Pilapil Psychologization of Injustice

Psychologization of Injustice?
On Axel Honneths Theory of

Recognitive Justice
Renante Pilapil
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
ABSTRACT. The present paper critically reconstructs Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice modelled on the formation of intact personal identity or self-realization. It looks into the status of using psychological evidence as
a basis for a theory of justice, and whether or not such an approach of justice
fails the publicity criterion. The claim is that although Honneths thesis is potentially susceptible to the charge of psychologization of injustice as Fraser alleges,
the idea that recognition impacts on the formation or malformation of personal
identity should not be denied a critical role in a theory of justice. Doing so
prevents a faceless or subject-less discourse of injustice. The paper also argues
that recognitive justice founded on very specific moral-psychological assumptions passes the test of publicity. The challenge is how to establish the necessary
conditions that enable victims of misrecognition to have a language and name
their experience of suffering publicly.
KEYWORDS. Recognition, Honneth, publicity, Fraser, narrativity
I. INTRODUCTION
xel Honneth has systematically rehabilitated the Hegelian and Fichtean

notion of recognition by incorporating it within his social theory and
theory of justice. He develops a tripartite account of recognition grounded in
a theory of intersubjective relations between persons, an idea that he draws
upon the early Jena Hegel and George Herbert Mead. He argues that the three
forms of recognition, namely love, respect, and esteem, constitute the social
preconditions for the formation of personal identity. Without the experience
of social recognition, it would be very difficult if not impossible for persons
to have personal integrity (Honneth 1995b, 165). Using the same forms of
ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 18, no. 1(2011): 79-106.

2011 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved.
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recognition as criteria of social justice, Honneth pins down the task of social
justice to how social institutions establish and maintain the social preconditions that enable individuals to attain autonomy and hence self-realization.
Our contribution will attempt to accomplish two things: (i) an internal
reconstruction of Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice;
and (ii) an external reconstruction of Nancy Frasers critique of psychologization in Honneth. Essentially, the paper makes three claims. First, Honneths recognitive justice modelled on the formation of intact personal identity
and self-realization is founded on very specific moral-psychological assumptions. This is demonstrated in his concern for practical self-relations such as
self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem that are necessary conditions for
self-realization. Second, although this notion of justice is potentially susceptible to the charge of psychologization as Fraser alleges, it is not incorrect to
derive political conclusions about justice from moral-psychological premises.
Since social criticism has to rely on empirical studies in order to be grounded
in reality, psychological evidence should not be denied a critical role in a
theory of justice. And third, recognitive justice anchored in moral subjectivity
is not bereft of the resources that will enable it to pass the objectivity and
publicity criterion of justice. What needs to be done is to design a fairer and
more inclusive political communication not merely reducible to an exercise
of argumentation. The paper proceeds in six parts. Parts II and III critically
reconstruct Honneths notion of recognition-theoretical conception of justice.
Part IV briefly exposes Frasers critique of psychologization. Part V re-asserts
the importance of moral subjectivity in a theory of justice. Part VI attempts
to re-define the publicity criterion of justice in relation to Honneths recognitive justice. The last part (VII) presents a short conclusion.
II. MORAL SUFFERING AS POINT OF DEPARTURE

It is only in his recent writings that Honneth more explicitly develops his
recognition-theoretical conception of justice, the originality and boldness
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PILAPIL PSYCHOLOGIZATION OF INJUSTICE ?
of which is immediately evident in its methodology. The definition of justice is not derived from a reconstruction of the intuitive notions of justice
that we would develop under the veil of ignorance as in Rawls. Nor is it
taken from a clarification of the norms of justification as in Habermas.
Drawing upon Hegel, Honneth links his theory of justice with Zeitdiagnose
(time diagnoses) more particularly with a diagnosis of social pathologies
(2010, 25-47; 2000). The latter refers to how persons are prevented from
enjoying their autonomy in the experience of injustice or moral suffering
which is an inescapable feature of our world. That is to say, a world which
is a paradise here and now, but which can become hell itself tomorrow
(Bernstein 2005, 303).
The reason why Honneth takes the negative path as his point of departure for a theory of justice is not so much for epistemological reasons as
it is for critical considerations (Deranty and Renault 2007, 93-94; Deranty
2004, 302-5). To undertake an effective critique of society, one must start
by taking into account instances of injustice or violations of standards of
justice. In contrast to its positive counterpart, the experience of injustice
possesses greater normative bite. As such, for Honneth, no experience of
injustice must be ignored even if its public expression is fraught with danger and difficulty. This approach to social justice and normativity is typical
of the Frankfurt School, which grounds the motivation for social resistance
and liberation movements not on grand theories of intellectuals but on
peoples everyday experience.
The experience of injustice that Honneth particularly refers to is the
moral experience of disrespect or misrecognition. Drawing upon his tripartite scheme of recognition, he identifies three forms of disrespect: physical
abuse, denial of equal rights, and denigration of individual and cultural
practices. These acts inflict wounds upon the self and cause humiliation
the feeling of being unwanted or unworthy in society, as if ones life
possesses no significance or integrity of its own (1995a, 247-60; 1995b,
160-70; Beitz 2001, 104). Physical maltreatment prevents people by force
from taking control of their body, bringing forth not only physical pain
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but also a loss of reality (1995b, 132). Losing basic self-confidence the
ability to express oneself publicly without fear of rejection persons will
lose trust in the world and will consequently suffer psychological death.
Meanwhile, excluding persons from the enjoyment of equal rights tramples upon their moral autonomy and reduces them to second-class citizens (1995b, 133). This leads to a loss of self-respect, or social death,
in the sense that persons will no longer be able to see themselves as
responsible agents capable of making moral judgments. Finally, denigration of individual and cultural practices denies individuals and groups the
social value they deserve (1995b, 134). As a result, they will lose selfesteem and will be unable to relate positively to their ways of life, producing moral scars and injuries. Without self-confidence, self-respect, and
self-esteem, the chance of persons fully functioning as autonomous subjects and attaining self-realization is completely lost. The question Who
am I? will never be answered.
How does the experience of personal disrespect generate feelings of
social injustice? Honneth goes back to his social theory in this regard. In
a given society, he claims, social order requires the existence of institutional rules and public practices that individual members understand to
be justified. These rules and practices are considered legitimate when
they pass generally accepted reasons, meaning, they must reflect the
moral expectations and claims of individuals upon the social order. The
social recognition of their personal integrity holds a central position here
(2003, 133). These expectations, Honneth writes, are internally linked
to conditions for the formation of personal identity because they indicate
the social patterns of recognition that allow subjects to know themselves
to be both autonomous and individuated beings within their socio-cultural environment (2003, 163). If institutional rules do not reflect the
normative expectations of individuals, that is, they deny and violate their
claims to respect, or fair treatment of their distinct ways of life and
achievement, then feelings of social injustice can arise (2003, 133; 2007,
134).
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It is in these respects that Honneth puts forward his notion of the

