. Deranty and N. Smith (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill,
forthcoming).
29. See below, subsection entitled “Social-Theoretical Findings.”
30. In RR Honneth answers some of these questions differently. See subsection
entitled “Meritocratic Esteem” below.
31. Axel Honneth, “Between Aristotle and Kant: Recognition and Moral Obliga-
tion,” in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.:
Polity Press, 2007), 136 (translation slightly modified).
32. Honneth, “Between Aristotle and Kant,” 136 (translation slightly modified).
33. Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situating Critical Theory
Today,” in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.:
Polity Press, 2007), 75.
34. That Honneth does not see any activity as an actualization of skills follows
from his assertion that “social esteem . . . can only be related to personal character-
istics and skills by which the members of society differ from one another: a person
can only perceive him- or herself as ‘valuable’ if he or she knows him- or herself to
be recognized for achievements that he or she does not share indiscriminately with
others.” (Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung, 203; here I quote Honneth’s works with
my own translation.)
35. Cf. F.W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York, London:
Harper, 1911).
36. See above, section entitled “On the Structural Change of the World of
Work.”
37. See subsection entitled “Two Types of Esteem” above.
38. See subsection entitled “Two Types of Esteem.”
39. For more on this topic, see also H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, „Marktwirtschaft
und Anerkennung. Zu Axel Honneths Theorie sozialer Wertschätzung,” in Axel Hon-
neth. Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante
(Münster, Germany: Lit., 2004), 92–97, as well as Honneth’s discussion of it: Axel
Honneth, „Antworten auf die Beiträge der Kolloquiumsteilnehmer,” in Axel Hon-
neth. Sozialphilosophie zwischen Kritik und Anerkennung, ed. C. Halbig and M. Quante
(Münster, Germany: Lit, 2004), 99–121.
40. Cf. subsection entitled “Social Esteem and Ideology Critique.”
41. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.”
42. Cited in W. Reiß, Mikroökonomische Theorie (Munich, Vienna: Oldenbourg,
1998), 204.
43. Cf., for example, the dispositions and behaviors analyzed by Max Weber
in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London; New York: Routledge,
1992).
44. Cf. Thorsten Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (New York: Penguin, 2005).
45. See subsection “On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal
Respect.”
46. See subsection “On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal
Respect.”
47. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.”
48. See subsection entitled “Meritocratic Esteem.”
282 Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
49. See subsection entitled “On the Relation between the Relation of Recognition
and Self-Relation” above.
50. See subsection entitled “On the Relation between the Relation of Recogni-
tion and Self-Relation.”
51. See above, section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.”
52. Recall that the aim of Critical Theory is “to connect the usually dis-
crete levels of moral philosophy, social theory, and political analysis in a crit-
ical theory of capitalist society.” What Critical Theorists wish to provide, then, is
a theory that is both an analysis and critique of contemporary capitalism.
53. I borrow this term from L. Boltanski and È. Chiapello, The New Spirit of
Capitalism (London, New York: Verso, 2007).
54. I will discuss the phrase “in a market economy” in the subsection entitled
“Two Follow-up Questions” below.
55. For this reason, it is inappropriate to maintain that a social theory of re-
cognition is “congenitally blind” to economic processes “which cannot be re-
duced to cultural schemas of evaluation” (DR, 215).
56. Cf., for example, Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology,” in Recogni-
tion and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, ed. B.
van den Brink and D. Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),
323–47.
57. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 volumes (Bos-
ton: Beacon Press, 1984–1987), trans. Thomas McCarthy, vol. 1, 285–95.
58. Cf. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, 153–97.
59. This view is taken by Habermas; see Habermas, Theory of Communicative
Action, vol. 2, 153–97.
60. Cf., for example, Habermas Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, 322.
61. See above, section entitled, “Nancy Fraser’s Critique.”
62. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), §36 and §71.
63. To avoid misunderstandings, I should like to emphasize that Hegel was
not a champion of free markets. He believed that not only personal respect, but
other kinds of recognition as well were part of a good life in modern times. The
realization of these kinds of recognition, however, requires market regulations
and welfare-state arrangements. This was clearly seen by Hegel. For this reason,
his Philosophy of Right does not champion free markets. See on this topic my
discussion in H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, Religiöse Hingabe oder soziale Freiheit. Die
saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie (Hamburg, Germany:
Felix Meiner, 2007), 93–176.
64. See Schmidt am Busch, “Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy,” and Schmidt am Busch, “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theo-
rie, Habilitationsschrift, Frankfurt am Main, 2009.
65. As I have remarked, this assumption can only be justified empirically. See
subsection entitled “Social-Theoretical Findings” above.
66. With regard to this point one should thematize not only the relation be-
tween meritocratic esteem and legal respect, but also the relation between meri-
tocratic and skill-based esteem.
Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? 283
67. The use of the expression “casino capitalism” to describe structures of dis-
tribution on global financial markets is an indication that a praxis of meritocratic
esteem can have such effects.
68. On my reading, Hegel advances such a point of view. Cf. Schmidt am Busch,
“Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie.
69. C.f. Schmidt am Busch, “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie and
Schmidt am Busch, “The Legacy of Hegelian Thought.”
13
Critique of Political Economy and
Contemporary Critical Theory:
A Defense of Honneth’s
Theory of Recognition
Jean-Philippe Deranty
Axel Honneth’s ethics of recognition has been the subject of much criti-
cism since it was first presented as an independent model of social theory
in 1992, in The Struggle for Recognition. Amongst the different features of
recognition theory picked on by its critics, one feature in particular has
been especially damaging, as it has revolved around the question that has
been historically the decisive one for Critical Theory: the critique of politi-
cal economy. Given its intention to construe every social phenomenon in
cultural or moral terms, as an expression of recognition relations, how
can Honneth’s model, these critics have asked, adequately account for the
specificity of economic injustice? How can a moral, psychological concept
explain economic injustice, since the latter seems to have to be explained
through functional, rather than moral, categories?
The most famous rejection of Honneth’s “monistic” approach to all
forms of injustice, including the economic one, has been famously articu-
lated by Nancy Fraser. In a series of influential articles culminating in her
1998 Tanner Lectures, which then triggered the substantial exchanges with
Honneth published in Redistribution of Recognition?, Fraser has gradually
developed a comprehensive, dualistic model of social analysis, which in-
tends most specifically to do justice to the independent logic of economic
processes in modern societies, both at the descriptive and critical-normative
levels.1 In this paper, however, the main reference that I will most directly
engage with is not Fraser’s work, even though it constitutes the fundamental
background. Instead, the central reference will be the long article dedicated
by Christopher Zurn to Honneth’s accounts of economic injustice.2 This
article will be at the center of my reflections for a number of strategic rea-
sons. First, it provides a wonderfully concise and exhaustive synthesis of
285
286 Jean-Philippe Deranty
Theory of democracy and the division of labor: the 1993 Dewey article
Zurn launches his critique of recognition theory’s reductionistic stance
on the economy with a reading of a crucial article published by Honneth
in German in 1993, and translated and published in English in 1998,
“Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.”6 At first glance, it could seem
surprising to launch a critique of Honneth’s stance on economic injustice
with this text since it is concerned primarily with questions of political
philosophy. In it, Honneth argues that Dewey’s writings on democracy
288 Jean-Philippe Deranty
On that model, political procedures are called for to coordinate and regu-
late the consequences of actions that originate at first from particular parts
of society, but which can be seen to in fact affect all members of society.
Politics then is truly a reflexive moment where society attempts to solve
its own internal problems. The division of labor comes into play in this
scheme as soon as the argument is given a normative twist and a specifically
democratic version of politics is sought: for all individuals to be involved
in the reflexive process of political deliberation, they must already see how
they are indirectly affected by the actions in which they are not directly
involved. This, division of labor ensures, since it shows how individual
activity is essentially related to, indeed defined by, its place with the overall
social organism. Put negatively: a society is not truly democratic, even if its
political procedures formally are, if social agents cannot see how the actions
of others relate to them, and their actions are related to the others. Once
again, democratic politics is rooted in a democratic society. Indeed, as Zurn
highlights very well, the argument functions at two levels: a fair division of
labor is required not just as the (social) condition of true democratic poli-
tics; it is also required for subjects to develop their self-esteem. Honneth’s
third sphere of recognition is synonymous with the notion that arises from
this idea of a just and fair division of labor. As a result:
only a fair and just form of a division of labor can give each individual mem-
ber of society a consciousness of cooperatively contributing with all others to
the realization of common goals. It is only the experience of participating, by
means of an individual contribution, in the particular tasks of a group, which
in its turn cooperates with all the other groups of a community through the
division of labor, that can convince the single individual of the necessity of a
democratic public.13
We verify here that the direct problem tackled by Honneth in the 1993
article is indeed that of “the moral foundations of democracy,” but that it
points in fact to a much broader conception of society at large, to an expan-
sive “social ideal.” Basically, for Dewey, and clearly for Honneth also, there
is no sense in talking of democratic politics separate from a democratic
292 Jean-Philippe Deranty
the rules organizing the distribution of material goods derive from the degree
of social esteem enjoyed by social groups, in accordance with institutionalized
hierarchies of value, or a normative order. . . . Conflicts over distribution . . .
are always symbolic struggles over the legitimacy of the sociocultural disposi-
tive that determines the value of activities, attributes and contributions. . . . In
short, it is a struggle over the cultural definition of what it is that renders an
activity socially necessary and valuable.16
All this taken together leads to a third, equally serious accusation: if the
theoretical analysis conflates phenomena belonging to different orders, its
practical relevance is seriously in doubt as it risks advocating practical solu-
tions that fail to address the real causes of injustice, or even worse, advo-
cates solutions that in fact compound the injustice, because, for example, of
negative feedback effects it is not able to take into consideration.20
As noted in the introduction, the great strength of Zurn’s attack is its
intimate knowledge of the full breadth of Honneth’s writings. He doesn’t
simply confront Honneth’s theory of recognition, by propounding an al-
ternative, competing theory. He also undermines Honneth’s theory from
within. This is especially the case in the last part of his article, where he
takes into account Honneth’s rejoinder to Fraser’s critiques, and recon-
structs with great accuracy the spirit of Honneth’s response. The latter is
based on the idea that “we should conceive of the rules of material alloca-
tion in any society as determined by that society’s comparative evaluation
of different ways of contributing to social reproduction and the attributes
necessary for doing so.”21
Against the background of the three sets of criticisms expressed above,
this solution, Zurn argues, can only work at the cost of facing a fourth
problem which only compounds its untenability: Honneth can reduce all
economic distribution to the expression of relations of recognition only at
such a high level of abstraction, that his analyses become empirically and
practically irrelevant. This is what Zurn calls the “generality/concretion
dilemma.”
