Iser, Mattias, "Recognition", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition),

Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/recognition/>.

Recognition
First published Fri Aug 23, 2013
Recognition has both a normative and a psychological dimension. Arguably, if you
recognize another person with regard to a certain feature, as an autonomous agent, for
example, you do not only admit that she has this feature but you embrace a positive
attitude towards her for having this feature. Such recognition implies that you bear
obligations to treat her in a certain way, that is, you recognize a specific normative
status of the other person, e.g., as a free and equal person. But recognition does not only
matter normatively. It is also of psychological importance. Most theories of recognition
assume that in order to develop a practical identity, persons fundamentally depend on
the feedback of other subjects (and of society as a whole). According to this view, those
who fail to experience adequate recognition, i.e., those who are depicted by the
surrounding others or the societal norms and values in a one-sided or negative way, will
find it much harder to embrace themselves and their projects as valuable.
Misrecognition thereby hinders or destroys persons' successful relationship to their
selves. It has been poignantly described how the victims of racism and colonialism have
suffered severe psychological harm by being demeaned as inferior humans (Fanon
1952). Thus, recognition constitutes a vital human need (Taylor 1992, 26).
Recognition theory is thought to be especially well-equipped to illuminate the
psychological mechanisms of social and political resistance. As experiences of
misrecognition violate the identity of subjects, the affected are supposed to be
particularly motivated to resist, that is, to engage in a struggle for recognition.
Therefore, at least since the 1990s, theories of recognition have enjoyed a lively
academic as well as public interest. They promise to illuminate a variety of new social
movementsbe it the struggles of ethnic or religious minorities, of gays and lesbians or
of people with disabilities. None of these groups primarily fight for a more favorable
distribution of goods. Rather, they struggle for an affirmation of their particular identity
and are thus thought to be engaged in a new form of politics, sometimes labeled
politics of difference or identity politics. However, many accounts want to ascribe a
much more fundamental role to the concept of recognitioncovering the morality of
human relationships in its entirety. From this more general perspective, also earlier
campaigns for equal rightsbe it by workers, women or African Americansshould
be understood as struggles for recognition. To frame these political movements in
terms of recognition highlights the relational character of moralityand justice: Justice
is not primarily concerned with how many goods a person should have but rather with
what kind of standing vis--vis other persons she deserves (Young 1990).
This entry will first discuss some controversies surrounding the very concept of
recognition (1) before reviewing four dimensions of what is recognized (by whom and
on what grounds) that have been highlighted by different theories of recognition (2).
However, even in light of these differentiations some authors have expressed the fear
that concentrating on the issue of recognition might supplant the central problem of
(re)distribution on the political agenda (3). Finally, the often rather sanguine
descriptions of recognition and its potential for emancipation (4) have been
fundamentally challenged: The concern is that because the need for recognition renders
persons utterly dependent on the dominating societal norms it may undermine the
identity of any critic. Thus, some worry that struggles for recognition may lead to
conformism and a strengthening of ideological formations (5).

1. Analyzing the Concept of Recognition

o 1.1 Recognition and its Neighboring Concepts
o 1.2 Possible Subjects and Objects of Recognition
2. Four Forms of Recognition
o 2.1 Elementary Recognition
o 2.2 Respect
o 2.3 Esteem
o 2.4 Love and Friendship
3. Recognition and Redistribution
4. Recognition and Emancipation
5. Recognition as Ideology?
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1. Analyzing the Concept of Recognition

Recognition presupposes a subject of recognition (the recognizer) and an object (the
recognized). Before asking what kind of subjects and objects of recognition are possible
(1.2) this entry discusses what it means to recognize and how it differs from
neighboring concepts such as identification and acknowledgment (1.1).

1.1 Recognition and its Neighboring Concepts

Paul Ricoeur has distinguished as much as 23 different usages of the notion to
recognize (Ricoeur 2005, 516) grouping them under three main categories, namely
recognition as identification, recognizing oneself and mutual recognition. Many authors
have challenged Ricoeur's view by proposing a distinction between recognition (of
oneself as well as of others) and identification: Whereas we identify an X as
an X without necessarily affirming it as (and because of) X, recognition requires a
positive evaluation of X. The term acknowledgment which some authors use
interchangeably with recognition (Appiah 1992, 149) is also contested. Whereas some
have argued that we acknowledge the validity of certain insights, values and norms
(Ikheimo/Laitinen 2007, 3437), others continue to use the term acknowledgment
with regard to persons but intend it to denote something less ambitious than the
wholesale affirmation of their specific identity (Cavell 1969; Markell 2003). However,
it is the meaning of mutual recognition that lies at the heart of the contemporary
discussion.
Mutuality has always served as the explanatory and normative core of the concept of
recognition. Most theories draw on G. W. F. Hegel who was, in turn, heavily influenced
by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (for their common roots in Jean-Jacques Rousseau see
Neuhouser 2010). According to Fichte we become conscious of our own autonomy by
being challengedor as Fichte would characterize it: called uponby the actions of
another subject. Only by understanding that the other's actions are intentional can we
also grasp our own actions and utterances as expressions of an intentional self. This
thought is most famously expressed in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit where this
interpersonal encounter logically culminates in a struggle of life and death (see esp.
Kojve 1947 whose reading strongly influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Lacan;
also the contributions in O'Neill 1996). Within the Phenomenology this idea is first and
foremost a thesis about how we can gain self-consciousness as autonomous agents,
namely only by interacting with other autonomous subjects (see in more detail 2.1
below). However, this idea also leads Hegel to consider the importance of differing
forms of mutual recognition. Already in his early writings in the
Jena Realphilosophie of 1805/06 Hegel expands the Fichtean motif by referring to the
Hobbesian figure of a fundamental strugglealbeit not of self-interest but of
recognition. In Hegel's story of the state of nature social relationships are a (perhaps
forgotten) given: A person who attacks your property does not primarily want to gain
material goods. Rather, she wishes to remind you, the first possessor, that she is a
person with moral standing as well who has been neglected by the act of taking first
possession (Siep 1979, 39; Honneth 1992, 4445). As becomes especially clear in
the Phenomenology: By fighting against the other the subject wants to affirm her own
freedom by proving that her normative status is of more importance to her than any of
her (animal) desires, includingat an extremeher desire to live. However, such
fighting, expressive of autonomy, must lead to an impasse as it cannot achieve mutual
recognition: either one of the subjects dies or subjects herself as a slave to the other, the
superior master, and thus fails to express her autonomy. Furthermore, in this case the
master does not receive adequate recognition either, because the recognizer has proven
to be a mere slave who does not count as an autonomous and competent judge. Thus,
adequate recognition can only be achieved within an institutionalized order of rights
that secures genuinely mutual recognition (Williams 1997, 5968). Hegel develops this
latter thought most systematically in his mature Philosophy of Right. Here, the
relationships and implicit norms of the three spheres of, first, love within the family,
second, contractual respect within civil society and, third, solidarity within the state are
supposed to be necessary in order to actualize individual autonomy, but not in the sense
of mere negative but of social freedom. These spheres allow the subjects to feel at
home within (or reconciled with) the ethical life of their community (which is
organized as a state) because it provides the subjects with the meanings necessary for a
fulfilling individual life that they can embrace (see also 2.3 below).