moral grammar of social conflicts, most particularly the struggle for recognition. The moral experience of disrespect can become the motivational impetus for political resistance. In his analysis of the struggle for
recognition, he links the distorted processes of recognition of individual
identities with the processes of collective oppression or marginalization
of groups (Benhabib 2002, 51). There are not only individual injuries but
also collective injuries to self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. To
make the individual experience of injustice typical for the entire group,
Honneth deems it necessary to propose a semantic bridge founded on
the individuals articulated stories of experiences of humiliation (1995b,
163). The shared semantics serve as the intersubjective framework
through which personal experiences of suffering are interpreted as something that affects both the individual and others.
It is disappointing to note that Honneth fails to show more precisely the nature and the process of how this shared semantics is shaped.
He assumes that it is always readily available through the common
experience of moral suffering. An idealized picture is painted here. Victims of abuse, discrimination and humiliation are thought to reach consensus easily on the meaning and interpretation of the experience that
binds them together to actively engage in political resistance. Contrary
to Honneths assumption, this may not always be the case. Part of the
politics of individual responses to injustice is that victims have varied
ways of interpreting and responding to their experience of injustice
even if they share the same gender, race, or socio-economic status
(Swanson 2005, 105). For example, while some may actively engage in
political resistance against oppression, others may deny their oppressive
condition, and others still may legitimize their oppression as natural or
socially beneficial.
With Honneths emphasis on the experience of moral suffering and
injustice, he effectively deviates from Habermass systemic theory centred
on the paradigm of communicative action as the basis for social critique
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(Habermas 1984). Although both thinkers operate within the tradition of

Frankfurt School, they differ as to where to locate this experience. Honneth thinks that Habermass fascination with linguistic conditions for
reaching understanding free from domination is insufficient as a normative basis for social critique. It loses sight of the fundamental moral experiences of subjects. Consequently, talk of genuine emancipation of subjects is unnecessarily thrown into oblivion. Contrary to Habermas,
Honneth claims that it is not the restriction of linguistic rules, but the
violation of persons identity claims acquired through socialization that
constitutes injury of moral experience. In the end, he believes that in
Habermas a pre-theoretical resource that can be called an expression of
social injustice is more or less absent. Let me construct Honneths theory
of justice more positively.
III. SELF-REALIZATION AS GOAL OF JUSTICE