This fourth attack on the theory of recognition’s account of economic
injustice is waged in separate waves, which repeat some of the earlier accu-
sations. We only need to mention the first two waves, as the third is based
on similar arguments as the initial critical point listed above. First, at the
level of the political philosophical implications of his model, Honneth can
tie so strictly the theory of democracy to the notion of fair and just division
of labor only at the cost of yet another sociological reduction: this time, by
ignoring the fact that the world of work is no longer the sole foundation for
a social cooperation upon which democratic deliberation and individual
self-esteem could rely. Honneth therefore can hold on to the 1993 model
of reflexive cooperation only if he gives a very abstract notion of “work,”
as designating any socially significant individual activity. This, however,
makes him incapable of distinguishing between different types of coopera-
tive associations (from bowling clubs to factory floors) and their distinctive
significance for allowing individuals to take part in “reflexive cooperation.”
But then the theory becomes so abstract as to be empirically and practically
useless when it comes to analyzing real forms of injustice, notably in terms
of the transformations that would be necessary to challenge distributive
patterns (bowling clubs and factory floors, for example, would be signifi-
Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory 295
cant in very different ways). Secondly, in terms of the analysis of social in-
justice, Honneth can explain economic injustice in terms that are adequate
to its actual economic aspect (for example, the political-economic factors
explaining the reality of low wages) only if his definition of work, as that
which the recognitive structure is supposed to reward, is so abstract as to
be useless empirically and strategically. Honneth would have to accept, for
example, to explain capital mobility, the main political-economic reason
explaining the low level of wages (if one accepts that capital mobility works
as constant pressure against wage increase through the threat of delocal-
ization), as being itself the result of an order of recognition, say between
labor and capital. But this would lead to such an abstract and simplistic
description of the complex reality of contemporary capitalistic processes
as to be without any real value analytically, and thus lead once again to
useless or even counterproductive practical recommendations. The call to
transform the unjust, recognitive relation between labor and capital would
tell us nothing substantial and precise in any given situation, for example
in the situation of the “industrial worker.” Once again, Zurn concludes, the
theory must choose between theoretical accuracy, at the cost of practical
insignificance, or maintain empirical and practical significance at the cost
of renouncing the centrality of recognition as paradigmatic notion.
Against this devastating attack, the first line of defense consists in granting
that recognition theory, qua social theory, is not sufficient to account for
the specificity of economic action as opposed to other types of social ac-
tion, but that it is extremely useful, perhaps irreplaceable, to account for
the experience of economic injustice, qua experience. This is the line taken
by Emmanuel Renault in the chapter dedicated to the economic institu-
tions of injustice in L’Expérience de l’Injustice and in other recent writings.22
As Renault writes, “It is clear that, on its own, a theory of recognition is
incapable of producing a theory of capitalism, but it never intended to do
that anyway. However, by relying on theories elaborated by the sociology of
work and the economic sciences, it can nevertheless engage in the analysis
of the effects of recognition produced by the institutions of waged work and
the capitalist market.”23
Instead of reasoning through the causes, making the critique of injustice
methodologically dependent on the analysis of the causes of injustice, Re-
nault proposes to conduct the critique of economic injustice by looking at
the effects of contemporary economic processes. Why, Renault asks, should
a critique through the effects be less effective, qua critique, than a critique
296 Jean-Philippe Deranty
Honneth writes in the 2001 Theory, Culture and Society special issue on rec-
ognition: “The rules organizing the distribution of material goods (notably
wages – JPD) derive from the degree of social esteem enjoyed by social
groups, in accordance with institutionalized hierarchies of value.”26 The la-
bor market produces specific injustices, whereby some forms of work, some
statuses attached to specific professions, are not sufficiently recognized, or
not recognized for their proper social value, and this injustice is reflected in
the wages. An unjust scale of wages is directly analyzable in terms of recog-
nitive injustice. In any case, this is quite precisely how it is experienced by
those who feel their wage represents a form of social injustice.27
However, as Renault argues convincingly, the commodities and services
markets also have recognitive effects (even if at this stage, to repeat, they are
not to be “explained” through recognition). The price that the market puts
on products is a reflection of the value that society (as a whole or just as
an aggregate) attaches to them. In Marx, for example, one of the structural
conditions of exchange value is the “social validation” of use value.28 If a
product is not seen as being socially useful, it will not be exchanged. This,
however, is directly linked to work: for the work of an individual to be part
of social labor and take place within the division of labor, it has to be rec-
ognized as being socially valid, as producing socially validated products. In
the capitalistic system, this occurs through the exchange of the products of
labor. The price of a product is therefore a more direct than indirect recogni-
tion of the value of that individual’s activity. Beyond the issue of any causal
explanation of the formation of prices, the fact remains that the prices of
the products of labor reflect a recognitive order.
And so the recognition model is particularly well placed to give a rich and
accurate account of real experiences of economic injustice in contemporary
markets. This is a very basic but quite important point to stress in defense
of recognition theory. Indeed, as a matter of fact, many social struggles in
developed and developing nations relate directly to the question of wages,
and in these struggles, it would appear that the theory of recognition can
point to a strong empirical verification of its conceptual claims. Before we
talk about the “skilled, male industrial worker who loses his job because of
a corporate merger” and other cases brought forward by opponents of rec-
ognition theory, it seems difficult to ignore the massive sociological reality
that many social struggles of the present turn around the question of wages,
or more simply, that one of the main individual experiences of injustice in
contemporary societies turns around the feeling that one’s wage is not a fair
reward for one’s contribution to society.
This remark can be taken in two ways. First, it is simply a way of pointing
to Honneth’s critics, that this is not a minor form of modern experience,
that it is in fact a very important one, at least in “quantitative” terms. This
is a simple empirical vindication of recognition theory: as a matter of fact
298 Jean-Philippe Deranty
critique of political economy. Not only does the “critique via the effects”
provide a good description of pathologies, it also points back, retroactively
as it were, to the structures that are responsible for injustice.39 This, we can
note, already counters to some extent one of the features of Zurn’s critique.
Whilst the latter argues that a nondualistic social theory that fails to ana-
lyze economic injustice in economic terms muddles the causal explanation
(with the practical downsides already noted), Renault retorts that the close
attention to the experience of economic injustice as injustices of recogni-
tion in fact already helps to identify the causal, structural forces responsible
for injustice. This shift from the phenomenological to the normative to the
causal-explanatory occurs in two unrelated ways.
At first, there seems to be no reason to go back in a direct way from
the phenomenological and the normative to the explanatory. The ways in
which people feel misrecognised does not say anything about the reasons
for their plight; nor does the critique of an unjust order, whether or not it is
grounded in those feelings of injustice. One has to acknowledge, however,
that the theory of recognition is also, amongst other things, the theory
of this passage from the normative to the explanatory inasmuch as it is a
theory of social movements.40 This aspect is particularly well developed by
Renault who relies on the sociology of social movements to make explicit
the different dynamics that are at play in the transformation of individual
feelings of suffering into collective experiences that eventually lead to full-
blown political claims. The normative and practical dynamics of social
movements, through which the latter structure themselves, formulate their
claims, identify their strategic and tactical allies and enemies, and so on,
have an irreducible cognitive dimension. A social movement cannot orga-
nize itself, in terms of the definition and clarification of its normative and
political goals and means, without identifying and analyzing the causes of
the wrong against which it is directed. This does not mean that the analysis
is necessarily correct. But the moment of analysis of the causes of injustice
is an indispensable moment in the rise of a social movement. For the in-
dividuals involved in the social movement, this means that understanding
that one suffers from socially caused injustice (and not just from individual
maladaptation for which each individual is responsible separately) entails
understanding how that injustice occurs, in other words, understanding
the causes of injustice. Indeed, Honneth’s embrace of a pragmatist concep-
tion of emotions to analyze the rise of social movements implies just as
much: negative emotions and feelings are the incentives not just to want to
change things, but first and foremost incentives to try to understand how
and why the habitual ways of being in the world were challenged. The huge
difference with Fraser’s model is, once again, that this cognitive process is
directly anchored in social experience. At this level, though, the concept
of recognition has no explanatory power; it is the concept required for the
Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory 305
but a unified science. Economic science is not unified in any of its aspects:
not in its retrospective descriptions (count the many opposed explanations
of historical economic crises); nor in its explanations of current economic
phenomena; nor in its predictions; not even at the level of basic measure-
ments (take the example of the great incertitude regarding real unemploy-
ment rates); nor, and most definitely not, in its basic methodological
premises, unless the institutional hegemony of the neoclassical model is
mistaken for a scientific proof of validity. It is simply not the case that one
can simply gesture towards economic science and trust that it will be able
to provide uncontroversial descriptions, explanations, and predictions of
economic phenomena. However, the way in which Fraser and Zurn refer to
the necessity of an explanation of economic injustice through the “causes of
injustice,” seems to gesture towards such value-neutral economic analysis.
Secondly, and more positively, one can find in nonneoclassical economic
theory, some powerful models that provide a strong support, from within
economic theory for the basic suggestions that Honneth makes on the basis
of his work in social theory. This is a fascinating aspect of Honneth’s final
rejoinder to Fraser on the issue.54 Honneth initially returns the immanent
critique perspective against Fraser. He points out that the empirical examples
Fraser mentions against him run the risk of repeating Habermas’s gesture:
a distinction that is supposed to be purely analytical, the dual “perspectiv-
ism” of recognition and redistribution, ends up in an ontological reification
of society along dual areas of integration. Fraser runs the risk of contradict-
ing her own methodology by ontologizing the economy as a separate realm
of society. Fraser’s and Zurn’s positivistic approaches to the economy seem
to originate in the uncritical acceptance of Habermas’s system-theoretical
approach to economic issues. Their approach to economic analysis would
then be grounded in a social-ontological reification of economic processes
as processes severed from social interaction. By contrast with this position,
in a fascinating final page, Honneth provides a few thoughts that hint
once again at an alternative analysis of economic processes which would
encompass the role played by social interactions. His conclusion, then, is
that: “There is little sense in merely appealing to the importance of capital-
ist imperatives without considering how changes in normative expectations
and action routines have paved the way for social negotiations about the
scopes of these imperatives.”55
What Honneth could have added is that there exist in fact excellent
economic theories that can be shown to adopt the main critical intuitions
highlighted above. These theories directly rebut the claim that Honneth can
marry economic analysis and recognition logic only by succumbing to the
generality/concretion dilemma. For example, some of the basic premises of
the American institutionalists are very close to those with which Honneth
approaches the economy: that it is impossible to study an economic system
Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory 311
NOTES
1. The main texts preceding the 2003 book are articles gathered in Nancy Fraser,
Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (New York: Rout-
ledge, 1997), notably the “Introduction” and “From Redistribution to Recognition?
Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘Postsocialist’ Age,” 11–40. Also important are “Rethink-
ing Recognition,” New Left Review 3 (2000): 107–120 (reprinted in this volume)
and “Recognition without Ethics,” Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 2–3 (2001):
21–42. The exchanges with Honneth as said are gathered in Nancy Fraser and Axel
Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (New York:
Verso, 2003).
314 Jean-Philippe Deranty
36. One can acknowledge the pluralization of the axes of identity formation for
modern individuals, and still insist on the relative centrality of work. Work remains
decisive as a factor of identity formation for a great number (the majority?) of in-
dividuals, at a basic empirical level. At a conceptual level, one can show that work
remains central, not in the sense of being the exclusive axis of identity formation,
but in the sense that the work experience is a privileged place where the different
identities can be either successfully integrated, or where they come apart, for ex-
ample when contradictory demands can no longer be reconciled (between family
and work for example). The latter is a major source of work pathologies today. See
Yves Clot, La Fonction Psychologique du Travail, 4th edition (Paris: PUF, 2004).
37. See in particular Axel Honneth, “Moral Consciousness and Class Domina-
tion” in Disrespect. The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Malden, Mass.:
Polity, 2007), 80–96 as well as Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situa-
tion Critical Theory Today,” in Habermas: A Critical Reader, ed. Peter Dews (Malden,
Mass.: Blackwell, 1999), 320–37.
38. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 250, quoted by Zurn, at 114.
39. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 212.
40. Chapter 8 of Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition is dedicated to that ques-
tion.
41. Against this, Renault propounds a “constitutive” theory of recognition in
relation to institutions: institutions are not just expressions of presocial recognition
relations, they also produce their own recognitive relations. Specific institutions
produce specific forms of injustice. If that is true, however, then it seems difficult
to limit the ontological status of these forms of recognition to that of effects: they
would seem to also be involved in the functioning of those institutions, and thus
be “coconstitutive” of them.
42. In particular the work of Stephan Voswinkel and Hermann Kocyba. Similar
points can be garnered from the work of Luc Boltanski, in particular in his book co-
written with Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2007).
43. See the essential passage in Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 196–200. A
similar argument is presented in Renault, “Politicising the Ethics of Recognition,”
99–102.
44. See Thompson, “Is Redistribution a Form of Recognition?” 93.
45. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 250. See Zurn, “Recognition, Redistri-
bution, and Democracy,” 114.
46. Axel Honneth, Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory,
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), 293.
47. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume II, (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1987), 232. Quoted by Honneth, Critique of Power, 292. See another
late summary from Habermas: “Modern societies are integrated not only socially
through values, norms, and mutual understanding, but also systematically through
markets and the administrative use of power. Money and administrative power
are systemic mechanisms of societal integration that do not necessarily coordinate
actions via the intentions of participants, but objectively, “behind the backs” of
participants. Since Adam Smith, the classic example for this type of regulation is
the market’s ‘invisible hand’,” Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1996), 39.
Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory 317
48. Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Paul Keast (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 223–44.
49. Joas, The Creativity of Action, 232.
50. Joas, The Creativity of Action, 290n73.
51. Honneth, Critique of Power, 292.
52. Honneth, Critique of Power, 293.
53. Honneth finds this concept of “cultural action,” the class-specific experience
of the overall division of labor, in the interstices of Horkheimer’s early writings:
“The ‘cement’ of a society . . . consists in the culturally produced and continuously
renewed action orientations in which social groups have interpretively disclosed
their own individual needs as well as the tasks required of them under the condi-
tions of the class-specific division of labor,” Critique of Power, 26. Honneth refers
specifically to Max Horkheimer, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the
Tasks of an Institute for Social Research,” in Between Philosophy and Social Science:
Selected Early Writings (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1993), 1–14.
54. See Honneth’s counterobjection in Redistribution or Recognition?, 253–56.
55. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?, 256.
56. For a clear synthesis of “old” and “new” institutionalist arguments, see
Malcolm Rutherford, Institutions in Economics: the Old and the New Institutionalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
57. Indeed, regulation theory provides a revised version of the labor theory of
value, against the assumption that the latter is now definitely condemned to sci-
entific antiquity. A clear and synthetic introduction into regulation theory can be
found in M. Aglietta, “Capitalism at the Turn of the Century: Regulation Theory and
the Challenge of Social Change,” New Left Review 232, no. 1 (1998). In particular,
this paper makes quite explicit the social-theoretical and political implications of
regulation theory.
58. For a precise analysis of neoliberal economic reality integrating the dimen-
sion of class struggle, see the decisive study by Gérard Duménil and Dominique
Lévy, Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution, trans. Derek Jeffers (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
14
On the Scope of “Recognition”:
The Role of Adequate Regard
and Mutuality
Arto Laitinen
Often different theorists use different terms to discuss the same issues,
and same terms to discuss different issues.1 Terminological confusions
will always be with us, and the best we can hope for is clarity in different
usages. But sometimes even a single mind may be slightly torn by conflict-
ing understandings on how to delineate the scope of a concept, how to
determine how extensive field some term or concept has—and therefore
what scope of phenomena a successful theory is ultimately meant to
cover. This essay is a response to that kind of conflict when it comes to
“recognition” as used in such slogans as “struggle for recognition,” “need
for recognition,” “mutual recognition,” “interpersonal recognition,”
“public recognition,” “recognition of difference,” “institutional recogni-
tion” or “emotional recognition.”
The conflict arises from two basic insights which play a role in defining
or delineating what recognition is. I call them the mutuality-insight and the
adequate regard–insight. The former is the idea that recognition involves
inbuilt mutuality: ego has to recognize the alter as a recognizer in order
that the alter’s views may count as recognizing the ego. There always needs
to be two-way recognition for even one-way recognition to take place. The
adequate regard–insight in turn is that we do not merely desire to be classi-
fied as recognizers, but to be treated adequately, in the light of any and all
of our normatively relevant features.
Both of these insights build on a third central idea, that recognition from
others matters because it is relevant to one’s practical relations-to-self: say,
respect from others is relevant for self-respect. But crucially for this paper,
the two insights pull in different directions—they are in tension when it
comes to deciding the scope of “recognition.” This paper is an attempt to
319
320 Arto Laitinen
negotiate the tension by comparing and assessing more and less restricted
views on “recognition.”
I discuss four issues on which definitions of recognition may be more or
less restricted. The first question concerns the scope of possible recipients of
recognition, and the second question possible recipient-dependent conceptual
restrictions on whether recognition has taken place at all. On these questions
I try to be true to both of the two conflicting insights. The mutuality-insight
leads naturally to a strict conception of recognition (only recognizers can
be recognized; recognition takes place only when two-way recognition takes
place). By contrast, the adequate regard–insight leads to an unrestricted view
(also other beings than recognizers can be treated adequately, and one-way
adequate regard is conceptually possible). I argue that the tension between
these is best negotiated by a two-part story, which will distinguish termi-
nologically recognizing (and being recognized) from successfully giving and
getting recognition. It is slightly unfortunate to have to draw such technical
terminological distinctions, but drawing this distinction helps to make sub-
stantive points that upon reflection need to be made, given the mutuality-
insight and adequate regard-insight. Or so I argue.
The other two questions are: what sort of responses to what sort of features
amount to recognition. Again, the adequate regard–insight would lead to
an unrestricted normativist view: any kinds of responses that are normatively
called for by any normatively relevant features may be cases of recognition.
The mutuality-insight might motivate a narrower suggestion developing the
idea that only other recognizers (or persons) can be recipients of recogni-
tion2: only the kind of features that can only be had by other recognizers
(or persons) can serve as the basis of recognition, and only the kind of
responses, which are forms of taking the other as a recognizer (or a person)
count as recognizing.3 I will argue that while such responses to such features
are an important subclass of recognition, the unrestricted normativist view
captures the full scope of recognition better. We should not in advance
define recognition in a restricted way which rules some cases out (even
though the mutuality-insight might seem to motivate some restrictions).
We can fully preserve the force of the mutuality-insight with the two-part
story, without restricting the scope of features and responses that amount
to recognition.
A starting point is the idea that getting recognition matters for the practical
relations-to-self of the recognized ones. Respect is related to self-respect,
esteem to self-esteem, denigrating feedback concerning one’s abilities is
related to an internalized sense of incapacity, experienced humiliations are
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 321
In a nutshell, the central idea is that the agentic competencies that comprise
autonomy require that one be able to sustain certain attitudes toward oneself
(in particular, self-trust, self-respect, and self-esteem) and that these affectively
laden self-conceptions—or, to use the Hegelian language, “practical relations
to self”—are dependent, in turn, on the sustaining attitudes of others.6
ADEQUATE REGARD
The way that others treat or regard one is relevant for one’s relations-to-self
in the readily intelligible way discussed above. So one suggestion might
be that perhaps any kind of regard from others counts as recognition or
misrecognition—adequate recognition simply being adequate regard from
others, and inadequate recognition being inadequate regard.
Before discussing such a conceptual connection between regard from
others and “recognition,” let us take a closer look at adequate regard. How
should A treat and regard B? What are the criteria for adequate treatment
or regard?
In answering this, we might try to start from A’s prior commitments, or
from B’s normative expectations, or from B’s actual experiences of being
treated adequately or inadequately, or from normative outcomes of actual
struggles or contracts between A and B. These will definitely play some role
in explaining how actual practices and goings-on are structured by norma-
tive convictions. But actual convictions are always fallible—think of cases
of ruthless slave owners with consistent lack of commitments towards the
well-being of slaves, or slaves with internalized sense of inferiority and con-
sistent set of low normative expectations. One would like to say that there is
something to be criticized or improved in their actual commitments or ex-
pectations, however consistent they are. So it seems we cannot but assume
that changes in actual convictions may be cases of improvement or learning.
Something is learning only if the latter view is better than the earlier view.
And it is better thanks to its content, not thanks to the fact that it is held
at a later stage—mere temporal change does not tell us which changes are
for the better and which for the worse. It would have been better to have
the better views even before. So some contents of convictions are (at any
given time) better than others, whether or not they are actually held at that
time.
We may then say that the criterion for adequate (as opposed to inade-
quate) regard is given by the contents of the best possible views and convic-
tions that would be available to the parties. (Unavailability may in principle
rule out some views that would otherwise in principle be even better). And
these contents of adequate regard give us the best theory of what are the
relevant differences between people and relevant equality between people
that make a difference in how they ought to be treated and regarded. I
have elsewhere defended the view that in addition to the basic equality of
persons, at least differences in merits and in special relationships (such as
parent-child relationship) make a normative difference.10
Something is adequate regard towards a person if it is an appropriate
response to the normatively or evaluatively significant features F of the
other. These features generate reasons to respond in certain ways—certain
324 Arto Laitinen
I will now turn to the two fundamental insights concerning what recogni-
tion is. One fundamental idea is the mutuality-insight: “getting recogni-
tion” in a sense which can affect one’s practical relations-to-self presup-
poses that one recognizes the recognizer as a recognizer. I discuss it in the
next subsection.
