The Recognition Principle : A Philosophical Perspective between Psychology, Sociology and Politics [1 ed.] 9781443875868, 9781443872768

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The Recognition Principle

The Recognition Principle A Philosophical Perspective between Psychology, Sociology and Politics By

Vinicio Busacchi

The Recognition Principle: A Philosophical Perspective between Psychology, Sociology and Politics By Vinicio Busacchi This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Vinicio Busacchi All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7276-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7276-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 7 The Psychology of Recognition between Cognition and Interrelation 1. The question of recognition in Psychology 2. Two philosophical psychologies of recognition in comparison 3. The constitutive dynamic of the struggle; the emancipative horizon of the gift Chapter II ................................................................................................... 27 The Sociology of Recognition between Struggle and Dialectics of Recognition 1. The question of recognition in Sociology 2. Habermas: The intersubjectivity between philosophy and social theory 3. Ricœur: The intersubjectivity between psychology and sociology Chapter III ................................................................................................. 47 The Politics of Recognition between Ethics and Responsibility 1. The question of recognition in Politics 2. Taylor: The politics of recognition 3. Thompson: A new critical perspective 4. Ricœur: Recognition as wisdom A Conclusion ............................................................................................. 69 Notes.......................................................................................................... 77 Bibliography .............................................................................................. 87

INTRODUCTION

The issue of recognition is now widely and deeply instilled into the communicative and reflective fabric of public and political debate. This concept identifies a cornerstone of the new dynamic and problematic structures of contemporary social life, including the problems of recognition in a multicultural society, and the struggles for recognition of individuals and identitarian groups. It is also a fundamental term for different theoretical and empirical areas of research. Whether the term ‘recognition’ may seem of lesser importance in ethnology and anthropology, in fact it was Marcel Mauss’ (1923-1924) previous research on reciprocity that established economic anthropology as a new field (Mauss, Polanyi [1944, 1957], Sahlins [1972]). Over time, this has not only facilitated the entry of the issue of recognition into the fields of anthropological and ethnological studies, but has also provided elements of great speculative importance to philosophy (as is evidenced by the widespread use of Marcel Hénaff’s book on anthropology Le prix de la vérité1 by Paul Ricœur in his The Course of Recognition2 [2004]). Sahlins’ theories played a particularly progressive role in the dialectic of recognition within anthropological research. Regarding the notion of reciprocity, Sahlins examines the variable of social distance by identifying three forms of reciprocity: balanced reciprocity (a form of reciprocity that expresses an intermediate degree of solidarity, from which the return of a gift is expected); generalized reciprocity (a maximum expression of solidarity, in which the value of traded goods is not actually taken into account); and negative reciprocity (an absolute lack of reciprocity). Although not explicitly understood in terms of ‘recognition’, ‘reciprocity’ nevertheless contains such concepts as solidarity, interaction and even symbolic interaction: a set of concepts (especially the latter two) that not only connect anthropology to sociology, but also join these two disciplines to philosophy once again. A precursor to this discussion is found in the works of George H. Mead (1934), which provide fundamental (and recurring) connections for psychology, sociology and the philosophy of recognition. He influences not only Charles Taylor, the initiator of the contemporary philosophical debate on recognition, but also Axel Honneth, Ricœur, Simon Thompson and the majority of scholars of recognition. Mead’s approach is founded