Based on an empirical account of what he calls social pathologies or
the experience of moral suffering, Honneth derives the normative account
of what a just society might look like. Methodologically, he argues that
the relation between the descriptive and the normative should not be
construed as a linear process, but rather as a kind of hermeneutical
circle. One cannot have a normative idea of what a just society is without already having some empirical observations about what is wrong with
society. Conversely, the capacity to make descriptive observations about
what is wrong with society presupposes already having an idea of what
justice is (Honneth 2004a, 390).
To recall, in The Struggle for Recognition Honneth speaks of three
principles of recognition: (i) love, which is characterized by boundary
dissolution and independence, and is based on the singularity of the other
(this singled out person); (ii) respect, which means being able to see oneself
as morally autonomous, and is based on the universal features of persons;
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and (iii) esteem, which means having a high regard for oneself in comparison to others, and is based on the persons particular and unique features. On the basis of these three principles of recognition, which impact
the formation of intact personal identity, Honneth extracts what he calls
three equal-ranking principles of social justice namely love, equality, and
merit (2003, 143; 2004, 358). In terms of intimate relationships, what is
required is the principle of love; in legal relationships the principle of equality; and in cooperative relationships the principle of merit. Since each particular sphere of social interaction is governed by a principle of justice,
Honneth calls his recognitive justice a plural theory of justice. However,
because the principles refer to distinct moral perspectives that generate
different obligations, inevitably the relationship between them is gripped
by a constant tension. Unfortunately, Honneth offers no formula as to how
to negotiate this tension, except for his reminder that the resolution lies
within individual responsibility (2007, 141).
The goal of social justice, he argues, is the creation of social relations in which subjects are included as full members of the society in the
sense that they can publicly uphold and practice their lifestyle without
shame or humiliation (2003, 259). What comprises a good and just society is its ability to guarantee the social conditions through which autonomous individuals are given the chance to realize their personality. Justice
requires establishing and maintaining enabling social conditions for the
formation of intact personal identity for all members of society. In this
sense, social equality is tied to being given an equal chance for an adequate self-realization. To work for justice involves eliminating the obstacles in attaining what Honneth calls practical self-relations such as selfconfidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.
Being institutionalized within the society, the principles of justice,
namely love, equality, and merit, constitute the normative perspectives
through which individuals can judge the adequacy of existing forms of
social recognition. Following Rawlss institutional approach to justice,
Honneth is convinced that the principles of recognitive justice apply to
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how social institutions secure the social conditions for mutual recognition. Let me briefly discuss the institutional application of these principles. I will give special attention to the institutions of the family and the
organization of labour.
According to Honneth, other than the formal marking off of childhood, the institution of marriage and the family marks the attitude of love
and care as a separate sphere of recognition. Taking his cue from Kant
and Hegel, he states that marriage is not simply a social contract between
two consenting and equal legal subjects, but also a union between two
persons who are mutually in love and in need of each other (2003, 139;
2007, 151-52). The family relationship between husband and wife, or
between children and parents, is nurtured by the principle of love and
care, which represents the core of the relationship. The lack of love and
care in the family can lead to its disintegration, which will create a serious
ethical-psychological impact on its members. Such is what happens in
rape, maltreatment of children, and other instances of domestic violence.
I think this point is crucial because it highlights the fact that the issue
of domestic violence or of unfair division of household labour cannot be
simply understood in terms of (legal) equality. In order to gain insight
into these phenomena, it is necessary to look more closely into the normative structure of the family, grounded in the principle of love. Justice
embedded in family relationships is not simply about the duty of members to respect each other as equal legal subjects but also the need of each
member to be loved and cared for.
Meanwhile, Honneth refers to the organization of labour as the institutionalization of the recognition principle of achievement, on which basis
we attain social esteem as productive citizens (2003, 141). He points to
the double-edged source of legitimacy of the principle of achievement.
On the one hand, the principle of achievement represents a biased evaluation of achievement. Its normative reference point for judging productive
or valuable work is mainly the economic activity of the independent,
middle-class, male bourgeois (2003, 141). In other words, the value of
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work is largely if not exclusively based on a particular privileged group.

This unduly disregards the value of other types of work that do not fit the
standard, for example household work. On the other hand, the bourgeois
can use the principle of achievement as a justification to maintain the
unjust distribution of resources and opportunities. Since a meritocratic
society only champions competition and ignores the moral arbitrariness of
the natural lottery that impacts on peoples life opportunities, the principle
of achievement further cements unjust inequality (2003, 149).
By linking social justice with a concept of the good life, Honneths
theory of justice can be said to employ a teleological rather than deontological justification. A just society is measured according to its ability to
guarantee the social conditions of mutual recognition necessary for the
formation of intact personal identity, and hence, the achievement of selfrealization. The problem here, however, is whether or not a teleological
justification is compatible with the fact of reasonable pluralism and of
deep disagreement about what constitutes the good life. Honneth allays
this worry by arguing that what he proposes is a formal conception of
ethical life in the Hegelian sense. In stark contrast to Kant, he is not
concerned solely with moral autonomy, but the conditions for self-realization. Yet, to avoid falling into communitarianism, he leaves the content
of self-realization as formal as possible by not tying it to a substantive
ethos of a particular community (1995b, 172; 2004a, 357-58).
However, I doubt whether Honneth is completely convincing here.
Despite his claim that he does not endorse a particular conception of the
good, it can hardly be denied that his notion of self-realization is closely
associated not only with Aristotles notion of human flourishing (the
fulfilment of a persons capacities and desires) but more importantly to
psychological well-being or health. He explicitly confirms this when he
writes that self-realization is the process of realizing [] ones selfchosen goals without coercion, free from external and internal force
or barriers including psychological inhibitions and fears (1995b, 174).
Its necessary conditions are the positive self-relations of self-confidence,
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self-respect, and self-esteem. It is no wonder that Honneths notion of