1.2 Possible Subjects and Objects of Recognition

It has been argued that focusing on the idea of mutuality may limit the scope of
recognition too much. Rather, we should distinguish between a narrow understanding of
recognition based on the feature of mutuality and a wide understanding grounded in the
idea of adequate regard (Laitinen 2010). The latter reading emphasizes that by affirming
a valuable feature of any entity (i.e., also of animals and even inanimate nature, not only
of persons) we properly recognize it regardless of whether the recognized object
realizes this fact (or is even able to do so). Thus, the wide understanding allows for
many objects of recognition that cannot themselves be subjects of recognition.
However, so far this constitutes a minority position.
By contrast, because most theorists of recognition argue that recognition is a genuinely
interpersonal endeavor, they conclude that only subjects of recognition can be proper
objects of recognition. At its margins, this narrow understanding of mutual recognition
between persons raises the question from which point onward children can start to be
subjects of recognition (and whether at least some animals can qualify as such). Most
theories of recognitiondrawing, for example, on psychoanalytic object-relations
theory (see in more detail 2.4 below)speak of recognition in the context of the
relationship between parents and babies. This suggests, of course, that human babies
face the surrounding world differently than even the most developed animals do (see in
more detail 2.1 below).
When it comes to the question of collective agency, there is still considerable
uncertainty within the literature. In the following, this entry distinguishes between (i)
groups, (ii) corporations or states and (iii) institutions more generally. (i) Most authors
readily grant that (at least certain) groups of persons may be the subject and object of
(mis)recognition because a group can share collective intentions as well as certain
features for which it can be misrecognized (especially if these features constitute the
group's self-understanding). (ii) It is more contested whether more complex collective
actors such as corporations or statesto the extent they are thought to have a legal
personalitycan be regarded as subjects and objects of recognition in the proper sense
(see for the latter Rawls 1999, 3435). For example, there is dissent about whether they
display genuinely autonomous collective intentions or whether the acts of the
collective actor are rather to be understood as resulting from the mere aggregation of
individual intentions, thus signifying individual acts of (mis)recognition. Recently,
there have been attempts to introduce the notion of recognition into the field of
International Relations, beyond the common usage of a legal recognition of states.
Often enough, it is argued, the (violent) behavior of states cannot be reductively
understood as a merely instrumental striving for ever more power but should (at least
also) be perceived as a struggle for recognition (see the contributions in
Lindemann/Ringmar 2011 and O'Neill/Smith 2012, part III). Certainly, citizens
frequently speak as if their state was disrespected by another state but it remains to be
seen whether these citizens are in fact merely indignant about their government being
disrespected or they themselves as members of the state. In both cases the recognition
of states presumably simply denotes a metaphorical usage. (iii) Finally, what about
institutions more generally? A lot depends on one's definition of institutions, which can
be part of a state (for example, a state's constitution) or transcend state borders (as the
institution of the free global market). Institutions cannot as easily be described as
collective actors. Still, given that they are human products, there is broad agreement
that an institution (say, a constitution) can disrespect persons because institutions,
besides effectively regulating behavior, always expressas well as reinforce
underlying attitudes of those who designed or keep on reproducing them. In
distinguishing between a civilized society where individuals do not humiliate each other
and a decent society where at least the institutions do not do so, Avishai Margalit (1996,
12) explicitly affirms this point. Furthermore, political resistance as a moral endeavor
would prove to be unintelligible if we did not assume that political institutions (and not
only the agents acting within them) could be subjects of misrecognition. But can
institutions themselves be misrecognized? Institutions can certainly be disregarded but
it may be argued that institutions (similar to values and norms) are either
acknowledged or not whereas it is only persons or groups subject to these institutions
who can be properly (mis)recognized as only here (mis)recognition has consequences
for the object's self-conception.

