Reconocimiento y Psicoanálisis

The Philosophy
of Recognition
The Philosophy
of Recognition
Historical and
Contemporary Perspectives
Edited by
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch
and Christopher F. Zurn
L EXINGTON B OOKS
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The philosophy of recognition : historical and contemporary perspectives / [edited

by] Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch and Christopher F. Zurn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-4425-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7391-4427-5 (electronic)
1. Recognition (Philosophy) I. Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph. II. Zurn,
Christopher F., 1966–
B105.R23.P55 2010
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Contents
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
10 Work and Recognition: A Redefinition 223

Axel Honneth
11 Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory: Saving Marx
by Recognition? 241
Emmanuel Renault
12 Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a
Theory of Recognition? 257
13 Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical
Theory: A Defense of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition 285
Jean-Philippe Deranty
14 On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard
and Mutuality 319
Arto Laitinen
15 Making the Best of What We Are: Recognition as an
Ontological and Ethical Concept 343
Heikki Ikäheimo
Index 369
About the Contributors 375
1
Introduction
Christopher F. Zurn
The theory of recognition is now a well-established and mature research

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

antecedents stretching back from the classical Greek understanding of
friendship, to the reanimation of such themes in Renaissance humanism,
on through the Enlightenment-era scrutiny of social passions rendered
by various forms of sentiments theory, and culminating in Rousseau’s
subtle accounts of the essential sociality of truly human nature. Despite
this rich philosophical history, contemporary recognition theory has more
frequently understood itself as rooted in German idealism, especially in
the work of Fichte and Hegel concerning the ways in which structures of
intersubjectivity are constitutively and regulatively related to the devel-
opment of subjectivity. Hegel’s analysis—or rather, his various differing
analyses—of intersubjective recognition in particular have been reworked
and put to use by quite disparate traditions of philosophical, social scien-
tific, and especially political thought over the course of two hundred years.
Not all of these descendents explicitly employ the word ‘recognition’ or
its cognates. But in a broad sense, one can see that they are employing a
family of ideas, rooted in Hegel’s insights concerning the irreplaceability
of intersubjectivity for the human form of life, in order to redirect and
reshape the fundamental questions of their respective disciplines and re-
search traditions.
These insights were influentially taken up and reframed in Marx’s early
analysis of the identity-constitutive character of our social relations in work
contexts, and the deformations in those processes caused by the capitalist
organization of productive relations. The exploration of such themes—es-
pecially the crucial concept of alienation—were central for the development
of Western Marxism in the early decades of the twentieth century. On this
side of the Atlantic, and in quite different intellectual conditions, one can
detect an inchoate but unmistakable imprint of British Hegelianism on
the development of American pragmatism, particularly where it sought to
employ socio-psychological evidence to support distinctly intersubjectivist
theories of perception, knowledge, emotions, actions, socialization, and the
development of a sense of self. From a quite different direction, and with
different theoretical aims in view, rethinking Hegel’s account of the master-
slave dialectic inspired a generation of French phenomenologists to take
Introduction 3
up a series of questions concerning intersubjective recognition for the con-

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

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

plishment, at the same time as the bases of social esteem were separated out
from the political and legal structures that were increasingly relied upon to
secure equal respect among persons considered as autonomous. These vari-
ous changes can be understood as developmentally progressive both with
respect to the individualization of social esteem and the egalitarianization
of social respect.
Like various forms of political consequentialism, recognition theory em-
phasizes the importance of promoting individual well-being, specifically in
the sense of individual development. Yet the philosophy of recognition is
more akin to capability approaches than to traditional welfare economics
in rejecting aggregative measures of value and their typical operationaliza-
tion in welfare metrics tied to simple revealed preferences or market prices.
While, therefore, the justificatory structure of recognition theory is similar to
liberal perfectionism or the capabilities approach to promoting freedom, its
topical concerns are, once again, broader than individual autonomy alone,
comprising as well concerns for basic psychic integrity and qualitatively rich
self-esteem. Because of these broader concerns, it has proven to be a para-
digm particularly well-suited to analyzing political struggles over the extent
of sex-specific injustices associated with the differential allocation of care re-
sponsibilities and unpaid household labor. In addition, as this volume dem-
onstrates, much recent work in recognition theory has been concerned with
rethinking the justificatory basis of the modern welfare state and exploring
new and alternative conceptualizations of the interrelations between capital-
ist economic systems, redistributive state policies, and a society’s underlying
principles and practices of productivity, merit, and remuneration.
As already intimated, in rejecting hypothetical contractarianism in favor
of situated historical analyses of changing forms of life, the philosophy of
recognition shares affinities with many of the methodological and analytic
concerns of contemporary neo-Aristotelianism most evident in political
communitarianism: the focus on a thoroughly social conception of the self;
the concomitant emphasis on relatively thick conceptions of ethical life
and competing horizons of value; the concern to broaden philosophical
analysis beyond a liberal focus on individual rights and autonomy to en-
compass the political and social conditions of the good life and individual
self-realization as well; the move away from philosophical justification in
abstract terms drawn from pure practical reason and towards more substan-
tive critique in terms of norms and ideals drawn immanently from existing
forms of life; and so on. Accordingly, recognition theory has played a large
role in some of the same debates where communitarianism has also been
influential: struggles concerning the proper relations between religious
understanding and state policies and forms of social organization and
power, debates over multiethnic and multicultural policies and practices,
Introduction 7
and expressions of critical concern about the excessive individualism fos-

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

ment of the recognition paradigm is that we can understand the historical
changes from traditional, to feudal, and to bourgeois-capitalist forms of
social organization as the progressive differentiation of three recognition
spheres according to their historically and socially specific institutionaliza-
tion of three different principles of recognition. The intimate sphere of the
family is first differentiated from a general public sphere according to the
recognition principles of care and love, whereby the mutual recognition of
persons is tailored to their particular affective, bodily, and conative needs.
Subsequently, the feudal fusion of the legal status of persons with their
predetermined location in the estate order of society is split apart. On the
one hand, a distinct sphere of legal rights and duties for persons qua legal
subjects develops that enables the mutual recognition of subjects according
to the universalized principle of equal respect. On the other hand, the dif-
ferential esteem that was previously fused with one’s place in a naturalized
status order is separated off from legal relations, and tied, rather, to the
social recognition of one’s individual achievements. Specifically, bourgeois-
capitalist forms of society connect the evaluation of one’s capabilities and
accomplishments to a specific interpretation of the achievement principle:
namely, that the appropriate degree of one’s merited esteem can be evalu-
ated in terms of the differential evaluative scheme of the division of labor.
Differential esteem recognition then is taken to simply track the quantita-
tive market valuation of one’s monetary and remunerative worth in the
sphere of civil society. Needless to say, this appears to be an ideologically
distorted interpretation of the achievement principle due to the specifi-
cally capitalist organization of the sphere of esteem. One’s capabilities and
accomplishments are measured only according to economic metrics, and
what gets counted as work, which forms of work are considered valuable,
whose work is systematically denigrated, or worse, made invisible, and so
on, are all largely dependent on asymmetrical and hierarchical relations of
production.
With such social-philosophical concerns, it is perhaps no surprise that the

theory of recognition integrates well with the concerns of critical theory,
that is, of an interdisciplinary social theory aiming to foster the emanci-
patory impulses it finds both explicitly and inchoately expressed in the
very society it is analyzing. I believe that it is on this terrain that some of
the most exciting—but also most unsettled and problematic—issues have
recently arisen for recognition theory. Let me explain. In critical theory’s
specific incarnations centered around the Institut für Sozialforschung in
Introduction 9
Frankfurt, there was always a more or less common and well-understood

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

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

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

from ecology to genetic engineering—recognition theory cannot provide
all of the conceptual tools we need today to come to terms with the ethical
dilemmas we face.
In his “Recognition, the Right, and the Good” Terry Pinkard takes on the
pressing question of the priority of the right over the good endorsed by
Kant and contemporaries influenced by him, by exploring the relationship
between intersubjective recognition and the good. Pinkard contends that
recognition is not just one good among others, or even a condition for the
realization of some other goods, but is rather itself world-disclosing and
constitutive of human agency. He explores three central theses advanced by
Hegel and argues that they give the most convincing answers to contempo-
rary questions in action theory, the philosophy of mind, and social philoso-
phy. First, Hegel’s dialectical metaphysics of agency can be understood by
seeing that, although agency is a normative matter of responding appropri-
ately to reasons, what counts as responding appropriately is itself socially
constituted through social practices. For instance, even as we perceive goods
in the world which spur us to action, those goods can themselves become
the objects of practical reflection and thereby can be transformed into new
goods to be perceived and responded to in the world. Second, goods are
essentially social facts which are instituted and sustained by social relations
of recognition. Social recognition practices thus not only disclose the world
of what is worthwhile and best for us, they are also constitutive of our
practical agency insofar as we orient our actions to those goods. Third, if
our social practices of recognition do not institute and sustain appropriate
goods, then recognition is experienced as alienating rather than reconcilia-
tory. Recognition, on Pinkard’s reading then, is important from the point of
view not only of human agency but also of the prospects for being at home
in the modern world.
In his contribution, Daniel Brudney argues that the 1844 Marx had
a specific conception of a well-ordered society, and shows how the true
communist society Marx then envisioned is essentially bound up with a
specific social recognition practice that could sustain the self-worth of its
members. Communist self-realization is self-realization through others,
that is, through a specific practice of social recognition of individuals’ pro-
ductive activities. However, in contrast to most accounts of recognition that
historically have focused on respect-based recognition, Marx (like Mill and
others in the sentimentalist tradition) focuses on concern-based recogni-
tion. Hence one central part of the paper is devoted to explicating precisely
what kind of concern-based recognition Marx envisioned, explaining how
that set of recognition practices could fundamentally transform individu-
als’ senses of themselves and their places in a community, and considering
whether that form of recognition is up to the task Marx set for it of over-
Introduction 15
coming the alienating effects of socially enforced egotism. Another central

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

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

fied form, material first published as part of my “Schwerpunkt: Anerkennung,” a
guest editor’s introduction to a special section on recognition, in the Deutsche Zeit-
schrift für Philosophie, Vol. 53, no. 3 (2005): 377–87. My thanks to Hans-Christoph
Schmidt am Busch for very helpful comments on this version.
2
Rousseau and the Human Drive for
Recognition (Amour Propre)
Frederick Neuhouser
Although it is seldom realized, Rousseau is the first thinker in the history of

philosophy to place the striving for recognition from others at the very core
of human nature1 and, so, to emphasize it as a central concern of moral,
social, and political philosophy. What is more, the views of Kant, Hegel,
and all later theorists of recognition can be regarded as elaborations or revi-
sions of Rousseau’s position that operate within the same basic framework
set out in the Discourse on Inequality, Emile, and the Social Contract. Indeed,
it is no exaggeration to say that, like the relation later philosophers have to
Plato, nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophies of recognition are
essentially a series of footnotes to Rousseau.
In this essay I attempt to outline the main contours of Rousseau’s
reflections on the human drive for recognition—or, as he calls it, the
passion of amour propre. My aim here is not to examine the details of
Rousseau’s complex view2 but to present a more general picture of its
principal dimensions and of how they fit together to constitute a compel-
ling and comprehensive philosophy of recognition. More specifically, I
shall address four questions fundamental to Rousseau’s theory: 1) What
kind of passion is amour propre? 2) Why is it the principal source of the
many evils that have appeared to many—to Hobbes and Augustine, for
example—as intrinsic to the human condition? 3) What social and po-
litical measures can remedy these evils? 4) Why does the only solution
to these evils—the development and exercise of human reason—depend
on the proper cultivation of amour propre rather than on its suppression
or extirpation?
21
22 Frederick Neuhouser
I. THE NATURE OF AMOUR PROPRE
As its name indicates, amour propre is a species of self-love—a love of what

is “proper” to (or belongs to) oneself. “Self-love” in this context means
self-interestedness: to love oneself is to care about one’s own good and to
be disposed to pursue whatever one takes that good to be. Yet clearly amour
propre is something more specific than self-interestedness in general, for
Rousseau makes a point of distinguishing it from another form of self-love,
amour de soi (or, equivalently, amour de soi-même). Since it is in distinguish-
ing these two forms of self-love that Rousseau comes closest to defining
amour propre, it is with this contrast that we must begin:
It is important not to confuse amour propre and love of oneself [amour de 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
same measure—then the standing I seek is comparative (defined in relation

to others) but not superior; in other words, equal standing is still standing
relative to others.
This feature of amour propre contrasts with the nonrelative character of
amour de soi in that the value of the goods sought by the latter is indepen-
dent of how much or how little of the same is possessed by others. If we re-
call that amour de soi is directed at self-preservation, the point of the contrast
becomes clear: the extent to which my food, my shelter, and my sleep satisfy
my bodily needs is independent of how well others fare with respect to their
needs. In the case of amour propre, in contrast, my satisfaction depends on
how the quantity and quality of the esteem I receive from others compares
with the quantity and quality of the esteem they enjoy.
Amour propre is relative to other subjects in the further sense that, since
the good it seeks is esteem from others, its satisfaction requires—indeed,
consists in—the opinions of others.6 Amour propre is relative in this second
sense because its aim—recognition from others—is inherently social in na-
ture. Here, too, amour propre contrasts with amour de soi: since the opinion
of one’s fellow beings is not constitutive of the goods sought by amour de
soi, it does not directly and necessarily tie us to other subjects, as does amour
propre. Of course, in any but the most unusual of human conditions, satisfy-
ing the needs of self-preservation will also require, as a means to achieving
one’s ends, cooperation with others. Even so, the good one hopes to achieve
through such cooperation—if it is truly an end of amour de soi—remains
external, and hence only contingently related, to one’s relations to others.
Finally, amour propre is not only relative but also “artificial” (factice). In
this respect, too, it contrasts with amour de soi, a “natural” sentiment. It is
important to note that when Rousseau calls amour propre artificial, he does
not mean that the drive for recognition is a merely accidental feature of hu-
man reality or that humans would be better off without it; he means, rather,
that amour propre is an inherently social phenomenon and that because of
this the particular forms it takes are highly variable and dependent on the
kind of social world its possessors inhabit. Although humans cannot exist
as such without amour propre, how it manifests itself in the world depends
on the social institutions that shape it.
The considerable malleability of amour propre is a thesis of crucial impor-
tance to Rousseau, and it must not be lost sight of when one encounters
passages, such as the one cited above, that appear to ascribe a fixed and
pernicious character to amour propre. When Rousseau says that amour propre
“inclines each individual to think more highly of himself than of anyone
else [and] inspires in men all the evils they do to one another,” “inclines”
and “inspires” must be read as “disposes” or “makes possible,” not as “com-
pels” or “necessitates.” As I have already noted, Rousseau does think that
amour propre is the principal source of the evils that beset human beings, but
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
is, in some meaningful sense, a “nobody.” The kind of existence at issue

here is nicely captured by N. J. H. Dent’s description of Rousseau’s idea of
moral presence and its relation to amour propre:
[Being recognized by others] is testimony to personal power and force in en-

counter and contention with other persons. The display of personal power is a
proof to oneself of one’s possession of real, effective existence as having living
presence . . . in . . . the world of other humans. We crave, as the condition of
having any sense of ourselves as living, vital, existences at all, proofs of our
reality; this we secure only by enforcing ourselves upon our surroundings such
that we experience a world showing the effects of our presence.9
If, generally speaking, the capacity to produce effects in the world is the sign
of a being’s reality, then being recognized by others, especially when 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
II. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE PRINCIPAL

SOURCE OF HUMAN ILLS
Rousseau’s announced project in the Discourse on Inequality is to uncover

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

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

be subject to the temptation to let his actions be dictated by the values and
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
Existing outside oneself certainly sounds like a species of alienation, but

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

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

anyone else’s. In the true republic, finding this form of recognition depends
not on the arbitrary deeds and dispositions of other individuals but on the
impersonal and more reliable guarantee furnished by the rule of law itself.
There is yet a third species of recognition provided by the republic: the
recognition of an individual as a bearer of rights. The idea here is that citi-
zens of the legitimate state must have a recognized standing beyond those
of “equal subject” and “equal sovereign.” In a republic, laws also recognize
citizens as free agents (or persons), and the importance of their individual
agency is expressed in a system of established rights21 that impose con-
straints on permissible legislation and assure each person a determinate
and equal sphere of “civil freedom” (SC, I.8.ii) in matters where the general
will is silent. The rights associated with civil freedom are essentially guar-
antees that others—both the state and other individuals—will not interfere
with one’s own freely chosen actions, including the free disposition of one’s
property, provided those actions are consistent with the general will’s defin-
ing end (securing the conditions under which the fundamental interests of
all citizens can be satisfied). In this third form of legal recognition what is at
issue is not that everyone’s interests count the same but rather that a certain
fundamental interest of each person—the freedom to author one’s private
actions to the extent that such freedom is consistent with the freedom of
all—is accorded an essential, nonfungible value, which amounts to a rec-
ognition of every individual as having the status of a free and inviolable
end in itself.
Insofar as Emile forms part of Rousseau’s systematic treatment of amour
propre, its aim is to investigate how the right kind of domestic education
can prevent unhealthy forms of amour propre from gaining a foothold in
the character of a young child. Emile’s education can be divided into three
phases. First, in Books I–III, Emile is raised exclusively “for himself” (E,
39/OC 4, 248), or “in his relations with things” (E, 214/OC 4, 493). This
means that his education takes place outside society and is devoted to the
appropriate formation and expression of amour de soi (and to preserving for
as long as possible the dormancy of amour propre), all in accordance with
the “natural” ideals of individual integrity and self-sufficiency (or indepen-
dence). In the second phase—in Book IV—Emile’s education is continued
with one crucial difference: the onset of puberty, with its awakening of
sexual passion, makes it impossible to prolong amour propre’s dormancy.
With the latter stirred, Emile can no longer be content with existing only
for himself, and his education—still carried out in isolation from all social
relations—must concentrate on forming his amour propre (and pity) so that,
once he finally enters the institutions of marriage and the state, he will
possess the psychological resources he needs in order to exist “for others”
while also preserving, as far as possible, the integrity and self-sufficiency he
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-
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
fortune (E, 245/OC 4, 536–37). To believe oneself worthy of one’s happier

position is to be fundamentally mistaken about one’s true “rank” in the
human species. Such an overestimation of self represents a serious moral
and political danger, for it is incompatible with sincerely and reliably tak-
ing up the perspective on others that morality and political justice require,
namely, regarding all individuals as equally worthy of happiness (in the
sense that each person’s fundamental interests must count for as much as
anyone else’s).
IV. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE SOLUTION TO ITS OWN ILLS
The most innovative aspect of Rousseau’s theory of recognition is his claim

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

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

of one’s own desires or beliefs.27 This is to say that, although the source of
many dangers, the pursuit of public esteem is also reason’s training ground,
where each human being receives her first lesson in the hard truth that
taking something to be good is not sufficient to make it so and that her
will is beholden to something beyond her own subjective preferences and
beliefs.
Beyond this, though, amour propre prefigures the standpoint of rea-
son even more precisely by locating the source of the constraints on an
individual’s will not in the world of things but in the judgments of other
subjects. Amour propre does more than simply teach human beings to
judge themselves from a perspective that transcends their own particular
desires; it also makes the opinions of other subjects the authority of that
perspective. This can be understood as the passions’ way of anticipating
reason’s claim that objectivity in the ethical realm has its source in the
agreement of rational agents (subject, of course, to the appropriate con-
straints)—that, in other words, the standard for what is right resides out-
side the consciousness of each individual in a kind of (ideal) consensus
among rational subjects.
The richness of Rousseau’s account of the importance for human affairs
of the drive for recognition extends well beyond the points I have been able
to sketch in these few pages. My hope is that even this bare outline of his
position suffices to show that the roots of much subsequent theorizing on
the nature and value of recognition are to be found in Rousseau’s reflec-
tions on amour propre and that, even today, we can profit from studying
those reflections more seriously than philosophers thus far have done.
NOTES
1. When Rousseau denies in Part I of the Discourse on Inequality that amour propre
is part of “original” human nature, he means only that it is an inherently social
passion, not a possible feature of human individuals “in themselves” (apart from
their relations to others). In this sense, “human nature” refers to the basic capacities
and drives that nature bestows on human beings qua individuals, independently of
whatever social relations they may have. In ascribing amour de soi, pity, perfectibility,
and free will to our original nature (DI, 139–41/OC 3, 140–42), Rousseau means
only to claim that they, in contrast to amour propre, are qualities individuals could in
principle possess on their own, even were they to exist outside all society (which, for
Rousseau, no real human beings ever do). It is only in a more expanded sense of the
term, then, that amour propre can be ascribed to “human nature:” it is a fundamental
motivating force of human behavior that is active in some form whenever humans
exist as social beings (as they always do).
2. I do this in Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rational-

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

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

concept whose realization is the consequence of normatively governed
modes of interaction, such theories are regarded as paradigmatic versions
of idealism. If the being of objects depends, at least in part, upon how they
are cognitively taken or practically treated, then those objects as empirical
appearances in space and time are, in some sense, mind-dependent. Recog-
nitive versions of idealism have the benefit over traditional Kantian-style
transcendental idealism of locating the idealizing element in the social
practices of concrete communities rather than in the solitary (transcenden-
tal acts of) consciousness of abstract individuals.
The enduring appeal of recognitive-type idealism is that it contains ample
resources for securing the normative dimensions of human life against the
onslaught of disenchantment and skepticism by demonstrating how the
very idea of a world of things and persons emerges only through how it ap-
pears, and how it appears is constituted in part by how it is taken (cognized,
intended, acted upon, interpreted, formed, etc.).1 Conversely, if the price
paid for the securing of the normative is tearing human beings out of their
natural setting, out of their place as products of evolution, and out of the
thick materiality of everyday existence, then that price is too high. One might
phrase the complaint against recognitive idealism this way: in claiming that
being human is a status which is bestowed by others, one is simultaneously
claiming that the paradigmatic form of harming another is not recognizing
her. Such a claim is perverse: the paradigmatic form of human harm is harm
to the body, the infliction of pain and suffering through the maltreatment
of the body, or worse, killing. While brutalizing and injuring another’s body
might rightly be said to be a mode or manifestation of not recognizing her,
the harm done is the intentional causing of bodily pain and suffering, not
simply nonrecognition (being snubbed or cursed or insulted or dishon-
ored). Even if this claim requires more complexity, the general thesis seems
unavoidable: human beings are also natural creatures who are capable of
suffering terrible physical harm and whose lives may be violently brought
to an end. Unless recognitive theory integrates bodily habitation into its ac-
count, it will falsify huge stretches of human experience.
Fichte’s theory of right aims at an integration of the recognitive and the
bodily material. The opening arguments of Foundations forward two cen-
tral theses: first, a “finite rational being cannot ascribe to itself a free ef-
ficacy in the sensible world without also ascribing such efficacy to others,
and thus without also presupposing the existence of other finite rational
beings outside of itself” (29)2—think of this as the commencement of
Fichte’s transcendental solution to the problem of other minds.3 Second is
the thesis that a rational being cannot posit himself as an individual—the
object of the first thesis—without ascribing to himself a material body,
where to so ascribe a body to oneself requires simultaneously positing
it as “standing under the influence of a person outside him” (58). The
Recognition and Embodiment: Fichte’s Materialism 49
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.
RIGHTS, PROTO-RIGHTS, NORMS
There is a puzzle concerning what Fichte’s conception of rights is truly

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

only if I am an individual and only if I also posit such a sphere and each object
50 J. M. Bernstein
within that sphere as an individual as well . . . There can be no individual un-

less there at least two of them. The conditions which make individuality possible are
called “rights.” It is absolutely impossible for me to attribute a right to myself
without attributing it to a being outside of myself, because it is absolutely
impossible for me to posit myself as an individual without positing a being
outside of myself as an individual.4
Fichte is here beginning to explore the thought that actual self-conscious-