personal identity is also deeply psychological. Personal identity is not tied
to identifiable features, as in the case of identity politics, but to what
underlies such features. This Honneth calls moral-practical identity, which
emphasizes the socio-psychological conditions necessary for a robust
identity, paving the way for a meaningful and responsible exercise of
freedom. An individual who continues to suffer psychologically cannot
act meaningfully and responsibly even if he or she is granted the same
rights as others. The goal of social recognition self-realization cannot
be genuinely attained if in the first place the person has no inner freedom,
the confidence to demonstrate ones capacities and qualities.
In these respects, it is not difficult to see the difference between
Honneths theory of justice and that of Rawls, who is considered to be
the pillar of liberal theory of justice (Rawls 1999; 2001). Two of these
differences deserve to be mentioned here. First, contrary to Rawls (as well
as Kant and liberalism), who does not leave much room for the social,
Honneth grounds what persons can become in their dependence on
social relations with others. Persons are not understood as isolated and
solitary creatures but are always already related to each other prior to
any specified social relation. The same intersubjective character of persons forms the basis of Honneths conception of individual autonomy
(2010, 1-6). In contrast to the highly atomistic conception of autonomy,
the latters relational or social character is stressed, i.e. the vulnerability
of the individuals autonomy to the disruptions in his or her relations with
others. Nevertheless, it must be noted that although he endorses the communicative presuppositions of all processes of self-realization, this does
not mean that Honneth embraces the communitarianism of Taylor or
MacIntyre (Taylor 1979, 157; MacIntyre 1981, 204-5). What is given
major attention is still the individual, particularly his or her vulnerability
as a result of his or her dependence on others.
Second, contrary to Rawls, Honneth thinks that injustice is not about
the unfair distribution of goods to which everyone is entitled, but about
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the obliteration of the moral basis of self-realization. To talk of distributing basic rights and liberties does not make sense unless the subjective
identities of individuals threatened by the social structure are taken into
account. The question of justice is not about the resources individuals
should possess in view of their rational life plans or what they can do
with such resources in terms of their functionings and basic freedoms
(Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2008). For Honneth, the main task of justice is to
look at the moral injury or harm to the individual (or impaired subjectivity, as Fraser puts it) caused by the unequal distribution of resources. In
other words, the point of injustice is not quantity but quality (Deranty
2009, 403). This significantly transforms the idea of injustice from a
strictly political issue into an ethical issue.
Based on the above discussion, the features of Honneths recognition-theoretical concept of justice can now be summarized. First, it is
rooted in a philosophical anthropology, particularly the intersubjective
character of human persons. It repudiates the liberal atomistic reading of
the nature of persons by conceiving them as dependent on the recognition of others. Second, faithful to the strategy of the Frankfurt School, it
takes as a point of departure the experience of injustice and moral suffering of individuals brought about by misrecognition. And third, it is
intimately intertwined with a concept of the good life as the ideal of selfrealization, the necessary conditions of which include the practical selfrelations of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.
It is conceivable that these features demonstrate one thing: Honneths idea of recognitive justice is founded on very specific moral-psychological assumptions. Psychological prerequisites, i.e. the experience of
moral subjectivity itself, are conferred paramount importance. His theory
of justice aims to protect subjective identities from the threats of the
social structure in order to attain and maintain intact personal identity. As
pointed out, Honneth thinks it would be misleading to talk of granting
equal rights to individuals if in the first place they do not have healthy
or stable self-relations that would enable them to act responsibly and
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meaningfully. Bearing this somewhat psychologizing strategy in mind,

many critics of Honneth accuse him of reducing the demands of recognition and therefore of justice to the merely psychological. That is to say, the
demands of justice and recognition are nothing but demands for the satisfaction of psychological needs. Nancy Fraser raises an objection along
the same line.
IV. THE CRITIQUE OF PSYCHOLOGIZATION

In her debate with Honneth in Redistribution or Recognition?, Fraser alleges
that Honneths ambitious project to fashion a theory of justice built on
the experience of prepolitical suffering and the notion of self-realization is fundamentally erroneous. She argues that by treating all political
discontent and injustice as a matter of impaired subjectivity, Honneth
does not only mess up the sharp distinction between questions of justice
and ethics, between the right and the good. More importantly, he shifts
the focus away from society towards the self (Fraser 2003, 204). Such an
account of injustice, she maintains, is guilty of psychologization. It
locates the wrong not in social relations but in individual or interpersonal psychology (2003, 31). What is unjust is identified with internal
distortions in the structure of the self-consciousness of the victim. This
is demonstrated in the experience of being scarred and injured due to
disrespect and humiliation. What could be wrong with psychologization?
According to Fraser, it is but a short step to blaming the victim
(2003, 31). The internal distortions brought about by misrecognition are
not blamed on others actions (persons or institutions) but on the persons inability to maintain positive attitudes of self-relation. Psychic damage is attributed to the victims failure to muster the negative psychological effects of the injustice of misrecognition. This condition, Fraser
argues, would only add insult to injury. Furthermore, she insists that
psychologization reduces misrecognition to a case of the prejudiced mind
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of the oppressors, such that remedying the injustice of misrecognition

requires policing their minds. This is questionable not only on practical
grounds, but also in terms of its political implications. It is illiberal and
authoritarian (Fraser 2003, 31).
Beyond this, Fraser unleashes her most lethal attack on Honneths
psychologizing strategy by exposing its implications for what justice
means. She contends that psychologization mixes up the distinction
between what really merits the title of injustice, as opposed to what is
merely experienced as injustice (2003, 205). If the basis of injustice were
only the pre-political experience of suffering or the failure to attain selfrealization, how can it be publicly contested and verified when the experience of psychological suffering is very personal? How can the loss of
self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem be objectively measured?
How can it be publicly known that intact personal identity as the goal of
recognitive justice has been attained? Thus, a model of justice centred on
the experience of psychological suffering can hardly meet the objectivity
and publicity conditions of justice.
In the end, Fraser eschews interpreting the injustice of misrecognition in terms of the damage it has done to the individual psyche. If this
were the only basis of injustice, what emerges is a foundationalist construction of justice grounded in and constrained by moral psychology
(2003, 206). Frasers thesis is that political conclusions about justice cannot be directly deduced from moral-psychological premises. Contra
Honneth, she proposes an alternative approach of understanding recognitive justice based on the model of status. Let me briefly discuss what
this is.
In her status model of recognition, Fraser moves away from an identity-based notion of justice towards a more depersonalized one. She extricates recognitive justice from its ontological or teleological roots, and
defines it exclusively in terms of equal participation as a member of the
polity. What has to be recognized is not the specific group identity but
rather the status of individual group members as full partners in social
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interaction (2000, 113). Status here is particularly construed as political