2. Four Forms of Recognition

We can differentiate the concept of recognition according to the kind of features a
person is recognized for. Most agree that only in a formal sense is recognition a vital
human need or an anthropological constant. New demands of recognition always owe
themselves to the historically established and changing ideas of what kind of
recognition we deserve. This is illustrated by the rather recent historical development in
which the premodern concept of honor (which was assigned to persons as members of a
group within a hierarchical social structure) was divided into two parts: first, into the
modern notion of equal respect awarded to all agents capable of autonomy and, second,
into the idea of esteem due to one's achievements. Whereas the former now guarantees
a basic level of recognition for everyone, the latter creates a hitherto unknown
insecurity with regard to the question of what kind of recognition one deserves (Taylor
1992, 3435); an insecurity which, according to some authors, has led to the growing
importance of intimate love and friendship within the private sphere.
Kantiansand liberals more generallyusually concentrate on the first dimension of
the modern recognition order, i.e., on respect for the equal dignity of autonomous
beings. Hegelian theories of recognition, by contrast, embrace a more encompassing
view of recognition attempting to cover all spheres of recognition within modernity.
Thus, in his classical text on the topic, The Politics of Recognition, Charles Taylor
distinguishes three forms of recognition (Taylor 1992). Whereas a politics of
universalism aims at the equal recognition of all persons in their common humanity, a
politics of differenceas only one dimension of a politics of recognition (Blum
1998; Thompson 2006, 78)emphasizes the uniqueness of specific (and especially
cultural) features (Taylor 1992, 37) often associated with communitarianism. Finally,
Taylor thematizes the recognition of concrete individuality in contexts of loving care
that are of utmost importance to subjects. However, because love (as well as friendship)
is, according to him, a purely private phenomenon, it does not constitute a sensible
subject of public contestation and politics (Taylor 1992, 37). It is these three
dimensions of the modern recognition orderwhich reach back to Hegel's treatment of
the subjectthat have been primarily analyzed in the discussion (critical Fraser 2003b,
219222). They have even been interpreted as genealogically distinct stages along
which individual persons gain self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem (Honneth
1992, ch. 5). However, some have argued that a much more fundamental form of
elementary recognition (2.1) is underlying these modern spheres of respect (2.2),
esteem (2.3) as well as love and friendship (2.4).

2.1 Elementary Recognition

Hegel's famous idea that we gain self-consciousness only through a process of mutual
recognition (see 1.1 above) has been taken up by some neo-Hegelian philosophers of
mind. They make the socio-ontological claim that the world is always cooperatively
(re)constructed by human agents (see Pinkard 1994, Pippin 2008, also the contributions
in Ikheimo/Laitinen 2011). Only mutual recognition that grants others the status of an
epistemic authority allows us to construct a normative space of reasons: I know that the
truth of my judgment depends on you being able to share it (Brandom 1994). Thus,
such accounts try to explain how reason can enter the world in the first placeand
therefore this kind of elementary recognition does not seem to depend on values or
norms but rather be a source thereof. As early as the 1960s and 1970s, Karl-Otto Apel
and Jrgen Habermas similarly developed their respective variants of discourse ethics
stressing that the proper use of language already presupposes a certain form of
recognition of all other speakers as equally authoritative (see on both Habermas 1991,
ch. 2, critical Wellmer 1986, 108111). However, human beings never create their
world or the reasons they use from scratch. Rather, they are embedded in holistic webs
of meanings which they jointly reproduce (and may hereby also redo). Theories of
recognition hereby provide the ground for a critique of atomistic views of subjectivity
(especially in Taylor 1989, part I).
Some have even argued that only empathy with other persons allows us to take over
their perspective (Cavell 1969) which, again, seems to be a prerequisite for sharing their
evaluative reasons: recognition is primary to cognition (Honneth 2005, 4044). These
ideas have gained additional currency by psychological findings suggesting that the
child's brain can indeed only develop cognitively if she is able to be emotionally
attached to her primary care-givers. Only by being interested in sharing experiences
with other autonomous beings does the child gain access to the world of meaning
(Tomasello 1999, Hobson 2002).
In this vein it has been argued that people come to recognize others as persons very
early on. Already the baby learns to recognize her attachment figures as intelligible
beings, i.e., as meaning-conferring and autonomous. Quite automatically, so the
argument goes, the child then later perceives all other humans as humans. Only
afterwards the subject may become blind to this antecedent recognition (Honneth
2005, 58). Such forgetfulness of recognition is supposedly caused either by reifying
social practices which prompt individuals to perceive subjects merely as objects or by
ideological belief systems that depict some human beings as non- or sub-human
(Honneth 2005, 5960).
In sum, this elementary form shows that recognition is not only needed for the creation
and preservation of a subject's identity, but that it also denotes a basic normative
attitude. Brandom emphasizes thatbesides constituting self-consciousness as an
essentially, and not just accidentally, [] social achievement []recognition is
a normative attitude. To recognize someone is to take her to be the subject of normative
statuses, that is, of commitments and entitlements, as capable of undertaking
responsibilities and exercising authority (Brandom 2007, 136, emphasis in original).
Whereas Brandom concentrates on rather basic normative ascriptions, all phenomena of
recognition can be described as inherently normative. In particular, there is one specific
form of recognition in modernity that seems to flow quite naturally from our basic
capacity of recognizing each other in the elementary form sketched so far, namely equal
respect.