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

to embodiment, are products of childhood development.
It is evident that throughout the early paragraphs of Foundations Fichte
has been interpreting the necessary conditions for the possibility of self-
consciousness as involving some form of genetic analysis. That the analysis
requires a genetic dimension follows from the role of the summons: an
individual can ascribe self-consciousness to itself only by having its indi-
viduality recognized—summoned—by other beings whom the recognized
subject in turn recognizes to be free. Demonstrating the necessary condi-
tions for free agency thus involves demonstrating what conditions must be
realized for free agency to be actual, that is, what conditions must appear,
must come to be, in order for free agency to manifest itself. Individuality, as
the actuality of self-consciousness, comes to be. The best evidence for this
claim is that the human infant is born prematurely and becomes a person.
Fichte assumes that evidence in his analysis (76). My suggestion, then, is
that we take Fichte at his word, interpreting and reconstructing his argu-
ment as sketching out an ideal process of socialization that is targeted on
the child acquiring a minimum conception of individuality, a conception
that could be understood as indifferent to the actual ideals and values of
different societies while nonetheless being sufficient to underwrite the nor-
mative structures necessary to preserve the minimum core of individuality
in any conceivable society.8 Let us call such norms “proto-rights.”
Proto-rights are obviously not political rights or explicit moral norms or
actual values, although they may overlap with any of these; rather, they are
the normative scaffolding that emerges in developmental sequences termi-
nating in individuals capable of acting in the world and interacting with
other individuals in socially standard ways.9 Behind the notion of proto-
rights lies the thought that the structures of right through which individu-
als are recognized as individuals track the functional imperatives necessary
in order for infants to become individuals. In this respect, one might say
that transcendental necessity tracks functional necessity. But to say that
transcendental necessity tracks the functional imperatives of an ideal pro-
cess of socialization is not to reduce norms to functional demands. On the
contrary, and this is patently Fichte’s quasi-naturalist thought, his way of
connecting idealism and realism, norms (actual structures of right, however
implicit or explicit) are the way in which functional imperatives become
satisfied for free and rational beings whose modes of interaction with the
world, with things and other rational beings, are not governed by instinct
but by rule-governed, purposive actions. Proto-rights are value-contoured
modes of other-regarding attitudes (sufficient for guiding action) that
condense the series of conditions necessary for becoming a self-moving,
independent being capable of interaction with others and objects in a man-
ner sufficient to meet survival imperatives as a member of a community
of agents. Proto-rights as the normative grid that must be satisfied by any

actual society capable of reproducing itself, that is, capable of reproducing
the life of self-determining individuals, can thus be understood as the tran-
scendental outline of the recognitive structures making human life possible.
I take it, this is what Fichte intends when he reprises his defense of right
thus: “. . . it has been shown that a certain concept [X] . . . is necessary for the
rational being as such . . . This X must be operative wherever human beings
live together, and it must be expressed and have some designation in their
language. It is operative on its own, without any help from the philosopher,
who deduces this X with difficulty” (49–50). As this passage makes evident,
Fichte intends transcendental right to be something that is uncovered or
discovered as necessarily underlying all actual viable social worlds. Hence,
its deduction should demonstrate why proto-rights have the role they do,
and not why they ought to be adopted or obeyed or valued.
If I am right about how Fichte is connecting the transcendental and the
genetic, and hence about the way in which transcendental rights function
as proto-rights, then the bulk of the objections to Fichte’s deductive strategy
are answerable. Of course, in claiming that proto-rights are a transcenden-
tal grid representing the minimum necessary conditions for individuality
empirically and normatively for any possible society, I am simultaneously
claiming that Fichte’s actual way of connecting transcendental right and
political right is insufficient—the connection is much looser than he en-
gineers. On my account, his theory of political right would become the
demonstration that the rights of the liberal state are the fullest expression
and the most adequate means “for the realization and flourishing”10 of the
minimum conception of individuality developed in the transcendental
portion of his argument. It is doubtful that his concrete conception of the
liberal state can stand up to that claim; but that is an argument for another
occasion.
INDIVIDUALITY (I):
THE SOCIAL CONSTITUTION OF FREEDOM
The object of §§1–9 of Foundations is the transcendental elaboration of

the minimum necessary conditions for individuality—and not moral au-
tonomy or self-realization or self-perfection. Individuality is a more modest
concept of the subject compared to these others. Again, Fichte is commit-
ted to arguing that there is a minimum conception of subject that captures
what any society capable of reproducing itself must ensure, and it is this
subject whose so-called “external” or “formal” freedom is guaranteed by so-
cietal norms: “the concept of right is the concept of the necessary relation of
free beings to one another” (9; emphasis mine), so those relations among
56 J. M. Bernstein
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
oneself only in relation to other individuals, then, a rational being cannot

posit itself as a self-consciousness without “positing itself as an individual,
as one among several rational beings it assumes to exist outside itself” (9).
If we are individuals only among other individuals who possess the same
power to bring about effects in the world, then individuals share a world in
which they are capable of “influencing, mutually disturbing, and impeding
one another” (10); but if freedom exists under conditions of mutual influ-
ence, then, sixth, we can act freely only if each contains her efficacy within
certain limits, that is, acts in ways that essentially acknowledge others’
freedom. This is Fichte’s thin concept of the person or individual; it is what
the deductions of §§1–7 aim to establish in relation to its normative cor-
relative, transcendental, or original right, that is, the genetic path through
which one becomes aware of oneself as an individual can only occur in tan-
dem with the normative recognitions through which one is granted or given
or bestowed that status. Individuality is, indissolubly, something achieved
and something normatively constituted. One might say that it is precisely
the indissolubility of the two sides of individuality—those features and
capacities one must possess, and those norms that secure the continued
exercise and possession of those features and capacities—that is the object
of Fichte’s presentation. Because individuality emerges only in relation to
these normative guarantees, then one can also argue that demonstrating
indissolubility of powers and norms involves eliciting the emergence or
installation of normativity in general, of how norms begin to emerge in the
regulation of human interactions.
Let us genetically examine some of the central steps in the becoming of
the individual. In order to be a free and rational being one must be a self-
determining being; hence, the self is defined by its activity. But the self is
finite. Finite beings can have only limited or bounded objects that are, by
definition, independent of that activity. To be a finite, active being is to in-
habit a world which cannot be posited by the rational being as such. All this
belongs to pure transcendental enquiry; the empirical question that arises is:
under what conditions can this finite being become aware of its free agency?
Because the self’s activity must be limited by an independent world, then
self-awareness becomes possible only through activity that can transform
or alter the world. Activity that can transform the world involves more than
physical interaction with the world; it involves having a concept in mind and
acting in accordance with that concept, and then perceiving that the world
has altered in accordance with the intended action. So it is not a mere matter
of the infant kicking and the rattle rattling; rather, at some point, through
the experience of kicking then rattling and the growing capacity to control its
bodily movements, the infant must become aware that it is its kicking that
has brought about the rattling, and that it can intend to bring about such
rattling through kicking, and then does so. Self-consciousness of agency is
58 J. M. Bernstein
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
no elaboration of agency in the sense already established can bootstrap the

individual into full self-consciousness. But from this it follows that self-
consciousness in its full sense is non-derivable: one cannot, in fact, generate
a conception of self-consciousness from anything else or by adding together
a bundle of lesser materials. In the same way, then, that transcendental
self-consciousness is irreducible, concrete empirical self-consciousness is
irreducible; human self-consciousness is sui generis.13
Self-consciousness cannot be transcendentally deduced or causally pro-
duced; it is transferred from one individual to another. The presumption
here is that in order for an individual to be fully self-aware, it must become
conscious of itself; in order to become conscious of itself, it must become
an object of its own awareness. The reason why bootstrapping through
interaction with ordinary material objects is insufficient for this purpose is
that it does not supply conditions for observing oneself from a perspective
that is not identical with agent identity. Self-consciousness requires a per-
spective on free, self-determining agency that the individual can possess but
which is not reducible to the self-intimating, tacit self-knowledge of agency
itself. Fichte presumes that for an agent to be self-aware as object requires
that an individual first actually be the object of another’s attention. But it
must be the object of another’s attention as self-active subject. That, so to
speak, is the puzzle: how can an object of awareness be simultaneously, as
object, subject? The scene of this transforming transference in which the
“thread of self-consciousness” is passed from one to another is a “summons
[Aufforderung].” If the summons is to be the new fact of reason, then it must
be that through which the neophyte becomes aware of its freedom. And this
is just how Fichte conceives the scene of instruction occurring: the beginner
experiences a sensation coming from without:
The object is not comprehended, and cannot be other than as a bare summons
calling upon the subject to act. Thus as surely as the subject comprehends the
object, so too does it possess the concept of its own freedom and self-activity,
and indeed as a concept given to it from the outside. It acquires the concept
of its own free efficacy, not as something that exists in the present moment . . .
but rather as something that ought to exist in the future. (32)
Recall that what is here presented as a single episode is in reality a process,

the education of a human to its humanity. As an episode, it condenses the
complex set of eventualities that the process of socialization involves. In the
first instance, the summons is conceived as a “bare” summons; Fichte strips
the summons of complexity in order to focus its status as summons, and
not conceivably a determinate object.14 The summons is an act of another.
It is an act whose purpose is to elicit an action from the infant. But if the
only purpose of the summons was to elicit a response, it would fall short of
its task, namely, awakening the child to its own freedom and self-activity.
60 J. M. Bernstein
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,
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.
PROTO-RIGHTS: A FIRST APPROACH
How complex the material conditions are for noncausal modes of mutual
influence we shall come to shortly. What is significant here is that Fichte
deduces his concept of right directly from the conditions of mutual 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-
tion depending on which seems most convenient and therefore appropriate.

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

the normative. This is the upshot of Fichte’s displacing the moral law by
structures of recognition, structures of proto-right as the normative bond
through which self and other become bound to one another; a transforma-
tion underlined and deepened by his account of the role of the body.
INDIVIDUALITY (II): FREEDOM AS EMBODIMENT
If individuality is a “reciprocal concept,” a concept that can be thought and

applied only in a relation to another, a concept that thereby determines
“community” (45), then, freedom must also be a reciprocal concept for
Fichte. In claiming that summons-type actions are self-limiting, Fichte is not
claiming, pace Hegel, that such actions are a “limitation of the true freedom
of the individual;”19 rather he is stating that relations to the other are nor-
matively constituted, those norms can be transgressed, and that acceding to
them involves, beyond habit and passion, deliberation and choice. Freedom
is, indeed, “enlarged” by community for Fichte in the obvious sense that
self-consciousness of freedom, and hence true freedom, cannot exist outside
community. Nonetheless, it might still be complained that Fichte’s image
of a sphere of freedom that is possessed and might be overstepped is, as yet,
merely metaphorical; and hence, second, with the notion of sphere hazy,
so are the ideas of transgressing and trespassing, on the one hand, and,
conversely, self-limitation on the other.20 Fichte supposes that these queries
can be silenced by the demonstration that individuality, as self-determining
efficacy, presupposes the possession of a material body (§5), and that the
possession of such a body necessarily involves being influenced by the body
of another (§6), making embodiment too a “reciprocal concept.”
I understand the depth of Fichte’s philosophical discovery of the body this
way: assume for a moment that even for Kant the idea of a fact of reason is
the beginning of a fracture in the methodological individualism of modern
philosophy in general, and within transcendental philosophy in particular.
Within this setting, the postulation of the summons of the other as the fact
of reason is equivalent to inverting the Copernican turn: the object, the
summons, makes self-consciousness possible. Fichte, at least temporarily,
manages to quiet the methodological disruption occurring by conceiving of
transcendental reflection as the conceptual (dialectical) recapitulation of a
genetic process, or, what is nearly the same, complementing an ascending,
progressive argument with a descending, regressive argument. In this setting
the body is not a mere residue left over from the effort of transcendentally
securing an objective world of objects and persons for a free subject, or a
material excess beyond the grasp of reason and perpetually disrupting it,
or the natural setting out of which the human spontaneously emerges (al-
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.
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,
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 INTERSUBJECTIVE BODY
The body so understood is not a natural body, a body seen from within
nature, but rather, again, the body as understood from the transcendental
perspective of making self-consciousness possible. This body is fully active.
Hence, Fichte must now proceed to deduce the passive body, the body that
is exposed to the influence of others, the body that has been summoned,
giving both active and passive powers a transcendental denotation. 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.
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
the status of a rational being, where such recognition is equivalent to the

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

tain fit. From a transcendental perspective, he argues that “The presence
of a body was inferred from the concepts of independence and freedom.
But freedom exists only insofar as it is posited; and therefore, since what is
grounded cannot extend beyond its ground, the body can exist only for one
who posits it” (68). The body cannot have the complex structures entailed
by its dual character unless it is posited as having those structures since the
normative difference between its higher and lower organs as corresponding
to subtle and coarse matter, as well as the activities that transpire through
the different types of organs, can exist only through their being appropri-
ately cognitively recognized—posited. Conversely, “I become a rational
being—actually, not merely potentially—only by being made into one; if the
other rational being’s action did not occur, I would never have become
rational. Thus my rationality depends on the free choice, on the good will,
of another; it depends on chance, as does all rationality” (69). I am a free

being only by positing myself as one; I am a free being only by being made
into one, which making is a matter of sheer contingency. Fichte’s anxiety
here is not that I have been made into a free being (the logic of the sum-
mons as the outline for an educative process is meant to answer the paradox
of being made to be free), it is that the making itself is so utterly contingent
that it undermines the claim for self-positing—each individual becomes
merely the “accidental result” (69) of another person’s summons.
For Fichte this is a fraught moment. The relation of summoner to sum-
moned is asymmetrical: the one summoned is absolutely dependent on the
other for her humanity. Is this relation of asymmetry and dependence with-
out end? Does it help to recognize that in the first instance this is a scene of
instruction, of education, and hence part of a process that will be gone be-
yond? In that case, might the correction to contingency be parental love and
communal concern? Even if the former is (in part) hardwired, that would
not make the genetic process capable of being appropriated and posited; it
would normalize chance, making it less chancy but not more rational. This
and related problems lead Hegel to reconstruct the scene of instruction as
at first a battle and then an intensified and temporally elaborated sequence
of collective historical learning whose internal logic provides the rationality
for its eventual overcoming.
While that may adequately deal with the summons as a genetic process,
it cannot be the whole story because the summons, again, is the model
of all human action that solicits a free response from another. In which
case, the question arises as to why anyone ever recognizes another. What
is the ground of recognitions generally? Who is to be included? What
does it mean to say that each human has the right to be treated through
summons-type actions? Hegel will urge that only an account of the his-
torical emergence of the liberal state and its elaboration of individuals as
citizens will fully answer these questions. Even if adequate in its own terms,
for Fichte the story of the emergence of the state occurs dialectically too
late, presupposing too much. There could not even be a battle for recogni-
tion unless those partaking already recognized one another as beings who
could be summoned or physically coerced; that is, the presupposition of the
battle is the mutual recognition by each participant that the other possesses
a dual material structure like its own. For Fichte the scene of the battle is a
scene of recognition and misrecognition. Hegel fails to explain the initial
(insufficient) recognition.24 If there is no misrecognition without recogni-
tion, however partial, and that recognition is not completely a matter of
chance, then there must be a ground for it. And this can be so “only by
presupposing that the other was compelled already, in his original influence
upon me, compelled as a rational being . . . to treat me as a rational being;
and indeed he was compelled to do so by me” (69), which would entail
74 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
a dictum of Wittgenstein’s; his original saying is the perfect complement

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

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

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

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

AND PROTO-RIGHTS
Fichte’s deduction of the human body as the necessary material/visual con-

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

tersubjectively mediated bodily performance the essential medium of self-
conscious activity, Fichte literally gives to self-determination and normativ-
ity a radical materialist twist, fully inserting the self into a world of material
objects and embodied others as the natural habitat of human existence.
Two final criticisms become pertinent here. First, by so radically figur-
ing the body as a medium for action and interaction, Fichte overidealizes
the body, suppressing its natural and animal functions, above all making
coercion the paradigm of wrong rather than physical injury. The Fichtean
subject might well be finite, but it is not quite a suffering mortal; pain, often
thought to be the criterion for sentience, makes no appearance in Fichte’s
Foundations anthropology; the Fichtean body is, nearly, a purely sapient
body. The second criticism is more complex. As we have already noted, and
as nearly all commentators agree, something goes wrong in the transition
from original right to political right: the normative authority of original
right fails to adequately inform the conception of political right.28 Critics
equally agree that this argumentative lapse undermines the architecture of
Foundations, ruining the project as a whole. This criticism is just, but alto-
gether too fast. The failure is different and simpler than usually supposed,
and hence more remediable. In order to better focus the difficulty, let us
briefly track Fichte’s argument.
The orienting normative thesis that Fichte deduces from his account of
embodiment is, again, that
at the basis of all voluntarily chosen reciprocal interaction among free beings
there lies an original and necessary reciprocal interaction among them, which
is this: the free being, by his mere presence in the sensible world, compels 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
employment of recognitive norms involves a self-limiting of the will, then

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

infant acquiring both the bodily powers for individuality and the norms
integral to the possession of those powers, that is, awakening to the powers
of self-consciousness is simultaneously to become awakened to their nor-
mative character. It is these presumptions that first, in being tied to habitual
routines, become expectations which, when frustrated, turn into normative
demands. In becoming normative demands what were the mere norma-
tive lining to a series of intersubjective acts become consciously and self-
consciously held normative claims. Hence, it is those normative presump-
tions that lie behind every child’s demand to be allowed to do this or that
activity on its own, to be allowed to express her powers of movement and
action; it is those presumptions that make all physical injury, not only that
which is intentionally caused, to be experienced initially as wrongs that
should not have occurred, and hence that construct the interwoven char-
acter of active powers and passive boundaries into a normative self-under-
standing of my body as “mine”—fact and norm. Those presumptions bear
within themselves the normative necessity of those expressions for animal
life. Inevitably, then, the culture educating a child must already have chan-
neled what the child expresses as normative demands into a set of ethical
norms for its treatment, ethical norms that make possible her development
of the basic physical skills necessary for survival and social interaction, and
that protect her both as an injurable animal and as a “full” member of this
family, clan, tribe, society (however full membership is cashed out for that
clan or society). Coming to appreciate precisely how powers and norms are
interwoven is what the education to self-consciousness involves; hence the
child cannot acquire the bodily powers for self-consciousness without acquiring
the norms underpinning the ongoing expression of those powers as the prima facie
ethical norms governing social interaction generally. These normative expecta-
tions seem a fair match for original right, which, recall, are the “right to
the continued existence of the absolute freedom and inviolability of the
body” and the “right to the continued existence of our free influence in the
entire sensible world” (108). Because these rights must be interwoven with
the ordinary expression of human powers in a setting sufficient to permit a
child to develop into a self-conscious agent, then when facing another hu-
man body, a body whose appearance is itself a summons to respond to it
in rights-respecting ways, there is not an abstract choice as to whether this
being should be respected; there is a prima facie demand that respect be
accorded.
My claim that norms expressing proto-rights must have prima facie
authority is thus bound to their embeddedness in the routines through
which newcomers are socialized and become agents. Embeddedness in the
structures necessary for societal reproduction at the level of the individual
removes even the hint that these norms might be cognized as optional for
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
1. For recognitive idealism, natural science too is a mode of world interpretation.

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

fundamental conceptual premise.
The first omission is that I will not try to thematize Hegel’s theory of rec-
ognition in its entire purview.4 It is not just the case that in the only posthu-
mously published “Jenaer Systementwürfe” whose writing had preceded the
Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel developed a theory of recognition that is more
comprehensive and in many respects more attractive than the corresponding
passages in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Beyond this it is also the case that
Hegel has propounded an alternative to his earlier practical philosophy as
the theory of Objective Spirit. There are many kinds of recognitive relations
to be found in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, whereas the concept of
recognition does not function as an organizing principle. In that work, this
role is reserved for the concept of the will. Something similar can be said for
the Phenomenology of Spirit: even in sections following the ones chosen here,
numerous relations can be understood as recognitive relations although
Hegel does not try to correlate these in a close systematic way with the nexus
of determination I am going to focus on exclusively in what follows.
The second omission is that I will blind out the overall systematic context
of the passage I am going to discuss within the Phenomenology of Spirit and
I will ignore the argumentative target Hegel aims for with the work as a
whole.5 Methodologically this is, of course, not unproblematic. But I think
it possible to abstract in such a way, for the claims that interest me in the
following are all placed on the same “narrative level” of the Phenomenology
of Spirit. As is well known, within this work of Hegel one has to distinguish
precisely between the passages in which Hegel portrays the self-experience
of the natural consciousness on its way to Absolute Knowing, and those
passages in which the philosophical consciousness that already disposes of
this standpoint gives a kind of meta stage direction to the reader as to the
conceptual development that is performed in the Phenomenology of Spirit.
The statements that are subject of my reflections in this contribution all be-
long to this second sort, so that I can, on the one hand, ignore the compli-
cation of the perspective of the natural consciousness. On the other hand,
those of Hegel’s claims I am interested in all belong to the same stage of
development, so that I do not have to deal with the complicated problems
of the conceptual development Hegel unfolds dialectically. This twofold
exclusion of the larger nexus and context of Hegel’s reflections has at least
the advantage that the focus on one single problem can be pursued in a
methodologically proper way. As anybody who tries to understand Hegel’s
arguments in detail knows, this is a gain not to be underestimated.
How fruitful such a detailed study actually is eventually depends on the
chosen section and on the systematic perspective under which one ap-
proaches this brick of Hegel’s work. The fundamental conceptual premise
that will guide my reflections in the following is this: the “pure Notion
The Relation of Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 91
of recognition” (185) that Hegel develops in the beginning of the sec-

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

ness, the nexuses I want to interpret as a social ontological conception.
This said, I return to the quote in which Hegel introduces the “Notion
of spirit” and defines the spirit as “absolute substance which is the unity of
the different independent self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition,
enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’”
(177). Here Hegel formulates an ontological thesis: the spirit is, analogous
to the subsequent remarks in the spirit chapter of the Phenomenology of
Spirit, characterized as absolute substance. This substance is determined as
the unity of two self-consciousnesses that differ from one another. Hegel
describes this unity with the famous phrase “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is
‘I’” whose fame I think is conversely proportional to the clarity of its mate-
rial content.
It is obvious that the single self-consciousnesses are, as moments, onto-
logically dependent with respect to the spirit as absolute substance. At the
same time these self-consciousnesses are characterized as free and indepen-
dent from the spirit. Furthermore, Hegel claims that the individual self-
consciousnesses are to be conceived in their freedom and independence
as the opposite of spirit. And finally he holds that the spirit is the unity of
the independent self-consciousnesses. This ontological constellation can,
so I suppose, neither be sufficiently captured according to the part-whole
model, nor can it be philosophically elucidated exclusively according to
the substance-accidence or the substance-moment model. Hegel’s reference
to an ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and to a ‘We’ that is ‘I’ expresses his attempt to make
visible this ontological nexus in its specific structure. But what exactly does
this phrase mean?
The rest of this contribution is dedicated to developing a plausible in-
terpretation of this famous phrase on the basis of Hegel’s analysis of the
concept of self-consciousness on the one hand and his explication of the
pure concept of recognition on the other. This interpretation is meant to
provide the basis of a systematically up-to-date and attractive social onto-
logical position.
II. THE NOTION OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
To bring light into the darkness we must now get clear on the concept of
self-consciousness while blinding out two aspects of Hegel’s remarks which
he introduces in a complicated way in the first paragraphs of the chapter
“The Truth of Self-Certainty.” Neither Hegel’s justification that the concept
of self-consciousness must manifest itself as “Life” (168), nor the connec-
tion between self-consciousness and “Desire” (174), can be reconstructed
in the following.10
94 Michael Quante
The fact that empirical self-consciousnesses exist as living organisms is

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

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

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

in the first two steps, we get the following situation. The concept of self-
consciousness, or the self-consciousness as a universal, can only be instanti-
ated in a situation in which two empirical self-consciousnesses interact in
a certain way. The entanglement of the universal level of self-consciousness
and concrete, empirical self-consciousnesses that are each free for them-
selves and that at the same time interact in a certain way fulfils the charac-
terization Hegel has given of the spirit as absolute substance.
With this we can give a first interpretation of the formula of the I
that is We and the We that is I. The instantiation of the concept of self-
consciousness requires an overall structure that can only be realized
through the interaction of two self-consciousnesses. Understood this way,
the concept of self-consciousness, the I, can be instantiated only as a We.
But if two self-consciousnesses each instantiate this required structure, then
they together are an instantiation of the concept of self-consciousness: a

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

The “many and varied” (178) entanglements of the interaction between
the two empirical self-consciousnesses A and B, through which the concept of
self-consciousness can only be instantiated, must according to Hegel be de-
picted as “process of Recognition” (178). In this process the “pure Notion of
Recognition” (185) manifests itself, that is, through recognition in the form
as it is perspicuous for the philosophical consciousness. The perspective of A
98 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:
(i) I realize that B acts towards me with a certain intention X which

contains, first, the insight that I in fact act with the same intention
X towards B, and that, second, requires and presupposes that I have
a specific attitude Y about B, and that is, third, the motive for B’s
action in which his intention X is realized.
(ii) I treat B factually and intentionally in the X-way and intentionally
take on the Y-attitude about him, because B does this and because
B requests this specific action from me.
A and B here meet one another with the attitude of conceiving of 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-
ceive of themselves as such autonomous agents, this attitude contains the

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

I want to suggest interpreting the first sentence of the section on the “In-
dependence and Dependence of Self-consciousness” as Hegel’s answer to
this problem. This opening statement fulfils the same function as the main
100 Michael Quante
texts of the paragraphs in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopedia;

they express Hegel’s core theses and argumentative targets:
Das Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem, und dadurch, daß es für ein
anderes an und für sich ist; d.h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes (127, 33–35)
Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists
for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged. (178)
In the passage after the semicolon we find the thesis that self-consciousness
is constituted by recognitive relations. Only within a recognitive relation
is an entity a self-consciousness. To put it in Fichtean terms: its being
consists in its being recognized. Miller’s English translation is, although it
does capture the constitutive relation, not quite precise at this point, for
it formulates only a necessary condition. It says: “it exists only in being
acknowledged” (178).
A smaller interpretive challenge lies at the beginning of this statement.
We can read the sentence as saying that Hegel is here talking about “an
empirical self-consciousness A” which is recognized by another empirical
self-consciousness B. Another possible reading would be to look for a 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
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
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
14. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III: Naturphilosophie und Philosophie

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

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

chapter on self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807. Several
passages about recognition in the Jena drafts, especially the writings on the
philosophy of spirit from 1805–1806, are more differentiated phenomeno-
logically speaking and clearer in method.4 However, in the following I will
deal with the Phenomenology as a whole. In the first part of this text I will
elaborate on the term, theory, and function of recognition. I am, however,
not concerned with an accurate text interpretation, rather with a brief over-
view. In the second part I will concentrate on modern attempts of develop-
ing this theory of recognition further.
RECOGNITION IN HEGEL’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT
As is widely known, the Phenomenology of Spirit fulfils a twofold function

in Hegel’s system: on the one hand it is an introduction and on the other
a negative demonstration—by refuting every alternative—of the truth of
what Hegel calls the viewpoint of speculation. This position is a sort of
“spirit monism” and it implies that all reality of nature as well as culture
and thought is a process of “coming to itself,” that is to say, a process of
unfolding and reflecting on a reasonable structure. This structure can be
presented in its pure form as a holistic system of meanings in the Science
of Logic. Unlike the former drafts, in which logic itself as criticism of the
dualism of the categories of mind and being functions as the introduc-
tion, the Science of Logic, according to the Phenomenology of 1807, should
follow as a second part of the system. In as far as the Phenomenology is
already able to make the pure terms of logic transparent in the cultural-
historic process of ascendency to speculative knowledge, it is simultane-
ously a kind of overall view of the system. This is because it includes the
most important phenomena and points of view of nature and the spirit in
a systematic representation. This representation is, however, structured ac-
cording to the aforementioned ascendency to the true stance—in Hegel’s
terms, the “experience of consciousness”—and not according to purely
innate aspects of the system.5
Moreover, with regard to recognition, in the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel
distinguishes between the term and concrete figures of self-consciousness
and the spirit, which belong to the movement of recognition. At the begin-
ning of the chapter on self-consciousness, recognition is being exposed
in its conceptual structure. But the complete movement is a teleological
process. In the Phenomenology, it leads through various stages of failure and
the resulting dialectical experience to the realized recognition of the spirit
and eventually to absolute knowledge. However, Hegel only uses the term
recognition in a few crucial points of the chapters on self-consciousness
Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit 109
and spirit, especially paragraph B (subsection A) of the chapter about self-

consciousness and paragraph C of the chapter on spirit (subsection C, the
conscience). At the beginning of the final section on absolute knowledge he
explicitly goes back to these previous stages.
For the general structure of the concept of recognition in the Phenomenol-
ogy I consider the following points as crucial.
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.
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
From the perspective of the “movement of recognition”, even these final