status, that is, ones membership in a body polity, and not the ontological
status of full personhood. Hence, for Fraser, the point of recognitive justice
is how to develop and maintain a social order in which individuals are
treated as peers or equal partners in the affairs of the political community
(2003, 29). Given the status model of recognition, injustice is no longer
understood in terms of deformation of personal identity or impairment of
subjectivity. Instead, it is exclusively attached to status or social subordination, or the way one is being prevented from participating as a peer or equal
in social life. That is to say, injustice occurs when the individual is denied
equal status, and treated as inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible, hence as less than full partners of social interaction (2003, 29).
Following Rawls, Fraser believes that recognition as justice is not about
the relation of political subjects with one another. It is about the relation
between social institutions and political subjects. She particularly defines this
relation in terms of the ways social institutions regulate social interaction on
the basis of cultural norms that affect parity of participation (2000, 114).
These institutionalized patterns can take the form of formal laws, government policies, administrative codes, professional practices, and informal
measures. Hence, according to the status model, misrecognition or injustice
does not simply occur when a person receives cultural and symbolic insults
from others (stereotypes). It does occur when members of disadvantaged
groups are systematically denied equal opportunities to participate as peers
in social life by prevailing social structures. To remedy injustice, Fraser suggests a radical deinstitutionalization of norms that subordinate the status of
individuals and reinstate their status as peers in social life (2003, 30).
Given Frasers critique, I want to salvage Honneths psychologizing
strategy, but in order to do so I will not reiterate and develop further on
his defence that Fraser misunderstands him. In his response to her allegation, he argues that she got it all wrong. Recognitive justice modelled on
personal identity formation and self-realization is not only a moral-psychological assumption, but also a social-theoretical thesis (2003, 184-85). It is
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both a process of individualization in which individuals are given the opportunities to legitimately articulate parts of their personality, and a process of
social integration in which individuals are given the chance to be included as
full members of society. In contrast to Honneths defense, what I want to
do instead is twofold: (i) to re-assert the crucial role of moral subjectivity
or moral suffering in the theory of justice; and (ii) to recover the potential
of such an approach of justice for passing the publicity criterion.
V. RE-ASSERTING THE ROLE OF MORAL SUBJECTIVITY

Let me start by debunking Frasers use of psychologization. To refer
back to the issue of reducing misrecognition to individual attitude, in
which she makes two arguments blaming the victim and policing the
mind of the oppressor Frasers worries may be products of misuse of
a psychological account (Thompson 2006, 35). She may have misunderstood the significance of psychological theory and the origin and impact
of misrecognition. On the one hand, the idea that victims are to be
blamed for internalizing the effects of disrespect and humiliation may
have been inferred from the idea that the arduous task of overcoming
their debilitating effects solely lies upon the victims. But such inference
is erroneous primarily because the fact that one can or should change
ones situation does not necessarily mean that one is responsible for it
(Thompson 2006, 34-35). On the other hand, what could Fraser have
meant by policing the mind of the oppressor? If it means forcing the
mind of oppressors to recognize their victims, then this is most likely
untenable. At the level of individual attitude, to force a person to recognize another is as difficult as telling someone to forgive and forget the
past. There is no necessary link between the end of oppression and policing the oppressors mind.
The psychological account of misrecognition does not mean that it
is prevented from employing institutional mechanisms in order to address
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the paralyzing effects of misrecognition. The greater burden is not how