2.2 Respect
Ever since the idea of universal human rights has been established in modernity,
assigning equal dignity or respect is commonly thought to be the central dimension of
recognition. Nearly every moral philosopher writing today accepts this (Kantian) idea,
even if not all embrace it in the terminology of recognition. One of the authors who
explicitly does so is Thomas Scanlon. According to him, respect expresses the
foundation of morality as such, because the contractualist ideal of acting in accord
with principles that others (similarly motivated) could not reasonably reject is meant to
characterize the relations with others the value and appeal of which underlies our
reasons to do what morality requires. This relation [] might be called a relation of
mutual recognition. Standing in this relation to others is appealing in itselfworth
seeking for its own sake (Scanlon 1998, 162). For Scanlon, therefore, moral blame is
especially relevant because it signifies a disturbance of this basic relationship (Scanlon
2008, critical Wallace 2012). What is valued here, again, is autonomous agency, the
capacity to respond to reasons.
Most discussions in moral and political philosophy can be seen as disputes over what it
means to recognize the other as equal, i.e., what proper respect demands. Such respect
(for the humanity in each person) has to be distinguished from a common usage in
which respect denotes something quite different, namely a certain respect for the
(moral) qualities of a particular person's character or conduct (for example, in Rawls
1971, 67; Sennett 2003). It has been proposed that the former should be termed
recognition respect whereas the latter should be labeled appraisal respect (Darwall
1977). Appraisal respect resembles esteem (see 2.3 below) in that particular properties
of a person are valuedand not so much the general fact that she is a person capable of
autonomous agency. In the following, the term respect will be used to denote the
attitude of recognition respect with regard to the equal moral standing of persons and
their demands.
As we face a continuum from severe degradation to phenomena of which it is hotly
contested whether they are disrespectful, quite a few theories of recognition have
focused on the negative experiences of clear disrespect. In fact, the normative
expectation of being treated with respect is most obvious when we look at extreme
forms of humiliation in which specific (groups of) humans are symbolically and
consequently also materially excluded from humanity, are treated like animals or mere
objects. In response to such extreme forms of humiliation, Margalit has concluded that
our primary political aim should be to strive for a decent society instead of a fully just
one (Margalit 1996, 271291) and there has been some discussion about whether
recognition theory has a natural affinity with minimal or negative theories of morality
(Allen 2001).
Being faced with extreme humiliation, the interplay between normative and
psychological aspects becomes especially salient. Even if the victims know that their
degradation is unjustified, they cannot but feel humiliated all the same. Any trust in
being able to control their lives is stripped away from them. In the course of
mistreatment, torture and rape the perpetrators do not only intentionally inflict pain and
injury on their victims but also deride the agency of the latter. This combination
undermines basic self- and world-trust (Scarry 1985; Rorty 1989, ch. 79; Margalit
1996, 115119, 145).
However, even less extreme forms of mistreating persons manifest disrespect. In these
cases it is not necessarily denied that those under discussion are humans, but rather that
they have equal moral and/or legal standing. Instead of being approached as adults,
women and people of different color, for instance, were, for the most part of history,
treated like children. They were regarded as second-class citizens (Taylor 1992, 37)
not capable of responsibly reproducing and shaping the social norms of their
communities. Only equal positive rights institutionalize recognition in a publicly
manifest way and thus make it easier for the individual to develop self-respect
(Feinberg 1970, 251253), perhaps the most important primary good (Rawls 1971,
67).
Nonetheless, there is a certain tension between recognizing somebody as a legal rights
holder and the idea of a full-fledged recognition order. The very idea of subjective
rights allows persons to step out of all interpersonal relations and insist on their right
whatever reasons might be raised against that by others (Menke 2009). Yet, in granting
every subject the right to use their powers of reasons as they see fit, law recognizes their
autonomous agency. It hereby takes into account the fact of reasonable pluralism.
Although people might disagree with each other, toleration of the other's dissenting
opinion is then supposed to be grounded in equal respect (see Forst 2013) and not only
a way of grudgingly settling for a modus vivendi. Nonetheless, theorists of recognition
(within the Hegelian tradition) have warned that concentrating entirely on negative
liberty without considering the wider social context in which such liberty is embedded
and on which it depends might lead to social pathologies (Honneth 2011, ch. BI.3.).
With this warning they join communitarian voices. Thus, one necessary step is to secure
the legitimacy of the legal order by ascribing equal democratic rights to all citizens.
This recognizes them as being able to orient themselves toward the common good (and
not only to their self-interest).