The other insight is that struggles for recognition are not merely struggles
for being held to be a “recognizer” (which is the minimum entailed by the
mutuality-insight), but for getting adequate regard from others, in view of
any and all of one’s normatively and evaluatively relevant features. (After all,
326 Arto Laitinen
THE MUTUALITY-INSIGHT
AND TWO KINDS OF RESTRICTIONS
The other insight, (one requiring a bit of reflection before it becomes evi-
dent) is that recognition in any sense that can make a difference to one’s
practical relations-to-self is always two-sided. One can “get recognition”
only from agents that are in turn recognized by one as minimally com-
petent givers of recognition. It follows that recognition is something that
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 327
Thus the two insights lead in slightly different directions. There is a tension
on at least two issues: Who can be recognized or get recognition—any be-
ings with normative features or only ones that are capable of experiencing
being recognized and recognizing the recognizer in return? And are there
conditions concerning B’s way of relating back to A that make a difference
on whether A has in fact recognized or given recognition to B?
Possible recipients of recognition are either (1) anything with normatively
relevant features: including animals, works or art, wilderness, etc. Adequate
regard-insight suggests that any bearers of relevant features can be recog-
nized in the relevant sense. Possibly any kind of individual entities, which
come to being and cease to exist, may in the meantime acquire and lose
normatively relevant features. This view can be called “unrestricted” (or
“monological,” “recognizee-insensitive” or “loose”).
Or then, possible recognizees are (2) recognizers only; ones capable of
“getting” recognition which presupposes regarding the other as a relevant
recognizer. This view can be called “restricted” (or “dialogical,” “recognizee-
sensitive” or “strict”).18
Thus there is a tension at least on two issues—concerning which things
can be said to be recipients of recognition, and under what conditions.
I will suggest that both views are right about something. A two-part story
will be able to preserve this suggestion. We can negotiate the tension con-
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 329
cerning these two issues by noting that “recognition” can mean two things,
which differ on two counts. I will reserve the terms “recognizing”/”being
recognized” to one of them, and “getting recognition”/”giving recogni-
tion” to the other. The former is identical with adequate regard, the latter
is not.
First, A recognizes B, whenever A (more or less adequately) responds to B
in ways called for or required by B’s normatively relevant features, whether
or not B recognizes A as a recognizer, or is aware of this response, or cares
about it at all, and indeed whether or not B is even capable of this. To this
we can add that logically, B is recognized by A, whenever A recognizes B. The
unrestricted normativist view gets this fully right.
Secondly, B gets recognition from A, only in cases where B not only is ca-
pable of recognizing A, but in fact recognizes A as a recognizer, and is aware
of this response, and cares about it. And A successfully gives recognition
only if B in fact gets recognition. The restricted view gets this fully right.19
This is what I suggest as the best way of dealing the tension between
the adequate regard–insight and the mutuality-insight. The former leads
So far, so good. We still need to discuss two questions, where one might
want to adopt more or less restricted views: what kinds of responses, to what
kinds of features, are at stake in giving and getting recognition. Perhaps
only responses that affirm that the other is a recognizer (e.g., a person),
and only features only had by recognizers (e.g., persons) are at play? Or
perhaps some other restrictions apply? I will try to argue that here the only
way not to compromise the adequate regard–insight is to have an unre-
stricted normativist view concerning the possible features and the range
of responses. Recall, the insight is that any kinds of responses from others,
which are required or called for by any of our normatively relevant features,
may intelligibly enhance our positive relations-to-self when adequate, or
may be experienced as misrecognition or inadequate recognition, when
inadequate.
Furthermore, this account does not compromise the mutuality-insight,
because the crucial conditions of mutuality have been taken into account
in the more strict definition of giving and getting recognition. So the view
to be defended here is that while there are differences between recogniz-
ing/being recognized, and giving/getting recognition, we should adopt
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 331
way, and one kicks the stones in anger, this kicking carries no such recogni-
tion. Kicking stones is not called “punishing” (even when the stones are
taken to be the cause of one’s tripping).31 What Strawson called “reactive
attitudes” (guilt, resentment, gratitude, etc.) are typically ones which carry
the implication that the object of the attitudes (self or other) is thereby re-
garded as a responsible agent. For example, while holding the other to have
valuable features is not a personifying attitude, holding the other to be a
responsible origin of those valuable features is a personifying attitude. So
there clearly is an important range of attitudes which imply that the other is
regarded as a person. To highlight the importance of this range of attitudes
is a definite virtue of the “personifying” definition.
Thus there is considerable support for the suggestion that recognizing in
the relevant sense just is taking such a personifying attitude and nothing
more.32 But an unrestricted normativist account would make several points
against the suggestion that “recognizing” a matter of appropriately regard-
ing the other as a person, and nothing more.33 First, recognition of persons
may be more detailed than merely taking to be a person. It need not only
be a matter of taking the other as a person, but it may be a case of taking
the other as some particular kind of person (say, having certain merits), or
as some individual person (say, a loved one). So in a scheme A takes B to
be X, X may be something more informative than simply “a person”: “a
person with certain merits,” or “a member of some relevant group,” or “a
loved one.”34 So it seems it is wrong to say that recognition is taking as a
person and nothing more.
Secondly, insofar as groups, institutions, states are among the recipients
that can get recognition in the relevant sense (because they are recognizers
themselves and can recognize the other as a recognizer), it need not be the
case that they must thereby be regarded as persons of some sort. It suffices
for mutual recognition that they are recognizers of some sort, either persons
or not. So in a scheme A takes B to be X, X can be “a recognizer,” “a group
agent,” “an institutional agent,” “an independent state,” etc.35
Thirdly, recognition need not be a matter of attitudes only, as the personi-
fying attitude analysis may suggest. It can be a matter of acting, emoting,
expressing the attitudes or emotions, a matter of statuses, relations, etc.36
Indeed, once one grants that for example states can be recognizers, the sug-
gestion comes to mind that a main way in which states recognize individu-
als is by granting them statuses, such as citizenship.
Fourthly, we can imagine a community without a concept of a “person,”
but with highly sensitive views about the normative features that we regard
as “person-making” properties (such as self-consciousness, rationality,
moral agency, etc.). Now arguably each of these properties is normatively
relevant, so it is not even clear that there’s any normative function that
personhood as such has, on top of the person-making properties. Perhaps
336 Arto Laitinen
CONCLUSION
This paper has tried to negotiate a tension between two insights (mutuality-
insight and adequate regard–insight). It suggested a terminological distinc-
tion, in order to make a substantive point. The terminological point is that
A can successfully “recognize” B, even when the further conditions for B
“getting recognition” are not met. If A recognizes B (as a possessor of nor-
matively significant features), then thereby B is recognized by A. There are no
further conditions for “being recognized.” But there are further conditions
for “getting recognition”: B must recognize A as a recognizer, must be aware
of the response, and must care about it. Further, A successfully gives recogni-
tion only when B gets recognition.
Recognizing is a matter of (more or less adequate) responsiveness to the
other as a possessor of normatively and evaluatively significant features,
that is, responsiveness to the other which is sensitive to the other’s norma-
tive standing. Recognizers include any beings capable of responding to nor-
matively and evaluatively significant features (persons, groups, institution;
other animals are a borderline case), whereas any possessors of normatively
and evaluatively significant features can be the objects of such responses (in-
cluding works of art, machines, animals, natural surroundings, etc.). What
B wants, when he wants recognition, may be precisely that sort of respon-
siveness or regard that can in principle be extended to any possessors of
evaluative features.
The realm of beings that can “get” recognition is considerably more re-
stricted than the realm of beings that can be responded to as possessors of
normatively relevant features. This is because B’s “getting” recognition from
A goes beyond merely being responded to by A. It includes being aware of
A’s response, and especially it includes B’s recognizing in turn A as a judge.
Thus the realm of beings that can potentially “get recognition” is the same
as the realm of recognizers.
Concerning the relevant features and responses, the unrestricted norma-
tivist view holds that B can be recognized as a possessor of any normatively
significant features F (the features need not, for example, be ones that only
persons or recognizers possess). Variations in the features in question lead
to different varieties of recognition. And the reason-governed “responses”
at stake in recognizing can be of a variety of sorts of things, for example,
such basic attitudes or regard as “respect,” “esteem,” “love”; expression of
338 Arto Laitinen
NOTES
relevant, and without being able to feel that they ought to do something. Perhaps
an argument could be made that they implicitly recognize normative relevance of
the features, and thus that their responses count as recognition. They always perceive
their world in the light of significances or affordances, and never as purely descrip-
tive. In this essay I will leave other animals aside, and focus on human individuals,
groups, and institutions.
3. These suggestions are closely related to the idea that the genus of recogni-
tion is “taking the other as a person” in Heikki Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and
Species of Recognition,” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 447–62, and Ikäheimo, “Taylor
on Something called Recognition,” in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor,
ed. A. Laitinen and Nicholas H. Smith (Helsinki, Finland: The Philosophical Soci-
ety of Finland, 2002), 99–111. I have reformulated it here in terms of features and
responses.
4. See Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and ‘The
Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992), 25–73; Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts, (Cambridge, Mass.: Polity Press, 1995); Margaret U. Walker, Moral
Repair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
5. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition; Joel Anderson and Axel Honneth,
“Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice,” in Autonomy and the Challenges
to Liberalism: New Essays, ed. John Christman and Joel Anderson (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005).
6. Anderson and Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition, and Justice,”
131, italics added.
7. For a more detailed treatment, see Arto Laitinen, “Social Equality, Recogni-
tion, and Preconditions of Good Life,” in Social Inequality Today. Proceedings of
the 1st Annual Conference of the CRSI 2003, ed. Michael Fine, Paul Henman, and
Nicholas Smith (North Ryde, Australia: CRSI, Macquarie University, 2003).
8. See Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Recognition and Social Ontology
(forthcoming).
9. See Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a
Precondition of Personhood?” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 463–78; essays in Heikki
Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Dimensions of Personhood, (Exeter, N.H.: Academic
Imprint, 2007).
10. Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition”; Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recogni-
tion and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences,” Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2006): 47–70.