to avoid deriving political conclusions about justice from psychological
premises, instead it is about determining whether or not such psychological premises are accurate. Fraser should not have worried too much
about Honneths reliance on psychological premises per se. What should
have concerned her is whether or not self-confidence, self-respect, and
self-esteem are indeed necessary conditions for the flourishing of the self;
or, conversely, whether or not physical abuse, denial of equal rights, and
denigration of cultural practices can actually lead to psychological death,
social death, and moral injuries respectively.
Beyond her misuse of a psychological account, there is a more fundamental problem in Frasers approach, particularly the way she eschews
talk of the suffering subject by incorporating the standard of justice typical of liberalism: objectivity and publicity. She considers the question of
a suffering subject to be a scandal in a theory of justice mainly because it
is hardly accessible to the public and therefore cannot be objectively verified. As she bluntly puts it: [A] society whose institutionalized norms
impede parity of participation is morally indefensible whether or not they
distort the subjectivity of the oppressed (2003, 32). While this might be conceived as Frasers strongest argument, I believe that it could also be her
Achilles heel. A notion of justice that denies the role of subjective experience may be nothing but an empty shell. Her view of justice suffers
from a faceless subject, unknown until precisely such time as they unite
in social movements whose political goals publicly disclose their normative orientation (Honneth 2003, 128). If Fraser rejects the notion of
suffering in favour of parity of participation, would she endorse an institutional norm that promotes parity of participation even if it makes people suffer psychologically?
I am not saying that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with acts of
social subordination, exclusion, or marginalization. Otherwise, my claim
would have been guilty of the happy slave objection the idea that
as long as victims of exclusion and subordination do not feel morally
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violated, then one can say that there is nothing wrong with their situation.
Although it is possible that for some people the experience of being
excluded or subordinated may not be particularly threatening or humiliating, it does not mean that an outsider, much less a social critic, will only
tolerate what is happening. The point, rather, is that we have to be able
to answer the question: What exactly is unjust about subordination, marginalization, and exclusion? I believe that a sufficient answer can be found
by looking at the debilitating effects they cause upon the individual. Issues
of subordination and exclusion count as normatively meaningful in the
context of justice only when they do not appear external to the individuals experience. In other words, only when the notion of equal social
status for equal participation is interpreted as a potential source of moral
harm or injury that it can have normative bite. As J.M. Bernstein lucidly
frames the issue: Unless the violation of a norm is simultaneously and
thereby a violation of me, a way of actually harming me, it is not a moral
norm (2005, 311). There is no sense of talking about rights and liberties
if the existing condition of subjective identities is unjustifiably ignored.
Hence, Frasers dismissal of a suffering subject can potentially make
her account of misrecognition and injustice nothing but a theoretical culde-sac.
My sense is that Fraser tends to limit the issue of recognitive justice
to a matter of legal-political status of individuals and groups. She confines
it within the issue of what full-fledged citizenship means, and so she readily assigns recognitive justice with the singular task of guaranteeing equal
democratic participation. However, to limit justice solely to the status of
being legal subjects is rather short-sighted. The issue of justice (and hence
recognitive justice) does not only possess a legal alimension, it also has a
moral dimension.
Rainer Forst clearly states that there is a necessary distinction
between the legal status and the moral status of persons that both command respect. The former is based on law and actionable rights, while
the latter is based on the status of personhood (Forst 2002, 280). What
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is at stake in recognitive justice is not merely the agents status as citizens but more importantly their moral status as persons. This is where
Honneths notion of moral grammar of recognition becomes highly
relevant. By virtue of persons moral autonomy and inviolable dignity,
they deserve due recognition for what or who they are, and whose
violation, as in the experience of humiliation, shame or other moral
injuries, can ignite struggles for recognition. The black political movements are an example of this. That blacks were reduced to second-class
citizens is not the primary reason that motivated them to engage in
social resistance and fight for justice; rather it was because they were
treated like sub-humans or nonhumans by the society in which they
were living.
Honneth may have used a psychological strategy for his theory of
recognitive justice, but such a strategy is not necessarily flawed. It is only
by taking social and moral psychology as the normative basis for a theory
of social justice and social criticism that an adequate criticism of contemporary injustice is possible. Normative theories cannot avoid a certain
degree of dependence on empirical psychologies if they are to be regarded
as valid. Indeed, it is true that subjective experience maybe an unreliable
source of justification, but it cannot be denied that it plays a crucial role
in better situating what justice is all about and why it is being fought.
Subjective experience of the misrecognized can serve as a corrective
against subjectless discourses of justice by insuring that the content of
such discourses does not become empty. Such discourses of justice ensure
that they do not constitute another source of alienation for the individual
(Kompridis 2007, 280-81). It is the individual him or herself who is the
end of all talk and walk of justice. However, this does not mean rejecting
subjectless discourses in favour of an exclusively subjective experiencebased account of justice. The former can also act as a corrective against
the latter in the sense that it helps the misrecognized make sense of their
suffering by referring to normative principles as status and parity of participation. This leads me to my next point.
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VI. RE-DEFINING THE PUBLICITY CRITERION

