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Recognition: A Chapter in the History of European Ideas
The idea that we are mutually dependent on the recognition of our peers is at least as old as modernity. Across Europe, this idea has been understood in different ways from the very beginning, according to each country's different cultural and political conditions. This stimulating study explores the complex history and multiple associations of the idea of 'Recognition' in Britain, France and Germany. Demonstrating the role of 'recognition' in the production of important political ideas, Axel Honneth explores how our dependence on the recognition of others is sometimes viewed as the source of all modern, egalitarian morality, sometimes as a means for fostering socially beneficial behavior, and sometimes as a threat to 'true' individuality. By exploring this fundamental concept in our modern political and social self-understanding, Honneth thus offers an alternative view of the philosophical discourse of modernity.
- GenresPhilosophy
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Published October 9, 2020
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About the author
Axel Honneth
113 books74 followersAxel Honneth (born July 18, 1949) is a professor of philosophy at both the University of Frankfurt and Columbia University. He is also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.
Honneth's work focuses on social-political and moral philosophy, especially relations of power, recognition, and respect. One of his core arguments is for the priority of intersubjective relationships of recognition in understanding social relations. This includes non- and mis-recognition as a basis of social and interpersonal conflict. For instance, grievances regarding the distribution of goods in society are ultimately struggles for recognition.
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September 17, 2022
I was interested in this book mainly to see the theme of recognition pulled out of Hegel and made a more general topic of investigation, as potentially the basis for political association. The book certainly succeeds by that measure.
The question of recognition, at least in my own mind, is of the interpersonal basis of legitimate political and social relationships. It’s not the question of the basis of social or political authority, but the basis for social and political association itself — why and on what basis people come together into societies, cultures, and states.
Honneth, at the end of his sweep across French, British, and German ideas of recognition does land on Hegel’s account as the fullest account from which to try to draw a single, integrated account.
The French “amour propre” is the form that recognition takes in Honneth’s account of the French tradition. His discussion begins with Larochefoucauld and moves forward through Rousseau, and into more modern treatments by Sartre, then Althusser.
Overall, unlike especially the German treatment, “amour propre” (maybe popularly translated as “self-esteem”) is negative and psychological. It is not recognition as peers that is sought as a basis for richer political and social relationships, but recognition as superior. That that recognition rests on some shared standards of virtue or excellence or some other positive quality notwithstanding, what the subject seeks here is reputation.
With Rousseau’s treatment in particular, this seeking for recognition is pernicious. What counts is reputation rather than substance. It doesn’t matter whether superiority is truly earned, only that it be granted.
Entering a situation of potential recognition then is like entering a competition. Who will be judged superior? This makes the subject dependent for his self-esteem on the opinion of the other. He lives “outside himself” (and, really, it doesn’t matter whether the esteem of the other is validly earned or achieved by fakery).
Honneth ties this negative idea of recognition back to court politics, where the currency, especially going back to Larochefoucauld’s time, was in fact reputation. Success depended upon it and personal worth was measured by it.
From this negative and psychological account, Honneth moves on to the British treatment of recognition via the idea of “sympathy.” Drawing especially on Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, we see by contrast with the French “amour propre,” a true internalized social sense that disdains self-interest per se for the sake of developing an “impartial observer.”
The “impartial observer” is an internalized judge of behavior in accord with public standards and an ability to see your own and others’ feelings and behavior on a par with one another. “Sympathy” is not so much a feeling as, for Hume in Honneth’s words, “our natural ability to understand others’ mental states and experience them in our own minds.”
Smith in particular emphasizes the role of this impartial observer as distinguishing a desire for reputation and approval from a desire for justified reputation and approval. We might call that “recognition proper.”
In its absence, all we are concerned about is what Rousseau saw as destructive — the yearning for reputation per se, for being well thought of, even at the expense of authenticity (i.e., at the cost of your reputation not according with the truth about yourself).
Its presence provides the possibility for both authenticity and social harmony (attuning our standards of assessment, particular moral assessment, with our community).