11. Joseph Raz, Value, Respect and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 61.
12. Raz, Value, Respect and Attachment, 162–63.
13. Building on the distinction between acknowledging normative entities and recog-
nizing in Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition: Identification,
Acknowledgement and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons,” in Recognition and
Power, ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 33–56, we can distinguish conceptually between acknowledging the va-
lidity of general principles (say, “honesty is valuable” or “honesty calls for a range of
positive responses from respecting to promoting”), or specific normatively relevant
340 Arto Laitinen
features, property instances (“B’s honesty calls for a range of positive responses from
respecting to promoting”), and responding to the bearer of these features accordingly
(esteeming B as an honest person). Only the latter is “recognizing” in the relevant
sense. Given the distinction between recognizing and giving recognition that I draw
in this essay, there are importantly two kinds of bearers of normative features: ones
which can in an extended, unrestricted sense be recognized, and others (recognizers)
which can properly be given recognition to.
14. As G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977), 111–12 puts it, each action is the action of both.
15. The degree of certainty of any of one’s belief testifies that one takes oneself to
be so-and-so competent author of the belief in question. The degree of certainty of
views concerning the other testifies that one takes oneself to be so-and-so compe-
tent author of views concerning the other. Some of these views count as “recogniz-
ing” the other.
16. For Hegel, in any single event of someone getting recognition, arguably both
parties must take both parties as recognizers. So, if R stands for a “recognizer,” A
must take B as R, A must take A as R, B must take A as R, B must take B as R, for
even a single event of “getting recognition” to occur. Or as Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung
als Prinzip der praktische Philosophie (Freiburg, Germany: Karl Alber Verlag, 1977),
137 puts it: “Recognition, as a double-signifying act of two self-consciousnesses, is
a relation in which the relata relate to themselves through the relation to the other,
and relate to the other through their own self-relation. Thus, the self’s relation to
itself is made possible by the corresponding relation to the other.” (Translated in
Robert R. Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), 51). The analysis below will suggest that in some cases this may be
slightly too strict, at least concerning single responses—a case where A regards B as
possessing normatively relevant features (and remains noncommittal on whether B
is a recognizer), and B takes A as a recognizer, will qualify.
17. See Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Ikäheimo and
Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition,” Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “Esteem for
Contributions to the Common Good: The Role of Personifying Attitudes and In-
strumental Value,” in The Plural States of Recognition, ed. Michael Seymor (Palgrave,
forthcoming).
18. “Recognizee-sensitive/insensitive” is used in Ikäheimo, “Taylor on Something
called Recognition,” “monological”/”dialogical” in Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyz-
ing Recognition,” and “strict”/”loose” in Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition.” The
terms “recognizee-insensitive” and “monological” should not be taken to have the
connotation that the recognizer is being monological, or insensitive. Rather, it is the
definition of recognition which either does or does not take the “receiving end” into
account in deciding whether what the “sending end” does counts as recognizing.
19. When both A and B are persons, we have a case of “interpersonal” recogni-
tion, and when they are groups we have a case of “intergroup” recognition and so
on. For most combinations (say, recognition of a group by a state) similar ready-
made handy expressions cannot be found, although perhaps we can call it state-to-
group recognition. Variations in A and B lead to many varieties of recognition (from
persons, groups, and institutions we get nine combinations).
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 341
20. The choice of terms here is not artificial, but follows the grammar of “giv-
ing” more generally. One for example “gives” money to another person, but “puts”
money in a machine. Giving recognition is no exception—it would sound funny to
say that we “give” recognition to the value of wilderness, although it sounds accept-
able to say that we recognize the value of wilderness. See Risto Saarinen, God and the
Gift: An Ecumenical Theology of Giving (Collegeville, Pa.: The Liturgical Press, 2005).
21. Galen Strawson, “The Self and the Sesmet,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6,
no. 4 (1999): 99–135, 131. In Strawson’s view “I” can refer to a mental entity or a
human being, so he compares the usage of “I” to the usage of “castle.”
22. “Suppose that I give someone esteem or disesteem in a given dimension. I
will recognize that person—I will give them respect or countenance—just so far as
I treat them as falling within the domain of those who are subject to estimation,
positive or negative; I will let the person count. The esteem I give in this sort of
case will come in degrees and the degree given will be sensitive to the comparative
performance of relevant others. But the recognition I give will not come in degrees
and will not be sensitive in the same way.” Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, The
Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 20.
23. See Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition,” on identification, ac-
knowledgment and interpersonal recognition.
24. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, discusses such “emotional recognition”
in the developmental context.
25. See, for example, Andrew Mason, Levelling the Playing Field (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 59; or Jean Hampton, “Correcting Harms Versus Righting
Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution,” UCLA Law Review 39 (1992): 1659–1702 on how
policies “send messages.”
26. See, for example, Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” Peter Jones, “Equal-
ity, Recognition and Difference,” Critical Review of International Social and Political
Philosophy 9, no. 1 (2006): 23–46.
27. Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Ikäheimo, “Taylor on
Something called Recognition,” Heikki Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” Journal of
Consciousness Studies 5–6 (2007): 224–47.
28. See Ikäheimo “On the Genus and Species of Recognition”; we discuss and
develop this view in Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition”; see also
Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Esteem for Contributions to the Common Good” on how
an unrestricted normativist view and a personifying view understand esteem based
on contributions to the common good.
29. Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
30. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, §413 in Miller’s translation.
31. In a different case, of course, even persons may be objects of similar treat-
ment: the boys may get their ears boxed out of anger, by someone who would
not consider it an appropriate form of punishment, but who temporarily lost self-
control. In this case, the beating is not a sign that the boys would be recognized as
responsible—the beating is just an (unjustified) expression of anger. The intention
or attitude with which the deed was done is relevant to recognition.
342 Arto Laitinen
32. Note that this goes much further than a club, whose only activity is to accept
and reject new members. The personifying view holds that membership comes with
various significances and statuses, which make a great difference to how one ought
to regard the other in different situations.
33. More sophisticated versions of the personifying account, such as Ikäheimo’s,
may not be vulnerable to all these points.
34. See Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition.” Even the Strawsonian reactive at-
titudes carry the implication that the other is regarded as a certain kind of person
(not an irresponsible one, and one who committed certain kind of deed).
35. See Arto Laitinen, “Social Equality, Recognition, and Preconditions of Good
Life.”
36. For an analysis of recognition concerning attitudes, acts, expressions, and
statuses see Ikäheimo and Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition.”
37. See Arto Laitinen, “Sorting out Aspects of Personhood: Capacities, Normativ-
ity and Recognition,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5–6 (2007): 248–70.
38. I discuss one further view, based on Scanlon’s theory, in Arto Laitinen, “Rec-
ognition, Needs and Wrongness: Two Approaches,” European Journal of Political
Theory 8, no. 1 (2009): 13–30.
15
Making the Best of What We Are:
Recognition as an Ontological and
Ethical Concept
Heikki Ikäheimo
343
344 Heikki Ikäheimo
proaches are popular among critical theorists who are inspired by the Hege-
lian notion of recognition without drawing directly on Hegel’s work,5 the
ontological approach is prominent among Hegel scholars and philosophers
more generally sympathetic to, and influenced by, Hegel. Here the claim,
put forth by contemporary neo-Hegelians like Robert Brandom or Robert
Pippin, is that recognition is something through which the realm of “spirit”
comes about, or through which mere animals develop into “spiritual be-
ings.”6 How do these two approaches—the ethical and the ontological—re-
late to each other, and are they really approaches to the same issue?7
One obstacle in the way of answering this question or establishing com-
munication between the two approaches is, no doubt, the word “spirit.”
Whereas “recognition” has always inspired the Hegelian left, “spirit,” with
its theological or suspiciously metaphysical “right-Hegelian” connotations,
is certainly not among the favorite words of critical theorists inspired by
“recognition.” But we should not get stuck with words. It is generally the
case that if one is not able to say what one is talking about in other words, or
in the words of others, one will have hard time in communicating with others
who have a different approach. In what follows, I will suggest a translation
that should be helpful for bridging the gap between the two mentioned ap-
proaches to recognition and what makes it important.
Let me first note something that is more or less generally acknowledged
in Hegel scholarship today, yet may not be wholly obvious to everyone
interested in recognition. That is, contrary to the traditional textbook view
on Hegel, “spirit” for Hegel is not a name for some distinct entity or tran-
scendent principle beyond or above the phenomenal reality. Rather, “spirit”
is best understood as a title word, or headline, for a great number of inter-
related philosophical issues, all of which have to do with factors which
essentially distinguish us, or our form of life, from mere animals, or from
a merely natural form of life.8 Assuming that this reading is correct and
fruitful, as I believe it is, what exactly is then the “us” who are the general
theme of philosophy of spirit in Hegel’s sense? An answer which provides
us with a translation for talking about what Hegel talked about under the
general title “spirit” is this: the us in question is us persons. In other words,
so I suggest, the best way to translate the Hegelian talk about “spirit” into
contemporary philosophical parlance is to translate it into talk about “per-
sonhood.” The idea that recognition is something that distills spirit out of
mere nature can thereby be expressed by saying that recognition is constitu-
tive of the basic features and structures that essentially distinguish persons
and their lifeworld from mere animals and their natural environment—or
the life-form of persons from a merely animal life-form.9
By translating “spirit”-talk into “personhood”-talk we have already estab-
lished a point of contact between the ethical and the ontological approaches
to recognition. We can now say that whereas the ethical approaches see
346 Heikki Ikäheimo
Let us start with a simple observation. There are beings which differ from
other beings that they otherwise resemble in that, unlike those other be-
ings, these beings organize, or experience their world as organized, by val-
ues and social norms. Such beings—ourselves that is—we call persons, and
the other beings which we otherwise resemble are those animals that are
not persons. Let us call them “mere animals.”11
When philosophers talk about what distinguishes us persons from mere
animals, they often focus only on one or the other of these two dimensions
on which we persons are different from mere animals; that is, either on the
dimension of values, or that of norms. To pick up an example of a philoso-
pher belonging to the first mentioned group conceiving of personhood in
axiological terms, Harry Frankfurt famously distinguishes between persons
and subjects that are not persons, or as he says “wantons,” by saying that
whereas wantons are driven by immediate desires, persons are capable of
distancing themselves from these immediate motivating states of theirs. In a
nutshell, for Frankfurt persons are creatures that care about something and
thereby experience their world in light of values that are not reducible to
desirability in the immediate animal or wanton sense.12 This is also what in
Frankfurt’s conception makes persons free in contrast to the desire-bound
animals or wantons.
