Umverteilung oder Anerkennung?: Eine politisch-philosophische Kontroverse

by Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth

In this stimulating debate Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth set out to advance the discussion in political philosophy about the idea of recognition, especially as it relates to that of redistribution. Some theorists, such as Axel Honneth, have reframed the original socialist ideal of redistribution in terms of the figure of a struggle for recognition that has inspired important currents of the feminist and gay and lesbian movements, as well as conflicts over multiculturalism. Others, like Nancy Fraser, ask whether the current theoretical and practical emphasis on cultural recognition is displacing, rather than complicating and enriching, our understanding of the centrality of redistribution to social justice. This line of inquiry raises a series of philosophical, social and political problems that lie at the heart of the two authors' projects and that their contributions seek to address.

Author Biography: Nancy Fraser is Professor of Political Science at the New School University in New York. Her previous books include Unruly Practices, Justice Interruptus and, with Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Seyla Benhabib, Feminist Contentions. Axel Honneth is Professor of Philosophy at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in Frankfurt. He is the author of, amongst other books, The Critique of Power and The Struggle for Recognition.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Feminism, Theory, Academia

Unknown Binding

First published December 11, 2003

About the author

Nancy Fraser is an American critical theorist, currently the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Fraser earned her PhD in philosophy from the CUNY Graduate Center and taught in the philosophy department at Northwestern University for many years before moving to the New School.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a debate between two prominent critical theorist: Nancy Fraser from the New School, and Axel Honneth, the new 'heir' to Habermas. For Fraser's writing alone, this book deserves 4.5-5 stars, but for Honneth's writing, it deserves one to two.

Axel Honneth is known for developing a normative critical theory based upon an anthropological view that mankind has built in recognition capacities, which can be expressed when entering into an inter-subjective relation. If one is not recognized to the degree they ought to be recognized (i.e., they are misrecognized), then something normatively unsatisfactory has occurred. Fraser dubs Honneth's theroy as a recognition monism. I agree with her. Honneth reduces all issues of justice and normativity into his theory of recognition, which ends up with some rather bizzare results. For instance he says the engine of social change is always recognition. But it's quite clear that social change comes about through technological advancements, that lead to changes in the lives of people who never entered any inter-subjective relationship during the process of technological development.

Fraser wants to develop a critical theory that incorporates dual systems of justice. The first being justice issues related to distribution (of economic goods, access to goods, etc), and recognition politics. She believes each field of justice, while interconnected to the other field, retains its own degree of autonomy in relation to justice. I also agree with this claim. She pushes this point of view further into a theory of the 'parity principle.' What is just is what allows for equal, or more egalitarian relations concerning distribution and recognition.

The book begins with Fraser presenting her theory, Honneth responding, Fraser responding, and then Honneth offering the final response. Having read Honneth's reading of Marx and Lukacs, I'm aware that he frequently misreads people, or reads them through his recognition theory, without considering the theorist on their own terms. This is frustrating. It's clear within the first three pages that he has entirely misread Fraser. As a result, after Fraser's stellar opening, the rest of the book goes downhill. Honneth spends all his essays responding to a straw-man, and Fraser spends her time just trying to correct his reading. So, if you want to learn about Honneth's theories read his own books, but don't look for stellar insights in this one. As a matter of fact his considerations of capitalism are so laughably absurd and contrary to anything in the critical theoretical tradition, that one wishes some of his essays weren't published at all, or at least were seriously revised. Also, if you want to learn about Fraser, the opening essay is fantastic, but I can't say the rest of the book is worth the cost. Perhaps it's better to read Fraser's independent work too.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fraser wins on points. Mostly jabs thrown, a few body shots, but no dangerous punches. For Fraser, this book has been superseded by her dialogue with Jaeggi. For Honneth, I mean... I'm just not a fan, and he seems to get worse with age. This is a perfectly reasonable statement of what his position was, is, and probably always will be, with the exception of one small essay that, I believe, was written in the midst of the financial crisis, in which he briefly considered that just maybe properly recognizing people won't solve all our problems. Good to know he stuffed those concerns back under the mattress and got on with out Hegeling Hegel.

But seriously, this is a good, quick intro to Honneth in Honneth's own voice, and there's value in that, as well as the great value of literally everything Nancy Fraser does.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the best book I've ever read in the "sphere" of social justice. Fraser's "two-dimensional" theory of justice in particular I think will stick with me for the rest of my life, as a cogent method for understanding and breaking down social divisions into their constituent parts, searching for causes, and developing praxis for dismantling them. I know I'm hyping it hella much here, but in a certain sense it's the perfect fusion of Marxian economic/material and Weberian "social status"-based perspectives on inequality/social divisions/oppression and their linkages with historical and contemporary institutions (media, education, taxation and wealth redistribution, etc.). Concretely, anyone interested in how we can balance Marxian perspectives on social justice with more "identity politics"-based perspectives should go read this book right now.