With German thought, we step into a very different political history, one in which states are fragmented, and the nature and legitimacy of political association is very much at the forefront.
Honneth’s account takes Kant, and the birth of German Idealism, as a starting point, and the notion of “respect” as the key form in which recognition develops.
I found Honneth’s account of “respect” in Kant very refreshing, in his attempt to tie inclination and obligation together, to take Kant’s footnote (from his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals) on the role of respect as a starting point. The problem is to transform the intelligible, or intellect-bound, notion of obligation to what actually produces behavior and action — the role that inclination otherwise plays but is misdirected by interests and desires. Respect, as in respect for the moral imperative, and for the other as an end in him/herself, is a proposed bridge between the intelligible and the natural, between the purely rational and the active person.
Honneth doesn’t think that Kant quite brings off the trick, but I won’t detour farther into that discussion.
It isn’t until Hegel, building on Fichte, that we get the most fully developed account of recognition. Recognition in Hegel is the basis for social relationship itself, as recognition “of each other as persons who deserve the right to co-determine our shared norms.” Much of this idea is present in Fichte’s thinking, but Hegel adds the critical grounding for recognition in actual, historically developed institutions, specifically the three spheres of ethical life in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right — family, civil society (which Honneth at least at one point glosses as the “market”), and the state.
Honneth’s final chapter is an attempt to integrate all three perspectives into a consistent, coherent overall concept of intersubjective (or interpersonal) recognition. As I mentioned, he takes the German/Hegel account as the fullest and the best starting point for such an integration.
The British/Smith/Hume account complements the Hegel account with an explanation of how it is that moral norms, via the development of a kind of internal observer (the “impartial observer”) inculcates habits of self-assessment and direction. This complements Hegel’s historical account of how subjects, through mutual recognition and mutual self-restriction, arrive at concrete forms of free social behavior.
For the French/Rousseau conception, the integration is a negative one, dealing with pathologies — the types of self-aggrandizing and self-alienating behaviors Rousseau (and others) describe result from the lack of something like what Hegel describes as participation in institutions of mutual recognition (family, civil society, and state).
Really, as a reader, I’m left kind of where I started, with the Hegelian conception being the seed for political and social life. But that conception is enriched: recognition of the other as peer, and participation in concrete institutions in which “freedom” is given concrete form through recognition of others’ standing and legitimate interests, sublimation of one’s own interests, and a kind of stage in which specific relationships, freedoms, practices, and norms can be worked out.
Needless to say, this is a book that appeals to an academic audience. It is intellectual history, and Honneth has a mastery of a very broad scope of thought. Not casual reading, although I have to say it reads pretty quickly. Honneth’s style (in translation) is not fussy or convoluted — it’s a smooth ride over some pretty tortuous roads.
The question of recognition, at least in my own mind, is of the interpersonal basis of legitimate political and social relationships. It’s not the question of the basis of social or political authority, but the basis for social and political association itself — why and on what basis people come together into societies, cultures, and states.
Honneth, at the end of his sweep across French, British, and German ideas of recognition does land on Hegel’s account as the fullest account from which to try to draw a single, integrated account.
The French “amour propre” is the form that recognition takes in Honneth’s account of the French tradition. His discussion begins with Larochefoucauld and moves forward through Rousseau, and into more modern treatments by Sartre, then Althusser.
Overall, unlike especially the German treatment, “amour propre” (maybe popularly translated as “self-esteem”) is negative and psychological. It is not recognition as peers that is sought as a basis for richer political and social relationships, but recognition as superior. That that recognition rests on some shared standards of virtue or excellence or some other positive quality notwithstanding, what the subject seeks here is reputation.
With Rousseau’s treatment in particular, this seeking for recognition is pernicious. What counts is reputation rather than substance. It doesn’t matter whether superiority is truly earned, only that it be granted.
Entering a situation of potential recognition then is like entering a competition. Who will be judged superior? This makes the subject dependent for his self-esteem on the opinion of the other. He lives “outside himself” (and, really, it doesn’t matter whether the esteem of the other is validly earned or achieved by fakery).