To a certain extent, I agree with Frasers view that publicity is an important criterion of justice, particularly on the issue of misrecognition. But
her swift judgment that the notion of recognitive justice, anchored in the
formation of intact personal identity, fails the publicity criterion of justice
unreasonably nips it in the bud. To me, such an approach of recognitive
justice is not bereft of the resources that would enable it to be publicly
and objectively verified.
Generally, the publicity criterion states that a claim is considered
justified when it is publicly articulated, verified, and defended through the
process of discourse. As such, it is an important instrument for measuring
whether or not a particular claim meets the standard of objectivity. Some
political theorists are sceptical about the publicity criterion because it
assumes that individuals possess the voice to be able to participate in the
justificatory exercise. It fails to take into account the possibility that some
individuals are unable to equally participate in public discourse because
they do not have a voice ontologically and politically. What if a person
has been rendered voiceless both literally and figuratively? Sceptics also
argue that underlying the justificatory discourse are power relations that
put the voiceless and the powerless in a disadvantageous position. Their
more powerful, articulate interlocutors can easily and unjustly manipulate
and monopolize the discourse, relegating them further to the sidelines. In
other words, the major concern is that despite the attractiveness of the
publicity criterion, it cannot guarantee that in the process of justificatory
exercise it is the voice of the participant him or herself that is really speaking. Nor can it guarantee that the legitimate concerns of the less articulate
participant are actually heard.
However, while these concerns are to some extent valid, I do not
think that they are sufficient to completely dismiss the strategy of justificatory exercise, and ultimately the publicity criterion of justice. The challenge that needs to be faced is how to make such exercise fairer and more
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inclusive, so that the voiceless and the powerless are empowered to have
a voice. Applied to the issue of recognitive justice, this suggests that there
is a need to find a way through which the victims of injustice, those who
suffer from the debilitating impact of misrecognition, can confidently
articulate their suffering and concerns publicly. How?
One possibility may be to fashion a democratic or political communication that is not simply reducible to an exercise of argumentation. In
this instance, I want to introduce Iris Marion Youngs notion of the narrative or storytelling (2000, 70-77; 1996, 130-25). Young notes how in
contemporary times legal theorists and resistance movements have
increasingly used narrative as a means to achieve particular objectives
political or otherwise. For example, legal theorists have realized that narrative can be used to dispute the impartiality of the law (universality) and
to rehabilitate the significance of the particularity of experience (context)
to which the law should respond but often does not (Young 2000, 71).
Similarly, revolutionary leaders in South America have used their life stories to expose to the outside world the oppression of their own people
and the repression that they went through under their governments. In
Youngs view, implicit in these instances is the fact that political narrative,
not narrative for entertainment purposes, can actually serve as a means
to give voice to the voiceless, to publicly articulate their suffering. That
is to say, it can function as a bridge between the condition of being in
total silence with respect to their suffering and its public expression.
What is interesting to note here is that the meaning of narrative has
been recast as a source of truth claims. Contrary to the view aligned with
the rational-critical discourse camp, narrative or storytelling is not simply
made up of incoherent emotional outbursts that contain no relevance to
democratic communication. Rather, it serves as an important vehicle to
make a particular point, to convey a political message to the public. This
is particularly important to those who have been victims of injustice, as in
the case of the disrespected and humiliated, who might have no other way
of expressing their claims. There might be no available terms in normative
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discourse that can precisely capture their harrowing experience. Nevertheless, the question is: How far is the narrative sufficient to let others or the
public understand the predicament and claim of the narrator?
Young argues that the downside of the language of narrative is that,
by itself, it is insufficient to make the claims of individuals legitimate.
Claims expressed through narrative are not automatically legitimate just
because they have a narrative form. Narrativity by itself does not solve
the problem of adjudicating legitimate and illegitimate claims. Since it
continues to be particularistic, it still requires to be universalized so to
speak. It has to be transformed into something that others are able to
accept (Gutmann and Thompson 1997, 137). How can claims expressed
through narrative become political arguments about justice? How do we
move from narrativity to normativity?
There are two ways of going about this problem the easier and the
harder route respectively. Determining the legitimacy of claims made
through narrative may not be particularly complicated when there are
already established normative principles that guide moral judgment. All
that needs to be done is to identify which normative principle is supported
or violated by the claim in question. The difficulty arises when narrative
exposes a new situation, a new claim to which existing rules do not apply,
or which challenges the rules themselves. A case in point is how in the
1970s, at the least in the United States, sexual harassment of women did
not have a public and normative face, even when women constantly suffered in silence in their workplaces. The situation calls for the creation of
a different normative language. How can this be possibly achieved?
Contrary to the exercise of argumentation, the power of narrative
does not lie in reason and analysis, but in its ability to elicit sympathy and
compassion by appealing to peoples moral intuitions and imagination
(Smith 1998, 373-74). By doing so, narrative hopes to set into motion
personal moral reformation accomplished through a hermeneutic process.
The audience are moved to compare their own situation with that of the
narrators and eventually identify with the latters moral sentiments. In
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this case, the legitimacy of the claim somehow depends on how far it
evokes the moral instincts of the audience. Narrative influences moral
reasoning through an appeal to the emotive, non-cognitive bases of moral
judgment. Despite the attractiveness of this idea, this is not the path I am
inclined to take. One of its problems is that adjudication of the legitimacy
of claims has been reduced to a strictly personal matter, thereby completely displacing the central role of public verification in the democratic
process. Fortunately, Young provides an alternative way.
She admits the fact that those who have been wronged may not possess
the necessary language to express their suffering as injustice. Contrary to
the exercise of rational argumentation, those who suffer tell stories in narrative about their sense of being wronged. However, Young hopes that as
these stories are told by people publicly and repeatedly within groups and
between groups, the process of discursive reflection upon them can pave
the way for the development of normative language. This becomes the basis
for victims to name their injustice and to discover why they constitute an
injustice (Young 2000, 72-73). It is through dialogical deliberation on the
stories of suffering that normative language is developed. Hence, adjudicating whether stories of suffering constitute an injustice still lies in the domain
of deliberative democracy. The legitimacy of claims expressed through narrative is still determined through the process of public deliberation.
However, unlike the strictly rational interpretation of democratic
communication, whose major concern is to find the unforced force of
the better argument, discursive reflection informed by narrative is aimed
at bringing into the open different perspectives and to discover a way not
to shut them off just because they are different and irrational. As Lynn
Sanders puts it, narrative encourages the democratic consideration of the
worthiness of perspectives [which] may not be rooted in common ground
and not necessarily voiced in a calmly rational way (1997, 372). The goal
then of such public discussion is to make sure that those who are often
excluded are enabled to speak and those who mostly dominate learn to
hear others perspectives.
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Clearly, narrative per se will not legitimize claims of individuals. It is