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Introduction

upon the idea that the mind and the self are social products, and that language (and by extension, discourse) is the area in which the mind and the self reach formation, expression and realisation. Here, on the one hand, we are driven by psychological and sociological research, and on the other hand by the philosophy of mind and language. These are the areas where the concept of recognition, although not widely used, has a significant importance within specific contexts (for example, in mathematical linguistics ‘recognition’ is used for studying grammatical models of linguistic theories, as well as the string sets generated by grammar models of natural languages). This study will examine the issue of recognition within its three main working areas: psychological (chapter 1), sociological (chapter 2) and political (chapter 3). It summarizes the concept’s most important and specific uses, in order to identify its ‘disciplinary characterisation’, its theoretical potential, and how it could be philosophically used and applied. Each chapter alternates between an initial analytical and disciplinary/sectorial section to a latter theoretical and speculative development/application. From one angle, this will allow us to directly test the theoretical and speculative importance of concepts produced from psychology, sociology and politics. From the other perspective it allows us, via several thematic and problematic ‘accesses’, to directly engage in the major philosophical theories of recognition. It attempts to elucidate [a] the interdisciplinary connections between each perspective (mainly those of Ricœur, Habermas, Honneth and Taylor); [b] the fundamental and characteristic theoretical aspects; [c] the connections and correspondences; and [d] the problematic issues that require clarification and resolution. This survey will not result in a final synthesis, but rather will reopen a problematic field that aims to focus, on the one hand, upon the major contemporary uses of the notion of recognition, and on the other hand, on all those elements central to a general theory of recognition; a theory that does not yet exist. The philosophical paradox that a proliferation of different theoretical models of recognition has not yet produced a general philosophical theory has become increasingly evident. Ricœur already noted this in his book The Course of Recognition; the first work on recognition operating from a generalized perspective. In his Preface Ricœur writes: My investigation arose from a sense of perplexity having to do with the semantic status of the very term recognition on the plane of philosophical discourse. It is a fact that no theory of recognition worthy of the name exists in the way that one or more theories of knowledge exist. This surprising lacuna stands in contrast to the kind of coherence that allows the word recognition to appear in a dictionary as a single lexical unit, despite

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the multiple senses that this lexical unit embraces … The contrast between the apparently haphazard scattering of occurrences of the word on the plane of philosophical discourse and the kind of rule-governed polysemy that results from the lexicographer’s labour constitutes the situation that gave rise to the sense of perplexity I have mentioned3.

In fact, a general philosophical theory of recognition should subsume the most important communicative and scientific uses, both disciplinary and interdisciplinary. It must also consider and reflect the broad spectrum of the semantics of recognition; a rich spectrum, and extremely varied since ancient times. The Greek uses of the term ȐȣĮ-ȖȚȖȣȫıȤȦ reveal its successive semantic stratification (from the first Attican and post-Homeric use, to the Ionic use, and so on). Within the epic use (Homerus) it meant ‘know well’, or ‘know certainly/deeply’. In the Attican and post-Homeric use it meant ‘know again’, ‘recognize’, or essentially ‘recognise signs’ (read). In Ionic usage it meant ‘induce one to do something’, ‘persuade’ and ‘convince’. The semantic meanings of the Latin recognoscere are equally rich. Cicero’s work contains numerous synonymical connections of the verb: recongnosco refers to cognscosco, agnosco, intelligo, video, considero. There are three main semantic areas: [1] recognize as ‘recall to memory’ and ‘remember’ (ad memoriam revoco, reminiscor [Cic.]); [2] recognition as ‘inspect’ or ‘examine’ (inspicere, videre, recensere [Justinian]); [3] recognition as ‘review’ or ‘correct’ (retractandi causa [Cic., Plinius]). The current uses of the concept reveal an incredibly wide variety of semantic differentiations; these are so numerous as to suggest that ‘recognition’ today is a lexical unit that certainly contains a multiplicity within it (Ricœur), but is also interrelated with other (external) multiplicities. In fact, ‘recognition’ can be understood today as follows: identification, individuation; remembering; comprehension, understanding, perception, consciousness; acceptance, admission, take cognizance [of]; realisation; repentance, self-improvement, contrition; appreciation; award, honour, commemoration; reward (tangible sign of gratitude); preliminary examination, survey, acceptance; designation, assignment, naming; approval; expression of gratitude; (Phil.) practical recognition (an application of cognitive reflection); (Jur., Pol. and Diplom.) attestation, acknowledgement [in diplomatic negotiations]; (Chem., Biol.) identification of a compound with physico-chemical methods, the ability of one molecule to attach to another molecule; (Comp. science) automatic identification, and so on. Beyond the variety, richness and complexity of its uses, the concept of recognition has certainly gained a central and indispensable theoretical momentum in psychology, sociology and politics. Therefore, a