Making the Best of What We Are 347
are, on the one hand, what we could call “psychological concepts of per-
sonhood” according to which being a person is having person-making psy-
chological properties or capacities that nonpersons (such as mere animals)
do not have. On the other hand there are “status-concepts of personhood”
according to which being a person is having some kind of a person-making
status or statuses that nonpersons (such as slaves) do not have.16
Furthermore, what exactly it means to be a person in the sense of having
a person-making status or statuses involves two distinct ideas which are usu-
ally not explicitly distinguished. One of these is what I call the “institutional
status-concept of personhood,” according to which being a person is having
collectively administered “institutional or deontic powers,” paradigmatically
basic rights, that distinguish persons from nonpersons. Another idea present,
even if more rarely made explicit, in the discussions of personhood is that be-
ing a person is having person-making social or interpersonal significance(s) in
the eyes of others, or in short being recognized as a person by others in con-
crete contexts of interaction. This latter concept, which I call the “interpersonal
status-concept of personhood” is easily mixed with the institutional status-
concept, but it should not be. Whether you have rights or other person-mak-
ing deontic powers that give you the institutional status of a person within the in-
stitutional system of a given collective or society is one thing, but whether you
are seen and treated by concrete others in light of person-making significances
that make you a person in their eyes and thereby give you the interpersonal
status of a person in concrete contexts of interaction is another.
Here again, I suggest that the psychological, the interpersonal, and the
institutional concepts grasp different, mutually irreducible, and interrelated
components, or as I say “layers,” of what it is to be a person in a full-fledged
sense of the word. We can schematically organize all of the mentioned
views on personhood—the deontic, the axiological, the psychological,
and the two status-views—as referring to different dimensions and layers
Table 15.1 Components of Full-Fledged Personhood
Deontic Dimension of Axiological Dimension of
Personhood Personhood
Psychological layer of capacity for exercising capacity for intrinsic
personhood deontic coauthority valuing or care
Interpersonal (status-) significance of deontic significance of someone
layer of personhood coauthority whose happiness is
intrinsically important
Institutional (status-) person-making deontic
layer of personhood powers (basic rights, etc.)
Corresponding recognitive Respect Love
attitude
Making the Best of What We Are 349
their life by social norms in the first place? Why, indeed, is it that we per-
sons care about social norms, whereas those animals that are not persons,
or Frankfurtian wantons, do not? The quite obvious answer is that we per-
sons have concerns which mere animals do not have. In contrast to animals
that are moved by immediate desire, persons are concerned about their life
more generally, and maximally as a whole. This is what gives persons a
value horizon and motivational structure that is far more complicated than
that of mere desiring animals.
“Life” does not obviously mean here merely life in the biological sense,
and the concern characteristic of persons is not merely about staying biologi-
cally alive. Rather, what is at stake is a concern for the goodness of life or
happiness, whatever it is exactly that this consists of for each person. There
are two general ways to conceive of the axiological dimension of the life-form
of persons by focusing on the concern for goodness of life, or happiness, as
characteristic of persons. First, we can understand happiness or the good-
ness of life as one object (or property) among others which persons value.
Secondly, we can understand “happiness” as a title word for anything that
a person values so that the success or flourishing of these things is what his
happiness, or the success or goodness of his life, for him, consists of. Accord-
ing to the latter conception, which I will follow and which I believe Hegel
also had in mind, being concerned or caring about one’s own happiness (in-
trinsically) is nothing else than valuing something and thereby wishing what
one values to flourish.22 When one experiences what one values flourishing,
one is happy or leads a subjectively good or flourishing life.
But not only are persons, as persons, concerned about their own lives.
They can be, and usually are, concerned about the lives of at least some
other persons as well. In caring about the happiness of another person one
values and wishes those things that she values to flourish. Valuing things,
and thereby wishing that they flourish, simply because they are constitutive
of another person’s happiness, or in other words for her sake, is one of the
basic senses of what we mean by loving someone.23 In loving someone in
this way, one internalizes the value horizon of the loved as part of one’s
own value horizon. Thereby I value x if I believe it is constitutive of the hap-
piness of someone that I love, yet I would not (necessarily) value x would I
not love this person—I value it not for my own sake, but for her sake, and
still this is my valuing and part of my value horizon. In other words, the
value horizon of the loved person becomes part of the value horizon of the
loving person, but the former retains, within the latter, an irreducible refer-
ence to the loved person. Recognition as love produces, as Hegel puts it, an
“identity of interest,”24 which, however, retains difference within it.
For Hegel, love is also one of the forms (if not even the paradigmatic
form) of “being or knowing oneself in one’s other,” which is Hegel’s general
formula for freedom.25 Hegel’s notion of freedom brought about by love is
352 Heikki Ikäheimo
Let us now make a brief overview of the role of recognition as love in our
being persons on the axiological dimension of personhood. This role is to
an extent, even if not wholly, analogical to that of respect in the deontic
dimension. First of all, love is constitutive of the interpersonal layer of the axi-
ological dimension in that being a person in the interpersonal sense of having
the interpersonal status of a someone whose happiness is intrinsically im-
portant for others is simply the same thing as being loved by those others.
The idea I am proposing here is that the interpersonal person-making status
of someone whose happiness is intrinsically important corresponds to the
recognitive attitude of love in a manner analogous to the correspondence
between the interpersonal person-making status of coauthority and the
recognitive attitude of respect.
But secondly interpersonal love is also constitutive of the psychological
layer of the axiological dimension of personhood, and in two different ways.
First, even if caring intrinsically only about one’s own happiness, or loving
oneself, is enough for having an evaluative horizon that elevates one above
mere animality, and is also sufficient for participating in norm adminis-
tration, we do think that also the capacity to love other persons is part of
having the normal psychological makeup of a person.29 At least a thorough
incapacity to love others is regarded as a serious deficiency or pathology
of personhood. A second, and quite different, way in which interpersonal
recognition as love is constitutive of the axiological person-making psy-
chological capacities is that the development, and perhaps maintenance,
of these person-making capacities seems to be, to some extent at least, de-
pendent on their subject being loved by others. What ever the exact dynamics
here are, it is common sense that at least an extreme lack of love by others
is not favorable for the ideal development of one’s capacity to love oneself
or others, and thereby to lead a life with the rich axiological texture char-
acteristic of persons.
It is often said, in Kantian vein, that the other person limits or constraints my
will. The thought is that such limiting of the will by the other is morally or
ethically centrally important. In a more Hegelian vein, the others toward
whom I have attitudes of recognition—respect or love—are constitutive of
my will, or more generally of the socially or recognitively mediated kind of
structure and content of intentionality that makes me a psychological per-
son. On the other hand, that others have the kind of structure and content
of intentionality that makes them psychological persons and that they in-
tend me accordingly—with recognition that is—are what make me a person
in the interpersonal sense. It is constitutive of the life-form of persons that
354 Heikki Ikäheimo
persons see and are seen by each other in terms of person-making signifi-
cances or statuses. These significances or statuses distinguish them, within
each others’ points of view, as persons (in the interpersonal sense) from
nonpersons. On the Hegelian account, recognition of others is thus not
only something that limits us, but something that quite generally makes us
what we are—persons.
In addition to being ontologically fundamental to our being persons,
recognition in the sense of taking someone as a person is also morally or
ethically central to our lives as persons. This shows in the fact that the extent
to which persons recognize and are recognized by each other in particular
relationships, social contexts, or societies is decisive for our moral or ethical
judgments concerning these social formations, as well as the persons in-
volved. One way to look at this is the following. Intuitively, being wronged,
or at least an important aspect of it, is being treated in ways which involve
inadequate respect toward one as an authority of the norms of action that
affect one, or inadequate concern for one’s happiness for one’s own sake.
Being morally wronged thus is—or, on a weaker formulation, involves—not
being recognized or taken as a person adequately in the interpersonal sense
by the wrongdoer—and this means, not being a person in interpersonal sta-
tus to a sufficient degree in the interpersonal relationship in question. The
moral wrongdoer, however, also corrupts her own personhood in the sense
that part of what it is to be a full-fledged person in the psychological sense
is to have adequate respect and love for others.
Moral wrongs range from everyday inconsiderateness of others to moral
atrocities. It is the latter that philosophers usually have in mind when they
talk about treating persons as nonpersons, and ask what it is and how it is
possible. The more terrible the case, the clearer are its contours in terms of
violation and corruption of personhood of both the sufferer and the agent.
“Psychopath” is a term used for an individual who is systematically un-
moved by the claims for normative authority or happiness of others to an
extent that defies the comprehension of a more normal person. We tend to
say that there is something in a psychopath that makes him “inhuman,” or
“not quite human.” By this we mean (and I shall return to this below) that
the psychological capacities or features of such an individual are deficient
as to a central element in what we think makes persons persons: recogni-
tion for others.
Yet, ethically even more troubling are the cases where persons are deeply
moved by the authority and happiness of some persons but where they
show remarkable coldness toward those of other persons. The concentra-
tion camp guard—if there ever was one—who deeply loves his children
and takes seriously the moral judgments of his wife or neighbors may be
the paradigmatic example. But people can show brutal indifference and
coldness toward selected others in more normal circumstances as well.
Making the Best of What We Are 355
Think, for instance, of the husband and father who employs and keeps
an illegal immigrant worker in conditions he would find simply inhuman
were anyone to propose life and work in similar conditions to him or his
family members, relatives, or friends. The unsettling fact is that the extent
to which we recognize or personify each other, and thus are persons in the
sense of subjects and objects of recognition, may vary dramatically from
one relationship to another.
Now, assuming that we have no convincing reason to radically revise
the connection that we draw in everyday moral judgment between moral
wrongs and lack of recognition or personification, then the basic thesis of
the “ethical” accounts on the importance of recognition is perfectly reason-
able: more recognition makes both the psychic and the social life of persons
better. And what is important, it makes them better ethically.30 If this is so,
then recognition does indeed seem to have a dual ethical-ontological role
in our lives.
Not everyone will be convinced at this point. What I have said will sound
suspicious to anyone having an aversion toward anything resembling Ar-
istotelian normative essentialism.31 Even more, postulating that what is
essential to the life-form of persons is something as nice as respect and love
does have a distinct ring of naïveté to it for many ears. Indeed, one might
ask whether this is anything but a curious mixture of long outdated Aristo-
telian essentialism with naïve psychological optimism. How to reply?
First of all, whatever philosophers or theorists make of it, normative es-
sentialism is deeply inbuilt to how we experience our shared life outside
philosophical seminars. So deeply that wholly exorcising it would shake
what may be the most solid foundations of moral or ethical thinking,
independently of philosophical schools or cultural difference. If anything
is universally shared, certainly the conviction that at least extreme cruelty
is—somehow—contrary to our very essence is so shared.
It is characteristic of our thinking about atrocities that we associate with
names like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Milosevic and their likes that we see them
as epitomes of “inhumanity.” We locate this inhumanity both on the side of
the perpetrators as well as the victims: The acts, and therefore the characters,
of the perpetrators are studied in light of their apparent “inhumanity”; and
the predicament of the victims is similarly described in terms that highlight
its “inhumanness”—we say that people are being treated like animals, that
they are being butchered, poisoned like vermin, burned like dirt or pollu-
tion, and so on.