2.3 Esteem
The major emancipatory movements of the last two centuriesfor instance the
women's or the civil rights movement in the USfought for equal respect and rights. In
contrast, in many of the contemporary social struggles persons or groups demand
recognition of specific (e.g., cultural or religious) aspects of their identities which are
neglected or demeaned by the dominant value and norm system of their society. It is
these phenomena which have helped popularize the notions of a politics of
recognition or identity politics. However, it is contested why these differences
should matter normatively: Do we owe such recognition to the affected as subjects
with equal moral status(a) or because we should esteem their specific properties as
valuable (b)?
(a) The first reading, which claims that we owe this kind of recognition to all subjects as
equally entitled, allows only for a context-sensitive form of respect. By pointing to
differences disregarded so far one hopes to show that the allegedly neutral state (or
society) is by no means neutral, but rather based on a partial (for example, male-
dominated, white, heterosexual) interpretation of citizenship or just on an arbitrary
privileging of specific groups. Hereby all members are discriminated who do not fit the
hegemonic understanding (already Taylor 1992, 42). If one tries to cancel out these
disadvantages by taking into account the differences, e.g., by means of affirmative
action intended to remove injustices, this serves the higher-ranking goal of treating
persons in all their particularity as of equal status (Benhabib 1992). In order to arrive at
such context-sensitive laws and regulations one has to more fully include the affected
groups into the process of democratic decision-making, for example, through a vitalized
public sphere and formal hearings (Habermas 1993). Additionally, it has been proposed
that (formerly) oppressed groups should have a veto right with regard to all those
questions that particularly affect them (Young 1990, 183191).
(b) In contrast, the second reading claims that we should value particularity in itself.
Such a politics of difference is not concerned with (context-sensitive) respect, but with
the esteem for specific characteristics or entire identities of individuals andoften
enoughgroups.
However, the idea of group identities has been hotly contested: Whereas some groups
indeed want to (re)affirm their particular identity, the criticism has been voiced that
such a homogenous reading of identity fails to take proper account of intersecting axes
of identification (being a woman, being black, being gay or lesbian). The failure to
admit of such heterogeneity has been suspected of legitimizing internal oppression
within minorities. According to some scholars, all identities have to be deconstructed.
Again others have held onto the idea of group identities for political reasons
(demanding secure exit-options for individual members) or have favored rainbow
coalitions. In this context, it is also controversial whether cultures should be valued in
themselves or only in their value for individuals and whether such cultural protection
necessitates group rights (Kymlicka 1989, Taylor 1992, Habermas 1993, Laden/Owen
2007). Finally, there seems to be an aporia as the alleged solution to equally value and
promote all cultures may be no solution at all: Arguably, to esteem something without
accurate knowledge or against one's own convictions is no real esteem but rather
manifests an additional insult. Therefore, Taylor urges us to be merely maximally
open towards the alien culture and to be led by the principle that traditions with a long
history most certainly contain something valuable (Taylor 1992, 6871).
There is another group of scholars which has argued that esteem should not be awarded
to groups but to individualsand not for the latter's wholesale identities but only for
specific features. Yet, in light of the value pluralism so characteristic of modern
societies, it remains unclear who could function as an impartial judge when it comes to
determining what is (more) valuable and what is not. Every decision seems to run the
danger of merely expressing a repressive majority opinion. Therefore, according to
some accounts, esteem should play no role in public politics whatsoever: it is sufficient
for individuals to be respected by all and to be esteemed by only some significant
others, for example, by their family, friends or fellow members of voluntary
associations (Rawls 1971, 67; Habermas 1993, 258).
Yet, an opposing camp claims that simply neglecting the dimension of esteem does not
do justice to our everyday experiences: We are not only injured by humiliating
behavior, but also if strangers insult us (either in the sense of not
recognizing specific features of ourselves or actively devaluing them). After all, we
have a need to be esteemed by society as such in order to be able to appear in public
without shame. Bourdieu's social theory, for example, points to the pervasiveness of
evaluative patterns and distinctions even in modern society, determining social status
and class (Bourdieu 1984). In order to solve the dilemma of having to create an
impartial value horizon for modern societies, in recent years some authors have
proposed to focus on the notion of achievement. The latter is supposed to be a
sufficiently formal reference point for esteeming persons. Achievement is not only of
great significance within capitalistic societies but remains open for historically and
interculturally different ideas of what kind of achievement should count as relevant
(Honneth 1992, 126; 2003, 140142; Margalit 1996, 4647). It is supposed to allow for
individual particularity (one's own achievement) but still to retain a common reference
point (the contribution to the common good, however that may be defined). From this
perspective, mass unemployment, for instance, is a social pathology because it denies
this form of esteem to large parts of the population. This could only be counteracted by
acknowledging activities outside of the labor market as achievements so that every
citizen has the chance to see herself as a person who contributes to the flourishing of
her society. Additionally, it constitutes an injustice if activities are devalued for
arbitrary reasons (e.g., if specific jobs lose their status just because the ratio of women
holding them increases, see Honneth 2003, 153, or if women earn less than men for
doing the same job).
Three sorts of arguments have been leveled against this idea of focusing on
achievement. First, some have argued that it is impossible to find culturally neutral
criteria of merit (Young 1990, 200206). But if this were true, the problem that was
supposed to be solved only reappears again: we can only expect such recognition from
those who share with us the same standards of achievement. Second, the market is not
interested so much in skills, but in outputs demanded by others regardless of the skills
involved (see Schmidt am Busch 2011, 4647). Third, even if the citizenry could come
up with a convincing standard, there remains a recognition gap: not all, perhaps not
even the central features that render us valuable in our own eyes can be understood as
achievements in the sense of contributing to the common good (Iser 2008, 193).
Nonetheless, by highlighting the human dependency on evaluative horizons of esteem,
many theories of recognition share important characteristics with communitarian
approaches. The idea of a common, more substantial ethical life is especially
important for those who think that we can only flourish if we live in meaning-bestowing
relationships of mutual recognition. In such relationships people are supposed to
experience the needs, desires and goals of their alter ego not so much as limitations but
rather as furtherances of their own social freedom (in this vein Taylor 1992, 3334;
Neuhouser 2000, esp. ch. 1; Pippin 2008, ch. 7; Honneth 2011, ch. A.III.). The
individual can only experience her deeds as really hers in living and acting in concert
with others and feeling at home in the society's institutions. Here recognition is not only
a precondition for valuing one's own (perhaps still individual) projects but is itself an
integral part of (essentially social) endeavors. According to this picture, we face a lack
of freedom where such relationships of mutual recognition are not fully realized. Thus,
these accounts follow Hegel in generalizing experiences drawn from the intimate sphere
of loving relationships.