only a means for them to publicly express their experience and claims. As
such, it does not replace deliberation. Narrative in its general form, nevertheless, serves an important function in normative political communication.
It facilitates a better understanding of the claims and experiences of others
who are situated differently, but who must be listened to in the name of
justice (Young 2000, 75). It reveals the normative starting points of individuals and groups the sources of their values, aspirations, and cultural
meanings, which can hopefully correct the prejudices of participants (2000,
76). As such, narrative enlarges thought, transforming the narrow thinking
of participants about a particular issue by taking into account the perspectives of others different from them. It is in this sense that narrative facilitates and motivates a fairer and more inclusive public deliberation.
Nevertheless, I find Youngs description of the relation between narrative language and normative language inadequate. She says that the former is not sufficient in itself to make the claims of individuals legitimate,
and as such, it requires to be transformed into a normative argument.
This seems to suggest the superiority of normativity, and that narrativity
is something that one has to get over in matters of justice. But I think
Young misses a crucial point here and paints a one-sided view of what
actually goes on when we talk about justice. Achieving normative principles about justice is not the end of the game, but only one of its
moments. Since normative language is abstract and formal, it continues
to require new stories of the moral suffering of individuals that will give
it some content and context. For example, the rule that sexual harassment
of women is downright immoral and illegal would have become meaningless and ossified if there were no actual cases or stories of sexual harassment. The latter provide the context to which the said rule can be applied
and through which its reinterpretation can effectively take place. Normative language continues to be informed by narrative language, and viceversa. Their relation is much more dynamic than Young intends to depict
it.
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The important question here, however, is whether or not Honneth

can and should endorse the inclusion of the publicity criterion in his
account of recognitive justice. The worry is that doing so could lead him
back to Habermass fascination with linguistic conditions for reaching
understanding free from domination. Honneth has painstakingly demonstrated that Habermass project is problematic because, as pointed out, it
loses sight of the core moral experience of subjects central to any discourse of emancipation. It ignores the lethal effects of the violation of
identity claims on persons. Yet, I think the publicity criterion is a bitter
pill that Honneth is compelled to swallow.
One of the dangers of recognitive justice modelled on the formation
of intact personal identity is that it is susceptible to the subjective assessment of harms based on individual beliefs and desires. As such, it may
lack the necessary resources to deal with malevolent claimants and false
consciousness (Zurn 2003, 532). This point is crucial because, being
attached to psychic injury, Honneths model may unwittingly justify struggles for recognition waged by ultranationalist or fundamentalist groups
who are only inspired by hate, racism, or fanaticism. Just as new social
movements, these groups could be thought to have engaged in recognition struggles on the basis of their desire for positive expression of their
personality, or for greater inclusion in society. Moreover, if the basis of
political resistance is the ontological, ethical, and psychological effects of
disrespect, it could open the door to legitimating violence as a political
instrument. The experience of social disrespect could be used by militaristic groups who, in Paul Ricoeurs words, are only motivated by the
lust for power and the fascination of violence (2005, 218 and 246).
On a short note, it might be worth mentioning that Honneth leaves
entirely open whether social groups employ material, symbolic, or passive
force to publicly articulate and demand restitution for the disrespect and
violation that they experience (1995b, 163; italics mine). Because of these
worries, Honneths notion of recognitive justice might find itself in a
hornets nest of how to adjudicate legitimate and illegitimate claims (and
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means) of recognition. For him to escape from this potential difficulty,

what he must do is adopt the publicity criterion of justice.
Does the inclusion of narrativity as publicity criterion not mar the
coherence of Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice? I
do not think it does. Instead, it heightens the normative dimension of his
theory of justice. By integrating narrativity, the normative categories of
love, equality, and merit as principles of justice are given a human face,
i.e. they do not remain abstract concepts. Interestingly, there is a second
dimension of this relationship. The categories of love, equality, and merit
can potentially provide the narrative with a normative dimension. If
Youngs concern is that narrative language is insufficient by itself and
needs to be transformed into normative language, Honneths recognitive
principles of justice can readily and effectively fill this gap. Again, what
has to be noted here is that the narrative and the normative mutually
enhance each other. The story of suffering, pain, and injustice of the
victim is accommodated in the public arena that recognizes love, equality,
and merit. Social institutions are thus arranged according to these categories that recognize individuals who have a name and a story, as well as an
individual personality to claim it and a voice to narrate it.
VII. CONCLUSION
Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice states that social
justice is concerned with how social institutions establish and maintain the
social preconditions for the formation of intact personal identity. The aim
of a theory of justice is to enable individuals to attain self-realization without necessarily specifying what the content is of such an ideal; hence, the
phrase formal conception of ethical life. Calling his account a plural
theory, he proposes three principles of justice, namely love, equality, and
merit on the basis of the three forms of inter-subjective recognition. The
attempt to ground justice in the experience of impaired subjectivity (or
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positively: the ideal of self-realization) catapults Honneth into a highly

contentious position. Fraser alleges that Honneths theory is guilty of the
psychologization of injustice. It has been shown, nevertheless, that Frasers dismissal of moral suffering as the basis of a theory of justice is questionable. Deriving political conclusions about justice from moral-psychological premises is not necessarily erroneous. Doing so affords the notion
of social justice greater normative bite. Finally, it has been shown that such
a notion of justice fails the publicity criterion. What has to be done is to
find a way through which the public articulation of the experience of
injustice and suffering is made fairer and more inclusive by introducing
the language of narrative. The publicity criterion is something that Honneth must accommodate. Doing otherwise precludes the kind of discriminating recognition that struggles for recognition desperately require.
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On Axel Honneths Theory of

xel Honneth has systematically rehabilitated the Hegelian and Fichtean

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 18, no. 1(2011): 79-106.

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES MARCH

II. MORAL SUFFERING AS POINT OF DEPARTURE