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Introduction

philosophical theory of recognition must first be compared with these domains, as well as the theories of recognition they express. This book does not defend the claim that a general, philosophical theory of recognition can claim to constitute an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation. Rather, it emphasizes the idea that philosophy can generate a significant and advanced understanding of the uses and usefulness of recognition for psychology, sociology and politics. This is due to [a] its interdisciplinary and conceptual openness and [b] its variety of methods and approaches. According to the author, the ideal philosophical approach for fulfilment and full appreciation of the issue of recognition must be both theoretical and practical. It must be a theoretical approach of an essential ethical nature, but must also be, as mentioned, an interdisciplinary approach, led by a flexible methodology that is not one-sided. Ricœur’s approach seems to meet all of these requirements. Ricœur himself methodologically defined his vast and varied philosophical work as follows: [a] a ‘reflexive philosophy’ that remains [b] within the ‘sphere of Husserlian phenomenology’ as [c] its ‘hermeneutical variation’4. However, this definition contains a few problematic elements. If, on the one hand, Ricœur has undeniably adhered to this/these tradition(s), then on the other hand, and in the following twenty years, some factors suggest that his philosophy shows the traits of a critical hermeneutics, rather than an ‘interpretive description based on reflection’. These elements include [1] a gradually developed epistemological model (the aforementioned ‘hermeneutic arc’); and [2] an interdisciplinary philosophical practice of active and emancipatory commitment. The idea of ‘critical hermeneutics’ refers to the philosophical project of the early Habermas (a sort of Frankfurt Kritische Theorie of evolution) as well as to the debate between Habermas and Gadamer in the seventies (that is, the critique of ideology vs. hermeneutics of tradition), in which Paul Ricœur makes a contribution entitled Herméneutique et critique des idéologies (1973), now available in From Text to Action (1986). In it, he uses the concept of herméneutique critique to characterize his mediation between Gadamer and Habermas’ perspectives. It is both overly complicated and extraneous to our topic to completely justify his operation, or to generalize this specific pronunciation to Ricœur’s entire work, or even propose it as a methodological key. However, the article of 1970 already contains several points that connect and explain this, including: [1] the close connection between critical hermeneutics and the epistemology of the hermeneutic arc (a concept built upon the hermeneutical phenomenology of text, action and history, and which provides critical hermeneutics with a transverse,

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already interdisciplinary epistemological structure, located between explanation and understanding5); [2] the connection of critical hermeneutics to Freudian psychoanalysis, the interpretation of which not only generates the first source of problematisation for Ricœur’s hermeneutical arc theory, characterizing and influencing the parcours from side to side, but above all also reveals a deep interdisciplinary configuration. In his Intellectual Autobiography6 Ricœur unhesitatingly declares that he never ceased defending the idea that philosophy will perish if the sciences interrupt its millennial dialogue; be these the mathematics of natural sciences or human sciences. However, when using his theory of a hermeneutic arc both to examine endless production, and to define the very general character of his procedures, we can understand that his philosophy is both true and developed according to this dialoguing vocation/characterisation of philosophy. This can also be accomplished by developing a better-defined and more advanced model of interdisciplinary philosophy. Ricœur indicated on several occasion that he was more impressed by the thematic and speculative fragmentary nature of his research than by its coordinated, synthetic and systematic nature (he called it a type of ‘controlled schizophrenia’). However, we can say it is unitary or, perhaps more aptly, unified/unifictional, (which even Ricœur demonstrates in Oneself as Another [Soi-même comme un autre, 1990]). On the whole (and as an interdisciplinary set), Ricœur’s philosophy precisely expresses a critical hermeneutics as a methodology capable of operating with a certain degree of coherence, coordination and effectiveness/legitimacy. This functions between: [1] a body of knowledge (scientific and non-scientific knowledge, which today is increasingly diversified and specialized); between [2] models, theories and discursive fragmented registers, resistant to all synthesis, and requiring a highly flexible and transverse approach capable of governing tensions. The methodological characteristics of this critical hermeneutics are established by considering the general traits, factors and characters of Ricœur’s work. These elements can therefore be summarized as follows: the ideal of research and dialogue within the community of philosophers (an ideal borrowed from Karl Jaspers’ thought); the philosophical procedure whereby ‘all the books are open simultaneously’7; interdisciplinary work; a focus upon the ‘philosophical argumentation’ (Ricœurian philosophy claims full autonomy of disciplines and ideas); the hermeneutical-reflexive dynamism between philosophical and non-philosophical dimensions; the attempt to form a connection with analytic philosophy; philosophical engagement in lived reality and in relation to politics and society; the layout/placement of philosophy within the dialectic of theory/practice