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

“malice,” as a necessary moment of the spirit. Conscience and general law-
fulness are acknowledged as two moments of a spirit which substantiates
and develops in the individual decision.
Hegel has not developed the practical and social forms of this reconcilia-
tion any further in the Phenomenology. If morality is founded in the auton-
omy of conscience, it may collide with general moral standards at any time.
The different constellation of this conflict, which Hegel discusses in the
section on morality, lead, however, to a reconciliation by mutual renuncia-
tion. The individual, which firmly relies on its conscience, needs to admit
to the one-sidedness and possible error of its decisions. The general moral
consciousness, on the other hand, needs to acknowledge the conscience’s
decision, even in its nonconformity and “evilness,” as a necessary element
of the common spirit.
When the spirit of this community “beholds” itself in its “opposite,” “the
absolutely self-contained individuality,” it constitutes a “reciprocal recogni-
tion, which is the absolute Spirit” (408). In Christianity as the most elevated
form of religion this is the Holy Spirit within the religious community, which
is above all one of mutual moral education and reconciliation. The statement
in the final chapter (481–82) concerning the correspondence between this
form of morality and the final form of Christian religion (purified by the
Reformation and the Enlightenment) suggests that Hegel considers recogni-
tion as a form of moral spirit to be realized mostly in forms of enlightened
religious morality. The congregation would then be the primary medium of
mutual correction for public morality and private conscience. Rational reli-
giousness is, however, only possible in a constitutional and welfare state with
different estates. This is manifest in Hegel’s works on the philosophy of spirit
from 1805 onwards. One could, however, doubt whether the recognition of
“I” and “we” in these writings corresponds with the symmetrical structure
inherent within the concept as discussed above.10
RECOGNITION IN CONTEMPORARY PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
During the past decades, the term recognition has been the subject of lively
philosophical debate.11 Not only do interpretations of German Idealism
focus on this subject, but also further systematic developments such as
Charles Taylor’s, Axel Honneth’s or recently Paul Ricoeur’s. In the following
I will distinguish between three different thematic complexes:
1. Recognition as mutual respect between autonomous persons, accord-

ing to Kant’s and Fichte’s moral philosophy and philosophy of right.
This subject of the conditions and boundaries of the relationship
114 Ludwig Siep
between autonomous persons, especially in the context of interdepen-

dency and asymmetrical distribution of competence, is also of major
concern in modern applied ethics.
2. Recognition in the context of social psychology and philosophical
research concerning the development of identity or authenticity. In
his studies concerning psychological and social conditions of per-
sonal identity Jürgen Habermas combined this subject with the term
recognition and the idealist tradition. Axel Honneth developed this
thought further.
3. Recognition between groups of different worldviews and cultures in a
multicultural community. This concerns not only legal toleration but
also the integration of groups as well as individual members of the
groups into one common identity. Hegel’s demanding term of recog-
nition can be applied here to speak of the recognition of “I” in “we”
as some sort of reconciliation. This is the direction in which especially
the works of Charles Taylor are leading.
Finally, I would like to return to my own attempt at conceiving recogni-

tion as a principle of practical philosophy and present, from my contempo-
rary viewpoint, the limitations of this attempt.
1
Many modern theories of mutual respect between persons, which is
often expressed with the term “recognition,” sort of trace back the way
from Hegel to Fichte. Hegel regarded the concrete relationships of love,
battle, mastership or in communities such as family, profession, or state as
a process of gradual fulfillment of recognition. In many modern theories,
however, the basic recognition of the other as the origin of a right to respect
(self-originating claims, second-personal authority, etc.),12 which cannot be
declined, forms the standard for all other social relations. The norms and
activities of love and care, both in the family and in the state may lead, 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.
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
that recognition has a teleological structure permitting the definition of

the necessary levels and fulfilled form of recognition in smaller and larger
communities.
2
The second stream of appropriation of the theory of recognition to be
discussed here focuses, since the time of Hegel, with growing significance,
on an aspect of interpersonal relations, namely the conditions of 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
socialization the influence of social patterns of behavior and valuation is

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

according to modern social psychology. The three patterns of intersubjec-
tive recognition he developed are “love,” “right,” and “solidarity,” The term
love can be traced back to Hegel, but includes all kinds of “friendship” and
family relations, in as much as they “are constituted by strong emotional
attachments among a small number of people” (95).19 They fulfill the need
for help and support just like in Hegel’s family, but possibly also in other
sorts of partner- or friendship, without any preconditions and with “affec-
tive approval or encouragement” (95).
With regard to modern law, Honneth considers public recognition of the
individual as a person with particular abilities of moral autonomy, elemen-
tary education, and the claim to social demands to be included. Especially
if one accepts the theory of different generations of human rights (defensive
rights protecting individual freedom, rights to political participation, and
rights to social welfare20 [cf. 116–17]), then there is a “chance of developing
self-respect” (119) by the publicly acknowledged ability of the demand-
ing of rights and the “participation in discursive will-formation” (120)
included in the status of the legal subject, independent of particular social
appreciation. This status is in modern societies the object of the “struggle
for recognition” of social groups.21
While love and rights are supposed to give individuals self-confidence
and self-respect, solidarity is concerned with self-appreciation through the
social appreciation of others. It means “to view one another in light of val-
ues that allow the abilities and traits of the other to appear significant for
shared praxis” (129).
Although this appreciation is directed at the individual in its particularity,
it is usually connected with “a feeling of group-pride” (128), which is based
on being a member of a group whose achievements are worthy contribu-
tions for the entire society and are appreciated as such. This sort of recogni-
tion must also be gained by the group and with the group.
Honneth’s three criteria for the social recognition of individuals and their
particular individuality or identity are derived from Hegel’s forms of ethi-
cal life but should be secured by the contemporary empirical results of the
social sciences. This leaves open the reason, why, independent of Hegel’s
system, just such a threefold system should contain all the necessary or at
least decisive conditions of recognition. Furthermore, it leaves open the
question, which conditions enable a society to identify and acknowledge
the necessary or at least enriching contributions of individuals and groups
to the “common practice” of a community. One would have at least to fol-
low the communitarian account, which states that social life is the action
and work of all members whose burdens and achievements can be identi-
fied according to common criteria. As the discussion about the theories of
justice of Rawls or Walzer have shown, this is in no way undisputed.22
But even under a communitarian foundation it still is not clear what

exactly the contributions to this common work are. An agreement on the
spheres of justice in Michael Walzer’s sense or on the kind of necessary or
generally desirable public and communal goods would be required.23 In a
modern society, in which the “system of needs” develops faster and faster,
this becomes a problem difficult to solve. Especially since it is no more
generally accepted that there is still one comprehensive system such as the
“state” or “society,” which includes all of the particular systems.24 Once the
significance of these comprehensive systems decreases, the significance of
social groups themselves for the identity and self-respect of their members
increases. Thus there is not only recognition between individuals as well
as between “I” and “we,” but also between groups, in a common political
culture or in an open multicultural society. This form of recognition is the
focus of a third stream in the modern theory of recognition, which I intend
to examine briefly in the following.
3
According to Charles Taylor, there is a tension between the two themes
mentioned above: recognition of universal equality of moral subjects and
legal persons on the one hand (1) and recognition of their “unique 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
It cannot simply be grounded on individual rights, such as the right to free

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

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

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

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

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

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

as a condition of something like individual self-realization so that it may
serve as the “master concept” of social theory.6
There is, however, more to the role that recognition plays with respect to
agency than being that of intersubjective agreement or that of a good which
may be granted or denied to people or which is a basic condition of some
other need, such as self-realization. In particular, a more dialectical concep-
tion of agency that understands it in terms both of its agency-constituting
character and its world-disclosing character helps us to understand some of
what is at stake in various disputes about what role it should play in think-
ing about issues of agency as it relates to conceptions of knowledge and
practice. It also raises again an issue which, although it had only recently
played a large role in moral and political philosophy, has since receded and
diminished in importance: Is there anything to be gained by talking about
the relation between the “right” and the “good”?
The distinction itself arose out the generalization of Kant’s conception
of the good will (as an unconditional good) into a conception of the (un-
conditional) right as distinct from the good, and this conception has been
given a well-known treatment in recent political philosophy by both Rawls
and Habermas. Notably, both Rawls and Habermas nonetheless rejected
the orthodox Kantian claim that pure practical reason alone will give us
everything we need in an ethical theory based on the structure of some
“master principle” and its consequences; they both agree that pure practical
reason must be supplemented with various empirical premises if it is to
give us any material guidance for action or policy. Moreover, both Rawls
and Habermas hold that the very thinness of any conception of the “right”
which is utterly divorced from the “good” itself means that any account
which places the “right” at the forefront of an account of political and social
reality is doomed to hopeless abstraction unless it unites itself with some
fairly well-established empirical theses in sociology, history, or psychology.
This is perhaps obvious in the writings by Rawls, and in Habermas’s Between
Facts and Norms and his subsequent essays.
Habermas in particular argues that the principles of the “right” are rooted
in the way in which agents who are already committed to justifying their
“validity claims” vis-à-vis each other are also thereby committed to some
fairly abstract commitments governing the rules of such justification, and
he gives a controversial account of how this itself requires an intersubjec-
tive rather than transcendental account of agency.7 Habermas’s own post-
Kantian account is intended to preserve the Kantian gulf between the right
(as principles of law and rights) and the good (as “ethical” life) while at
the same time bringing them together in a unified account of, for example,
a lively “public sphere”; such an account is intended to provide the basis
for the legitimating force for the modern secular state as a constitutionalist
Recognition, the Right, and the Good 131
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
psychological good associated with freedom, it is not a condition of it. It

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

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

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

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

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

zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1979), argues for
it as the principle of his practical philosophy; James Kreines rightfully asks why Siep
does not extend the principle of recognition to all of Hegel’s philosophy instead of
restricting it only to practical philosophy. See James Kreines, “Finding Our Way in
the Phenomenology of Spirit,” review of Ludwig Siep, Der Weg der Phänomenologie
des Geistes. Ein einführender Kommentar zu Hegels “Differenzschrift” und Phänomenolo-
gie des Geistes” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000), published in Internationales
Jahrbuch des deutschen Idealismus/International Yearbook of German Idealism. vol. 2,
2004, 366–373.
2. To some extent, Alexandre Kojève and his followers have argued that recogni-
tion, under different names, was in fact the central concept of political thought in
the West. See Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. by James H.
Nichols, Jr. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969). This is also the contention
behind Francis Fukuyama’s best selling and rather conservative version of Kojève’s
views, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
3. Jürgen Habermas lodges this complaint against all such “purely intersubjectiv-
ist” ways of reading Hegel in Truth and Justification, trans. Barbara Fultner (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003). An example of just how vehement the debate can
be can be seen in the myriad of (to my mind, largely unfair) criticisms of Richard
Rorty’s work as obliterating this distinction. Many commentators have taken Rorty to
be arguing that all there is to truth is agreement (and, to be fair, Rorty has in looser
moments given them plenty of ammunition for this charge). Rorty’s point on truth
is more that of the Humean skeptic than it is a denial of the value of truth; just as
Hume asked what extra we possibly thought we got by adding the word “causality”
to the constant conjunction of events (or even their subjunctive conjunction), Rorty
wonders what extra conceptual help we think we are getting when we add the word
“true” to a proposition that has been verified, cross-checked, subjected to criticism,
and the like, except for the fallibilist reminder that “we might after all be wrong.”
4. This point has been a consistent theme in Charles Taylor’s writing. See Charles
Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). See
also Donald Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics, 112 (2002), pp. 267–91.
5. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Charles Taylor, et al., Multicul-
turalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1994); Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Grammar
of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006); Patchen
Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
6. This is the position debated between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth in their
joint book, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange, trans. Joel
Golb, James Ingram, Christiane Wilke (London: Verso, 2003).
7. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1996).
8. It is, of course, an entirely separate question as to whether it can do this in a
way that is neutral towards all determinate conceptions of the good. Another ver-
sion of this can be found in Christine Korsgaard’s idea of “practical identities” as
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
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
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 general, it may be affirm’d, that there is no such passion in human

minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal
qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself.
—David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature2
Usefulness is agreeable, and engages our approbation. This is a matter

of fact, confirmed by daily observation. But, useful? For what? For some
body’s interest, surely. Whose interest then? Not our own only: For our
approbation frequently extends farther. It must, therefore, be the interest
of those, who are served by the character or action approved of; and these
we may conclude, however remote, are not totally indifferent to us.
—David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals3
In this paper I detail the structure and workings of what I call the 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
The chapter presents a picture of TCS social relations. It is thus a form

of ideal theory. In the chapter’s final section I make a few remarks about a
distinction between types of ideal theory, a distinction that is relevant for
comparing Marxian ideal society to an ideal market society that highlights
citizens’ equal legal rights.
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
of all human beings.12 In most liberal societies, however, at least in their

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

ophers, for example, Butler and Schopenhauer, hold that although we can
feel for others’ miseries, their happiness leaves us cold (at best).18 Others are
more optimistic. Hume imagines meeting with a comfortable, middle-class
family. “[T]he freedom, ease, confidence, and calm enjoyment, diffused
over their countenances, sufficiently express their happiness. I have a pleas-
ing sympathy in the prospect of so much joy, and can never consider the
course of it, without the most agreeable emotions.”19 And J. S. Mill claims
that the capacity for positive sympathy is a part of our nature.20 Oddly, the
writer closest to Marx here is Oscar Wilde. In “The Soul of Man under So-
cialism,” Wilde first praises what he calls “Individualism,” and expounds
on it as follows:
Under Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish.

. . . When man has realized Individualism, he will also realize sympathy and
exercise it freely and spontaneously. . . . Anybody can sympathize with the suf-
ferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the na-
ture of a true Individualist—to sympathize with a friend’s success. . . . [Under
socialism] the sympathy of man will be large, healthy, and spontaneous. Man
will have joy in the contemplation of the joyous lives of others.21
The most obvious reason I might not share another’s enjoyment is envy.
This is the emotion that both the 1844 Marx and Wilde, that incorrigible
cynic, believe a new society will tamp down, allowing our natural pleasure
in others’ well-being to come to the fore. It is a commonplace that others’
accomplishments cast me down. One measure of optimism about 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.
It is time to complicate matters. In TCS, the following are claimed to ob-

tain:
(i) Each agent engages in some sort of nature-transforming activity as

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

part of providing other agents with the means for their individual
self-realization.
(iv) Agents have a particular belief about the content of the human self-
realization activity.
(v) Agents believe that others have the same belief.
(vi) Agents care about others’ well-being.
(vii) Agents believe that others care about their well-being.
These features of TCS reinforce one another. In engaging in the joint

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

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

volves two ways of identifying with others. Each producer identifies with
other producers (sees their output as his own); each also identifies with
the consumer’s satisfaction in using the product (sees her enjoyment of
the product as his own). In this section the focus is on the second form of
identification. It is in virtue of the producer’s stance toward the consumer
that the producer both shares the consumer’s enjoyments and is motivated
to produce for the consumer. The question is how to characterize this stance
toward the consumer.
The Millian picture puts the stress on feelings of love and sympathy. This,
I think, is problematic. Mill’s inveterate critic, James Fitzjames Stephen,
considers it problematic largely because he thinks affection for all of hu-
manity is beyond our emotional ken: Mill is asking too much from us.40 I
will press a different reason to reject a focus on these feelings. I think that
they simply cannot have unknown others as their object. I think that this
160 Daniel Brudney
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.
Now, some feelings can do without any object. I can be melancholy

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

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

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

tle shows in his caustic remark about Plato’s ideal society that it is much
better “to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato’s
fashion.”57 If our psychology were the same in the Kallipolis as it is in our
current world, that is, if what it is to be a cousin and a son were the same,
Aristotle would be right—but that premise is precisely what Plato denies. In
interpreting the 1844 Marx, the challenge is to provide more detail to the
thought that there would be a transformation of ordinary life.
We should return to the idea of a social-recognition activity, of an activ-
ity that functions as a publicly understood form of social expression. In
TCS, the production/consumption process plays this role. And because hu-
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
understand a human language and it would remain without effect. By one

side it would be recognized and felt as a request, an entreaty, and therefore a
humiliation, and consequently uttered with a feeling of shame, of degradation.
By the other side it would be regarded as impudence or lunacy and rejected as
such. We are to such an extent estranged from man’s essential nature that the
direct language of this essential nature seems to us a violation of human dignity,
whereas the estranged language of material values seems to be the well-justified
assertion of human dignity that is self-confident and conscious of itself.60
In principle, for Marx, the exchange of objects is how unknown, distant

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

need of another human being [Wesen].” More generally, “Our products
would be so many mirrors reflecting our nature.”64
This is Marx’s second metaphor. It is an old one, used most famously
by Aristotle in the Magna Moralia where he says that friends are mirrors to
one another, thus reciprocally facilitating self-knowledge.65 I take Marx’s
claims to be that products would mirror not the particulars of each agent
(not self-knowledge qua Brudney) but our shared essential nature (self-
knowledge qua human being), and that this would facilitate expanded
“friendship.”
Suppose my friend and I exchange gifts, say, articles of apparel. When he
wears what I have given him or I wear what he has given me, this triggers a
recognition of our relationship. If much time has elapsed so we are used to
seeing the other wearing these items, such recognition might barely be con-
scious yet it would still be there. In a similar way, in TCS, objects generally
would resonate for people generally, providing a constant, even if barely
conscious, recognition of agents’ production/consumption relationship.66
The Marxian solution to the potato love problem, then, is (a) that the
focus is mutual concern rather than love, and (b) that such concern is a
fundamental constituent of the production/consumption process and so
of the form of life of TCS. Agents (1) have certain beliefs (about the hu-
man essence and the human good), (2) act with a particular intention and
a particular practical attitude, and (3) believe that others have the same
beliefs, intention, and attitude. This instantiates what I have elsewhere
called a “structural” friendship.67 It is quite compatible with the extension
of agents’ feelings as far as human psychology will let them go, but it does
not require such feelings.68 What it is to be concerned for others is to live
a certain way.69
I have said little about “community.” I have claimed that the central
social-recognition activity in TCS would generate and sustain social bonds
but I have not characterized those bonds in organic terms or in terms of
shared membership in a community with a distinct communal goal. In fact,
communists’ communal relationships would not proceed through joint
membership in an entity that provides them with any shared goal, the way,
say, being a Spartan might tie people together through joint commitment to
the good of Sparta (to take an example from Rousseau). Communists’ rela-
tionships would be one-to-one—perhaps merely notionally so but still not
via any larger whole.70 To be sure, communists belong to the human species
and this fact would connect them to one another but, for Marx, the human
species has no goal distinct from the well-being of individual human be-
ings. This is the point of thinking in terms of George Eliot’s insistence on
concern for individuals, or, as I have recast it, a concern to benefit “someone.”
In TCS, I would not produce for humanity; I would produce for someone.
168 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
In this section I examine how, on this Marxian picture, institutional ar-

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

menschlichen Wesen entfremdet] that the direct language of this essential nature
seems to us a violation of human dignity [Würde], whereas the estranged
language of material values seems to be the well-justified assertion of human
dignity that is self-confident and conscious of itself.80
Under current conditions, for someone to demand an object from me

would seem to be a violation of my dignity as a property owner, as the
holder of certain rights. It is because I have such rights that I can reject
170 Daniel Brudney
others’ demands, that is, I can stand on my rights in a “self-confident” way.

As property owners, we can “‘stand up like men,’ [and] look others in the
eye.” Marx’s claim is that this is a thoroughly estranged form of life, a way
of relating to others that would be absent in TCS. Does that mean that com-
munists would not be able to “look others in the eye, and . . . feel in some
fundamental way the equal of anyone”?
Here we should note different ways to look others in the eye, different
goals one might have in doing so.
(i) X looks Y in the eye in order to assert herself as Y’s equal.

(ii) X looks Y in the eye in order to gain validation (under some de-
scription) from Y.
(iii) X looks Y in the eye in order to intimidate Y.
We can ignore (iii). Neither Marx nor Feinberg sees that relation as 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-
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
usually understood to refer to something I have in virtue of being human,

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

said is that, for Marx, decision making that is distinct from one’s workplace
activities would have a much reduced role. Most importantly, TCS would
not highlight the classical ideal of the citizen who, outside the workplace
and with a brief that goes well beyond the administration of things, rules
over others and is ruled in turn. As for the family, Marx says little about it,
though he clearly thinks that its capitalist form is hierarchical and degraded
and its communist form would be an improvement. For Marx, what would
do the psychological heavy lifting would be the production/consumption
process.
Note that, in principle, even under capitalism the workplace could be
a site of validation. Marx would of course be skeptical. He would press
such claims as that under capitalism workplace validation depends on ac-
complishment and that such validation is contingent: there are losers as
well as winners, and today’s winner might be tomorrow’s loser. It is not a
sphere for stable social assessments of value. It is not a sphere for of course
validation.
Maybe these claims about capitalism are inaccurate or accurate only in
part. In any event, in TCS validation (of course validation) would obtain
within the workplace. It is there that agents would complete and confirm one
another. (“[I] would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and
your love.”)90 Agents would not only express and receive messages of concern;
through their work, they would show themselves worthy of concern, and be
confirmed as such. And as consumption is not limited to specific times and
places, participation in the key social-recognition activity (the production/
consumption process)—and so agents’ sense of validation within it—would
be a more or less constant subtext of daily life.
Note the following about work in TCS:
1) Agents in TCS believe that transforming nature to provide others with

products is the essential human activity, that is, I believe this, and
others’ similar beliefs support mine; moreover, others validate my
actual engagement in this activity. That I believe that I am engaged
in the preeminently valuable human activity and that others support
this belief ought to help sustain my self-worth. Put differently, I not
only have the highly valued status, “human being”; I have the highly
valued status, “producer.” So far as self-worth concerns status, I am in
good shape.
2) I believe that I am successfully engaged in the essential human activ-
ity. What is confirmed in TCS are intention and practical attitude
as much as accomplishment. Suppose I have tried to make (to
contribute to making) something—widgets, say—that others will
use, but suppose there is too much widget production and some go
174 Daniel Brudney
unused. Or suppose I am less than deft at making widgets. To the

extent that what is validated are my intention and attitude, neither
supposition matters. Marx surely hopes that if I gravitate to tasks
commensurate with my abilities, I will do them well, but validation
can tolerate properly motivated but less than stellar performance.
My validation is tied to the fact that I participate in the production/
consumption process with the right beliefs, intention and attitude. As
far as self-worth concerns achievement, that is sufficient.
Let’s go back to Marx’s claim that language under capitalism is distorted.

(The descent here is from Feuerbach’s assertion that there is need for “hu-
man understanding and human speech” but that “[t]o think, speak, and act
in a pure and true human fashion will, however, be granted only to future
generations.”)91 In the “Comments,” we have seen that Marx focuses specifi-
cally on “dignity” as currently having a distorted meaning. Under capital-
ism, it involves asserting that one is a being with rights. This self-description
makes one “self-confident.”92 In TCS, dignity would come from the fact that
one is (properly) engaged in the essential, and essentially reciprocal, hu-
man activity, and that one is constantly validated as someone so engaged.
In TCS, “the well-justified assertion of human dignity that is self-confident
and conscious of itself” would be expressed via a relationship of mutual
dependence that is also a relationship of mutual support.93
I have sketched the 1844 Marx’s picture of the production/consumption

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

tive activity is very useful for coming to identify with productive activity
in general. The point is simple. On the usual picture, physical capacities
are not a condition of citizenship. As long as one has cognitive capaci-
ties, one can count as a fully functional citizen. One can obey the law,
vote, have opinions about the issues of the day, debate with others, and
so forth. Thus a view, say, civic humanism, that gives pride of place to
the identity, “citizen,” might be able to handle problems of physical dis-
ability and age better than a view that gives pride of place to the identity,
“producer.”94
A further problem appears if we drop the premise that most labor is nec-
essary labor.95 Assume that social productivity has reached the point that
necessary labor takes only a small part of the day. Much work time is now
devoted to producing things that hardly count as “for” others. Perhaps these
things are for others in the sense that works of art, especially of the quality
most of us would produce, might be for others. They would be made as
things to be seen, read, etc.—but others might be better off without them.
And a good deal of what I would do in TCS might be purely a matter of
self-development. Learning ancient Persian or practicing the hammer throw
might be respectable ways to develop my talents but would have nothing
to do with others’ well-being. A widespread reduction in necessary labor
would make it difficult to see what completing another would mean. Even
if I were to see all necessary social output as mine, much of my actual out-
put would not be for others (and much of others’ output would not be for
me). Much of my output would require a different, and surely more uncer-
tain, form of validation, for example, my artistic production might require
others to validate its quality.
More important, necessary labor either is or is not the essential human
activity. If it is, why would I engage in any nonnecessary labor? Yet sup-
pose productivity improves. If we then engage only in necessary labor, we
would produce more and more goods for one another. So our conception
of the necessary would have to change, that is, our consumption desires
would have to grow. But this is both intrinsically problematic and at odds
with Marx’s condemnation of the false and distorted needs that capitalism
induces.96 On the other hand, if necessary labor is not the essential human
activity, why would I see others’ use of the products of such labor as my
completion, the route to my self-realization?
The sensible response here would be to invoke a sensible middle way:
necessary labor is important but not all there is to a good human life. This
might be sensible, but it would limit the scope of Marx’s self-realization-
through-others model, and so also, presumably, the facilitation of strong
social bonds. Ironically, a significant increase in productivity is likely to
undermine Marx’s desired social relationships.
176 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,
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-
date agents’ value. When things go well, an individual’s self-worth would

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

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

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

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

44. I think that at least some of the nineteenth-century mockery of busy-body
philanthropists came from the sense that they paraded themselves as loving human-
ity and yet both (a) didn’t seem to love those known and near, and (b) knew noth-
ing individuated about those whom they claimed to love—and so, in effect, love
couldn’t be what was at stake. Perhaps Fitzjames Stephen is gesturing at this worry
when he claims that we cannot love the human race because, among other things,
it is “so little known.” See Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 91.
45. I am very grateful to John Deigh for a conversation on these issues.
46. For instance, I see no need to discuss here the differences in the content of
the beliefs that love and concern involve about their objects. For good anthologies re
current debates about emotion, see Amelie Rorty ed., Explaining Emotions (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980), and Robert C. Solomon ed., Thinking about
Feeling (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
47. A point of clarification. I take the practical attitude of concern for others to
involve the disposition to act with particular intentions, namely, to help the objects
of concern. However, this need not involve the intentions that are specific to agents
in TCS, namely, to produce objects for others’ use. Of course, these different intentions
are not in the least bit incompatible. The point is that one could have the practi-
cal attitude of concern for others without being a communist, and so without a
communist’s specific intentions.
48. A full discussion here would go into much more detail about the nature of a
practical attitude (and about how far love is such a thing). A full discussion would
also distinguish concern from both agape and benevolence. Agape is usually a
Christian theological concept, with God as usually the being whose love as agape is
in question. However, as God can individuate every object of His affection, agape in
this sense would be, for our discussion, beside the point. It would be worth deter-
mining how far concern overlaps with agape insofar as human beings are capable
of the latter.
Benevolence does seem the sort of attitude that might be similar to concern for
others. In particular, it seems an attitude that does not require an individuated
object. One question about benevolence would be whether it is tied to forms of
responsiveness in the way that I take concern to be. Would benevolence prompt
not only acts of assistance to disaster victims but indignation at those who block
the distribution of supplies? Intuitions may differ here, but I think that although
benevolence would prompt further acts to overcome a blockage of supplies it
would not necessarily prompt indignation—that is, a failure to be indignant
would not necessarily show a deficiency in benevolence, though it would show
a deficiency in concern. Benevolence seems tied to an array of actions but, in
contrast to concern, not also to an array of reactions. Still, intuitions about this
may differ.
Another point is that concern can easily be egalitarian and reciprocal (that is
certainly how it works with the 1844 Marx). In principle, benevolence could be of
this kind; still, it generally has the connotation of an agent in good circumstances
helping an agent in worse circumstances, that is, in circumstances that preclude
reciprocity.
184 Daniel Brudney
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).
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.
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.
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
70. On conceptions of community that do not involve commitment to the good