2.4 Love and Friendship

Relationships of loving care are deemed important within psychologically oriented
recognition theories (Benjamin 1988, Honneth 1992) because such emotionally
fulfilling interactions are supposed to display the first form of recognition humans
experience. The unconditional care by a parent provides the baby with the feeling of
security and of being loved, and thus to be worthy of love. This world- and self-trust is
taken to later enable the child to value her own projects and align the role standards that
grow increasingly more complicated in the course of her development and to critically
question them (Mead 1934, Habermas 1988). Most of those who endorse the relevance
of love also stress the importance of the affective dimension for all subsequent forms of
recognition (Honneth 2011, C.III.1).
Following the idea that recognition should always affirm certain aspects of the other
person, there has been some controversy about what exactly we recognize in other
persons when we love them or regard them as friends. After all, we seem to embrace
them in their entire (and changing) personality and could not just replace them with
others who may have similar characteristics. Whereas some think that we still respond
to some valuable trait, namely the autonomous core of the loved one's personality
(Velleman 1999, 366374), others think that the relationship itself creates a value that is
worth caring for (Frankfurt 2004).
Furthermore, as love embraces the entire personality of individuals it has been proposed
that it is this experience, anchored in early childhood, that provides subjects with a
permanent motivational resource for demanding recognition for ever more aspects of
their identity, and thus for further moral progress. This may, of course, in its extreme
form of desiring to be recognized in all one's features by all persons be a mere utopia
(along these lines Honneth 2002, 504). Theories such as those of Emmanuel Lvinas
(1961, section III) or Jacques Derrida (1990, 959) depict concrete others as demanding
an infinite sensibility and care toward them. Although we often have to relativize these
demands in light of competing claims of others and for reasons of
overdemandingness (Forst 2011, 3637), these theories generally point to the possibility
of having to redraw the boundaries between different spheres of recognition. This
could, for example, lead to a revised understanding of solidarity being not only a task of
families or close friends but of entire societies, namely in the form of a welfare state.
Although politics might not be directly responsible for this form of recognizing
concrete individuality, there are nevertheless indirect possibilities to protect and to
shape its basic conditions. By means of effective law enforcement politics assures the
individual that the trust (in one's environment as well as one's own body), acquired in
intimate relations since childhood (see Taylor 1992, 3637), is not forcibly destroyed
from the outside, e.g., by maltreatment, torture or rape (some, as Owen 2007, 308, even
mention natural disasters although these catastrophes do not damage interpersonal
trust). Additionally, some of the social conditions that make it more challenging to
succeed in intimate relations can be improved politically. This is, for example, valid for
inflexible or very long working hours for parents and bad child care offers, for demands
of high mobility which endanger intimate relationships, or for the cultural patterns that
devalue reciprocity between partners, e.g., by favoring negligence and recklessness as
masculine.

3. Recognition and Redistribution

Despite the differentiation of these four dimensions of recognition, in the middle of the
1990s, Nancy Fraser (but also Rorty 1999) voiced the concern that, at least in the
political context of the US, the increasingly influential identity politics threatened to
replace the issue of redistribution on the political agenda. She insistedagainst Taylor
and Honneththat only recognition and redistribution taken together would allow for
the right kind of justice, namely the ideal of participatory parity that guarantees each
subject an equal participation in public life. While redistribution secures the objective
condition of such an ideal, recognition safeguards its intersubjective condition (Fraser
2003a, 36). Fraser tries to illustrate the independency of recognition and redistribution
by way of two examples: Whereas homosexuals suffer primarily from culturally
discriminating practices of humiliation, workers are first and foremost the victims of
economic exploitation. Though homosexuals also have to struggle with economic
disadvantages and the achievements of the workers have been ideologically demeaned
as less valuable, the real cause of the injustice in the former case lies within the cultural
sphere whereas in the latter it lies within the economic sphere (Fraser 1996, ch. 1;
2003a, 5054). Thus, Fraser categorizes different forms of injustice according to their
socioeconomic roots. Her main point is, nonetheless, that in most cases of injustice we
are dealing with a combination of cultural disrespect and economic exploitation. As
especially fitting examples Fraser refers to groups categorized along the lines of gender
or race. Thus, women and people of different color suffer not only from a
discriminating status order, but also from an economy which is based on encoding
unpaid housework and badly paid labor as female as well as auxiliary and superfluous
work as colored. Only a two-dimensional theory such as the one she suggests can
according to Fraserpay proper attention to practical conflicts between policies of
redistribution and recognition. On the one hand, if one redistributes without considering
the relations of recognition involved, the receivers might be stigmatized as social
parasites, and thus disrespected. On the other hand, generally legitimate policies of
recognition may lead to normatively undesirable side-effects by dramatically worsening
the economic position of the affected persons, as measures against reification through
prostitution and pornography might very well do when they render those engaged in
these lines of work unemployed (Fraser 2003a, 65; see for a thorough discussion the
contributions in Olsen 2008).
In light of this criticism, Axel Honneth has insisted that the concept of recognition can
be applied to questions of distributive justice, but that it is important to properly
differentiate between the dimensions of respect and esteem: First, our understanding of
what we owe to others on account of their equal status as autonomous persons has itself
been historically extended and now entails social rights. Accordingly, the affected
persons can at least claim qua equal citizensand thus in the name of a politics of
respectthat amount of basic goods that is necessary for enabling them to effectively
use their legal entitlements. Secondly, they can refer to the criterion of achievement
which is supposed to be constitutive of capitalismas an (also) cultural entityin
order to demand a more adequate remuneration of their work (Honneth 2003, 151154;
see 2.3 above). Only if one understands redistribution in this way, that is, as a problem
of recognition, can oneaccording to Honnethexplain why the affected experience
outrage: namely because they deem their identity to be threatened by a perceived
injustice. What counts as an injustice, therefore, depends on our reasonable expectations
of recognition: Justice and recognition mutually illuminate each other.
However, Fraser has responded by arguing that most problems associated with global
injustice are not primarily due to misrecognition but rather stem from systemic features
of capitalism, such as when multinational enterprises relocate factories and lay off
workers in order to maximize profits and share-holder interests (Fraser 2003b, 214
215). Subsequently, there has been quite some debate with regard to what extent and
how fruitfully global capitalism can be explained and criticized in terms of
recognitionand what role functional imperatives play within such an account (see, for
example, the contributions in Schmidt am Busch/Zurn 2010, 241318).