356 Heikki Ikäheimo
The conviction that seeks expression here, namely that these and similar
actions are somehow against what we are, or against our very essence, is, I
want to argue, perfectly rational; yet it is quite badly served when it is ex-
pressed in terms of “humanity” or “inhumanity.” Rhetorically powerful as
it may be to talk in this way among those who already find it the right way,
there are others who will find it sentimental nonsense. After all, amongst
all living beings that we know of, only humans are capable of the kinds
of actions we are talking about. How could moral atrocities be somehow
inhuman(e) if they are among the things that only humans do?32
What this question reveals is simply the well-known ambiguity of the
term “human(e)”—being biologically human is one thing, being morally
or ethically human or humane is another. If one does not believe in the
prospects of marrying ethics with biology, yet feels that there is something
important to the thought that evil is against what we are, then one needs
to look elsewhere. Rather than focusing on what it is to be a human being,
my suggestion is to look instead for a theory of personhood that can articulate,
organize, and philosophically justify our deepest intuitions about what
makes us what we are. Following this line, we can save the rational core of
the thought that the events mentioned are somehow against, or contrary to,
our essence, by interpreting it as referring to us as persons, or to our intuitive
notions about what makes us persons.
With the risk of some repetitiveness, we can thus say that it is characteristic
of the actions mentioned that the perpetrators radically fail to recognize their
victims as persons. One consequence of this is also a radical failure of moral
self-relations that are constitutive of psychological personhood. That is, the
extent to which individuals have respect and love for particular others is the
extent to which they judge and evaluate their own thoughts and actions, and
themselves, from the deontic and axiological viewpoint of these others.33 A
radical failure to be moved by the authority or vulnerability of others, and
thereby a radical lack of respect or love for them, cancels out this interper-
sonal aspect of self-relations and makes them seriously defective morally.34
On the side of the victims, this means a radical loss of their personhood in
the interpersonal sense—not having the interpersonal status or significance
of persons in the particular social contexts or relations in question.35
True, the capacities which enable the perpetrators to act in the way they
do cannot be wholly wrenched apart from what makes persons persons.
On the contrary, it is precisely their being persons in the sense of creatures
acting and thinking in norm-governed ways, caring about at least their own
life (however perverse their convictions about what makes it good or better
may be) and representing complex ends as valuable and thereby motivating
for action, that distinguishes the Nazis, Stalin’s bureaucrats, or the Khmer
Rouge as killers from, say, cats killing mice out of natural instinct. That they
have these capacities is inseparable from their having, and having had, at
least some recognition for some others. Yet, what makes them the monsters
Making the Best of What We Are 357
PERSONHOOD AS A TELOS
CONCLUSION
NOTES
10. See Heikki Ikäheimo, “On the Genus and Species of Recognition,” Inquiry 45,
no. 4 (2002): 447–62, Ikäheimo and Laitinen “Analyzing Recognition,” and Heikki
Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” in Dimensions of Personhood, ed. Heikki Ikäheimo
and Arto Laitinen, a special issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 5–6
(2007) (available also as a resale book by Imprint Academic). In these texts, and
in what follows, I use the expression “taking something/-one as a person.” See also
Arto Laitinen, “Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a Precondition
of Personhood?” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 463–78, and Arto Laitinen, “Sorting Out
Aspects of Personhood: Capacities, Normativity and Recognition,” in Dimensions of
Personhood (2007).
11. There is a great temptation, and long tradition to which also Hegel belongs,
to identify the distinction between persons and “mere animals” with the distinction
between humans and nonhuman animals. On my account, whether all persons are
humans and whether all humans are persons are empirical questions. Furthermore,
the distinction between persons and “mere animals” is a terminological simpli-
fication since what I mean by personhood “in the full-fledged sense” has several
components all (or at least almost all) of which come in degrees. For an overview
of philosophical discussions on personhood, see Dieter Sturma, Die Philosophie der
Person (Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh, (1997), and Sturma, „Person und Men-
schenrechte,” in Person. Philosophiegeschichte—theoretische Philosophie—Praktische
Philosophie, ed. Dieter Sturma (Paderborn, Germany: Mentis, 2002), and Heikki
Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Dimensions of Personhood, a special issue of Journal
of Consciousness Studies, 14, No. 5–6 (2007). I discuss, and argue for, the multidi-
mensional and multilayered model of full-fledged personhood presented in this
paper more in detail in Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons.”
12. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal
of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–20, originally formulated the distinction between wan-
tons and persons in terms of the concept of higher order desire. Later on, the notion
of higher order desires became replaced in his writings with the notion of care, and
most recently by love: Harry Frankfurt, Reasons of Love (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2004). This last mentioned move eventually brings Frankfurt’s position
into contact with that of Hegel.
13. For Brandom’s account of how desiring animals may develop into the level
of mutual attribution of authority and thereby “self-consciousness,” see “The Struc-
ture of Desire and Recognition.” For Brandom’s views on freedom as constraint by
collectively self-authorized norms and on the role of recognition in it, see, among
others, Robert Brandom, “Freedom as Constraint by Norms,” American Philosophical
Quarterly 16 (1979): 187–96, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing and Discur-
sive Commitment. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), and “Some
Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism.” In using Brandom as an example of a
deontic approach to spirit, or personhood, I lay no claim of doing justice to the
details of his position.
14. Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, calls the three attitudes of recognition
“love,” “respect,” and “esteem” (Liebe, Achtung/Respekt, Wertschätzung). The way in
which I spell out respect as an attitude of recognition differs from Honneth’s way
since I distinguish more explicitly between respecting someone as an authority
and Respecting someone as a rights bearer (see footnote 21). I leave out the third
362 Heikki Ikäheimo
attitude here for reasons of space, and also since I am somewhat hesitant about its
exact ontological significance. See however my “A Vital Human Need—Recogni-
tion as Inclusion Into Personhood” (forthcoming), where I suggest, among other
things, that a third attitude of recognition which I call “contributive valuing” is
constitutive of the cooperative structures of the lifeworld of persons, and that it
should not be mixed with instrumental valuing. Ikäheimo and Laitinen “What
is Esteem? Two Rival Accounts” (forthcoming) discusses this attitude in more
detail.
15. Note that I am only talking about recognition between persons, or about inter-
personal recognition, whereas Hegel uses “Anerkennung” in other senses as well. My
conception of the “species” of interpersonal recognition is not meant to be exhaus-
tive of all the less systematic ways in which Hegel uses the term, but rather a rational
reconstruction of what I think are clearly ontologically and ethically foundational
forms of interpersonal recognition for the realm of spirit in general.
16. An example of a psychological concept of personhood is the one advanced
by Lynne Rudder Baker in Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000) and “Persons and Other Things,” in Dimensions
of Personhood (2007), according to which persons are defined by the psychologi-
cal property or capacity of self-consciousness, or more exactly what she calls “the
first-person perspective.” An example of a status-concept of personhood is the one
advanced by Michael Tooley, “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs
2, no. 1 (1972), according to which being a person is the same thing as “having a
serious right to life.” Although personhood is variously defined either in terms of
psychological properties or capacities or of statuses, both capacities and statuses
are somehow present in most discussions of personhood. It is, however, one of the
sources of confusion in the debates that authors often talk about personhood both
in terms of capacities and of statuses without explicitly distinguishing these two
ways of speaking. The more or less standard taxonomy of concepts of personhood
into “moral” and “metaphysical” concepts does not help, since “moral person-
hood” can be defined, and is variously defined, both in terms of psychology and
of statuses. This standard taxonomy is unhelpful also in that it seems to rule out a
priori the perfectly live option that moral capacities and/or statuses are at least part
of what makes persons metaphysically distinct from other beings.
17. If you want, think of “deontic coauthority” as a metapower, since it is basi-
cally the power to determine (with others) who has which “deontic powers” (rights,
responsibilities, and so on).
18. Note that this does not involve the claim that everything that we want
to call norms are social norms in this sense. But do social norms have to be self-
authorized—can’t they be imposed by an external authority? One point to note
is that the origin of norms is not at issue here: it’s not who happened to write a
law, but rather whose authority makes it the law within a collective. The Hegelian
thought is that there is no such a thing as wholly external authority, since even the
lord has to be recognized by the slave, or the God by the believer, for the lord or God
to have authority on the slave or the believer. This means that authority is necessar-
ily a relation of coauthority. On the other hand, mere coercion is not authority at
all, and decrees enforced by brute force are just that, not social norms. In short, col-
lective self-authorization is necessary for there to be social norms within a collective.
Making the Best of What We Are 363
A further fact—one that is important for moral and political judgment concerning
particular relationships, communities, or societies—is that in most cases of social
norms and institutions, not all those whose life they regulate are equally respected
as their authorizers. Therefore, what is a freely accepted institution for some part of
a population may be closer to a system of coercion for others whose authority is not
asked or does not count equally. Indoctrination and ideology present complications
to this rather simple picture that cannot be discussed here.
19. Deontic neo-Hegelians call it simply “recognition,” since they do not dis-
tinguish between different recognitive attitudes. Hegel rarely uses “respect” (or
“Achtung” or “Respekt”) in talking about recognition (“Anerkennung”), but since love
clearly is a species of recognition for Hegel, yet it is not exhaustive of the species, we
need to use distinct names for the other species as well.
20. It is this sense in which recognition relates to person-making psychological
capacities that is at the center of Axel Honneth’s work on recognition.
21. It is important to distinguish between respecting someone as an authority
of social norms and institutions, and respecting* her as a bearer of institutional or
deontic statuses such as basic rights. Respecting* someone as a bearer of rights is
compatible with having no respect toward her as an authority of her or anyone’s
rights. Since this is the case, the assumption that having rights and being respected*
as a rights holder promotes the self-respect of rights bearers is much less obvious
than it is sometimes thought to be. Compare Joel Feinberg, “The Nature and Value
of Rights,” in his Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980).
22. This is also roughly Frankfurt’s position in Reasons of Love.
23. This needs to be contrasted with A’s valuing things because they are consti-
tutive of B’s happiness and because B’s happiness is constitutive of someone else’s
(such as A’s) happiness. This is not valuing something simply because it is constitutive
of B’s happiness, or not for her own sake. Here I have to bite the bullet and say that
if a person does not value something for the sake of some others, her valuing it is
always her valuing it “for her own sake.” The “sake” here refers, not to one valuable
thing among others, but to the particular valuing horizon in which something is
valuable, or to its subject whose happiness is constituted by the success or flourish-
ing of what in her horizon is valuable. I use “being concerned about someone’s
happiness for her sake” synonymously with “being intrinsically concerned about
someone’s happiness.” To be absolutely clear, “being concerned about someone’s
happiness” should be understood in the sense of “wanting that he be happy,” and
not of “wanting that he be unhappy.”
24. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen Wood, trans. H. B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 [1821]), § 161.