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

ogy.1 It is absent even from newer lexica of psychoanalytic concepts and
from the indices of analytic literature. The same applies for closely related
terms such as “affirmation [Bejahung],” “approval [Annehmen],” “acceptance
[Akzeptieren],” and “acknowledgment [Bestätigung].” The case is somewhat
different with “respect [Achtung].” In the last few decades, however, the
concept of “recognition” has appeared with increasing frequency in litera-
ture particularly where it is of a Kleinian bent, and in some more recent,
intersubjectivistic approaches the term has become a central concept, most
notably in the work of Jessica Benjamin and Martin Altmeyer.2
The latter case is no doubt an expression of the influence of certain
philosophical tendencies on psychoanalysis, namely that of the more recent
reception of early Hegel following Alexandre Kojève’s legendary lectures in
Paris in the 1930s, which so greatly influenced Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and
Lacan.3 In Germany, Hegel’s theory of recognition has been studied and
revived mainly by Habermas and Idealism scholars belonging to the sub-
sequent generation.4 Axel Honneth’s social philosophy of the struggle for
recognition picks up from there. In turn, such discourses in recent critical
theory have made their impression on younger psychoanalysts.
This revaluation of the term “recognition” also applies to internal de-
velopments in psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this context, the
increasingly secular significance of the theme of “Narcissus” is decisive. In
the classical theory of narcissism, the term “recognition” hardly makes an
appearance. Yet there are grounds for supposing that inadequate recogni-
tion by the primary person to whom the child may relate [Bezugsperson]
plays an important role in the genesis of narcissistic disorders. And it is just
189
190 Andreas Wildt
as natural for depth psychology to comprehend narcissistic symptoms as

manners of “struggling for recognition” precisely when they demonstrate
independence.5
Such an understanding of narcissism is hardly compatible with Freud’s
notion of a subject that primarily rejects the world. This has already been
revised in the framework of object relations theory and self-psychology
[Selbstpsychologie] within psychoanalysis.6 But here, too, the term “recogni-
tion” was of little importance at first in describing intersubjective relations,
for which the concept of “respect” [Achtung and Respekt] was of greater con-
sequence. Only in more recent attempts to develop a fundamentally inter-
subjective understanding of the soul and the unconscious has “recognition”
been of major significance. Pioneering these attempts have been Stephen
Mitchell in the U.S. and Martin Dornes in Germany.7 The reception of em-
pirical research on infants has also played an important role here.
But following some remarks in late Freud and by several Freudians, the
concept of “recognition” has also gained importance in a more orthodox
strain of psychoanalysis, namely in Melanie Klein’s school of thought.
However, here “recognition” denotes not an intersubjective relation, but
rather the affirmation of reality in spite of efforts that conflict or reject it.
“Recognition” is, in this sense, the counterconcept to “defense [Abwehr],”
“repression [Verdrängung],” and especially “disavowal [Verleugnung].”
In today’s understanding, disavowal is a defense mechanism that stands
in contrast to that of repression, which is characteristic of neuroses; along
with splitting and projection, it is fundamental for forms of psychopathol-
ogy that are more severe and genetically determined at an earlier stage.
Thus, with the focus trained on the relation between “recognition” and
“disavowal” as an opposition, analytic interest has been shifted towards
early childhood disorders [Frühstörungen] in an even more basic manner
than by recent theories of narcissism. In the broader sense, narcissistic dis-
orders also belong to this class of early childhood disorders [Frühstörungen],
but above all psychosomatic and borderline personality disorders, and the
inorganic psychoses [nicht-organischen Psychosen] that Freud once described
as “narcissistic neuroses.”
From these terminological findings there arises the question of whether
there is an actual connection between the intersubjective and the ortho-
dox usages of the concept of recognition. In the following, I would like
to provide critical, yet mainly positive considerations of this question,
though these will have to remain theses rather than answers. My presenta-
tion is structured as follows. In the first section, I propose theses on the
importance of the term “recognition” in Freud, briefly demonstrate the
significance of the term in several Kleinians, and attempt to argue that it is a
term already overloaded in these texts. In the second section, I define the or-
thodox usage of the concept of recognition as “propositional” recognition,
“Recognition” in Psychoanalysis 191
distinguish this from “personal” recognition, work out the commonality

between these two forms, and investigate the actual connections between
them. In contrast to the others, this section is mainly oriented towards the
philosophical concept.8 In the third section, I discuss the two forms of rec-
ognition and their intermingling in the conceptions set forth by Winnicott
and Benjamin. Finally, I talk in the fourth section about the usage of the
concept of recognition in intersubjectivistic conceptions of narcissism and
in a more comprehensive psychoanalytic anthropology, by way of which I
also arrive at positive hypotheses.
RECOGNITION IN FREUD AND IN KLEINIAN THEORY
The word “recognition” often appears in its colloquial form in Freud’s texts,
that is to say, in such a way that no idea specific to psychoanalysis is 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
“reality-testing [Realitätsprüfung].” By this he primarily meant the testing of

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

that are cited in support of this view.16 Nonetheless this opinion is highly
relevant for many Kleinians following the work of the (later) Hanna Segal.
According to this position, Hanna Segal’s 1957 essay Notes on Symbol
Formation “makes clear with her concept of symbolic representation that
the recognition of the independence of the object is necessary when there
is a decrease in the infant’s omnipotent identifications.”17 In this text, Se-
gal does in fact employ the term “recognition,” but only in reference to
the specific attitude taken towards symbols, and not towards “objects” in
a psychoanalytic sense.18 In her 1964 introduction to Klein’s work, how-
ever, and specifically in the chapter on “Reparation,” Segal emphasizes the
importance of “recognizing” the internal realities of aggression, guilt, and
mourning and the external realities of the mother’s independence, loss, and
assistance in reparation.19 In her later book Dream, Phantasy and Art Segal
then talks about the “acceptance of the triangular situation [Anerkennung
der triangulären Situation]”20 in reference to Bion: “It is an important aspect
of the depressive position that the recognition of mother as a separate per-
son includes the recognition of father as her partner rather than as a part-
object seen as her possession or as an object confused with her, as in the
fantasy of the combined parents.”21
The Kleinian text that puts the greatest weight on the concept of recog-
nition is, to my knowledge, Money-Kyrle’s short essay The Aim of Psycho-
analysis from 1971. Money-Kyrle defines the goal of analysis as “help[ing]
the patient understand, and so overcome, emotional impediments to his
discovering what he innately already knows.”22 To this end the author
particularly draws on Bion’s adoption of instinctive “preconceptions” and
Plato’s theory of knowledge as anamnesis [Wiedererinnerung]. In this con-
text, the concept of “recognition” denotes as its primary sense the cognition
on the base of a former cognition of the same thing or reidentification. Money-
Kyrle already attempts to capture this sense of “re-cognition” in an earlier
essay on Cognitive Development by recasting it as “re-recognition.”23 Here it
is clear that recognition is related to the “essential facts of life”24 that are
at first “intolerable.”25 “Recognition” thus carries the further connotation
of “resistant acceptance [widerstrebendem Akzeptieren],” which was already
decisive in Freud’s use of the term.
In the later paper, Money-Kyrle identifies three central forms of recognition:
“The recognition of the breast as a supremely good object, the recogni-
tion of the parents’ intercourse as a supremely creative act, and the recog-
nition of the inevitability of time and ultimately death.”26 By the third form
of recognition, which to my knowledge does not appear as such in Klein,
Money-Kyrle means the recognition of the fact “that no good (or bad) expe-
rience can ever last for ever.”27 He then examines the various forms in which
these forms of recognition may be obstructed, disturbed, or restricted. To
194 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
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.
“PROPOSITIONAL” AND “PERSONAL” RECOGNITION
In Freudian and Kleinian schools of thought, “recognition” is almost always

understood in the sense of the reluctant acceptance of facts, which given
certain circumstances often apply, of course, to persons. One paradigm for
this usage of “recognition” would be the once familiar phrase, “recognition
of the GDR.” Here “recognition” meant accepting the fact that the German
Democratic Republic, though incompatible with the values of the West, was
not merely a phantom of propaganda and not just a “phenomenon,” as one
often heard back then, but rather a reality with which one must reckon and
which had consequences for action.
In what follows, I will call “propositional recognition” the recognition
of any type of fact. My use of this term is not affected by the fact that a
“proposition” not only refers to “facts,” that is, real content, but also un-
real content. I also leave aside here the logical sense of “proposition” as
a “statement [Satz].” The term “propositional” is not meant to determine
recognition solely on the basis of its cognitive side. Rather, “propositional
recognition” is always a voluntative [voluntativ] and thus at the very least an
affective act when linked to ambivalence.
When such propositional recognition refers to facts that hold value, it
has in spite of its ambivalent character the character of approval. It is in
196 Andreas Wildt
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
philosophy,33 I have answered in the negative, though here the question

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

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

IN WINNICOTT AND BENJAMIN
Winnicott’s 1969 essay on “The Use of an Object and Relating through

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

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

nen], that is, the cognition of something based on a former cognition of it.
Recognition, in the sense of affirming abilities, performance or rights, is at
most a marginal feature on the mother’s side, and does not feature at all on
the infant’s part.44 Benjamin does not want to explicitly state the latter case.
For her, and in contrast to Freud, the newborn already seeks the mother
actively and spontaneously and joyfully explores her. But “recognition” is
not suitable as a description of this process, since the term expresses the
oppositional or ambitendent character contained in affirmation.
Similarly for Martin Dornes’ programmatic thesis: “Man is (perhaps) the
only living being that does not only strive towards the satisfaction of his
needs, but also the recognition thereof.”45 Just as in Benjamin, “recogni-
tion” can only generally denote affirmation and acknowledgment in the
context of “primary intersubjectivity” from which this quote is taken. This
does not subtract at all from the importance of the thesis that humans ap-
pear to be the only living beings in need of fundamentally intersubjective
acknowledgment, because they possess a structure of intentionality and
self that can only develop and stabilize itself by means of intersubjective
acknowledgment.46
In spite of all this, the theses for the anthropogenic importance of striv-
ing for recognition, its necessary reciprocity, conflictedness, and the struggle
for recognition remain convincing in my view, especially for the later stages
of development. Benjamin already tries to show this for the crisis of “rap-
prochement [Wiederannäherung]” following Margaret Mahler, and for the
pre-Oedipal relation to the father.47 This involves, among other things, not
only accepting the child in his or her existence, and understanding, paying
attention to, acknowledging, and attending to his or her needs, affects, and
intentions, but also in his or her performance of a stubborn and resistant
will, desire, and action. The model for the latter is above all the idealized
father. He is therefore the object of a love that is fundamental for identifi-
cation.48 This identification is based on the wish to be like the father, and
thus on an admiration of his abilities. For the child, reciprocity is constitu-
tive here: the child’s being recognized in his abilities by his parents comes
into effect precisely where it corresponds to a passionate admiration on the
part of the child. As I have argued above, however, it seems inappropriate
to me to describe such admiration as “recognition.” Benjamin obscures the
parents’ recognition in that she subsumes both the mother’s mood towards
the child as well as the father’s acknowledgement of desire, will, and action
under the same general term “recognition.”
Even if it is inappropriate to describe the love between parents and the
small child as recognition, it might be fitting for love between adults. Of
course, the positive relation to the interests of the other in mature love also
implies the recognition of moral obligations towards this other and above
all the recognition of his or her personal rights. Yet this type of recognition
is clearly not restricted to love. The same applies for the following attempt
at a definition: “Love is the recognition of the otherness of the other.”49 The
recognition of the otherness of the other is also characteristic for personal
respect, and is in no way restricted to love (and friendship). Here, interest
and readiness are specifically directed towards discovering the other in his
or her otherness as well, and then to recognize this other even if he or she
contradicts one’s own wishes. There is thus a dimension of recognition that
is specific to mature love (and friendship). But for the same reason, love
does not allow itself to be defined as recognition. What is more decisive
here is the interest in the individuality of the other, and that in itself is not
a form of recognition.
NARCISSISM, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, AND RECOGNITION
The thematics of propositional recognition in Kleinianism has a constitu-

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

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

oder Anerkennung? [Self-respect or Recognition?], ed. Henning Hahn (Weimar, Ger-
many: Bauhaus Universität, 2005). There I mainly discuss Axel Honneth’s theses on
the moral and social philosophy of recognition, which already refers extensively to
psychoanalytic texts, in particular those of Winnicott and Benjamin. My own efforts
owe much to Honneth’s work. The German version was translated into English by
Julia Ng (Northwestern University).
2. Cf. Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Prob-
lem of Domination (New York: Pantheon, 1988). [German translation: (1990) Die
Fesseln der Liebe. Psychoanalyse, Feminismus und das Problem der Macht (Basel, Swit-
zerland: Nexus, 1990).]; Martin Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und An-
erkennung,” Psyche 54, no. 2 (2000): 143–71; Altmeyer, Narzissmus und Objekt. Ein
intersubjektives Verständnis der Selbstbezogenheit (Gießen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2000); Altmeyer, M. (2003) Im Spiegel des Anderen. Anwendungen einer relationalen
Psychoanalyse (Gießen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003).
3. I will not be elaborating on Lacan and his school here, although the topoi
of the “struggle for recognition” and the “recognition of desire” play a role in that
discussion.
4. Cf. my own essays: Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung. Hegels Mo-
ralitätskritik im Lichte seiner Fichterezeption (Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta, 1982);
Wildt, “Recht und Selbstachtung, im Anschluss an die Anerkennungslehren von
Fichte und Hegel,” in Fichtes Lehre vom Rechtsverhältnis, ed. M. Kahlo. (Frankfurt am
Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1992); Wildt, “‘Anerkennung’.”
5. Cf. Altmeyer, „Narzissmus, Intersubjektivität und Anerkennung,” 161.
6. Cf. Morris Eagle, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation,
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1984); Howard Bacal and Kenneth Newman, Theories of
Object Relations: Bridges to Self Psychology (New York: Columbia University Press,
1990).
7. Stephen Mitchell, Relationality: From Attachment to Intersubjectivity (Hillsdale,
N.J.: Analytic Press, 2000); Martin Dornes, Die frühe Kindheit. Entwicklungspsychologie
der ersten Lebensjahre (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1997).
8. As my cited works show, I am an academic philosopher. In the last fourteen
years I have further trained in primal therapy, body-psychotherapy and psychoanaly-
sis, but I am not a psychoanalyst.
9. References to Sigmund Freud’s works will be made to the following editions:
Gesammelte Werke, chronologisch geordnet (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer,
1999) (cited as GW); Studienausgabe (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Fischer, 1982)
(cited as Stu); The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1966) (cited as Standard Edition).
See Freud’s Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, XXVII “Die Übertra-
gung”: Stu, I, 425 GW, XI, 459 [Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, XXVII
“Transference”: Standard Edition, XVI, 431–47; 441]; and Das Unbewusste: Stu, III,
128 GW, X, 268 [The Unconscious: Standard Edition, XIV, 159–215; 169].
10. Freud, „Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Gesche-
hens”: Stu, III, 18, Anm. 3 GW, VIII, 231, Anm. 1 [„Formulations of the Two
Principles of Mental Functioning”: Standard Edition, XII, 213–26; 219 n. 3].
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.
42. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes [1807], ed. J. Hoffmeister (1970),

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

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

here that we need a way of rethinking the politics of recognition in a way
that can help to solve, or at least mitigate, the problems of displacement
and reification. This means conceptualizing struggles for recognition so
that they can be integrated with struggles for redistribution, rather than
displacing and undermining them. It also means developing an account of
recognition that can accommodate the full complexity of social identities,
instead of one that promotes reification and separatism. Here, I propose
such a rethinking of recognition.
MISRECOGNITION AS IDENTITY DISTORTION?
The usual approach to the politics of recognition—what I shall call the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

processes of public justification, thus avoiding the authoritarian monolo-
gism of the politics of authenticity and valorizing transcultural interaction,
as opposed to separatism and group enclaves. Far from encouraging repres-
sive communitarianism, then, the status model militates against it.
To sum up: today’s struggles for recognition often assume the guise of
identity politics. Aimed at countering demeaning cultural representations
of subordinated groups, they abstract misrecognition from its institutional
matrix and sever its links with political economy and, insofar as they pro-
pound “authentic” collective identities, serve less to foster interaction across
differences than to enforce separatism, conformism, and intolerance. The
results tend to be doubly unfortunate: in many cases, struggles for recogni-
tion simultaneously displace struggles for economic justice and promote
repressive forms of communitarianism.
The solution, however, is not to reject the politics of recognition tout
court. That would be to condemn millions of people to suffer grave injus-
tices that can only be redressed through recognition of some kind. What
is needed, rather, is an alternative politics of recognition, a nonidentitarian
politics that can remedy misrecognition without encouraging displacement
and reification. The status model, I have argued, provides the basis for this.
By understanding recognition as a question of status, and by examining
its relation to economic class, one can take steps to mitigate, if not fully
solve, the displacement of struggles for redistribution; and by avoiding the
identity model, one can begin to diminish, if not fully dispel, the dangerous
tendency to reify collective identities.
NOTES
1. This paper was originally published in New Left Review 3 May/June 2000.
2. Author’s note added in 2009: Subsequent to writing this essay, I have 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
In what follows, I want to determine whether this development can still

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

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

cooperation, without which the archive of our dreams of a better life would
be significantly poorer. In these utopias of craftsmanship or artistic work,
ethical thought found an impetus for expanding the traditional notion of
“the good” to include activities of work. Since then, we can hardly imagine
a well-lived life without an element of objectifying activity. But none of
these accomplishments has been able to change the fact that a critique of
the capitalist organization of labor in the name of the ideal of craftsman-
ship has the fault of being a merely external standpoint.7 Social struggles to
improve working conditions in the economic sphere are forced to appeal
to norms that greatly differ from the utopian conception of holistic activ-
ity. The threshold to an immanent critique of the existing organization of
societal labor is only crossed when moral norms are drawn upon which
already constitute rational claims within the social exchange of services.
After all, the institutionalized notion of understanding one’s own work as a
contribution to a social division of labor is linked to normative claims that
reach all the way to the organization of the workplace.8 Before I go into the
conditions of such a critique, I want to examine briefly one attempt to foist
an immanent critical substance onto holistic, craftsmanlike activity.
We saw that the weakness of a critique in the name of the craftsman’s
ideal lay in the fact that it singles out a form of activity that in no way em-
bodies a guaranteed claim within the structures of societal reproduction.
Even if certain segments of socially necessary instances of work approach
this ideal, this would still not be an argument why all required activities
would have to take on the same shape. Of course, it might appear that this
fact could change if it could be shown that every performance of socially
necessary labor itself possessed a certain tendency to organic holism, to
autonomous self-control, and thus to quasi-craftsmanlike organization.
Thus regardless of what kind of activity is at issue, its individual purpose-
fulness alone would require that it remains under the sway of the perform-
ing subject as much as possible. I myself once sought to develop such an
argument on the basis of industrial-sociological investigations in order to
demonstrate that workers’ daily resistance practices revealed the desire for
autonomous control over their activity. I was convinced that the mere fact
that employees constantly undertook subversive efforts to gain control over
their work provided enough evidence to justify demands for self-control in
the workplace.9 Here, however, my aim was to apply the ideal of the crafts-
man not as an external, but as an internal standard for judging the capitalist
organization of labor. If, on the basis of the structure of their work, employ-
ees have the desire to possess control over their work, then this is a moral
demand immanently contained in the historically given relations of work,
and doesn’t necessarily have to be externally opposed to these relations.
Only a short time later, Jürgen Habermas pointed out that I was guilty
of drawing a “genetically false conclusion,” because I had taken the mere
228 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
it presupposes moral attitudes. That is why Habermas cannot ascribe any

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

form of societal integration in the structures of the capitalist economy
developing before his eyes. He was certain from the very beginning that
230 Axel Honneth
the achievements of the new market-mediated system of satisfying needs

could not be measured merely in terms of economic efficiency. Although
he was also aware that this new market institution significantly increased
the productivity of economic activity, he insisted that its function mustn’t
be restricted to this one physical achievement. Otherwise, this institution
would lack any ethical anchoring in society and would thus remain with-
out the necessary moral legitimacy. Therefore, Hegel sought to demonstrate
that the entire system of the market-mediated exchange of labor for the
means of satisfying needs could only find approval if it fulfilled certain
normative conditions. For Hegel, the primary integrative function of this
new economic form consisted in transforming the individual’s “subjective
self-seeking” into a willingness to work for “the satisfaction of the needs of
everyone else.”12 Once the population’s economic needs are to be fulfilled
by means of transactions on an anonymous market, every (male) member
of society must be willing to abandon his personal affinity for idleness
and contribute to the common good with his own work. For Hegel, this
universal obligation to work requires that each individual must develop
his skills and talents in such a way as to increase the “universal permanent
capital.”13 However, the willingness to contribute to the common good in
this way now presupposed a corresponding service in return. Every partici-
pant in the market-mediated exchange of services has “the right to work
for his bread,”14 that is, to nourish himself and his family at a given living
standard. In Hegel’s eyes, therefore, the second normative achievement of
the new economic form consists in the fact that it creates a system of mu-
tual dependence that secures the economic subsistence of all its members.
As we might say nowadays, the expectation that each person must work is
linked to the condition that each receive a minimum wage that provides
the financial means required to ensure economic independence.15 In order
to emphasize the moral significance of these internal preconditions, Hegel
coined the term “recognition”: in the system of market-mediated exchange,
subjects mutually recognize each other as private autonomous beings that
act for each other and thereby sustain their livelihood through the contribu-
tion of their labor to society.16
Of course, Hegel was clear-sighted enough to see that the development
of the capitalist market economy would threaten to place it in conflict with
its own normative recognitional conditions. As long as the profit-oriented
production of goods “is in a state of unimpeded activity,” it will eventually
give rise to the problem that “profits” will be concentrated in the hands of
the few, while “the subdivision and restriction of particular jobs” will in-
tensify for “a large mass of people,” which will in turn lead to “dependence
and distress.”17 “The rabble,” a not insignificant portion of the population,
will lack any chance to gain market-mediated recognition for their work,
and will thus suffer from a lack of “self-respect.” Due to his understanding
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
[lebensweltliche Sittlichkeit]. Even in Hegel’s time, there were many theo-

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

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

of a living wage, Durkheim attaches special value to the fairness and trans-
parency of the social division of labor. Durkheim was convinced that the
new economic form can only take on the function of social integration if it
fulfills two moral conditions, which both consist of counterfactual presup-
positions in all exchange relations on the labor market. For employees to be
able to consent freely to a labor contract, a level playing field must be en-
sured in terms of the acquisition of the necessary qualifications, and all so-
cial contributions must be remunerated in accordance with their real value
for the community.25 For Durkheim, therefore, justice and fairness are not
normative ideals externally imposed on the capitalist organization of work,
but constitute functionally necessary presuppositions within the framework
of this economic form. Without their existence, a sense of social belonging
could not arise. The same is true of the second normative determination
that Durkheim brings into play in his attempt to give an overview of the
moral necessities of the new economic form: if market-mediated relations
of work are to fulfill the function of social integration, they must not only
be organized in a fair and just manner, but also satisfy the demand that
individual activities be related to each other in a way that is as transparent
and clearly arranged as possible.
At this point Durkheim takes a decisive step beyond Hegel by propos-
ing a criterion according to which individual activities must be shaped.
His argument begins with his insight that the new relations of work can
only generate “organic” forms of solidarity if all workers can experience
them as a common, cooperative effort in the common interest. In order
to fulfill this condition, he claims that the cooperative connection be-
tween one’s own activity and that of one’s fellow workers must be clearly
visible from the perspective of each individual job. However, Durkheim
maintains that this will only be possible if the various work activities
are complex and demanding enough to insert each individual into what
can be felt as a halfway meaningful connection with all other socially
necessary work activities. He doesn’t hesitate to interpret the demand
for meaningful work as an entitlement anchored within the normative
conditions of the capitalist economic system: “The division of labor pre-
sumes that the worker, far from being hemmed in by his task, does not
lose sight of his collaborators, that he acts upon them and reacts to them.
He is, then, not a machine who repeats his movements without knowing
their meaning, but he knows that they tend, in some way, towards an end
that he conceives more or less distinctly. He feels that he is serving some-
thing.”26 It may be true that Hegel also entertained such ideas in speaking
of “self-respect” as a form of recognition to which every member of the
market-mediated society is entitled, but Durkheim was the first to go a
step further and detail the normative implications of the new social form
236 Axel Honneth
such that they included the entitlement to work that can be experienced
as being meaningful.27
III
The currently existing and thoroughly deregulated relations of work seem

to scorn Hegel’s and Durkheim’s considerations on the moral conditions
inherent in the capitalist economic form. The actual circumstances of so-
cietal work, be it in the post-Fordist wage production regime found in the
industrial democracies, or in the low wage countries of the second and third
world, is marked by such unreasonable and oppressive conditions that any
demand for sustained improvement must sound like a mere wish. Just as I
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, we are further away than ever
in the history of capitalist society from an effective critique of working
conditions that could have any practical consequences. Nevertheless, the
analyses offered by Hegel and Durkheim have not totally lost their signifi-
cance. If we take a look at recent developments in economic sociology or in
economic institutionalism, we gain ever more theoretical insight into the
fact that the capitalist labor market is dependent on normative conditions
concealed beneath the praise for the “self-regulating powers of the market.”
However, not all of the market’s pre-economic presuppositions that appear
in the altered perspective of these rather new disciplines are also moral in
nature. The majority of the rules analyzed there have more the character of
institutional conventions and social networks.28 We don’t encounter moral
norms in the strict sense until we come to share Hegel and Durkheim’s
conviction that the capitalist labor market mustn’t merely be a means for
increasing economic efficiency, but also a medium of social integration.
Only under this premise, which is in no way self-evident, does it become
apparent that the functioning of the market depends on the fulfillment of
moral promises that are to be described with terms such as “self-respect,”
“a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” and “meaningful work.” Thus in re-
sponding to the question whether we have immanent criteria for criticizing
the existing relations of work, everything depends on whether we decide to
analyze the capitalist market from the perspective of system integration or
social integration. If we restrict ourselves to the former perspective, then we
will find pre-economic conditions and rules in the market, but no moral
principles. If instead we take up the latter perspective, we will get sight of all
the moral implications, which, according to Hegel and Durkheim, guaran-
tee the market’s normative embedding in the social life-world.
At this point, where we are faced with a choice between two different per-
spectives, the voices of those affected by the capitalist labor market can per-
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
4. Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, 2 volumes (Boston: Beacon

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

conditions must ensure that workers recognize each other’s fulfillment of their roles
in the labor process and thereby attain “self-respect”: 58.
22. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: The Free Press,
1964).
23. I will not discuss the various difficulties involved in Durkheim’s analysis. For
a useful overview, see Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, A Historical
and Critical Study (London: Penguin Press, 1973), chapter 7; Hans-Peter Müller, “Die
Moralökonomie moderner Gesellschaften,” in Emile Durkheim, Physik der Sitten und
des Rechts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 1999), 307–341.
24. Steven Lukes refers indirectly to the affinity with Hegel by drawing parallels
between Durkheim’s analysis and that of the British neo-Hegelian T. H. Green. See
his Emile Durkheim, 265, 271, 300.
25. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 389–95.
26. Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 372.
27. A short text from 1898 makes clear that Durkheim was indeed aware of all
these normative implications of his sociological analysis: Emile Durkheim, “L’in-
dividualisme et les intellectuels,” English translation in Robert Bellah, ed., Emile
Durkheim on Morality and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).
28. Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of
Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 481–510.
29. Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary
Society (Stanford, Calif.: Polity Press, 1999).
30. Philosophy of Right, §238.
11
Taking on the Inheritance of
Critical Theory: Saving
Marx by Recognition?
Emmanuel Renault
Axel Honneth developed his theory of recognition as a way to inflect the

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

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

involves the extension of a tendency, inherited from Habermas, consisting
Taking on the Inheritance of Critical Theory 243
in the reduction of Critical Theory to a reflection on the norms of criticism.