4. Recognition and Emancipation

Struggles for recognitionthat need not be fought by violent means, just think of the
Indian liberation movement under Mahatma Gandhiare supposed to effect moral
progress toward ever more just or fulfilling relations of recognition. Therefore, some
authors, especially those interested in social criticism, have proposed to use recognition
as a new paradigm for Critical Theory (Honneth 1992, see also Iser 2008, Deranty
2009). Such a critical theory of recognition is supposed to evaluate whether societies
provide their citizens with the necessary primary good of social recognition.
Because some theories of recognition are not only concerned with questions of justice
but also with a formal theory of the good life designed to illuminate the social
conditions of individual flourishing (or negatively, of social pathologies) this has
sparked the critique that such approaches are too sectarian (Fraser 2003, 30; similar
Zurn 2000, 121): Any reference to the telos of a good life (or the specific idea of
individuality or authenticity) proves to be a non-starter (or just eurocentric). In reply,
proponents of such a broader account of social philosophy have insisted that the
emphasis on a society that recognizes as many features of individuals as possible,
hereby promoting their autonomy, does not prescribe how to live. It only spells out the
intersubjective conditions which provide everybody with the chance to live the life they
want to lead (be it autonomously chosen or not), namely in a social environment where
this life is either adequately recognized or at least not looked upon derogatively
(Honneth 2003, 177).
Some authors have emphasized that speaking of recognition as a vital human need
cannot mean that every struggle for recognition is (equally) justified (Alexander/Pia
Lara 1996). We still require criteria to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate
struggles. Certainly, those who fight for more recognition think that they deserve it. But
obviously their belief can be false if the claims are unjustified or exaggerated. As all
instances of legitimate criticism remind us: Neither every negative description of a
person('s self-image) nor every challenge of her current status positionas hurtful as
such challenges might be for the affected personis necessarily a form of
misrecognition. Quite to the contrary, only by being subject to well-meaning criticism
can we improve ourselves.
Therefore, those who defend a primarily normative account of recognition (and
humiliation) distance themselves from what they perceive as the problems of overly
psychological approaches. On the one hand, they claim, due to adapted preferences
persons might not even (emotionally) register when they are in fact treated
disrespectfully. On the other hand, persons might feel slighted because they hold utterly
unreasonable views in the first place, e.g., if Nazis think that they ought to be treated as
super-humans or if a mediocre painter expects others to view him as a genius (Margalit
1996, 9; Fraser 2003, 3742; Iser 2008, 216221).
But how do we come by the normative criteria of adequate recognition? Whereas
Kantian contractualists ask themselves which standards are acceptable to all (in a
hypothetical choice situation), most theories of recognition follow a more Hegelian
route. They argue that the social practices of recognition in which subjects live already
provide them with all the normative resources needed to criticize and transcend these
practices. Thus, Hegelian theories of recognition in all their variations choose an
interpretative orperhaps more adequatelyreconstructive path: Because we are
socialized into a specific recognition order we also internalize (via the exchange with
and through the view of others) a given space of (historical) reasons that shapes our
practical identity and our normative expectations springing from this identity. This is
also supposed to explain the close connection between the normative and the
psychological dimension of recognition: On account of our intersubjectively acquired
identity we have a psychological need to be recognized as having the normative status
we deem to deserve. Consequently, because it is a normatively structured need to the
disappointment of which we usually react with indignation, its appropriateness can
always be questioned by reference to the reasons available to us (Iser 2008, 173).
One way to make progress then is to criticize problematic ways of thinking of and
relating to others' characteristics by pointing to already established principles of
recognition. This would, for example, entail arguing for women's rights on the basis of
the idea of equal dignity of all men or for higher wages for workers by reference to
already established notions of desert. Thus, it is always possible to bring to bear aspects
which were disregarded up to now by referring to the surplus validity of an already
established abstract principle of recognition (Honneth 2003, 186). According to this
view, moral progress takes place by way of a laborious sorting out of reasons that are
shown to be implausible. However, this still leaves open the question of how radical
such a critique can be, i.e., whether it can only proceed in a context-dependent and
peace-meal way or whether the very logic of recognition provides us with more abstract
criteria of progress, such as egalitarian inclusion and the recognition of ever more
aspects of individuals that fosters their autonomy (Honneth 2003, 184185).
Sometimes such critical reflections on one's society are triggered by emotional
impulses. Thus, the psychoanalytic tradition refers to suppressed, but unconsciously
still effective drives or experiences. These approaches always search, albeit in a
speculative manner, for a motive people may have to transcend the given recognition
order. These drives or experiences may be described, following Freud, as libidinous
energies or rather as the positively connotated recollection of a state of infant
omnipotence (Whitebook 1996). In recent times, object relations theory has been used
to highlight the traumatically experienced end of an original symbiosis (between a baby
and her primary care-giver) which we supposedly strive to regain throughout our entire
life (Benjamin 1988).
But regardless of the way subjects reach the conviction that they must claim recognition
for new, so far neglected oreven worsedemeaned aspects of their identity, the
following question must be asked: From where do they gain the mental strength to at
least temporarily withstand the disrespect or indifference of (at least many of) their
surrounding others? The assumption that without recognition by all others it is
inevitable that we suffer psychological breakdown is much too strong. In spite of
disrespect, the capacity for agency which is necessary for resistance may spring from
three motivational sources. First, the oppressed subjects can, under certain
circumstances, still draw upon the assurance that they acquired in a (more or less)
happy childhood. Secondly, social movements of resistance often create enough
motivational energy by recognizing each other within these movements, e.g., within the
civil rights movement. As a consequence, the disrespect shown by the rest of society at
least weighs less heavily. Finally, the idea that members of a better society in the future,
though merely imagined, would one day grant the desired recognition, might function
as a third source of the mental strength needed to endure (Mead 1934, 199).