Honneth ties this negative idea of recognition back to court politics, where the currency, especially going back to Larochefoucauld’s time, was in fact reputation. Success depended upon it and personal worth was measured by it.
From this negative and psychological account, Honneth moves on to the British treatment of recognition via the idea of “sympathy.” Drawing especially on Hume, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, we see by contrast with the French “amour propre,” a true internalized social sense that disdains self-interest per se for the sake of developing an “impartial observer.”
The “impartial observer” is an internalized judge of behavior in accord with public standards and an ability to see your own and others’ feelings and behavior on a par with one another. “Sympathy” is not so much a feeling as, for Hume in Honneth’s words, “our natural ability to understand others’ mental states and experience them in our own minds.”
Smith in particular emphasizes the role of this impartial observer as distinguishing a desire for reputation and approval from a desire for justified reputation and approval. We might call that “recognition proper.”
In its absence, all we are concerned about is what Rousseau saw as destructive — the yearning for reputation per se, for being well thought of, even at the expense of authenticity (i.e., at the cost of your reputation not according with the truth about yourself).
Its presence provides the possibility for both authenticity and social harmony (attuning our standards of assessment, particular moral assessment, with our community).
With German thought, we step into a very different political history, one in which states are fragmented, and the nature and legitimacy of political association is very much at the forefront.
Honneth’s account takes Kant, and the birth of German Idealism, as a starting point, and the notion of “respect” as the key form in which recognition develops.
I found Honneth’s account of “respect” in Kant very refreshing, in his attempt to tie inclination and obligation together, to take Kant’s footnote (from his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals) on the role of respect as a starting point. The problem is to transform the intelligible, or intellect-bound, notion of obligation to what actually produces behavior and action — the role that inclination otherwise plays but is misdirected by interests and desires. Respect, as in respect for the moral imperative, and for the other as an end in him/herself, is a proposed bridge between the intelligible and the natural, between the purely rational and the active person.
Honneth doesn’t think that Kant quite brings off the trick, but I won’t detour farther into that discussion.
It isn’t until Hegel, building on Fichte, that we get the most fully developed account of recognition. Recognition in Hegel is the basis for social relationship itself, as recognition “of each other as persons who deserve the right to co-determine our shared norms.” Much of this idea is present in Fichte’s thinking, but Hegel adds the critical grounding for recognition in actual, historically developed institutions, specifically the three spheres of ethical life in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right — family, civil society (which Honneth at least at one point glosses as the “market”), and the state.
Honneth’s final chapter is an attempt to integrate all three perspectives into a consistent, coherent overall concept of intersubjective (or interpersonal) recognition. As I mentioned, he takes the German/Hegel account as the fullest and the best starting point for such an integration.
The British/Smith/Hume account complements the Hegel account with an explanation of how it is that moral norms, via the development of a kind of internal observer (the “impartial observer”) inculcates habits of self-assessment and direction. This complements Hegel’s historical account of how subjects, through mutual recognition and mutual self-restriction, arrive at concrete forms of free social behavior.
For the French/Rousseau conception, the integration is a negative one, dealing with pathologies — the types of self-aggrandizing and self-alienating behaviors Rousseau (and others) describe result from the lack of something like what Hegel describes as participation in institutions of mutual recognition (family, civil society, and state).
Really, as a reader, I’m left kind of where I started, with the Hegelian conception being the seed for political and social life. But that conception is enriched: recognition of the other as peer, and participation in concrete institutions in which “freedom” is given concrete form through recognition of others’ standing and legitimate interests, sublimation of one’s own interests, and a kind of stage in which specific relationships, freedoms, practices, and norms can be worked out.
Needless to say, this is a book that appeals to an academic audience. It is intellectual history, and Honneth has a mastery of a very broad scope of thought. Not casual reading, although I have to say it reads pretty quickly. Honneth’s style (in translation) is not fussy or convoluted — it’s a smooth ride over some pretty tortuous roads.
Displaying 1 of 1 review