Habermas criticized Adorno, as he did Foucault, for leaving unclear the nor-
mative presuppositions of their critical models, and even for presupposing
the normative principles that contradict certain of their fundamental theses.
In fact, the effort to link normative reflection and social theory, central in
The Theory of Communicative Action,13 was then abandoned for reflections
raised exclusively by moral philosophy and the theory of moral philosophy
and legal and political philosophy. While some claim that Honneth dis-
tances himself too much from Habermas,14 a distance that leads notably to
the severing of the essential link between criticism and reason, others iden-
tify, on the contrary, a proximity that remains too strong. One could have
criticized Honneth for attempting to refound a critical theory on a social
philosophy of normative content by focusing his reflections exclusively on
the ethicomoral presuppositions of the models of social critique, abandon-
ing conjointly the effort to elaborate an effective social criticism. In Marx-
ian terms, Honneth as well as Habermas would be guilty of transforming
a Critical Theory into political philosophy, and one would have to oppose
to these tendencies the demand of a critique of philosophy, in addition to
that of a theory of the contradictions and the social tendencies that bear
possible emancipations.
However, even if Honneth’s works up until now have above all borne
on the normative side of Critical Theory, they have also for several years
been oriented towards a deepening of the theory of recognition as social
theory.15 Moreover, the theory of recognition that Honneth proposes offers
a critique of political theory, and develops an analysis of emancipatory
social potentials.
From a certain point of view, indeed, the theory of recognition chal-
lenges one of the fundamental orientations of contemporary political
philosophy, namely, the privilege accorded to the definition of justice
and the identification of its criteria. Honneth shows that theories of jus-
tice tend to ignore the central characteristics of experiences of injustice,
and they tend to be unaware of the importance of questions relating to
what is called “the other of justice,” in other words, social pathologies.16
He can thus present his mode of intervention in the field of normative
political philosophy in Marxian terms, by associating in the same move-
ment Critical Theory and critique of moral. This is the case in the article
“Moral Consciousness and Class Domination,”17 which underlines that
it is only under certain privileged social conditions that individuals have
the occasion to refer explicitly to consciously formulated moral principles
in order to orient their existence, while conversely, most resistance move-
ments of the dominated are anchored in unbearable experiences. Indeed,
this critique of moral consciousness could be developed as a critique of
the political as well.18
In addition, in Critique of Power, Honneth develops a critique of Haber-

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

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

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

theory? Honneth elaborates the fundamental theses of his social theory in
Critique of Power. These theses have been criticized, and they sometimes
merit criticism for their ambiguities. But criticisms have most often focused
on isolated aspects of this social theory, without taking into account the fact
that these theses define a research plan that can be oriented in different di-
rections, and that certain of these orientations correspond precisely to that
which is demanded, or which can be demanded by these criticisms.
A First Ambiguity
A first ambiguity is relative to the Habermasian distinction between
system and lifeworld. In Critique of Power, Honneth explains that no social
sphere can be totally free of the weight of normative anticipations, and that
the “administration,” as well as the “market,” is submitted to the moral
constraints of the lifeworld. But this objection can be understood in two
different ways. In the first sense, it can signify that the theory of recognition,
understood as an analysis of the normative components of interaction, is
in itself to describe all social relations because these always consist of 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
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
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
make intelligible the specificity of each of the regimes of accumulation. If

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

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

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

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

seemed to surpass the unilateralities of that which was identified, maybe by
mistake, with Marxist functionalism, and it proposed theoretical hypotheses
as to the relationship between different social spheres, and as to different
social struggles that developed therein. Today, the stakes of the relationship
of Critical Theory with Marxism remains linked to the challenge presented
by joining critique and social theory. The Marxian principles in fact allow
for the updating of certain insufficiencies of the theory of communicative
action, but the question of knowing how to construct a social theory of
replacement remains unclear.
For this reason, Marxist criticisms of the theory of recognition often
remain unconvincing. Ultimately, when they do not purely and simply
rest on misunderstandings, they only take action on that which remains a
problem to resolve, for the different agendas of Critical Theory, as well as
for the different versions of Marxism itself. The problems that the theory
of recognition encounters today are also those faced by the contemporary
diagnoses that are inspired by Marx, and the objectives that it intends to at-
tain are equally those that impose themselves on the forms of Marxism that
wish to raise the theoretical and political challenges of the present.
NOTES
1. See notably, Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On the 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
at a Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Two Lectures (Assen, Netherlands:

Van Gorcum, 2001).
9. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-
Philosophical Exchange, trans. Joel Golb, James Ingram, and Christiane Wilke (New
York: Verso, 2003).
10. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology,” in Recognition and Power: Axel
Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, ed. Bert van den Brink and David
Owen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 323–47.
11. Axel Honneth, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2008).
12. Axel Honneth and Martin Hartmann, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constella-
tions, 13, no. 1 (March 2006): 41–58.
13. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1: Reason
and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press,
1984) and The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A
Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press,
1987).
14. For example, see Axel Honneth, ed., Befreiung Aus Der Mündigkeit: Paradoxien
Des Gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus Verlag,
2002); N. Kompridis, “From Reason to Self-Realization? Axel Honneth and the Ethi-
cal Turn in Critical Theory,” Critical Horizons 5 (2004): 323–60.
15. See the debate with Nancy Fraser, and the research projects in the ensemble
of research projects at the Institute for Social Research dealing with “the paradoxes
of capitalist modernization” and “the metamorphoses of recognition.”
16. Axel Honneth, “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dia-
lectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism,” Constella-
tions 7, no. 1 (March 2000): 116–27.
17. Axel Honneth, “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination: Some Prob-
lems in the Analysis of Hidden Morality,” The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays
in Social and Political Philosophy (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995), 205–219.
18. See Emmanuel Renault, “Radical Democracy and an Abolitionist Concept of
Justice,” Critical Horizons 6 (2005): 137–52.
19. Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory,
trans. Kenneth Baynes (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991).
20. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Con-
flicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995).
21. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1997); Patchen Markell, Bound by Recognition (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003). See also Bert van den Brink and David Owen,
eds., Recognition and Power. Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
22. See Forster, “Recognition and Resistance,” op. cit.
23. Hermann Kocyba, “Der Preis der Anerkennung. Von der taylorischen Mis-
sachtung zur strategischen Instrumentalisierung der Subjectivität der Arbeitenden,”
in Anerkennung und Arbeit, ed. U. Holtgrewe, S. Voswinkel, and S. Wagner (Konstanz,
Germany: UVK, 2000), 127–40.
24. Axel Honneth, “Recognition and Ideology.” op. cit.
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.
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?
ON THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE OF THE WORLD OF WORK
Some thirty years ago,1 shortly after Jürgen Habermas published Theory
of Communicative Action, some of his critics argued that he had failed to
acknowledge the importance of work for a good life in the modern world.
Habermas dismissed such criticism: “If we consider the trends towards
shortening working time and towards a corresponding devaluation of the
relevance of labour [. . .], then it becomes evident that the historical 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
economic policies have been implemented in many Western countries.

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

follows:
From a social-theoretical perspective, the fundamental assumption is that
the core areas of societies are “institutionalizations”12 of specific forms of rec-
ognition. According to this view, every society is constituted by human rela-
Can the Goals of the Frankfurt School be Achieved by a Theory of Recognition? 259
tions that “are anchored in different principles of reciprocal recognition” (RR

146). Honneth believes that such a social reality can only be analyzed with a
normative social theory whose basic concepts are tailored to precisely the “ex-
pectations” (RR 132) of recognition people have. Because of this, the category
of recognition functions as a socio-ontological key concept for him.
In Honneth’s view, three kinds of recognition are constitutive of what
he terms “bourgeois-capitalist society” (RR 138): love, respect, and social
esteem. In very broad strokes, these can be understood in the following
terms: individuals in a love relationship affirm one another “as needy be-
ings” (RR 139); individuals who respect one another treat each other as
subjects to whom the “same autonomy” as well as “equal rights and duties”
are accorded; and individuals who esteem one another take each other to
be possessors of “skills and talents . . . that are of value for society” (RR
142). If this is to be consistent with Honneth’s socio-ontological thesis
mentioned above, one would need to show that the core areas of capitalist
societies—which Honneth believes are the private sphere, the constitutional
state, and the world of work—can be understood as institutionalizations
of love, respect, and social esteem. And indeed, it is evident that Honneth
claims to have proof of this when he explicitly links his social-theoretical
analysis to “the core institutions of the capitalist form of society” (RR 139).
In his view, modern family relationships are characterized by “loving care
for the other’s well-being in light of his or her individual needs” (RR 139);
moreover, both the constitutional and the welfare state are governed by the
principle of legal respect; and finally, the idea of “individual achievement,”
(RR 140) which Honneth believes is the “leading cultural idea” (RR 140) in
the modern working world, can be explained in terms of social esteem (RR
140–41). For these reasons, he believes it is possible to “interpret bourgeois-
capitalist society as an institutionalized recognition order” (RR 138).
From a moral-philosophical perspective, Honneth’s fundamental assump-
tion is that people can only form a positive evaluative self-relation if they
participate in “social relations that require an attitude of reciprocal recogni-
tion” (RR 143). However, this thesis is formal in the sense that it contains
no (further) information relating to the content of such social relations of
recognition. In fact, while Honneth regards participation in social relations
of recognition as a “necessary condition” (RR 176) for the formation of the
kind of self-relation mentioned above, he considers the content of these
relations to be subject to historical changes. Apparently, qualitatively dif-
ferent constellations of recognition that have been formed in the course of
human history are, in Honneth’s opinion, equally suited to the formation
of positive individual self-relations.13
From the sociopolitical perspective, the aim of Honneth’s theory lies in
developing a critique of contemporary “neoliberalism.”14 In this con-
text, what is central is the distinction between two types of capitalism,
a “social-democratic” one and a “neoliberal” one,15 as well as the claim

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

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

tion by turning to the “political-philosophical exchange” between these
two authors.
In Fraser’s view, Honneth has not provided an adequate answer to “the
question of how critical theorists should understand the social structure of
present-day capitalism” (DR 211). Fraser characterizes Honneth’s analysis
of the modern working world in the following terms: “In the sphere of
labor, . . . recognition should be regulated by the principle of achievement,
which determines the level of one’s wages according to the value of one’s
social contribution. From Honneth’s perspective, therefore, struggles over
distribution are really struggles over recognition, aimed at changing the cul-
tural interpretation of achievement” (DR 213). If this holds true, however,
“it follows that there is nothing distinctive about market-mediated social
interactions, which are regulated, like all interactions, by cultural schemas
of evaluation. Thus, there is neither any point in, nor any possibility of,
conceptualizing specifically economic mechanisms in capitalist society”
(DR 213).
Fraser elaborates as follows:
These considerations apply in spades to the labor markets of capitalist socie-

ties. In those arenas, work compensation is not determined by the principle of
achievement. . . . Also important are political-economic factors such as the sup-
ply of and demand for different types of labor; the balance of power between
labor and capital; the stringency of social regulations including the minimum
wage; the availability and cost of productivity enhancing technologies; the
ease with which firms can shift their operations to locations where wage rates
are lower; the cost of credit; the terms of trade; and international currency
exchange rates. In the broad mix of relevant considerations, ideologies of
achievement are by no means paramount. Rather, their effects are mediated by
the operations of impersonal system mechanisms, which prioritize maximiza-
tion of corporate profits (DR 214–15).
In conclusion, Fraser maintains that Honneth’s theory of recognition is

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

different professional activities.
In considering this, Fraser claims to show why capitalist worlds of work
cannot be analyzed in terms of recognition theory. As a result, her critique is
directed not only at Honneth’s theory, but fundamentally at a certain kind
of social theory as well. This is evident from her belief that, on the rigorous
grounds provided by her argument, capitalist markets can only be analyzed
systems-theoretically (DR 216–22).
If this holds true, recognition theory is also ill suited to ground a
critique of contemporary capitalism. Indeed, should the distribution
of goods and income be dependent largely on “political-economic
factors”—factors themselves independent of patterns of recognition—
economic injustices would have to be explained by reference to these fac-
tors and remedied by measures affecting them. Criticizing such injustices
on the basis of recognition theory would therefore be misleading and
counterproductive.23
Is Fraser’s critique justified? There are two things to consider here.
On the one hand, it should be noted that within economics there is a
growing consciousness of the relevance of norms to the behavior of eco-
nomic actors.24 This is a connection of fundamental importance for advo-
cates of institutional economics. In their view, an account of “norms, mo-
res, traditions and customs”25 is required in order to appropriately describe
and reliably predict the behavior of economic actors:
Prognoses of human behavior made with the help of the simple model of the
homo oeconomicus have frequently been proven wrong. If one insists, on the one
hand, on the general model of behavior taking constant preferences as its starting
point, yet wishes to uphold restrictions whose alterations are the sole means of
inducing changes in behavior, then one would be well advised to examine the 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
From the standpoint of institutional economics, accounting for

“norms, mores, traditions and customs” is thus a social-theoretical require-
ment. Now if, as Honneth believes, the norms constitutive of “bourgeois-
capitalist societies” are norms of recognition, then the theory of recogni-
tion would be an indispensable—and central—element for the analysis
of economic behavior from the point of view of institutional economics.
Thus, there are considerations within contemporary economics that
speak in favor of taking Honneth’s social theory seriously.27
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
A discussion of Honneth’s conception of social esteem is quite revealing in

considering whether or not the social-theoretical and social-critical goals
of contemporary Critical Theory may be attained within the framework
of a theory of recognition. For this reason, I will now discuss some ques-
tions and problems that this conception of social esteem poses. Here I will
concentrate on three issues that I will treat in separate subsections. I will
then explain the relevance of my considerations with regard to the critique
expressed by Nancy Fraser and others against recognition theory.29
Two Types of Esteem

What constitutes social esteem? Why is this form of recognition im-
portant in terms of moral philosophy? And how is it institutionalized in
capitalist societies?
In general,30 Honneth answers these questions as follows: social esteem
refers to “skills and talents” whose use is “of value for society” (RR 142).
Honneth believes that the moral-philosophical relevance of social esteem
consists in the fact that this form of recognition is a necessary condition
for the formation of “the conviction that one possesses good or valuable
skills,”31 and that this conviction is a central element of a stable and positive
“sense of self-worth.”32 Someone who is not socially esteemed can therefore
not consider him- or herself a valuable human being. With regard to the
institutional form of social esteem in capitalist societies, Honneth says:
A mere glance at studies of the psychological effects of unemployment makes

it clear that the experience of labor must be assigned a central position in the
model [of social esteem—SaB] emerging here. The acquisition of that form or
recognition that I have called social esteem continues to be bound up with the
opportunity to pursue an economically rewarding and thus socially regulated
occupation.”33
Honneth thus seems to hold that in capitalist societies having work is a

sufficient condition for earning social esteem. Moreover, as his reference to
“the psychological consequences of unemployment” suggests, he believes
that participation in the world of work is a necessary condition for earning
social esteem in these societies. Given his understanding of “social esteem”
analyzed above, it follows that people who have work are socially esteemed
as possessors of specific skills, while people who lack work are not socially
esteemed in this regard. As a result those—but not these—people will have
the conviction that they “possess good or valuable skills,” and they may
consider themselves valuable and form a stable “feeling of self-worth.”
To illustrate:
Table 12.1
Self-Relation Relation of Recognition Institutional Form
Esteem for possessing specific (Social) esteem for possessing Having work
skills socially valuable skills
In my view, it is important to distinguish between the following two

kinds of esteem:
1. esteem related to specific skills; and

2. esteem related to socially useful achievements.
This distinction is important because there are forms of work in

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

and there is also a tension between it, on the one hand, and the principle
of legal respect (in Honneth’s understanding of it) and people’s support of

welfare-state arrangements, on the other hand. I shall discuss these issues
separately in the following two subsections.
On the Relation between the Relation of Recognition and Self-Relation

The conception of social esteem proposed in RR is problematic in view
of the relation between the relation of recognition and self-relation. We
saw above that the interest that Honneth’s conception of social esteem
holds for moral philosophy lies in the assumption that the presence of
a particular type of recognition (namely, social esteem for possessing
specific skills) is a necessary condition for the formation of a partic-
ular type of individual self-relation (namely, self-esteem for possess-
ing specific skills). But how plausible is this assumption in the pres-
ent case, which is summarized in table 12.2? There are three things to
consider here:
1. As has already been said, it is possible to be useful to society without

actualizing anything that would generally be considered a nontrivial
skill or talent. This connection is expressed in labels such as “unskilled
labor.” Even when such work is very useful for society (for instance, in
cases of natural catastrophes or times of war), and thus provides the
basis for relatively high social esteem, I do not see how it could com-
municate the consciousness of having valuable skills to the worker.
(Of course, it is conceivable that the readiness to perform such work
in the above-mentioned situations gives rise to social esteem; however,
this form of recognition refers to being useful to others, and not to the
kind of work that is performed.)
2. The relation between the relation of recognition and self-relation is
problematic in a quantitative respect. (This follows from 1.) Even in
the case of work that is generally seen to involve an actualization of
nontrivial skills, an increase (or decrease) of social usefulness can be
affected by factors that do not concern work-related skills, for example
a change in the intensity of work, the use of different tools and ma-
chines, or a change in consumer needs and demands. On the other
hand, further professional training does not necessarily lead to an
increase in the social usefulness of a professional activity; and tech-
nological innovations or changes in the demands of the society as a
whole can even render one’s expertise superfluous. Because a change
in one’s own professional skills is neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition for a change in the social usefulness of one’s own work, one
cannot conclude from an increase in social esteem that it is accompa-
nied by an increase in skills.
3. Let us assume that we lived in a world in which every increase of a

unit of work’s social usefulness were caused by an—quantitatively
corresponding—improvement of the worker’s professional skills, and
in which workers were remunerated according to the social usefulness
of their work. Would we not have to believe, then, that we possessed
more or less valuable skills depending on our levels of income? In other
words: wouldn’t the meritocratic aspect of this form of social esteem
also characterize individual self-relation? And would it be plausible
to claim that recipients of (very) low incomes could believe they pos-
sessed “good or valuable skills”? Or wouldn’t one have to suspect,
rather, that they would see themselves as possessing almost worthless
skills and tend to form a negative “feeling of self-worth”?39
In light of these considerations, the conception of social esteem pre-

sented in RR appears to be problematic with regards to the relation between
social recognition and self-relation. In fact, it is not clear why social esteem
related to the social usefulness of one’s work is important for forming the
consciousness that one possesses nontrivial skills, and why an increase in
social esteem might be relevant in this context.
In order to circumvent this problem, one could for instance try to “fit”
self-relation to the relation of recognition. In this case one would claim that
individuals who participate in the practice of meritocratic esteem described
in RR consider themselves as more or less socially useful members of so-
ciety depending on how much social esteem is accorded to them. This is
illustrated in the following table:
Table 12.3
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
As we shall see below,40 it is nonetheless doubtful whether the concep-

tion of recognition sketched out in this table is attractive to contemporary
Critical Theory.
On the Relation between Meritocratic Esteem and Legal Respect

There is a tension between meritocratic esteem on the one hand and the
principle of legal respect (in Honneth’s understanding of it) and people’s
support of welfare-state arrangements on the other. In order to analyze
this tension, it is necessary to take into account a number of preliminary

considerations.
It is of course possible to defend a gradual conception of social esteem
and link this form of recognition to the social usefulness of work. Under
this assumption, it is plausible to argue that the income commensurate to
this usefulness is the institution through which society’s esteem of the in-
dividual is expressed. Then, however, the question arises of how the social
usefulness of different types of work and the levels of appropriate income
are to be determined. Since in RR it is assumed that meritocratic esteem is
a characteristic of capitalist societies, there seem to be basically two ways of
answering the above question:
1. The Critical Theorist who holds onto the concept of meritocratic

esteem might take the view that markets are basically suited to deter-
mining the social usefulness of work. In this case he or she would have
to (i) specify under which conditions markets fulfill this function, and
(ii) justify why he or she is of this opinion.
2. The Critical Theorist who holds onto the concept of meritocratic es-
teem might take the view that markets are not suited to determining
the social usefulness of work. In this case he or she would have to (iii)
explain how the social usefulness of different types of work and the
levels of appropriate incomes are to be determined, and (iv) justify
why he or she is of this opinion.
Which of these two options does Axel Honneth endorse? As I see it, there
are good reasons to believe that he actually takes the view specified by op-
tion 1. Here are two of these reasons:
1. Neither in RR nor in any other writing does Honneth develop a con-

ception of determining the social usefulness of different kinds of
work and the level of commensurate income by means of anything
other than markets. Moreover, nowhere does he suggest that such
a conception is to be developed within the framework of Critical
Theory.
2. From the sociopolitical perspective, the aim of contemporary Critical
Theory is not the critique of capitalism as such, but rather of neolib-
eral capitalism.41 As I have pointed out, Honneth is fundamentally
of the opinion that neoliberal, but not social-democratic, orders are
problematic from the standpoint of recognition theory. Because regu-
lated markets are components of the latter, it would be surprising if
Honneth believed that markets in general were unsuited to determin-
ing the social usefulness of work.
For these reasons, it is correct to assume that Honneth endorses the

view specified by option 1. The question to ask, therefore, is under which
conditions markets are suited to determining the social usefulness of work.
Honneth’s answer to this question may be summed up as follows: in order
to fulfill this function properly, markets must be “contained by the social-
welfare state” (RR 149) and be free of ideological “distortions” (RR 148).
Social welfare programs and institutions are explained in RR by the prin-
ciple of legal respect: “But it was also precisely this principle of equal legal
treatment that could be mobilized in countless social struggles and debates,
especially by the working class, to establish social rights. Thus the recogni-
tion sphere of the achievement principle was in a certain way contained
by the social-welfare state” (RR 149). Honneth then elaborates: “The nor-
mative argument which made social welfare guarantees in a certain sense
“rationally” unavoidable is essentially the hardly disputable assertion that
members of society can only make actual use of their legally guaranteed
autonomy if they are assured a minimum of economic resources, irrespec-
tive of income” (RR 149). Thus, members of a society who respect one an-
other as autonomous subjects accord each other social rights, that is, legally
backed claims on social goods that do not require having work.
According to RR there are ideological distortions where activities “neces-
sary for [society’s—SaB] reproduction” (RR 141) are not recognized as work
and/or work is not evaluated solely by reference to “[its] actual content”
(RR 153). As I will discuss Honneth’s theory and critique of ideology in
more detail further below, I will not go into these two points here. Instead,
I will point out for now that Honneth’s reflections on the theory of ideol-
ogy specify no criterion or procedure for determining the social usefulness
of goods and achievements. They therefore contain no argument that
runs counter to my claim that Honneth would endorse option 1 laid out
above.
Even if Honneth does not deal explicitly with our question (ii) above, it
is clear that he grounds the arguments from (i) in a moral-philosophical man-
ner. In his view, markets have to be “contained by the social-welfare state”
because otherwise the members of the society in question would not legally
respect each other to the fullest extent; and if they do not recognize one an-
other in this way, they would not be able to form the consciousness of fully
being autonomous subjects. Analogously, Honneth believes that markets
have to be free of ideological “distortions” because otherwise the members
of society would not esteem each other according to the social usefulness of
their work; and if they do not esteem one another in this way, they would
not be able to form the consciousness of having valuable skills.
Given our reflections so far, it is now possible to explain why there is a
tension between meritocratic esteem, on the one hand, and the principle
of legal respect and people’s support of welfare-state arrangements, on

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

society strive for the highest possible (relative) income as bourgeois, while
intervening for the preservation of their social rights as citoyen. Yet experi-
ence shows that it is doubtful whether the tension I have sketched out can
be defused for long in this way. This might be connected to the fact that
social reality cannot be “departmentalized” in two different areas each of
which corresponds to either social esteem or legal respect. An employer
who would be in a better position in terms of social esteem if he did not
financially participate in the maintenance of the company’s pension system
will have reason to question the corresponding social claims and rights;
and an employee who can earn a higher income by way of an individually,
rather than collectively, negotiated contract will have reason to disfavor
trade unionism. As these examples show, it is unlikely that a practice of
social esteem related to the social usefulness of work as measured by the
market economy has no negative consequences for the social recognition
of social rights.
To sum up: the conception of social esteem that is described in RR is in
tension with Honneth’s conception of legal respect. In societies where peo-
ple esteem one another according to the usefulness of their work and where
this usefulness is determined by markets, the practice of social esteem tends
to be problematic with regards to the preservation of social rights.
Social Esteem and Ideology Critique