[Bram Van boxtel · Rating 2 out of 5]

'een discussie van drie nullen achter de comma'

[Foppe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let my start off by saying that this book is a very fertile work for the patient and careful reader who wants to get a feel for the kinds of issues to consider in the redistribution/recognition debate on social justice.
However, I'm finding this to be a very annoying book to read. In this book, Honneth and Fraser both first supply a very long essay; starting with Fraser, an extended reply/counterargument by Honneth, and then 1 reply to the other's reply. To start, both their arguments are quite elaborately argued (and sometimes quite repetitive-seeming). More problematically for the reader, (and this is especially noticeable because they are responding to each other in the same book; it may be that authors do this all the time, but when they decided to publish a book together this tendency becomes more than a little bit more irritating than usual) both authors constantly (to a greater or lesser extent) misrepresent the other's position, both in order to make their own points and because they 'identify' a problem in the other's position, but most of the time this is merely a problem caused by their own inability to understand the other's position accurately in their own terms.
While both authors recap and summarize their own (intended) arguments quite often, so that their chapters are fairly clearly structured, this also distracts the reader from looking for the problematic passages or lacunae in their work, especially in Honneth's chapters.
On to the substance: Honneth and Fraser both try to clarify how redistribution and recognition relate to each other. Fraser does this by emphasizing the importance of 'all affected' to have an proportional say in every decision that is made that affects them somehow. In this way, she feels, it is possible to give a procedural account of how members of collectivities can work out a shared conception of the kind of society in which they can all flourish. Honneth, on the other hand, makes 'flourishing' the goal that societies should aim to maximize, and the preconditions for which should be embodied in the institutions and modes of interaction between its members. For him, experiences of suffering (caused by the perception of not being treated in the way you are due; note that this is different from 'not being treated equally') are what informs social protest, and for him, these should all be considered at the 'legal' level.
However, because of the fact that I cannot really find any passages in Honneth's text in which he adequately distances himself from the moral force of 'experience', I can't shake the feeling that Honneth is at bottom trying to work out a theory of solipsistic narcissism, in which nothing may be laid in the way of the person who wants to 'develop himself fully': he remains entirely silent on the question how we might differentiate between valid and spurious complaints about 'not being respected (or treated) in the way you feel are due (or in the way you deserve)'. And although 'mutual recognition' is the Hegelian bedrock on which his theory functions, the intersubjective dimension is only there because it is the way to guarantee personal development (which may, but need not be, substantively 'social'.)
This issue relates to another problem I have with his text, namely that he says nothing about the kind of political organization that is to be preferred. The way in which I would say you consider the different ways of life the members of a society embody is by discussing the pros and cons, or arguing for the acceptability of a way of life given the other ways of life that exist in a collective. As such, polygamy may for instance be unacceptable to the rest of society, and 'voted out' as a valid choice, whereas gay marriage may be acceptable (once the majority has come to see that this does not 'demean' that marvelous institution). Now, admittedly there are no hard and fast rules that determine that gay marriage should always be accepted, so that it is contingently possible that some collectives will reject this as a valid choice, but you won't be able to fix that problem with an ahistorical rule anyway, so I'm not sure it matters for critical theory that even democratic societies might forbid it. In any case, it seems to me that democracy is still the kind of society that has the most procedural guarantees of working out what the 'collective' thinks about new ways of life and whether to accept them. That is, it seems to me that it is impossible to talk about shifting and changing recognition practices -- let alone redistribution issues -- without also saying something about the procedures and mechanisms that facilitate such deliberation and change. And yet, this is left entirely undiscussed. Honneth has nothing to say about how, for instance, political representation -- an inexcisable part of democratic life and deliberation concerned with aggregating opinions and distilling a shared position that all can live with even if they don't all entirely agree with it -- fits the rest of his theory, as majority decision will always serve to allow some choices while blocking others, at least for a time. Consensus decision-making, about what is and is not allowed, is what it is to have to live together. However, according to my reading of Honneth, he appears to support the position that any decision that abridges a desire of one of the members of a society is illegitimate.
All of this makes it very difficult for me to take him seriously. And while it may be that (especially) my last point is off the mark, I have no way of really finding this out because Honneth never bothers to explain how such group decisions can be legitimated at all.
As such, I am somewhat more inclined towards Fraser's discussion, though I have problems with her text as well (which I cannot yet articulate).

[Christopher Waller · Rating 2 out of 5]

How did the frankfurt school go from Adorno to this shit?