25. Alan Patten, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), among others, rightly emphasizes the importance of this formula for Hegel’s
complex concept of freedom. In my view, however, he downplays the extent to
which agency in general is, according to Hegel, constitutively dependent of the
subject’s having particular interests.
26. Contrast this with the misery of loving someone to whom your happiness
is of no significance, or someone who wishes you to be unhappy. The importance
of mutuality is clearly in view in Hegel’s discussion of what he calls “universal
364 Heikki Ikäheimo
who has no intrinsic concern for the well-being of others whatsoever represents a
kind of limit case in our moral imagination. Below I will suggest that those we call
“psychopaths” are individuals who are relatively incapable of recognition—in the
sense of love or respect—of others. See also Honneth’s discussion of autism as an
incapacity for recognition: in Honneth, Reification, 42–44 and 58.
30. Note that this is a quite different claim from the morally or ethically neutral
one saying that recognition from others makes us psychically stronger, or psychically
better equipped for self-realization.
31. By “normative essentialism” I mean a view according to which things have
an essence that they can realize to a greater or lesser degree, and according to which
realizing it to a greater degree makes an entity somehow better. Such a view can be
readily identified as an Aristotelian one. To be exact, however, what I understand
by the Aristotelian variant of normative essentialism is a position that declares,
furthermore, that entities have some tendency toward a greater degree of realization
of their essences (see section entitled “Personhood as a Telos”). I am only arguing
for Aristotelian normative essentialism about one particular class of things, namely
persons.
32. Compare Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1996) and Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th
Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000).
33. This would be the starting point of my answer to the question posed by
Judith Butler in her critical reply to Honneth’s theory of reification: what exactly
does it mean that recognition involves taking up the position of the second person?
(See Honneth Reification, 97–119.) In loving someone, I relate to my thoughts and
actions, and to myself as their subject, from an evaluative viewpoint which includes
the evaluative viewpoint of the loved person (in the way discussed in section en-
titled “Recognition and the Constitution of Persons”); and in respecting someone I
judge my thoughts and actions, and thereby myself, by norms that incorporate the
deontic coauthority of the respected person.
34. Compare the discussion of “arrogance” as corruptive of personhood in Robin
S. Dillon “Arrogance, Self-Respect and Personhood,” in Dimensions of Personhood
(2007), 101–126. Part of what I say in this paper can be seen as an implicit dialogue
with her more Kantian approach to lack of (self-) recognition as a corruption of
personhood.
35. This may, or may not, have effects on the self-relations, or more generally on the
psychological layer of personhood, of the victims. Yet, the badness of nonrecognition/
nonpersonification is clearly not exhausted by the psychological effects. See also
Heikki Ikäheimo, “A Vital Human Need: Recognition as Inclusion Into Person-
hood,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 1 (2009): 31–45.
36. In relation to this, the fact that the victims are also not respected* as holders
of what ever basic rights are constitutive of personhood in the institutional sense
(whether according to philosophers’ recommendations, the various declarations
of “human rights,” or actually existing systems of rights), seems less important for
our judgments about the moral quality of the events in question. The same goes
for, say, slavery: not having rights is not the worst thing about it. This is not to say
that institutional personhood in the sense of basic rights is not important at all;
on the contrary, it gives stability to social life and secures individual life in that it
366 Heikki Ikäheimo
makes persons less vulnerable to the lack of interpersonal personhood in the eyes
of particular others.
37. This comes close to Honneth’s Adorno-inspired talk about reification of per-
sons as “forgetfulness of recognition” in Honneth, Reification. Even if the usefulness
of the figure of “forgetting” may be debated (see Frederick Neuhouser, “Axel Hon-
neth: Verdinglichung,” a review in Notre Dame Philosophical Review (2006) ndpr.nd
.edu/review.cfm?id=5941 [accessed September 16, 2007]), Honneth’s point is clear:
reification in the sense of A’s relating to B without recognition is a lack of some-
thing that was a necessary ingredient in A’s becoming a person himself, namely
of recognition. The present article can be read as an argument against Jonathan
Lear’s claim that recognition in a sense in which it is constitutive of the most
basic person-making capacities of “symbolic thought, language,” etc., on the one
hand, and recognition in a sense in which it is constitutive of human well-being,
on the other hand, are two different phenomena. (See Lear’s critical discussion in
Honneth, Reification, 131–43. In fact, Honneth himself makes a similar distinc-
tion between “existential” and “substantial” forms of recognition in Honneth
Reification, 90n70.)
38. There is of course much more to be said about this distinction. One obvious
issue to take into account is the fact that attitude patterns of individuals toward
particular others (individuals or groups) are affected by cultural environment, and
are also vulnerable to deliberate manipulation and indoctrination.
39. See, for instance, Pippin, “What is the Question,” 161.
40. See Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, § 382, as well as G. W. F. Hegel, Lec-
tures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827–1828, trans. Robert R. Williams (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 2007), 3–7, and Robert R. Williams’ introduction to the latter.
41. One question that obviously needs close scrutiny is how exactly to conceive
of the appropriateness or adequacy of the quantity of recognition in particular cases
and in the particular spheres of social life. In general, quantifying respect, as well as
love, is something philosophers have not spent much time thinking about, even if
these are unsurpassable elements of our moral life. For example, if, as Kant says, we
ought to treat each other not only as means (that is, as nonpersons), but also as ends
(that is, as persons), what is the right, or acceptable, mixture of these ways of treat-
ing each other in the different spheres of our lives, and how are we to conceive such
mixtures conceptually? In Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, “What is Esteem?
Two rival accounts” (forthcoming), we approach this theme in terms of “claims of
personhood” which determine how much recognition is appropriate in each case,
but obviously much more work needs to be done on this issue (compare Alice Le
Goff, “B. van den Brink and D. Owen, eds.: Recognition and Power, A. Honneth and
the Tradition of Critical Social Theory,” Revue du MAUSS 9 [December, 2007]). Let me
make one point concerning this, however, to address a question posed by Bert van
den Brink in discussion: it is inappropriate at least to respect someone in something
in which he is incapable of being an authority. Thus saying that “more recognition
is always better” is, as van den Brink notes, simplifying. But two things need to be
noted. First, we do think that as a rule the better way of overcoming a discrepancy of
this kind between respect and capacity is a higher level of capacity (and thus claim
for respect) rather than a lower level of respect. Secondly, not only the actual, but
also the potential, capacities of the recognizee for exercising authority are relevant
Making the Best of What We Are 367
for judging the appropriateness of levels of respect toward him. Another important
issue is that although interpersonal recognition, by its very nature, comes in degrees,
the institutionalization of deontic powers making up the institutional status of a
person is by no means necessarily a matter of degrees. It is up to us to legislate, if we
so decide, that each and every being fulfilling what ever criteria we choose decisive
has the same basic “person-making” rights without degrees. For more on this see
Ikäheimo, “Recognizing Persons,” 242–45.
42. On immanent critique, see Antti Kauppinen, “Reason, Recognition, and In-
ternal Critique,” Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 479–98.
43. What I am proposing resembles what Christopher Zurn calls a “strong meta-
physical project” of recognition” (see his “Anthropology and Normativity: a Critique
of Axel Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life,’” Philosophy and Social Criti-
cism 26, no. 1 (2000): 115–24). Yet, contrary to what Zurn suggests belongs to such
a project, I am not declaring “ontological or metaphysical truths about the timeless
essence of humanity “ (122, emphasis mine), which would be an anthropological
enterprise, but rather appealing to deeply embedded intuitions about personhood
as an ideal, or, as one could also say, to the collective normative-essentialist self-
understanding of our life-form.
44. Let me note one way in which what I have said about the “ethical” impor-
tance of recognition might seem strange, and perhaps disappointing, to many of
the proponents of the ethical approach to recognition. That is, I have not talked at
all about “recognition” (in the sense of acceptance, paying notice, appreciation, and
so on) of particular identities, on which much of the discussion on the “politics of
recognition” focuses. One reason for this is that the rather unclear notion of “rec-
ognition of identity” would require a thorough analysis and there is only so much
one can discuss in one paper. Another reason is that I do not think that “recogni-
tion of identity” is at all as vitally important either ethically or ontologically as is
recognition as love and respect. To put it bluntly: if the relevant others around you
do not care about your well-being intrinsically, and if they also do not respect you
as having authority in matters that concern you, what they happen to think of your
particular features may ease or worsen your predicament, but it does not change
the fact that it is quite miserable anyway. On the other hand, that people do not
appreciate all the particular features of your identity is really not that bad, provided
that they genuinely care about what is good or bad for you, and provided that they
genuinely respect you as having authority—for example, on which criteria or norms
particular identities are to be evaluated and judged on. In other words, even if oth-
ers’ appreciation of one’s particular qualities or “identity” is not insignificant, what
certainly matters much more is to be taken as a person.
Index
Adorno, Theodor, 143, 241, 243 Benjamin, Jessica, 15, 87, 189, 191
Aglietta, Michel, 317 199–202, 206, 208, 209
Albertini, V., 207 Bennett, Jonathan, 105
alienation, 2, 29–30, 138–43, 224, Bermudez, José Luis, 364
250, 321 Bernstein, J. M., 12–13
Allen, Danielle, 184 Bion, Wilfred, 193, 195, 199
Altmeyer, Martin, 189, 194, 204, 206, Bloch, Ernst, 238
208, 209 Bollas, Christopher, 194
amour de soi, 22–24, 35 Bolognini, Stephano, 194
amour propre, 11–12, 21–46, 142; Boltanski, Luc, 282, 316
as source of human ills, 25–31; Bourdieu, Pierre, 222, 239, 279
psychological responses to, Boyer, R., 256
35–38; rationality and, 38–43; Brandom, Robert, 103, 123, 127, 148,
socio-political responses to ills of, 345, 347, 360, 361
31–35 Brennan, Geoffrey, 331, 341
Anderson, Elizabeth, 180, 184 Britton, 194
Anderson, Joel, 339 Brudney, Daniel, 14–15
Aristotle, 137, 164, 167, 184, 185 Buber, Martin, 208
Aristotelianism, 4–7, 355 Butler, Joseph, 155, 159, 181, 182
Augustine, 21 Butler, Judith, 254, 365
Austen, Jane, 154
Castañeda, Hector-Neri, 104
Bacal, Howard, 194, 206 Castel, Robert, 223, 237, 256, 279
Baker, Lynne Rudder, 362 Celikates, Robin, 255
Balint, Michael, 203 Chiapello, Eve, 282, 316
Bauer, Bruno, 181–82 Chitty, Andrew, 45, 46
Beckert, Jens, 238, 280 Christianity, 13, 80, 112–13, 120, 149,
Bellow, Saul, 182 164, 183
369
370 Index
375
376 About the Contributors