To his analysis of “the individualistic achievement principle” (RR 147)
Honneth adds some reflections on the theory and critique of ideology.
Earlier I claimed that his own theory of ideology specifies no criterion or
procedure for determining the social usefulness of goods and achievements
independently from a market economy.45 In the present context, I shall
substantiate this claim. Furthermore, I will investigate whether Honneth’s
own ideology critique is attractive from the perspective of contemporary
Critical Theory.
In RR we read:
Of course, the latter kind of social relation—which represented a third sphere

of recognition alongside love and a new legal principle in the developing capi-
talist society—was hierarchically organized in an unambiguously ideological
way from the start. For the extent to which something counts as “achievement,”
as a cooperative contribution, is defined against a value standard whose norma-
tive reference point is the economic activity of the independent, middle-class,
male bourgeois. What is distinguished as “work,” with a specific quantifiable
use for society hence amounts to the result of a group-specific determination of
value—to which whole sectors of other activities, themselves equally necessary
for reproduction (e.g. household work), fall victim (RR 141).
Hence, the concept of individual achievement, which is central to the

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

best.
One should note that Honneth’s reflections do not concern the ques-
tion of how much social esteem should accompany a particular type of
work (in contrast to other types of work). As has already been remarked,
his discussion of case (1) is directed only at the question of whether or not
an activity is work (and should thus generate social esteem), and his argu-
ments regarding case (2) are formal in the sense that they simply submit an
unequal remuneration of equal work to critique, but do not provide infor-
mation that would be relevant for the determination of income levels for
specific types of work. Consequently, no alternative to the market is cashed
out by Honneth’s theory of ideology as a measure for evaluating the social
usefulness of different kinds of work. Therefore, his reflections contain no
argument that runs counter to my claim that Honneth supports the above
option 1, and they are in line with my considerations from the preceding
subsection.46
At this juncture we should consider whether Honneth’s fundamental
adherence to the achievement principle is attractive from the perspective
of contemporary Critical Theory. Is it plausible, within the framework of
a normative theory of recognition with which contemporary neoliberal-
ism shall be criticized,47 to consider the concept of meritocratic esteem a
(central) “normative principle of reciprocal recognition” (RR 148)? In this
context we should recall two problems that have already been discussed:48
1. With respect to moral philosophy, the interest of social esteem rests

on the assumption that this form of recognition is a necessary condi-
tion of self-esteem related to specific skills.49 However, if social esteem
refers to the social usefulness of work, the relation between the rela-
tion of recognition and self-relation becomes problematic. For one,
the conceptual relation between socially useful work and skill-based
work is contingent,50 and furthermore, in a world where the social
usefulness of work is proportional to the skill level of the working
person, the people whose work is of very little use for society would
have to believe that they possess nearly worthless skills. With regard
to the possibility of self-esteem related to specific skills, meritocratic
esteem is thus of minor interest at best; in order to achieve its moral-
philosophical aim, it is not necessary that Critical Theory rely on this
concept of recognition.
2. Adhering to the concept of meritocratic esteem would be counter-
intuitive given the sociopolitical ambition of contemporary Critical
Theory. As we have seen, one of Honneth’s interests lies in defending
a social-democratic type of capitalism against the market-oriented
economic policies adopted in reaction to the crisis of Keynesianism.51
However, a social practice of meritocratic esteem is in tension with

society’s recognition of social rights. For this reason, it is surprising
that Honneth views the concept of meritocratic esteem as a central
“normative principle of reciprocal recognition” and limits the task of
social critique to identifying the “superimpositions and distortions”
of the achievement principle.
RESULTS AND PERSPECTIVES
What interest do my considerations hold for a social theory of recognition

within the tradition of Critical Theory? In what follows, I will first elucidate
the social-theoretical relevance of my discussion of Honneth’s conception
of social esteem and then address two further questions arising from this.
I shall conclude my discussion by briefly explaining how a Honneth-style
Critical Theory might achieve its aims in the domain of social critique.52
Social-Theoretical Findings
My reflections above on the concept of meritocratic esteem are of great
importance with regard to social theory. As we have seen, the question of
“how critical theory should understand the social structure of present-day
capitalism” (DR 211) is the subject of much controversial debate. In 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
on “political-economic factors such as the supply of and demand for dif-

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

As we have seen, it is possible to trace some dispositions and behaviors
that social scientists consider to be central elements of “the new spirit of
capitalism” back to a specific practice of recognition: meritocratic esteem

in a market economy. Striving for professional success and the highest
possible income, as well as the desire to socially document these successes,
can be explained in this way. As a result, meritocratic esteem is suited to
explaining the occurrences of these dispositions and behaviors under the
assumption that there is a market economy. In light of this condition, the fol-
lowing two questions arise:
1. Can markets be analyzed with recognition theory?

2. Can the existence of markets be legitimated by recognition theory?
As has already been said, these questions are at the center of a 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
idea of such a social critique? What perspectives do they open up for a

critique of the economic policies implemented in reaction to the crisis of
Keynesianism?
Assuming that meritocratic esteem—or an increase in its social relevance—is
a causally relevant factor for the processes of market-oriented restructuring
and weakening of social insurance systems,65 one would need to investigate
how this practice of esteem can be criticized in terms of social philosophy.
In connection with this, one should investigate:
1. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem has (structural) effects that

make it difficult or impossible for the members of society to engage in
other practices of recognition that are important for them;66
2. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem has (structural) effects that
delegitimate and destabilize this praxis itself;67 and
3. Whether a praxis of meritocratic esteem forms a necessary element of
a fulfilling life in “bourgeois-capitalist societies,” or whether it might
not rather be considered and criticized as a compensatory order of
recognition.68
Investigating any of these fields of inquiry—which I have merely

sketched here—requires extensive conceptual, normative, and social-sci-
entific study and therefore lies beyond the confines of my present paper.
As I show elsewhere,69 such research does, however, allow for a critique
of contemporaneous capitalism to be formulated which fulfills the meth-
odological requirements of Critical Theory. If this estimation is correct,
then there are reasons to believe that both the social-theoretical and the
social-critical goals of Critical Theory may be attained from within a
framework of recognition theory.
NOTES
1. Parts of this essay were presented at the following venues: Department of

Philosophy, University of North Florida, Jacksonville (March 2, 2007); Institute of
Social Research, Frankfurt am Main (June 30, 2007); Department of Philosophy,
Queens College, City University of New York (February 29, 2008); Department of
Philosophy, University of Cologne (April 12, 2008); Department of Philosophy, The
Chinese University of Hong Kong (April 19, 2008). I am grateful for the valuable
remarks and suggestions I received on each of these occasions. Finally, I would like
to thank Frederick Neuhouser, Michael Quante, and Christopher F. Zurn for their
very helpful comments on an earlier version of my essay.
2. Jürgen Habermas, “A Reply to my Critics,” in Habermas: Critical Debates, ed.

J. Thompson and D. Held, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1982), 225.
3. Witness, for instance, the current political discussion about raising the pen-
sionable age in Germany.
4. Cf., for example, Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffer-
ing in Contemporary Society, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (Oxford: Polity, 1999)
and Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (New York, London: W. W. Norton,
1998).
5. Cf., for example, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding
Heights (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
6. Cf., for example, Robert Castel, From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Trans-
formation of the Social Question (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003),
Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, and Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism
(New Haven, Conn., London: Yale University Press, 2006).
7. Cf., for example, Bourdieu, The Weight of the World, Castel, From Manual Work-
ers to Wage Laborers, Sennett, The Corrosion of Character and The Culture of the New
Capitalism.
8. Cf., for example, Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, eds., Ethical
Theory and Business (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004).
One issue related to the working world that is currently being debated among
political philosophers is the question whether the so-called right to work can
be established. On this issue, see my discussion in Hans-Christoph Schmidt am
Busch, “Gibt es ein Recht auf Arbeit?” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 51, no.
6 (2003): 949–68.
9. The term “Critical Theory” is used here to refer to what is also called “The
Frankfurt School,” that is, the school of thought established in the 1930s at the In-
stitute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany. Cf., for example, David Hoy and
Thomas McCarthy, Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994) and Rolf
Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule. Geschichte—Theoretische Entwicklung—Politische
Bedeutung (Munich, Vienna: Hanser, 1986).
10. See note 8 above.
11. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, “Introduction: Redistribution or Recogni-
tion?” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical
Exchange (London, New York: Verso, 2003), 4.
12. Axel Honneth, “Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy
Fraser,” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philo-
sophical Exchange, 140. Citations to this essay will henceforth be, in text, noted
by RR.
13. It should be noted that Honneth has recently stressed the need for a “robust
conception of progress” that would be based on “the assumption of a develop-
ment in the cultural transformations of human values which would allow for well-
grounded judgments of the transhistorical validity of a particular culture of recogni-
tion.” Axel Honneth, „Nachwort: Der Grund der Anerkennung. Eine Erwiderung auf
kritische Rückfragen,” in Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer
Konflikte, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2003), 324–25.

(Here I quote Honneth’s works with my own translation.)
14. Martin Hartmann and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constella-
tions 13, no. 1 (2006): 44.
15. Cf. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 41–46.
16. This is the view advanced in Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capital-
ism.”
17. Cf. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 41–46.
18. Hartmann and Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” 44.
19. Since defining “neoliberalism” is a matter of ongoing scientific and public
debate, I have not used this term in my introduction. As Honneth’s remarks show,
he uses the word “neoliberal” to refer to the economic policies set up in many
Western countries in reaction to the crisis of Keynesianism in the late 1970s. What
is more, he describes these policies in terms that are very similar to mine (see my
introductory remarks above). We are therefore justified in concluding that the socio-
political aim of Honneth’s theory is to provide a recognition-theoretical critique of
these economic policies, which presently threaten the material and moral well-being
of a large number of citizens. (Cf. the sociological literature cited in the introduc-
tion.)
20. Honneth, „Nachwort,” 334.
21. Cf., for example, Nancy Fraser, “Distorted Beyond All Recognition: A Rejoin-
der to Axel Honneth,” in Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A Po-
litical-Philosophical Exchange (London, New York: Verso, 2003), 198–236 [hereafter
cited in text as DR]; Emmanuel Renault, L’expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et
clinique de l’injustice (Paris: La Découverte, 2004); Christopher Zurn, “Recognition,
Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,”
European Journal of Philosophy, 13, no. 1 (2005): 89–126. See also the critical discus-
sion of these positions in Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Critique of Political Economy and
Contemporary Critical Theory: A Defense of Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” in
this volume.
22. See section entitled “Critical Theory as a Theory of Recognition.”
23. Cf., for example, Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy.”
24. Current sociological investigations also point in the same direction. Cf., for
example, Jens Beckert, “Die soziale Ordnung von Märkten,” in Märkte als soziale
Strukturen, ed. J. Beckert, R. Diaz-Bone, and H. Ganßmann (Frankfurt am Main,
Germany: Campus, 2007), 43–62, and Nico Stehr, Die Moralisierung der Märkte. Eine
Gesellschaftstheorie (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2007).
25. Stefan Voigt, Institutionenökonomik (Munich, Vienna: UTB, 2002), 19.
26. Voigt, Institutionenökonomik, 41.
27. See also Deranty, “Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Criti-
cal Theory” on the relation between the theory of recognition and institutional
economics.
28. Cf. H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, “Personal Respect, Private Property, and Market
Economy: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Hegel,” Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice, 11, (2008): 573–86 and H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, “The Legacy of Hegelian
Thought and the Future of Critical Theory,” in Applying the Ethics of Recognition: Work
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.”
48. See subsection entitled “Meritocratic Esteem.”
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.”
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.
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
the debate on redistribution.3 Second, the article is based on an intimate

knowledge of Honneth’s work, especially his writings prior to The Struggle
for Recognition. This enables Zurn to avoid some of the mistakes made by
Fraser in her accusations of Honneth. At the same time, though, this makes
Zurn’s criticisms all the more serious. In particular, he is able to take into
account some of Honneth’s most powerful rejoinders to Fraser’s critiques.
In other words, his skeptical points against the theory of recognition are
not only nourished by the explicit embrace of a substantive countermodel,
Fraser’s dualistic analysis of society and her “participatory parity” model
of social critique; they also contain the deadly sting of immanent critique.
If one adds to this the critical virtuosity and scholarly seriousness of the
skeptical reader, Zurn’s attack on Honneth’s theory of economic injustice
does such a good job that it seems to leave the theory of recognition in
tatters. Zurn’s initial critical review of The Struggle for Recognition, of all the
critiques launched against the book, had been the most acute one, leading
Honneth to a major shift in his own thinking.4 With this skeptical response
to Honneth’s theory of economic injustice, one is forgiven for thinking that
recognition theory as a whole had received its coup de grâce.
This paper attempts to offer a defense of the theory of recognition pre-
cisely on this its weakest point, the theory of economic injustice. I would
like to defend the theoretical fruitfulness of a “recognitive-theoretical” per-
spective for a contemporary critique of political economy. The fundamental
point underlying Zurn’s critique of Honneth’s interpretation of economic
injustice is that it is premised on a reductionist account of the economy,
and consequently advocates only unhelpful, or even counterproductive,
practical measures for the redress of injustice. Honneth is accused, at the
critical level, of “(reducing) distributive injustices to recognition injus-
tices.”5 And this is said to originate, even more seriously, from his apparent
intention to explain the economic causes of injustice, and thus provide a
theoretical approach to the economy, both as a separate system of social in-
tegration and as a specific origin of social injustice, as a formation resulting
from deeper cultural patterns. Honneth is basically accused of propounding
a reductionist, culturalist theory of the economy. Without himself adopting
a Marxist stance, Zurn is thus the one who, following in Fraser’s footsteps,
has given the most robust theoretical expression to date of the feeling of
skepticism and frustration clearly felt by many within the critical camp, in
the face of what appears to be Honneth’s emasculation of the critique of
political economy as a result of its reformulation in the language of moral
psychology.
In the first section of the paper, I follow the steps of Christopher Zurn’s
attack, which, if confirmed, leave the theory of recognition in ruins. Whilst
Zurn’s reading of Honneth is perfectly accurate, and indeed remarkable for
its knowledge of the different stages in Honneth’s thinking, this section
Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Critical Theory 287
highlights a dimension of Honneth’s thought that Zurn slightly underes-

timates: the radical social dependency of individual subjective formation.
The imperceptible shift in emphasis I suggest has major implications for
the appraisal of recognition theory’s relevance for a contemporary critique
of political economy.
The next two sections aim to establish this relevance. The second section
starts the defense of recognition theory through substantive recourse to the
work of Emmanuel Renault. In L’Expérience de l’Injustice, Renault demon-
strates the efficacy of a recognitive perspective in the critique of contempo-
rary economic phenomena, by arguing in favor of a critique “through the
effects.” I defend this position and show that it not only responds to the
accusations Fraser and Zurn raise against Honneth, of sociological inaccu-
racy or even naivety. In fact, Renault’s method shows that the sociological
objections can be returned to the critiques, as it highlights the extent of
social pathologies that the theory of recognition can well account for, but a
model of “participatory parity” far less so. The key problem in this section
is thus the link between social critique and social experience. I question the
Fraserian severing of the two dimensions from the perspective of a critical
theory program.
The third section looks at the plausibility of using recognition not just
as a clinical and normative concept, but also as a concept with explanatory
potential in social theory. I show that this link between clinical, normative-
critical and social-theoretical uses of recognition, in particular in relation to
economic realities, has in fact been at the heart of Honneth’s project since
the beginning, notably in his early critiques of Habermas. This, I argue, sug-
gests ways in which the theory of recognition can play a directly construc-
tive part in an alternative economic theory, beyond its role as a critique of
pathologies. From that angle, there would be fruitful avenues for dialogue
between recognition theory and heterodox economic theories, notably dif-
ferent versions of economic institutionalism.
ZURN’S CRITIQUE OF HONNETH ON ECONOMIC INJUSTICE
Theory of democracy and the division of labor: the 1993 Dewey article
Zurn launches his critique of recognition theory’s reductionistic stance
on the economy with a reading of a crucial article published by Honneth
in German in 1993, and translated and published in English in 1998,
“Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.”6 At first glance, it could seem
surprising to launch a critique of Honneth’s stance on economic injustice
with this text since it is concerned primarily with questions of political
philosophy. In it, Honneth argues that Dewey’s writings on democracy
provide a fruitful alternative approach to the question of the normative

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

only for the contemporary political theorists intent on finding alternatives
to liberalism. For Dewey, this vision of democratic society (as opposed to
democratic politics stricto sensu) has a much broader scope. It aims at an
expansive vision of society as a whole, in other words, at the possibility of
individual flourishing on the basis of healthy social relations, in which par-
ticipation in democratic life is only one dimension of social cooperation.
The key argument fleshing out and justifying this identification of social
cooperation and democratic politics, an argument that will prove crucial for
the evaluation of Honneth’s approach to economic problems, is encapsu-
lated in the pragmatist sense of the notion of “reflexivity.”
In his early writings, though,8 as Honneth shows, Dewey does not charac-
terize the distinctive type of reflexivity that is inherent in politics. Instead, he
equates democratic politics and cooperative society, thus repeating Marx’s
truncated notion of politics. What is missing here, in both the early Dewey
and Marx, is a separate analysis of the political moment in its specific role
and structure. Inspired directly by Hegel’s notion of Sittlichkeit, but failing
to heed Hegel’s careful description of the state in its multiple relations to
society, Dewey brings together without sufficient mediation individual au-
tonomy and political sovereignty. The element that brings them together is
the individual’s participation to the division of labor:
Because each member of society contributes, on the basis of a division of labor,

through her own activities to the maintenance of society, she represents a “vital
embodiment” of the end of society. For that reason, she is entitled not just to a
part of the freedom made socially possible; rather, as an individual she always
possesses the entire sovereignty through which all jointly as a people become
the sovereign bearer of power.9
However, despite the serious shortcoming of such a lack of mediation

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

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

scheme. This scheme will be crucial in the subsequent discussions of Hon-
neth’s approach to the economy:
Social action unfolds in forms of interaction whose consequences in the

simple case affect only those immediately involved; but as soon as those not
involved see themselves affected by the consequences of such interaction, there
emerges from their perspective a need for joint control of the corresponding
actions either by their cessation or by their promotion.12
On that model, political procedures are called for to coordinate and 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
society. To put it differently, democracy can only be achieved via social

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

complete. Zurn’s subsequent critical points all rely on the identifica-
tion of this shift, and the resulting conclusion whereby, basically, the
economy is explained through culture. In the remainder of his article,

Zurn systematically lists all the problems that emerge once economic
distribution is analyzed as the result of a “sociocultural dispositive,” and
economic injustice is therefore said to have to be redressed through cul-
tural struggles aiming for the recognition of the value of contributions to
social cooperation.
Honneth’s Reductionist Theory of Social Injustice

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

THE EXPERIENCE OF ECONOMIC INJUSTICE
Against this devastating attack, the first line of defense consists in granting
that recognition theory, qua social theory, is not sufficient to account for
the specificity of economic action as opposed to other types of social 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
through the causes?24 It doesn’t have be an either/or alternative. The critique

of the impact of economic processes on contemporary minds, bodies, and
souls can be shown to complement, rather than replace, a structural critique
of political economy. Here, the point would be to show the benefit of add-
ing the critique of pathologies from the experiential perspective to the struc-
tural analysis. This is what Renault but also Honneth have both attempted
to do in their latest texts.
Let us briefly outline the arguments Renault brings forward to demon-
strate the relevance of recognition theory for a critique of the experience of
economic injustice. This will demonstrate, first of all, the relevance of the
theory of recognition for the analysis of contemporary social pathologies.
By contrast, this will point to weaknesses in the dualistic approach to social-
cultural and economic injustices.
Renault’s proposition for a renewed critique of political economy from the
perspective of its effects on individuals relies squarely on two of Honneth’s
fundamental premises. This basic acceptance of these Honnethian premises
is also what allows us to use Renault for a defense of Honneth, despite their
dissimilarities on some important aspects of the theory of recognition.25
Renault accepts first of all Honneth’s intersubjectivistic premise, namely,
that a positive relation to oneself, itself the condition for a minimally well-
functioning subjectivity, is fully dependent on the recognition of the social
value of one’s existence. He also accepts that work is one of the main types
of action through which individuals are able to achieve such social recogni-
tion of their individual existence. This second premise is precisely one of
the points on which Zurn incriminates Honneth for his alleged sociological
naivety. Renault explicitly acknowledges that a Honnethian approach to the
critique of economic injustice needs to bite the bullet and run against the
grain of much contemporary social theory which has decreed the end of the
centrality of work. We return to this key problem of the interpretation of the
“centrality of work” thesis later on.
Once those two basic premises are accepted (the intersubjective vulner-
ability of individuals and the importance of work for social recognition),
following Renault, what one needs to do is study separately the different
institutions involved in the economy and how work is misrecognised, or
denied recognition in them. This is done through the study of the patholo-
gies of modern societies which specifically relate to the world of work.
Here critical theory relies massively on empirical research drawn from the
psychology and sociology of work.
The first major economic institution is the market. Working individuals
are involved in it in two ways: through the structures of the labor market,
and through the recognitive effects of the commodity and services markets.
In the labor market, the relevance of recognition theory is obvious. This
is after all what the third “sphere of recognition” is explicitly about. As
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
a great deal of contemporary injustice today has to do with direct forms

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

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

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

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

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

arguments in discussing the economy, in the light of which subjective ef-
fects are irrelevant.
As we can see, the discussion about the grounding of the norms of the
critique of economic injustice inevitably takes us into the explanatory
problem of the causes of economic injustice. We now turn to this problem,
the relationship between critical theory and its implicit theory of economic
reality.
THEORY OF RECOGNITION AND ECONOMIC THEORY
The severing of the critique of economic injustice from the experience of

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

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

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

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

acknowledges its system-like appearance, on account of its complexity, but
refuses to radically separate domains of action, and therefore finds a nor-
mative component in all of them. This alternative image, then, is one where
indeed there are functional dimensions to action coordination, but where,
also, relations of recognition, and notably relations of power, play a deci-
sive, “constitutive” role. We can see why the Dewey article, as Zurn correctly
saw, provided such an excellent entry point for assessing Honneth’s theory
of economics. With Dewey’s social-democratic solution to the problem of
“unintended consequences” (through the ideal of a solidarity-based divi-
sion of labor where each can see his/her actions affecting and being affected by
those of others), Honneth had in fact given an preliminary, action-theoretic,
intersubjectivistic response to functionalist reservations, and not just an
answer to a strict question of political theory.
What this solution through a “thick” interpretation of the division of
labor precisely entails, Honneth saw very clearly as early as 1988 in The
Critique of Power. Already then he had given significant indications about
the relationship between the system-like dimension of action coordination,
and the communicative-normative (later: recognitive) dimension:
“both spheres of reproduction require mechanisms that so unite the particular

processes of communication or cooperation in a complex that . . . they are able
to fulfill the corresponding functions of symbolic reproduction or material
reproduction. In both cases, mechanisms of this kind represent institutions in
which the respective accomplishments of action are normatively institutional-
ized, that is, under the constraint of the action orientations of subjects that are
stored up in the lifeworld, while their execution is sanctioned by the degree
of autonomy of a society found in democratic agreements or under authorita-
tively bound orders.”52
The institutional moment that Honneth refers to in this passage is the

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

that economic actions have an irreducibly “cultural” dimension, if by that is
meant, as the Critique of Power argues, the class- and group-specific filtering
of social action.53 In clear terms: economic processes, as social realities, are
always partly “constituted” by the interactions of the groups in presence,
because such economic processes require institutions which to some extent
reflect the state of the power relations existing between the different groups
of society. The institutional dimension that unavoidably frames economic
action qua action, as it concretizes the asymmetrical relations of the differ-
ent social groups at a given time, always introduces a normative dimension
into it.
Secondly, the “execution” action, in other words, the end result of action
coordination, the overall economic action as it actually takes place at the
level of society, is subject to a second normative “control”: the reflexive
level of politics, in which group struggle, in the case of democratic politics,
finds a second, more reflexive, institutionalized expression. In clear, it is an
abstraction descriptively (social-theoretically) and a mistake practically, to
evacuate from the analysis of economic action the asymmetrical relations of
power between groups, which the theory of recognition reframes as struggle
for recognition.
This solution, where recognition is coconstitutive of economic action, is
basically the solution that Honneth brings again into the debate with Fra-
ser, when he asserts that “even structural transformations in the economic
sphere are not independent of the normative expectations of those affected,
but depend at least on their tacit consent.” Even in the case of economic
processes, Honneth proposes, some basic relations of recognition are neces-
sary for the system to function at all, even qua system.
Zurn is not happy with this solution because, according to him, it is, once
again, caught in the generality/particularity dilemma. According to him,
this solution remains undeniably true if it remains at a very high level of
abstraction. For example, a basic trust, some socialization processes, a legal
framework, are necessary for economic action to be possible at all. But for
him this claim is so abstract that it yields no specific explanatory benefit.
If on the other hand, social theory aims to provide the kind of explanatory
economic analysis that Fraser sketches with her list of political-economic
factors behind low wages, then one has to give up the recognitive stance.
Instead, one is forced to rely on a functionalist analysis, of the “market
imperatives” kind.
But Zurn and Fraser in my opinion give an inaccurate image of what eco-
nomic analysis can achieve. They seem to take it for granted that homoge-
neous, uncontroversial analyses of economic phenomena can be provided
in every case. This seems to be a naïve vision of what economics as a science
can offer. Economics as a theory and as an empirical descriptor is anything
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
without reference to the broader culture; that individual economic action is

therefore always largely informed by its social context, following “working
rules” that are essentially normative; that economic “laws” are not laws of
nature but institutional arrangements that reflect the balance of power and
the state of group antagonism at a give place and time; that conflict, the
asymmetry of power relations, is thus crucial in analyzing a given, empirical
economic situation (of a whole economy, or a specific labor market).56
I would even claim that Honneth’s criticism of positivistic approaches to
the economy overlap massively with some the basic social-theoretical assump-
tions of regulation theory. This is a very tentative claim, because regulation
theory can be read itself in a functionalist way. I will just remark that, on some
versions of regulation theory, one rejects a rational-individualistic premise at
the methodological level: the basic theoretical gesture is to insist on the
social embeddedness of individual action (where economic goals them-
selves are shown to be dependent on the social context); and the major
focus of inquiry concerns the role of mediating forces, in the shape of
institutions, which help to explain the shift from the microeconomic to
the macroeconomic level. This is basically what the concept of regulation
points to: microeconomic relations cannot by themselves explain the co-
herence and cohesion of the macroeconomic system of the full economy;
rather intermediary “mechanisms,” to use Honneth’s language, through
which individual actions are coordinated, and which have a fundamental
normative dimension, are required, even just at the primary level of de-
scription and analysis, even prior to any attempt at critique. Regulation
theory also starts with the assumption of asymmetrical power relations,
against the neoclassical fiction of a transparent web of relations between
individual actors.57
In the present discussion, the important point to draw from the com-
parison of recognition theory with “heterodox” economic theories is that it
helps to see that what appears at first glance to be a commonsense criticism
from Fraser and Zurn (that one should analyze economic injustice in eco-
nomic terms, where economic analysis means pure functional analysis) in
fact is not that commonsense after all. By contrast with the countermodels
offered by institutionalism and regulation theory, Fraser and Zurn’s own ver-
sions of what economic analysis looks like seems too indebted to functional
approaches, to the point of granting too much to a neoclassical understand-
ing of economic science and economic reality. Honneth’s critical insights on
the other hand appear well supported by those two alternative economic
theories. This contrast between the two positions on economic issues be-
comes especially apparent if we return to the example used by Zurn to prove
the uselessness of recognition theory in approaching the injustice, with the
example of low wages. All the elements cited by Zurn to demonstrate the
“evaluatively independent” logic behind remuneration rates can be shown,
from an institutionalist perspective, to contain elements of class struggle, as

