The Theory of Recognition in the Frankfurt School

This chapter introduces Axel Honneth's theory of recognition and discusses some criticisms of it, especially in relation to the third dimension of recognition and its relationship to the market economy

Sexual Objectification

According to Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. I argue that this instrumentalization account fails to capture the distinctive harms and wrongs of sexual objectification, because it does not explain the relationship between instrumentalization and the processes of social stereotyping that make it possible. I develop an imposition account of sexual objectification that provides such an explanation and, therefore, should be preferred over the instrumentalization account. It draws on a contrast between imposition and self-presentation and explains why sexual objectification, understood as the imposition of sex object status on women, is harmful and wrong

Achieving CRPD Compliance: Is the Mental Capacity Act of England and Wales compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability? If not, what next?

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and debate the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice

Is the Market a Sphere of Social Freedom?

In this paper I examine Axel Honneth's normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom's Right. Honneth's position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realize social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth's conception of social freedom and investigate how it is realized in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth's method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labor market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realize social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory

Adorno on Hope

I argue that Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy articulates a radical conception of hope. According to Lear, radical hope is ‘directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is’ (2006:103). Given Adorno’s claim that the current world is radically evil, and that we cannot know or even imagine what the good is, it is plausible that his conception of hope must be radical in this sense. I develop this argument through an analysis of (i) Adorno’s engagement with Kant’s conception of hope, (ii) Adorno’s references to hope, and (iii) his critical diagnosis of a metaphysical need for hope. Having demonstrated that Adorno must reject both ordinary and Kantian hope, I examine why Adorno thinks that we still may have reasons for hope. I also show that Adorno’s conception of hope differs from Lear’s in one important respect

Competition and Justice in Adam Smith

This paper analyzes the relationship between competition and justice in Adam Smith in order to determine to what extent competition can promote and undermine justice. I examine how competition features in two basic motivations for human action, “the propensity to truck barter and exchange”, and “the desire of bettering our condition.” Both can be traced back to the desire for recognition, but they operate in very different ways. The former manifests itself in social cooperation, chiefly commercial exchange and the division of labour, and while it can take a competitive form, competitive success produces benefits for everyone. In contrast, the latter may manifest itself in zero-sum social competition. Commercial society harnesses both motivations, and both have negative as well as positive effects. However, while Smith explicitly addresses the negative effects of excessive specialization in the division of labour, it is less clear how he thinks the negative effects of social competition can be addressed. I argue that competition can undermine justice when (i) it pits people against each other, and (ii) leads to psychological corruption. I conclude with some reflections on what a focus on competition adds to our understanding of Smith’s work

Recognition

Recognition can be understood as a positive acknowledgment or affirmation of a person’s existence, identity, rights, or achievement. It is sometimes said to be a necessary condition for self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. Although the concept has origins in Hobbes, Rousseau, Fichte, and Hegel, it has come to renewed prominence since the early 1990s, when philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth developed theories of recognition. These showed that the need for social recognition underlies many social and political movements from struggles for civil and labor rights to modern multiculturalism. In social and political philosophy, Honneth has argued that three forms of social recognition—affective care, equal respect, and social esteem—are preconditions of individual autonomy and that the principles governing these three forms of recognition should be the core of a conception of social justice. According to the theory of recognition, modern capitalist society can be evaluated as a recognition order that institutionalizes the distribution of respect and social esteem according to people’s individual achievements in their contributions to socially shared goals. Methodologically, Honneth uses an approach of normative reconstruction. Rather than constructing principles of justice on the basis of hypothetical agreement, he reconstructs the normative principles that are immanent in our social practices and institutions and sometimes contain a “normative surplus” that points beyond the status quo. This approach has been very productive in elucidating the importance of social recognition in the sphere of work, but critics have suggested that it limits the scope of radical social criticism. Honneth has proposed the concept of ideological recognition, where there is a chasm between the evaluative promise entailed by a form of recognition and its material fulfilment, in order to address this problem. More generally, critics have questioned whether recognition must be understood as positive rather than ambivalent, because this limits the scope of misrecognition and means that phenomena such as interpellation or objectification cannot easily be analyzed as forms of misrecognition