[Jacopo Claudio Siffredi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy Fraser piacevole scoperta ma le parti di Axel Honneth purtroppo tirano giù la mia valutazione complessiva

[Sofia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this for Philosophy class.

[Veera]

yuh

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book demonstrates a political debate between two intellectuals arguing in essence for the "best" way for social justice to be had. Nancy Fraser begins by dissecting the two poles of redistribution and recognition. She breaks them down but in the end synthesizes them into a theory of the necessity of both expelling the myth of mutual exclusivity. She proposes "participatory parity" as the need for distinct groups to be recognized politically representing the recognition side of the argument but also economically representing the redistribution side of the argument. Not leaving them separate, she demonstrates how both intersect and are required in a society committed to social justice. As a counter argument Axel Honneth leaves her in the dust as he totally demolishes the assumed framework in which Fraser uses a false dichotomy and posits a multi dimensional framework based on a more realistic set of politics. Honneth shows how both of these are facets of ways of getting justice subsumed under what could be called a normative framework of what is just in a society. Honneth also breaks down three distinct ways of social forms of "recognition" that are deemed fundamental to social justice, love, law, and achievement. He shows how historically the category of law has been used as a catalyst for recognition and redistribution and gives it as a more concrete stepping stone. He shows the necessity in the change in law(social policy) as a way to shift the boundaries of what normative acceptance of just and injust are.

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is hippie nonsense with - "the far more reaching goal of respecting cultural practices of a minority as something socially valuable in itself - as a social good."

Even Neo-Nazi's? Should we respect the cultural values of a group that possesses no mutual respect for other groups? Get real. Fascism is real. The Hardt book on Deleuze was too anarchical (All Critique is violent) and this book is too Kantian "All people are inherently rational, capable of deciding for themselves, and full of moral conviction" - Is there really anyone doing philosophy these days that is down to earth? In touch with how totally berserk the 'demos' has become? Should we really respect the irrational beliefs of religious cults and fanatics? No. Just another bourgie Leftist 'everything will work out in the end if we all work together' crap-fest. But then again, books like this give me hope - then again, hope is dangerous because it constitutes a political dream that is still as of yet unfulfilled. Time to pick up some Machiavelli.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A core text for anyone interested in the rise of 'identity politics' since the end of the 20th century. While Fraser's contributions are quite well known to English readers, this book provides a dialogue between Fraser and Axel Honneth who provides a welcome alternative.

[C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, Nancy Fraser with her liberal hat on is INCREDIBLY BORING. Nonetheless there are some useful things here. I can't even be bothered trying any of the Axel Honneth chapters.

[Slow Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

so central to the ongoing ideological war between softhearted, socialist-sympathizing liberals and lionhearted communists that it almost prohibits any kind of brief remarks. Honneth refuses to accept that worker exploitation is the grounding dimension of all 'social disrespect', which does not exist in an immaterial vacuum prior to the already-there conditions of material existence, and the methods of reproducing said material existence, that we find ourselves immersed in since birth. Fraser could do a better job accepting the supplementary necessity of a recognition-based political fabric (though she is right to insist that this is meaningless inside of the world-interior of capital, which subsumes it with ease). Honneth also cannot account for capitalist-sanctioned 'class-pride' (everyone cheer on the exploited workers, look how noble they are) as a novel strategy of neutralizing class antagonism.

[Sry Puteri · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Theorists of rational choice contend that increased earnings enhance women's exit options from marriage and improve their bargaining position is households; thus, higher wages strengthen women's capacity to avoid the status harms associated with marriage, such as domestic violence and marital rape. Some policy analysts claim that the surest way to raise poor women's status in developing countries is to provide them access to paid work."

[Mariana Peinado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Fraser has an interested idea about feminism that includes an economic aspect, this is very different from all other reconstuctions of feminism. This two aspects of feminism make her theory unique. This is a great approach to gender inequality.

[Margriet Minnema · Rating 3 out of 5]

The debate redistribution/recognition is worth the read, although I would stick to the introduction of the concepts (make sure to apply it to current politics), instead of boring yourself with all chapters.

[Juan Francisco · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 para Fraser, 2 para Honneth.

[Julen B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy Fraser, como siempre, reina. Honneth, otro señoro del marxismo que lee las cosas como le dan la gana y saca las conclusiones que a él le van mejor pa sus moviditas.

[Bonxaiu · Rating 4 out of 5]

bello solo che Honneth scrive giustamente come un hegeliano...

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, I tend to incline myself for Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice based on the principle of parity of participation. Obviously there are other ways to do critical theory, but if we are talking about normative political theory I could not think of a better one.