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

tive and normative cogency of Honneth’s position in the current context. As
Emmanuel Renault has shown convincingly, the vocabulary of recognition
can help to refresh the critique of capitalism, by providing the possibility of
a “critique through the effects.”
From that perspective, however, a powerful rejoinder has emerged against
attempts to conduct critical social theory without reference to social experi-
ence. An objectivistic stance towards the social risks underplaying and mis-
construing the real pathologies of the contemporary world. For that reason, it
is not clear how such stance would form the basis for a political theory that
would be in any way more concrete or cogent than one based on recognition.
Indeed, as recognition theory is indebted in its very conceptuality to the reality
of social experience, it can be informed by the latter to propose corrections to
universally accepted dogmas of contemporary social theory, notably regarding
the place of work in contemporary society and for contemporary subjects.
Recognition thus appears to be a concept not just with descriptive, nor-
mative, and critical value, but also with explanatory value, a key concept
of social theory. Indeed, by pointing to the fundamental normative layer
underpinning capitalist orders, recognition designates not just the norma-
tive core that makes experiences of suffering also experiences of injustice. It
also designates a symbolic framework outside of which capitalistic orders
would not be able to function. By insisting in this way on the irreducible
normative, social-cultural dimensions at the heart of the functioning of eco-
nomic orders, Honneth performs perhaps the most important intervention
in contemporary social theory, by questioning the uncritically accepted vision
of markets as autopoetic subsystems obeying an autonomous logic of their
own. Honneth’s insistence on the regulating role of social institutions in the
very functioning of economic thereby provides a powerful social-theoretical
complement to the attempts undertaken within economic theory to chal-
lenge the neoclassical hegemony.
NOTES
1. The main texts preceding the 2003 book are articles gathered in Nancy Fraser,
Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (New York: 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).
2. Christopher F. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy: Dilem-

mas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 1
(2005): 89–126.
3. See also the excellent discussions of the debate by Simon Thompson, “Is
Redistribution a Form of Recognition? Comments on the Fraser-Honneth De-
bate,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2005):
85–102; and Leonard Feldman, “Redistribution, Recognition, and the State: the
Irreducibly Political Dimension of Injustice,” Political Theory 30, no. 3 (2002):
410–40.
4. Christopher F. Zurn, “Anthropology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel
Honneth’s ‘Formal Conception of Ethical Life,’” Philosophy and Social Criticism 26,
no. 1 (2000): 115–24. Honneth responds to Zurn’s critique by seemingly dropping
previous references to philosophical anthropology and by embracing the solution
that Zurn in his review had flagged as the most appropriate (or rather, least dubi-
ous) one to ground the normative basis of critical theory: the idea of a normative
differentiation accompanying societal differentiation.
5. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution and Democracy,”100.
6. Axel Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the
Theory of Democracy Today,” Political Theory 26, no. 6 (1998): 763–83.
7. See Axel Honneth, “The Limits of Liberalism: On the Political-Ethical Discus-
sion concerning Communitarianism,” in The Fragmented World of the Social (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1995), 231–46.
8. Notably in the 1888 article John Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” in The
Early Works of John Dewey, vol.1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1969), 227–49.
9. Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” 237.
10. Especially in the 1927 John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, quoted by
Honneth in the reprint edition (Chicago: Gateway Books, 1976).
11. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.”
12. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.”
13. Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation.” The English translation
leaves out the essential clause in the German text: “which cooperates with all the
other groups of a community through the division of labor.”
14. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 96–99.
15. See Dewey’s reflection, which is very close to Mead’s similar reflections on the
topic: state institutions, by “enabling all members of society to count with reason-
able certainty upon what others will do,” create “respect for others and for one’s
self,” The Public and Its Problems, 29, quoted by Honneth in “Democracy as Reflexive
Cooperation,” 771.
16. Axel Honneth, “Recognition or Redistribution? Changing Perspectives on the
Moral Order of Society,” Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 2–3 (2001): 43–55.
17. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 101.
18. Fraser in Redistribution or Recognition? 214, quoted by Zurn, “Recognition,
Redistribution, and Democracy,” 102.
20. Zurn, “Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy,” 102–103.
22. Emmanuel Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice (Paris : La Découverte, 2004);

see in particular chapter 3: “The Institutions of Injustice,” 179–246. See also the
following recent texts by Renault, all relevant for the present discussion: “Radical
Democracy and an Abolitionist Concept of Justice. A Critique of Habermas’ Theory
of Justice,” Critical Horizons 6, no. 1 (2005): 137–52; “Biopolitics and Social Pathol-
ogies,” Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 159–77; “Du Fordisme au Postfordisme.
Dépassement ou retour de l’Aliénation?,” Actuel Marx 39 (2006): 89–106. See also
Jean-Philippe Deranty and Emmanuel Renault, “Politicising Honneth’s Ethics of
Recognition,” Thesis Eleven 88, no. 1 (2007): 92–111.
23. Renault, L’Expérience de l’Injustice, 212.
25. The two main points of difference between Honneth and Renault in their use
of recognition for social critique are: the concept of identity, which Renault defends
as an essential notion for social critique; the relation between recognition and
institutions. The latter is a central issue for critical theory’s approach to economic
phenomena, as section three will demonstrate.
26. Honneth, “Recognition or Redistribution?” 54.
27. Zurn accepts this analysis, and indeed finds it to be one of the strong aspects
in Honneth’s recognitive approach to the economy. At the same time, however, it is
precisely this quote which allows Zurn to launch his subsequent criticisms.
29. This is for example the leading question that guides his critical reappro-
priation of Marx, see especially the crucial article in which the shift to recognition
within a Marxist paradigm is sketched: Axel Honneth, “Domination and Moral
Struggle: The Philosophical Heritage of Marxism Reviewed,” in The Fragmented
World of the Social, 3–14.
30. Axel Honneth, “Organized Self-realization. Some Paradoxes of Individua-
tion,” European Journal of Social Theory 7, no. 4 (2004): 763–78; Martin Hartmann
and Axel Honneth, “Paradoxes of Capitalism,” Constellations 13, no. 1 (2006):
42–58.
31. See Axel Honneth, “Work and Instrumental Action,” in The Fragmented World
of the Social, 15–49. On the transformations of Honneth’s social-critical account of
work, see Nicholas Smith, “Work and the Struggle for Recognition,” European Journal
of Political Theory 8, no. 1: (2009): 46–60.
32. See Christophe Dejours, Souffrance en France. La Banalité de l’Injustice So-
ciale (Paris: Seuil, 1998). In English, see Christophe Dejours, “Subjectivity, Work
and Action,” Critical Horizons 7, no. 1 (2006): 45–62. For a critique of the lack
of consideration of the material, somatic dimensions in Honneth’s approach to
recognition and recognition pathologies, see my “Repressed Materiality: Retrieving
the Materialism in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition,” Critical Horizons 7, no.
1 (2006): 113–40.
34. See my “Work and the Precarisation of Existence,” European Journal of Social
Theory 11, no. 4 (2008): 443–63, which presents the work of Christophe Dejours,
especially the theses presented in Souffrance en France in the context of contempo-
rary social theory.
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.
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.
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.
SELF-RELATIONS AND WHY RECOGNITION MATTERS
A starting point is the idea that getting recognition matters for the practical
relations-to-self of the recognized ones. Respect is related to self-respect,
esteem to self-esteem, denigrating feedback concerning one’s abilities is
related to an internalized sense of incapacity, experienced humiliations are
On the Scope of “Recognition”: The Role of Adequate Regard and Mutuality 321
related to a sense of inferiority, and so on.4 The connection between recog-

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

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

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

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

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

UNRESTRICTED NORMATIVIST ACCOUNT
I will now turn to the two fundamental insights concerning what 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
being held to be a person, or recognizer more broadly, is compatible with

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

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

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

THE TWO-PART STORY
Thus the two insights lead in slightly different directions. There is a tension
on at least two issues: Who can be recognized or get recognition—any 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-
Table 14.1. The Tension

Adequate Regard–Insight Mutuality–Insight
Possible recipients Any possessors of normative Recognizers only
features
Facts about B’s regard None B must recognize A as a
which make a difference recognizer, be aware of
to whether A is successful A’s response, and not be
in her recognition of B totally indifferent
towards it.
The correct theory The unrestricted normativist The restricted view
view
cerning these two issues by noting that “recognition” can mean two things,
which differ on two counts. I will reserve the terms “recognizing”/”being
recognized” to one of them, and “getting recognition”/”giving 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
Table 14.2. The Two-Part Story Combining an Unrestricted Normativist View

Concerning Recognizing, and a Restricted View Concerning Giving Recognition.
Recognizing and Being Successfully Giving and
Recognized Getting Recognition
Possible recipients Any possessors of normative Recognizers only
features
to whether A is successful A’s response, and care
in her recognition of B about it at least a bit.
The correct theory The unrestricted normativist The restricted view
view
(The fundamental insight) (Adequate regard–insight) (Mutuality-insight)
330 Arto Laitinen
in an unrestricted normativist account, and the latter in a more restricted

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

FEATURES AND RESPONSES AT STAKE
So far, so good. We still need to discuss two questions, where one might
want to adopt more or less restricted views: what kinds of responses, to what
kinds of features, are at stake in giving and getting recognition. Perhaps
only responses that affirm that the other is a recognizer (e.g., a person),
and only features only had by recognizers (e.g., persons) are at play? Or
perhaps some other restrictions apply? I will try to argue that here the only
way not to compromise the adequate regard–insight is to have an 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
the unrestricted normativist view concerning the features and responses in

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

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

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

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

with the conceptual resources of “person-making properties” only. In
any case, we can definitely say that in a community where “personhood”
as such is not paid attention to, but the normative relevance of self-
consciousness, moral agency, and rationality, etc., are regarded in a sensitive
and responsible manner, the individuals are being “recognized.” It is just
that in the scheme A takes B to be X, X is “a self-conscious being,” “a moral
agent,” “a rational animal,” etc., and not “person.”37 So it is perhaps best
to say that “to recognize” in the relevant sense is not necessarily “to take as
a person,” but rather to regard as someone who counts, as a possessor of
some normatively relevant features, as X where X can be a variety of norma-
tively relevant characteristics.
Fifthly, one may be deeply attached to human beings, which (depend-
ing on one’s conception of “persons”) need not literally be persons, say
newborn children, or mentally retarded human beings. One may certainly
regard them as concrete beings that count, very significantly, without taking
them as “persons.” The personifying account would have to hold that such
beings are not recognized in the relevant sense. According to the normativ-
ist view defended here, they may well be unable to get recognition, but they
can nonetheless be recognized (and the kind of responsiveness at stake in
recognizing them may be very highly cherished by the recognizers).
Sixthly, recognition of other persons may be a matter of taking them as
possessing some particular evaluative features, say, esteeming their ability to
produce good shoes which are valuable for the community. The characteris-
tic in question can be had by nonpersons, say by mindless machines which
just produce shoes. Thus, to take someone or something as possessing that
characteristic does not imply that we regard that thing as a person. Is this
“recognition”? According to the “personifying” view suggested above, it
would not be. But it seems to be: a shoemaker may take pride in his ability
to make better shoes than machines do, and may feel recognized by others
who tell him that he is better than machines. The same goes for recogniz-
ing B as a sentient being, whose pains and pleasures matter. There are other
sentient beings than persons, so taking someone’s sentience to matter does
not entail that it is thereby regarded as a person. And so on.
These six points try to show that being regarded as possessing normatively
relevant features is not the same as being regarded as a person. Nonethe-
less, both of them can be something desirable in itself, can lead to struggles
concerning adequate “regard,” can affect one’s self-relations in suitable way,
can be institutionalised in various ways, and thus both of them fit what is
fruitfully thought of as “recognition.” Even in cases of persons, all aspects
of the regard need not be “personifying”; some may be neutral concerning
personhood. We legitimately want adequate regard concerning even those
aspects of our being which are shared with nonpersons.
This concludes my partial survey of narrower views concerning the nor-

mative features and responses called for or required by them, that are at stake
in recognition.38 The only view capable of preserving the full force of the
adequate regard–insight seems to be the unrestricted normativist view.
CONCLUSION
This paper has tried to negotiate a tension between two insights (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
Table 14.3 The Overall View on Recognition

Recognizing and Being Successfully Giving and
Recognized Getting Recognition
Possible recognizers Persons, groups, institutions (including states), possibly
other animals
Possible recipients Any possessors of Recognizers
normative features
to whether A is successful A’s response, and care
in her recognition of B about it at least a bit
Relevant features Any normatively significant features

Relevant responses Any responses called for or required by the normatively
relevant features
Adequate vs. misrecognition Whether or not responses are sensitive to what the
normatively relevant features of the other require or
call for
such regard; action; situation-specific cognitive, affective, conative responses;

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

Christopher Zurn for comments on a draft of this paper.
2. In this essay I will take it for granted that the possible recognizers include any
beings that can guide their behavior and attitudes in light of normative require-
ments created by normatively relevant features of others. These include individual
persons, groups, and institutions, including states. The borderline case consists of
other animals, which can perhaps respond reliably to normatively relevant features
(avoid dangers, eat healthy food, provide help, enjoy company), without being able
to draw a distinction between the features as descriptive and features as normatively
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).
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
Recognition, or Anerkennung, is a notion that has inspired generations of

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

then spell out in some detail the ways in which recognition in this sense is
constitutive of the various components that make up full-fledged person-
hood. After thus discussing the ontological importance of recognition, I will
show that recognition (on the very same concept) is perhaps the most fun-
damental factor in judgments concerning the ethical quality of actions, per-
sons, interpersonal relationships, and social life in general. Finally, based
on the preceding reflections, I will give a slightly new twist to the Hegelian
idea that recognition drives progress in history.
The general aim of the article is to clear a path for a unified approach in
social philosophy that has both ontological depth and critical bite, and is
capable of drawing on what may be the deepest, arguably cross-culturally
shared, elements of the collective self-understanding of our life-form. It is
here, in providing means for such a holistic philosophical enterprise, that
the so far unfulfilled promise of the Hegelian notion of recognition lies.
TWO APPROACHES TO RECOGNITION
How important is recognition? How is it important? What difference does

it make whether there is more, or less, recognition, or indeed, whether
there is any recognition at all? Two basic answers to these questions are
represented, even if not explicitly distinguished, in the recent literature.
On the one hand, many authors think that recognition makes a qualita-
tive difference to the world in that it changes the quality of what it affects.
On the other hand, other authors think that recognition makes a generic
or ontological difference to the world in that it makes what it affects what
they essentially are.
As to the first, “qualitative,” approach the claim has clearly not been only
that recognition just makes things somehow qualitatively different, but
more precisely that it, at least as a rule, makes them somehow better.3 Two
mutually complementary points of views stand out here. First, it is widely
thought that recognition is good for the self-identities, self-conceptions, or
generally speaking self-relations of individuals. Thus, recognition affects,
to put it very roughly, psychological life for the better. Secondly, it is also
widely thought that recognition is good for interpersonal relations, and
thereby for the coherence, harmony, or “inclusiveness” of communities,
societies, or social life in general. In other words, recognition affects, to put
it again roughly, social life for the better.4
As to the second, “ontological,” approach the claim is hence that recogni-
tion makes what it affects the kinds of beings they essentially are. In other
words, somehow, through recognition new kinds of entities come into
being. Whereas the qualitative—or perhaps one should say ethical—ap-
Making the Best of What We Are 345
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
recognition as something that makes our life as persons better in various

ways, the ontological approaches see recognition as something that makes
us persons in the first place. Seen in this way, the question about whether
the ethical and ontological approaches to “recognition” are really ap-
proaches to the same issue boils down to the question whether there really
is something called recognition or Anerkennung that does have such a dual
ethical-ontological role in our lives as persons.
My thesis is that there is, and in what follows I will focus on a particu-
lar concept of recognition, according to which recognition is just such an
ethical-ontological phenomenon. On this concept, which I have discussed
elsewhere in more detail, recognition consists of practical attitudes whereby
subjects take other subjects as persons.10 In more than one sense subjects de-
velop into persons through recognition, that is, by taking, and being taken
by, others as persons. And in more than one sense the extent to which per-
sons so recognize and are recognized mutually is a decisive measure with
which we judge the ethical quality or goodness of life of persons. Recogniz-
ing others as persons, being recognized by them as a person, and thereby
being a person is, I want to argue, as much ontologically, as it is ethically,
foundational for our form of life.
RECOGNITION AND THE CONSTITUTION OF PERSONS
Let us start with a simple observation. There are beings which differ from
other beings that they otherwise resemble in that, unlike those other 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.
The latter group of philosophers conceiving of the difference between

persons and mere animals in deontic terms includes contemporary neo-
Hegelians like the already mentioned Robert Brandom who conceptualizes
the difference between animals and “us” by saying that whereas animals are
driven by desire and experience their world in terms of “erotic significances”
determined by the immediate demands of their natural needs, we—per-
sons, I translate—organize and thereby experience our world in terms of
collectively authorized and administered norms. Again, this means that per-
sons, in contrast to mere animals, are free in a distinctive way. Namely, for
Brandom and other contemporary neo-Hegelians who emphasize Hegel’s
proximity to Kant’s legalistic conception of knowledge and action, freedom
is governance by collectively self-authorized norms.13
Both the axiological and the deontic views clearly hit essential elements in
our intuitions about how persons differ from mere animals and there seems
to be no fruitful way to reduce one view to the other. Contrary to the impres-
sion that contemporary—one might say deontic—neo-Hegelianism gives, my
claim is also that Hegel’s conception of spiritual subjects, or in our terms
persons, includes both deontic and axiological elements and that this is
an essentially important feature of it. This relates to the fact that Hegel’s
notion of recognition between persons, spelled out in terms of attitudes of
“taking something/-one as a person,” has both a deontic and an axiologi-
cal dimension. That recognition has several dimensions, or, more exactly,
that the attitude of recognition is a genus for more than one species, is one
of the major insights of Axel Honneth’s work on recognition. This insight
is central to what I will say, although I will concentrate here on only two
dimensions—respect and love—whereas Honneth distinguishes three at-
titudes of recognition.14
What hence unites respect and love in the relevant senses is that they are
both species of the genus recognitive attitude and thereby, I propose, differ-
ent ways of “taking something/-one as a person.”15 Both of these ways are,
I will argue, constitutive of corresponding dimensions of our being persons:
whereas what I mean by “respect” is constitutive of the deontic dimension
of personhood on which the deontic neo-Hegelians focus, what I mean by
“love” is constitutive of its axiological dimension on which philosophers
like Frankfurt focus. The term “dimension” is meant to suggest that the
deontic and the axiological accounts both focus on features that are essen-
tial, mutually irreducible, and interrelated components of what it is to be
a person in a full-fledged sense. This already suggests that personhood is a
complex notion.
Another source of complexity—as well as of the rather confusing nature
of the philosophical literature on personhood—is the fact that whereas
some accounts of personhood define personhood in terms of psychological
capacities, others define personhood as some kind of a status. Thus, there
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
of “full-fledged personhood” according to table 15.1. The components

included in the table may seem strange at start, but each of them will be
explained in its turn.
The general idea here is that each of the components included in the
table—the psychological capacities for exercising “deontic coauthority,”
and for intrinsic valuing or care; the interpersonal statuses of a coauthor-
ity, and someone whose happiness is intrinsically important; as well as some
basic rights or other “deontic powers”17—can, and should, be seen as “person-
making” features or essential components of personhood, since lack or loss
of each of them can equally well be understood as lack or loss of part of
what makes individuals fully, or full-fledged, persons. And as far as I can
see none of them are reducible to the others, even if they are in many ways
interconnected. It is these interconnections, in which recognition plays the
central role, that makes “full-fledged personhood” a holistic phenomenon
with a dynamic internal structure and unity. Let me explain.
Respect and the Deontic Dimension of Personhood

Starting from the deontic dimension of personhood, what is thus dis-
tinctive of persons on this dimension is that persons administer or gov-
ern their life with collectively self-authorized norms. For such collective
administration of norms to take place the subjects in question have to
have two general properties: first, they have to have the relevant psycho-
logical capacities needed for partaking in norm administration or deontic
coauthority (the psychological layer of the deontic dimension of personhood);
secondly, they need to have the interpersonal significance or status of a
coauthority for each other (the interpersonal layer of the deontic dimension
of personhood). The latter property is necessary, since there is no collec-
tive norm administration without the administrators forming a “we” or
collective of coauthority by taking each other as coauthors and thereby
attributing each other this status. This is true of all social norms—from
conceptual norms to the moral ones—to the extent that they really are
social norms freely followed and sanctioned by the members and thereby
operative within a collective.18
Accepting that taking others as coauthorities of the norms whereby
shared social life is regulated is a species of interpersonal recognition, it
therefore needs a name whereby it can be identified and distinguished
from the other species. Because of its Kantian, legalistic, connotations the
Kantian name respect is apt for it.19 We can now say, in the footsteps of the
deontic neo-Hegelians, that when a person respects the relevant others and
is similarly respected by them as a coauthority of the norms or institutions
of a collective, she is free or autonomous in the sense of governed by col-
lectively self-authorized norms.
As to the institutional layer of personhood, this is a special case of norms and

institutions that can come about within such a life-form. Being a person in
this institutional sense is having some particular deontic powers or statuses
such as basic rights (say, the right to life or to property). Thus anyone’s
being a person in this institutional sense is dependent on the necessary
conditions of norm institution being in place. In this sense the deontic
interpersonal status of a person—being such a condition—is ontologically
more fundamental than the institutional status of a person. Note also that
having rights without having authority on one’s rights is not being free in
the sense just mentioned.
Let us now make a brief overview of the constitutive role of recognition as
respect in our being persons on the deontic dimension. First of all, respect is
constitutive of the interpersonal layer in that being a person in the interpersonal
sense of having the interpersonal status of a coauthority simply is the same
thing as being respected by others. But, secondly, respect is also constitutive of
the psychological layer of personhood, and in two different ways. First, since it
is not possible to be a coauthority with others without respecting them as co-
authorities, the capacity for respecting others is itself part of the deontic person-
making psychological capacities. Secondly, another and quite different way
in which respect is constitutive of these capacities is that their development
and maintenance is causally affected by their subject’s being respected by others
and thereby being included into the “we’s” or collectives of norm adminis-
tration constitutive of our life-form. If an infant is not respected by relevant
others, and thereby not included into the normative networks constitutive
of the life-form of persons as an active member with an authority-status cor-
responding to its (actual and/or potential) capacities of exercising authority,
these capacities are unlikely to develop or actualize ideally. And as we know
well, at least systematic disrespect by relevant others can also be harmful for
the person-making capacities of an adult.20 Finally, as pointed out already, as
a social institution, institutional personhood is dependent on respect in that
there are no social norms and no institutions at all without some individuals
respecting each other as coauthorizers or administrators of the space of social
norms constitutive of any lifeworld of persons.21
Love and the Axiological Dimension of Personhood

Since love considered as a form of recognition, as well as the whole of
what I call the axiological dimension of personhood, has not been at issue
in the recent deontic neo-Hegelianism, it may be useful to discuss it a bit
more extensively. An important point to note is that without being persons
in the axiological dimension individuals could not be persons in the de-
ontic dimension either. We can easily see this by posing a simple question:
what is it in persons that makes them interested or motivated to organize
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
more complicated than Frankfurt’s in that in the Hegelian picture mutuality

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

FOUNDED ON RECOGNITION
It is often said, in Kantian vein, that the other person limits or constraints my
will. The thought is that such limiting of the will by the other is morally or
ethically centrally important. In a more Hegelian vein, the others toward
whom I have attitudes of recognition—respect or love—are constitutive of
my will, or more generally of the socially or recognitively mediated kind of
structure and content of intentionality that makes me a psychological 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
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.
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.
ARISTOTELIAN ESSENTIALISM WITH NAÏVE

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPTIMISM?
Not everyone will be convinced at this point. What I have said will sound
suspicious to anyone having an aversion toward anything resembling 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.
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
they are is the catastrophic selectivity of their recognition of other psycho-

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

emphasize, an achievement;39 and it is one that prevails only through a
constant process of reproduction. “We” make spirit, by and large, by recog-
nizing and being recognized. This is to say—following the translation I am
proposing—that we produce and reproduce personhood in ourselves and
each other, and thereby the life-form of persons in general, by taking each
other as persons. One of the features of this translation is that it can spell
out at least part of the teleological thrust of Hegel’s concept of spirit in more
or less down to earth terms.
As Hegel puts it, the “essence of spirit is freedom”40—and Hegel clearly
means that it is essence in the Aristotelian sense of a self-realizing telos. For
the skeptics, Hegel’s joining hands with Aristotle in not only accepting nor-
mative essentialism, but also accepting the thought that the essence of spirit
has some kind of tendency to realize itself is, of course, only so much the
worse for Hegel. However, if interpersonal recognition constitutes an essen-
tial element of spirit and thus of freedom on the Hegelian conception, then
at least part of saying that spirit tends to realize its essence is simply saying
that there is a general thrust to more recognition. Is this a credible claim?
It surely seems so, and at least in two ways. On the one hand, the ex-
pectation of recognition is certainly an important element of all human
interaction, and in many tangible ways lack of adequate recognition is a

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

double role of recognition for the life-form of persons make sense, they
point to a way of grounding immanent social critique on ontology.42 Impor-