5. Recognition as Ideology?
Some authors are not very optimistic about the prospects of emancipation through
struggles of recognition. If our expectations of being recognized as X are always
contingent upon the social and historical context we live in, how is moral and political
progress possible at all? Is itin view of our basic dependency on the view of others
not more likely that our striving for recognition leads to uncritical conformity instead of
an emancipatory struggle for recognition? It is just this suspicion which is expressed by
the French Marxist Louis Althusser. He regards recognition as the central ideological
mechanism by which the state confronts its citizens with the choice between obedience
and the loss of social existence (Althusser 1970, 174176). Hereby, Althusser follows a
specifically French tradition that does not primarily conceptualize recognition as the
condition of intersubjective freedom, but as a source of estrangement: Already in
Rousseau's Second Discourse on Inequality(Rousseau 1755) individuals lose
themselves in vain pretense, because they inauthentically attempt to please others (for a
more positive reading see Neuhouser 2010). Finally, in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre
individuals are reified by every kind of recognition because even the affirmation of
others freezes the subjects in their present state, hereby denying their potential for
change, i.e., their freedom (Sartre 1943, esp. 347361). According to this tradition, we
do not suffer primarily from the fact that we are not recognized, but rather from the fact
that we are held captive within a specific pattern of socially mandated recognition
(Bedorf 2010). Struggles for recognition only entangle us ever deeper in a wrong
dependency on power relations the workings of which we fail to adequately grasp.
Whereas left-Hegelian approaches are designed to positively overcome ideological
recognition orders for the purposes of social progress (Honneth 2004), post-
structuralists maintain that one should not ask which features of one's identity should be
recognized. In doing so we only remain caught within the old (ideological) categories
and are forced to define clear-cut identities. Rather, one should question struggles for
recognition as to whether and to what extent they increase spaces of freedom to think
and act differently (Tully 2000, 469). Such work, often inspired by Michel Foucault,
has also pointed to the motivational problem of all resistance to the established
recognition order: How can you reject exactly those categories that constitute your
identity? Does social criticism not necessary imply self-denial? Judith Butler has tried
to circumvent this alleged paradox by pointing out that norms never remain valid by
themselves but need constant reaffirmation. This process hereby opens up possibilities
ofat least slightlyreconfiguring the dominant norms and changing one's own
identity (Butler 1997a, ch. 3; 1997b, 13, 4041). Some authors even want to replace a
politics of recognition with a politics of acknowledgment: an acknowledgment that we
can never be sure about the changing identities (and thus normative claims) of others
but have to remain open to new and unpredictable developments (Markell 2003, 180).
In a similar vein, feminist thinkers have claimed that the entire idea of being recognized
in one's given identity makes it impossible for us to gain an adequate understanding of
how power and agency not simply react to such an identity but rather create it as an
embodied identity in the first place (McNay 162197).
Even those who think that one canat least conceptuallyconceive of non-ideological
forms of recognition have started to pay more attention to the ways in which
relationships of recognition are always also relationships of power (see the
contributions in van den Brink/Owen 2007). This becomes especially urgent if one
realizes, as already indicated above, that values and normsbeing products of human
thought and attitudescan express disrespect even if those who follow them are not
really aware of this. Subjects may attempt to convey recognition within a framework
that is itself disrespectful. For example, a lord in the 18th century who treated his maid
according to the accepted norms of that timefor example, by treating her as if she was
invisiblemay not have (intentionally) disrespected her with regard to the socially
valid system of norms and values. Thus, he might have been considered a decent lord
according to prevailing standards (whereas other lords might have been described as
cruel, etc.). However, at least some probably want to say that this lordin another
sensedid not adequately respect his maid (and that therefore the social changes since
then manifest moral progress). Nonetheless, some authors regard even ideological
recognition (as being, for example, a dutiful maid) as something positive insofar as it
strengthens the subject's sense of worth and is clearly superior to acts of misrecognition
(Honneth 2004, 323347). Yet, others may mourn such ideological recognition for the
incapacitating effects on the recognized subjects' will to resist.
However, even if attitudes and acts of recognition are a much more ambivalent blessing
than might have been presumed at first sight, recognition theory does not only
illuminate the complexity of our normative thinking but also provides a strong
argument that such normative considerations are an ineradicable part of our social
 world. The concept of recognition therefore also serves an important explanatory
function.

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