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

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

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

trans. Michael John Petry (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1978–1979 [1830]), §
436.
27. It is absurd in two ways. First, an agent that does not value anything has no
motivation for norm administration. Second, respecting someone as a deontic au-
thority or norm administrator in something that is of complete indifference to her
is senseless. Compare Ronald H. Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature,” Ethics 112
(January 2002): 267–91, who says that Kantian legislation without value is arbitrary.
What I say is that it is impossible, and that the fact that this is so is in no way affected
by the fact that legislation, or administration, is a collective practice, as the deontic
neo-Hegelians say it is. See also John McDowell, “Responses,” in Reading McDowell:
On Mind and World, ed. Nicholas H. Smith (London: Routledge, 2002), 276 and
note 10, who criticizes Brandom by saying that if norm administration is not to be
arbitrary, it has to be constrained by norms that are independent of norm adminis-
tration. I find this point acceptable if it is understood as saying that not all norms
are social norms. My point is, however, that the whole deontic or legalistic discourse
on spirit, personhood or “second nature” (the last one is McDowell’s favored
wording) lacks touch on reality if it neglects the axiological dimension of valuing
and thereby motivation. Hegel—from the beginning to the end of his career—was
perfectly clear on this. See Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory:
Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), chapter 7
on the relationship of the quest for happiness and ethical norms in Hegel; see also
Alfredo Ferrarin, Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
part III, chapter 8, § 8 on Hegel’s way of reconciling Kantianism and Aristotelianism
in his discussion of the will.
28. This is not to say that all thinking is dependent on language. For one view
on which forms of thinking are language-dependent and which aren’t, see José Luis
Bermudez, Thinking Without Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
29. Peter Strawson thinks that someone “who manifested the personal reactive at-
titudes in a high degree but showed no inclination at all to their vicarious analogue
would appear as an abnormal case of moral egocentricity, as a kind of moral solip-
sist”; he says further that such an individual is “barely more than a conceptual pos-
sibility” (Peter Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” originally published 1962, in
his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974), 15). As far as
I can see, what Strawson calls “reactive attitudes” (his famous examples are “resent-
ment” and “gratitude”) can be conceived of as emotions that are constituted by (1)
the pro-attitude that someone should have particular kinds of attitudes—namely re-
cognitive attitudes of respect and/or love—toward someone, and (2) the belief that
this is (or the belief that this is not) the case. That is, C expects A to have recognition
for C or B, and reacts with resentment when this is not the case, or with gratitude
when it is. Strawson’s point is hence that an individual (C) who is very sensitive
about A’s attitudes toward himself (C) but not toward B is barely possible. Now, I
take it that C’s being concerned of A’s recognition, or lack of it, toward B involves C’s
recognition of B. The axiological dimension of Strawson’s thought cited is thus that
deeply caring about oneself, and thereby caring about being recognized by others,
but not caring about anyone else and thereby about their being recognized by third
persons, is hardly possible. Whether this is true or not, clearly the idea of a person
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
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
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
Clot, Yves, 316 Forster, Roger, 253, 254

Cohen, G.A., 185, 187 Foucault, Michel, 243–44
Cohen, Joshua, 44, 186 Frank, Manfred, 91, 103
communicative action, 3, 9, 17, 241–42 Frankfurt, Harry, 117, 126, 346–47,
Comte, Auguste, 158, 165, 182 352, 361, 363
Cooper, John, 185 Franks, Paul, 85, 86, 87
Fraser, Nancy, 15–16, 17, 18, 126, 127,
Danto, Arthur, 67 144, 242, 247, 254, 258, 260–63,
Darwall, Stephen, 125 265, 275–80, 285–87, 292–94, 298,
Dejours, Christophe, 299, 315 300–306, 309–14, 360
Deleuze, Gilles, 244 Freud, Sigmund, 15, 190–92, 195,
Dent, Nicholas, 25, 44 200–205, 206–208
Deranty, Jean-Philippe, 18, 253, 255, Fromm, Erich, 201
256, 280 Frommer, Jörg., 208, 209
Deutschmann, Christoph, 238 Früchtl, Joseph, 126
de Vries, Willem, 105 Fukuyama, Francis, 144
Dewey, John, 287–92, 300, 307–308,
312, 314 Gattig, Ekkehard, 194
Dickens, Charles, 158 Gill, Michael, 180
Dillon, Robin, 365 Glover, Jonathan, 365
Donner, Wendy, 184 Goldman, Alvin, 13, 102, 105
Dornes, Martin, 190, 202, 206, 209 Granovetter, Mark, 239
Dubiel, Helmut, 253 Green, T.H., 239
Duménil, Gérard, 251, 256, 317 Grice, Paul, 86–87, 104
Durkheim, Emile, 225, 234–37, 239
Düsing, Edith, 125 Habermas, Jürgen, 9, 91, 103, 114,
116, 123, 126, 130–31, 142, 144,
Eagle, Morris, 194, 206 189, 224, 227–29, 237–38, 241–
economics, theories of, 249–51, 44, 247–49, 252–54, 257, 275–77,
309–13 279, 282, 287–90, 300–302, 306–
Eliot, George, 158, 160, 162, 167, 182 10, 315, 316
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 158, 182 Hahn, Susanne, 126
Engels, Friedrich, 172, 187 Halbig, Christoph, 105, 125
esteem. See recognition Hampshire, Stuart, 182
Hampton, Jean, 341
Feinberg, Joel, 153, 169–72, 180, 186, Hardt, Michael, 251, 256
363 Hartmann, Martin, 242, 254, 255, 280,
Feldman, Leonard, 314 315
feminism, 3, 211 Hegel, G. W. F., 2–3, 5, 11, 13, 14, 21,
Ferrarin, Alfredo, 364 64, 73, 79, 81, 87, 89–106, 107–127,
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 158, 161, 164, 174, 129–49, 172, 181, 189, 200, 208,
184, 187 209, 213, 216, 229–38, 242, 245–
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1, 12–13, 47– 46, 255, 277, 282–83, 288–90, 293,
87, 94, 95, 96, 100, 101, 107, 109, 327, 333–34, 340, 341, 343–66
113, 114, 116, 125, 129, 132, 145, Hegelianism, British, 2
206, 208, 333 Heidegger, Martin, 116
Index 371
Held, Virginia, 184 Kojève, Alexandre, 144, 189

Hellinger, Bert, 194, 208 Kompridis, Nikolas, 254
Herder, J.G., 116, 120 Korsgaard, Christine, 144–45
Herman, Barbara, 44n7, 180n8 Kreines, James, 144
Hill, Thomas, 186 Krejci, Erika, 208
Hitler, Adolf, 355 Küchenhoff, Joachim, 194, 209
Hobbes, Thomas, 21, 81
Hogarth, 70 Lacan, Jacques, 189, 206
Holbein, Hans, 80 Laclau, Ernesto, 256
Honneth, Axel, 4, 7–11, 16–17, 103, 113, Laitinen, Arto, 18–19, 359, 361, 362,
114, 118, 120–21, 126, 127, 144, 186, 366
187, 189, 197, 201, 206, 241–56, Laplanche, Jean, 86
258–82, 285–317, 322, 339, 341, Laurence, Ben, 187
347, 360, 361, 363, 365, 366 Leibniz, G. W., 139–40
Horkheimer, Max, 241, 252, 317 Lévy, Dominique, 251, 256, 317
Hoy, David, 279 Lichtheim, George, 238
Huhn, Tom, 87 Locke, John, 81, 156, 181
Hume, David, 144, 151, 155, 178, 179, Loewald, Hans, 194
181, 187, 188 Lombard, Lawrence, 105
love. See recognition
idealism, 2–3, 12–13, 48–49, 54–56, Luhmann, Niklas, 9, 126
76, 83, 94, 199 Lukács, György, 9
Ikäheimo, Heikki, 19, 334, 338–39, Lukes, Steven, 239
340, 341, 342
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 146, 184
Jacobi, F. H., 49 Mahler, M., 202
Jaeggi, Rahel, 45 Margalit, Avishai, 359, 365
Jesus Christ, 80, 116 Markell, Patchen, 144, 254
Jevons, William Stanley, 270, Marshall, T. H., 126
Joas, Hans, 301, 307, 317 Marx, Karl, 2, 9, 14–15, 17, 31, 32, 33,
Jones, Peter, 341 151–88, 241–42, 250, 252, 289–90,
297
Kächele, Horst, 198, 208 Marxism, 2, 10, 214, 222, 241–45, 248–
Kambartel, Friedrich, 238 53, 286, 288
Kant, Immanuel, 9, 12, 13, 14, 21, 51– Mason, Andrew, 341
53, 61, 65–67, 113, 130–34, 136–38, materialism, 47–49, 54–55, 64–65, 81
148, 149, 347, 353, 364, 365, 366 McCarthy, Thomas, 279
Kantianism, 4–7, 48, 60 McDowell, John, 134, 364
Kauppinen, Anti, 367 Mead, George Herbert, 5, 45–46, 292
Kim, Jaegwon, 13, 102, 105 medical ethics, 114–16
Kittay, Eva, 184 Meggle, Georg, 104
Klein, Melanie, 15, 189–90, 192–96, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 70, 189
203, 207 Mesch, Walter, 126
Kleist, Heinrich von, 116 Michelangelo, 80
Kocyba, Hermann, 254, 316 Mill, John Stuart, 155, 158–60, 163,
Kohut, Heinz, 201, 203 165, 181, 182, 184
372 Index
Miller, A. V., 89, 100–101 Quante, Michael, 13, 125

Miloševic,´ Slobodan, 355
Mitchell, Stephen, 190, 206 Raphael, 80
Modell, Arnold, 208 Rawls, John, 118, 121–22, 126, 127,
Money-Kyrles, Roger, 193–96, 204, 130–31, 151, 153, 168–69, 178,
207–208 179, 180, 186, 187
Morales, Maria, 184 Raz, Joseph, 324, 339
More, Thomas, 164, 184 Reagan, Ronald, 172
Morgenroth, Christoph, 237 recognition: as acceptance of reality,
Mouffe, Chantal, 256 190–96, 204–205; adequate regard
Müller, Hans-Peter, 239 vs. mutuality in, 18–19, 319–42;
Müller, Horst, 253 agency and, 14, 18–19, 47–49,
Münch, Richard, 238 54–61, 64–69, 130–32, 135–39,
322; capitalism and, 6–10, 17–18,
Nagel, Thomas, 187 165–67, 169–73, 212, 220, 223–
Negri, Antonio, 251, 256 37, 241–42, 247–52, 257–78, 293–
Neuhouser, Fred, 11–12, 85, 86, 186, 317; care and, 114–15, 154–63,
364, 366 201–202; concern-based vs. respect-
Newman, Kenneth, 194, 206 based, 14–15, 160–72, 177–79;
contemporary normative theory
O`Brien, Lucy, 67–68, 87 and, 4–7, 13–14, 113–24, 242–44,
Ogden, Thomas, 208 288; critical theory and, 8–11, 131,
189, 223–29, 236–37, 241–56,
Parsons, Talcott, 9, 238–39 257–78, 285–313, 343, 345;
Patten, Alan, 363 cultural and evaluative pluralism
Pettit, Philip, 170, 186, 331, 341 and, 3, 116, 122; democracy and,
phenomenology: French, 3; 287–92; economy and, 15–18,
theological, 3 214–21, 285–317; embodiment
philosophical anthropology, 3, 5, 19, and, 13, 47–87; esteem, 5–8,
75–80, 343–67 17–18, 21–43, 168–69, 196, 211,
Pildes, Richard, 180 259, 263–78, 292–94, 296–300,
Pinkard, Terry, 14, 103, 360 320–21; experience and, 295–305;
Pippin, Robert, 105–106, 145, 147, freedom and, 55–62, 64–69, 72–
345, 360, 366 76, 131–36, 143, 349, 351–52; as
Plato, 80, 164, 193 a good, 129–30; group reification
Pöggeler, Otto, 125 and, 16, 212, 215–16; identity
Pol Pot, 355 vs. status models of, 16, 213–22;
Polanyi, Michael, 232, 238 identity politics and, 211–13, 221;
Popper, Karl, 91 ideology and, 241–42, 244–45,
pragmatism, 2, 104, 289–92 252, 269, 272–75; immanent
psychoanalysis, 3, 15, 189–209; critique and, 225–29, 231–37,
narcissism and, 189–91, 203–205. 298–303; individuality and, 55–61,
See also recognition, as acceptance of 200; intersubjectivity and, 2–3,
reality, and, recognition, personal vs. 49–50, 54–55, 57, 59–63, 69–74,
propositional 91, 95–102, 109–110, 129, 189–91,
psychology, 3 198, 199–205, 216, 245–46, 269,
Index 373
308–11, 325–28, 331, 352, 357–58; Regan, Ronald H., 364

law and, 5–8, 10, 34–35, 47, 85, Reich, Reimut, 194, 204, 209
107, 111–12, 115, 118–22, 130–31, Reinhold, Karl L., 51
153–54, 166, 170–72, 217–18, Rembrandt, 80
259, 267–72; love, 5–7, 114, 159– Renault, Emmanuel, 17, 280, 287,
63, 201–203, 259, 347, 350–53, 295–305, 313, 315, 316
347, 350–53; misrecognition and, respect. See recognition
213, 216–19; multiculturalism and, Richardson, Henry, 145
3, 13, 16, 114, 119–22, 211–13; Ricœur, Paul, 113, 120, 125, 126, 255
nature and, 122–24, 133; norms rights. See recognition
and, 49–55, 63–64, 83–85, 132– Rorty, Richard, 116, 117, 126, 144
34, 232–33, 236–37, 262, 346–55; Rosenfeld, 194
objects of, 320, 324–38, 344–67; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1, 11–12, 21–
paradigm of, 1–11; personal 46, 81, 142, 167, 186, 209
vs. propositional, 15, 190–209; Rubens, 80
personhood and, 356–59; practical Rutherford, Malcolm, 317
attitudes and, 19, 162, 176–79,
323–24, 334–36, 343–44, 346, Saarinen, Risto, 341
347–53; practical relation-to-self Sachs, David, 186
and, 320–22, 344; redistribution Sallard, Y., 256
and, 211–15, 219–21, 260, 286, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 189, 242
288, 293–95; respect, 5–8, 22–23, Scanlon, T. M., 125
30, 34–35, 113–16, 153, 168–69, Scharff, 194
171, 190, 196, 197–98, 211, 230– Schlegel, Friedrich, 116
31, 259, 267–72, 320–21, 347, Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph,
349–50; the right, the good, and, 17–18, 238
7, 14, 129–49; rights and, 12–13, Schneider, 194
47, 49–55, 61–64, 64–69, 169–72, Schopenhauer, Arthur, 155, 159, 182
196–97, 199–202, 211, 348, 350; Schwarzenbach, Sibyl, 185
self-consciousness and, 91–102, Schweikard, David, 104, 106
107–113, 200; self-realization and, Searle, John, 105
114, 116–21, 130, 152–56, 172–76, Seel, Martin, 238
179, 225–27, 322; social facts Segal, Hanna, 193, 207
and, 136–39; social philosophy Senghaas-Knobloch, Eva, 237
and, 7–11, 242–44, 246–50, 252, Sennett, Richard, 238, 279
258–63, 275–78, 287, 290, 303– sentimentalism, 154
13; social spheres of, 8, 258–59, Sherman, Nancy, 145
276–77; social struggles and, 5–6, Siep, Ludwig, 13–14, 103, 144, 340
10–11, 244–46, 251–53, 297, 304; Sinnerbrink, Robert, 360
theology and, 3, 112–13; true Smith, Adam, 209, 293
communist society and, 151–88; Smith, Nicholas, 315
work and, 16–17, 173–76, 223–39, social pathologies, 9, 18, 243, 252,
245, 250, 257–78, 294–301, 305; 287, 297–303
world-disclosure and, 130, 163–67. Sophocles, 140
See also amour propre Sorel, Georges, 242
Regan, Donald, 144 Spivak, Gayatri, 255
374 Index
Stalin, Joseph, 355 Veblen, Thorstein, 281

Stanislaw, Joseph, 279 Vidal, Gore, 181
Stehr, Nico, 280 Vincent, Jean-Marie, 253
Steiner, John, 194 Voigt, Stefan, 280
Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin, 360 Voswinkel, Stephan, 316
Stephen, Fitzjames James, 159–61, 182,
183 Waldron, Jeremy, 126
Straus, Erwin, 87 Walzer, Michael, 118–19, 126, 186
Strawson, Galen, 341 Weber, Max, 9, 221–22, 281
Strawson, Peter, 87, 334–35, 341, Weiß, 194
364–65 well-ordered society, 151; non-ideal
Sturma, Dieter, 361 societies and, 176–79
Wiggershaus, Rolf, 279
Taylor, Charles, 113, 116–17, 119–20, Wilde, Oscar, 155, 181
126, 133, 144, 307, 333, 339, 341 Wildt, Andreas, 15, 103
Taylor, Frederick, 264, 281 Williams, Robert, 87
Thomä, Helmut, 198, 208 Wilson, William Julius, 237
Thompson, Michael, 146 Winnicott, Donald, 15, 191, 199–201,
Thompson, Simon, 314, 316 203, 206, 208
Todorov, Tzvetan, 209 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 75, 87, 145
Tooley, Michael, 362 Wood, Alan, 85–86
Tress, W., 208, 209
Tronto, Joan, 184 Yergin, Daniel, 279
Tugendhat, Ernst, 91, 103, 208
Zurn, Christopher, 255, 280, 285–88,
utilitarianism, 4–7 291–316, 367
About the Contributors
J. M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the

New School for Social Research. He works primarily in the areas of aesthet-
ics and the philosophy of art, ethics, critical theory, and German Idealism.
Among his authored books are The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism,
and the Dialects of Form (1984); The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant
to Derrida and Adorno (1992); Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (2001);
and, Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting
(2006); he edited Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (2003). He is pres-
ently at work on a book provisionally entitled Torture and Dignity: Reflections
on Moral Injury.
Daniel Brudney is associate professor of philosophy at the University of

Chicago. He writes on political philosophy, medical ethics, and philoso-
phy and literature. He is the author of Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy
(1998). His recent publications include “Grand Ideals: Mill’s Two Perfec-
tionisms” (History of Political Thought, 2008); “Choosing for Another: Be-
yond Autonomy and Best Interests” (Hastings Center Report, 2009); “Styles
of Self-Absorption” (forthcoming in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
of Literature); and “Nineteenth-Century Ideals: Self-Culture and the Reli-
gion of Humanity” (forthcoming in The Cambridge History of 19th Century
Philosophy).
Jean-Philippe Deranty is senior lecturer in philosophy at Macquarie Uni-

versity. He has published extensively in contemporary European philosophy
and critical theory. His latest publications include Beyond Communication: A
Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (2009).
375
376 About the Contributors
Nancy Fraser is Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New

School for Social Research in New York. She currently holds a “Blaise
Pascal International Research Chair” at the École des hautes études en
sciences sociales in Paris. Her books include Scales of Justice: Reimagin-
ing Political Space for a Globalizing World (2008); Adding Insult to Injury:
Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics, ed. Kevin Olson (2008); Redistribution
or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (2003) with Axel Hon-
neth; Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition
(1997); and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary
Social Theory (1989).
Axel Honneth is professor of social philosophy at the Goethe-Universität

Frankfurt and director of the Institute for Social Research. He specializes
in practical philosophy and the theory of society. His English language
publications include The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical So-
cial Theory (1990); The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social
Conflicts (1995); Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1999); Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-
Philosophical Exchange (coauthored with Nancy Fraser, 2003); Disrespect: The
Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (2007); and Pathologies of Reason: On
the Legacy of Critical Theory (2009).
Heikki Ikäheimo is Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Macquarie

University. He is currently working on applications of the concept of rec-
ognition in theories of personhood and social ontology. His publications
include articles on recognition, personhood, and Hegel’s theory of subjec-
tive spirit, as well as the monograph Self-consciousness and Intersubjectivity:
A Study on Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (2000), and
the collections Dimensions of Personhood (2007) and Recognition and Social
Ontology (forthcoming).
Arto Laitinen is a Research Fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Stud-

ies, and Docent at University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His current research inter-
ests include mutual recognition, solidarity, and normativity. His publications
include Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources: On Charles Taylor’s Philosophical
Anthropology and Ethics (2008); the co-edited collections Recognition and Social
Ontology (forthcoming); Hegel on Action (forthcoming); and a number of ar-
ticles on the nature of recognition, including “Interpersonal Recognition—A
Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood?” (Inquiry, 2002).
Frederick Neuhouser is professor of philosophy at Barnard College, Co-

lumbia University. He is the author of three books: Rousseau’s Theodicy of
Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, And the Drive for Recognition (2008); Foundations
About the Contributors 377
of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (2000); and Fichte’s Theory of

Subjectivity (1990). He is currently working on a project on social inequality
from a Rousseauian perspective.
Terry Pinkard is University Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown Uni-

versity. His interests are largely in exploring the German tradition in
philosophy from Kant to the present, especially German Idealism. He has
produced many books, including, as author, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The
Sociality of Reason (1994); Hegel: A Biography (2000); and German Philosophy
1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (2002); and, as editor, Heine: On the His-
tory of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (2007).
Michael Quante is full professor of practical philosophy at Universität

Münster and associate editor of the journal Ethical Theory and Moral Prac-
tice. His main areas of research are German Idealism, practical philosophy,
philosophy of mind, and biomedical ethics. His books, in English, include
Hegel’s Concept of Action (2004) and Enabling Social Europe (2005). His
books, in German, include Menschenwürde und Personale Autonomie (2010);
Karl Marx: Ökonomisch-Philosophische Manuskripte (2009); Person (2007);
Einführung in die Allgemeine Ethik (2003); Personales Leben und menschlicher
Tod (2002); Ethik der Organtransplantation (2000); Hegels Begriff der Hand-
lung (1993).
Emmanuel Renault is maître de conférence in the Philosophy Department

at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Lyon).
Editor of the Journal Actuel Marx, coeditor of the Journal Critical Horizons,
he has written articles and books on Hegel, Marx, and contemporary criti-
cal theory: Marx et l’idée de critique (1995); Mépris social. Ethique et politique
de la reconnaissance (2000); Hegel. La naturalisation de la dialectique (2001);
Philosophie chimique. Hegel et la science dynamiste de son temps (2002);
L’Expérience de l’injustice. Reconnaissance et clinique de l’injustice (2004); and
Souffrances sociales. Sociologie, psychologie et politique (2008). His last book:
Lire Marx (2009).
Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch is Postdoctoral Researcher in Philoso-

phy at Universität Münster and Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Sozial-
forschung in Frankfurt. His areas of research include nineteenth-century
European philosophy and contemporary social and political philosophy.
He is the author of Hegels Begriff der Arbeit (2002); Religiöse Hingabe oder so-
ziale Freiheit. Die saint-simonistische Theorie und die Hegelsche Sozialphilosophie
(2007); and „Anerkennung“ als Prinzip der Kritischen Theorie (2009). He has
coedited Heinrich Scholz. Logiker, Philosoph, Theologe (2005) and Hegelianismus
und Saint-Simonismus (2007).
378 About the Contributors
Ludwig Siep is University Professor of Philosophy at Universität Münster.

He is member of the Northrhine-Westphalian Academy of Arts and Sci-
ences and corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His
fields of research encompass practical philosophy, history of philosophy,
especially German Idealism, and applied ethics. He is author of Hegels Fich-
tekritik und die Wissenschaftslehre von 1804 (1970); Anerkennung als Prinzip
der praktischen Philosophie (1979); Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idea-
lismus (1992); Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes (2001); and Konkrete
Ethik (2004). He has also edited Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
(2005) and Kommentar zu John Locke, Zweite Abhandlung über die Regierung
(2007).
Andreas Wildt is Private Docent in Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin.

His publications include Autonomie und Anerkennung. Hegels Moralitätskritik
im Lichte seiner Fichterezeption (1982) and articles on issues in moral and
political philosophy, and the philosophy of subjectivity.
Christopher Zurn is associate professor of philosophy at the University

of Kentucky. His scholarly interests focus around deliberative democratic
theories of constitutional democracy, and issues in contemporary critical
social theory. He has authored Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of
Judicial Review (2007) and coedited with Boudewijn de Bruin New Waves in
Political Philosophy (2009).

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The philosophy of recognition : historical and contemporary perspectives / [edited

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10 Work and Recognition: A Redefinition 223

The theory of recognition is now a well-established and mature research

From a historical perspective, the theory of recognition has decipherable

up a series of questions concerning intersubjective recognition for the con-

socially contingent. It rejects the pure proceduralism of Kantian strategies

disconnected from kin structures and tied increasingly to individual accom-

and expressions of critical concern about the excessive individualism fos-

The ambitious sociotheoretic claim underlying this further develop-

With such social-philosophical concerns, it is perhaps no surprise that the

Frankfurt, there was always a more or less common and well-understood

a crucial desideratum of critical theory: to articulate an interdisciplinary

our physical embodiment. Detailing the insights and curiosities of Fichte’s

humans to nature in contemporary ethical thought—concerning everything

coming the alienating effects of socially enforced egotism. Another central

of that which is recognized—Laitinen calls this the “adequate regard” intu-

1. The first three sections of this introduction incorporate, in significantly modi-

Although it is seldom realized, Rousseau is the first thinker in the history of

I. THE NATURE OF AMOUR PROPRE

As its name indicates, amour propre is a species of self-love—a love of what

same measure—then the standing I seek is comparative (defined in relation

is, in some meaningful sense, a “nobody.” The kind of existence at issue

[Being recognized by others] is testimony to personal power and force in en-

II. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE PRINCIPAL

Rousseau’s announced project in the Discourse on Inequality is to uncover

free will that individuals possess “in themselves,” independently of social

Rousseau’s thought is that someone who needs recognition will regularly

Existing outside oneself certainly sounds like a species of alienation, but

an instance of alienation is one’s existing always outside oneself, one’s liv-

III. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES

that every individual’s fundamental interests have the same standing as

fortune (E, 245/OC 4, 536–37). To believe oneself worthy of one’s happier

IV. AMOUR PROPRE AS THE SOLUTION TO ITS OWN ILLS

The most innovative aspect of Rousseau’s theory of recognition is his claim

of their solipsistic existence—where each “regards himself as the sole spec-

form of taking oneself to be subject to norms whose validity is independent

2. I do this in Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rational-

RECOGNIZING THE HUMAN

In his Foundations of Natural Right, J. G. Fichte offers the first interpretation

Because strong recognitive theories conceive being human to be a status

RIGHTS, PROTO-RIGHTS, NORMS

There is a puzzle concerning what Fichte’s conception of rights is truly

as determined in a realm of rational beings outside of myself which I can do

within that sphere as an individual as well . . . There can be no individual un-

Fichte is here beginning to explore the thought that actual self-conscious-

is given empirical specificity: the summons, and the connecting of freedom

of agents. Proto-rights as the normative grid that must be satisfied by any

The object of §§1–9 of Foundations is the transcendental elaboration of

oneself only in relation to other individuals, then, a rational being cannot

no elaboration of agency in the sense already established can bootstrap the

Recall that what is here presented as a single episode is in reality a process,

PROTO-RIGHTS: A FIRST APPROACH

tion depending on which seems most convenient and therefore appropriate.

be turned around into an argument against the reification and inflation of

INDIVIDUALITY (II): FREEDOM AS EMBODIMENT