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Introduction

(philosophy, like science, can locate itself on the horizon of theoretical practices); the philosophical process of articulation/differentiation in reflexive degrees, as well as in philosophical-methodological and thematic registers. This book will apply this Ricœurian methodological approach to the issue of recognition: i.e., the approach of a critical hermeneutics8. A philosophy of recognition can undoubtedly lead to an entirely new level of awareness and problematisation, which may be useful on both theoretical and practical grounds. The review proposed here is neither a meta-scientific transaction nor a speculative abstraction, but rather an attempt to locate the vital core of the significance of the concept of recognition within the context of knowledge and contemporary reality. The final section of this text contains philosophical and theoretical general conclusions, as well as a pronunciation of practical and ethical implications regarding the importance of recognition as compared to social reality. This concerns the new context of the political, moral, and cultural conditions that we are facing today, and includes the following questions: What place does the discourse of recognition have today? What is the basis for this evidence? What are its practical implications? What are its psychological, sociological and political implications? Is it possible to establish recognition as a basis for individual emancipation (psychology), social progress (sociology) and strengthening of justice and democracy (politics)?

CHAPTER I THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RECOGNITION BETWEEN COGNITION AND INTERRELATION

1. The question of recognition in Psychology The question of recognition is particularly important and central to the field of cognitive psychology, but its theoretical and clinical uses in other schools of psychology and psychopathology are also large and varied. First, the concept is connected to memory research, which generally refers to the perception and identification of a given content or object whose cognitive-experiential track is already known to the person, or rather retained at the level of memory. The mechanism and the process of recognition are of equally fundamental importance in both the scientific study of memory and the assessment of a subject’s cognitive skills and intellectual abilities. The so-called ‘recognition tests’ are often included in intelligence assessments. The notion of object recognition is notably one of the most important notions in this field of study, and specifically refers to the cognitive processes by which one identifies a particular object (e.g., ‘this figure is a willow’), or category in its membership (e.g., ‘this figure is a plant’). Other key terms directly or indirectly related to the question(s) of recognition in psychology are: face recognition (above all, in cognitive psychology); word-recognition (a question related to the psychopathological problem of hyperlexia; a reading disorder); optical character recognition (artificial intelligence); recall (often defined in connection/contrast with recognition); perceptron ( pattern-recognition in artificial intelligence). The importance of recognition has exponentially increased in cognitive psychology since the seventies. Amongst its many subject areas, the most notable is the field dedicated to applying information theory to explain perceptual phenomena. Of particular importance were the first computer simulations of both recognition processes and those of so-called problemsolving9 (notable for initiating a new approach to research and study). Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert A. Simon employ the term blackbox to refer to the processes (not directly accessible, not fully intelligible)

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Chapter I

that are understood to form a mental (cognitive) system10. This is a framework that receives and stores information, in order to define, identify, classify, and recognize it. It manages and revises this information, and reuses it in different ways according to its different occurrences (cognitive, evaluative, reflective, recollective, etc.). This referred to as human information processing; a thematic sphere of cognitive psychology within which the issue of recognition is studied and treated in relation to memory, perception, attention, thought and language. In this area, the question of pattern recognition generates widespread interest. The complex mechanism of recognition is active in the (rare) case of a perfect coincidence between what is perceived and what resides in remembered traces. Pattern recognition is defined as the identification of a pattern with one previously encountered, despite possible modifications. Thus, the mind can even recognize a certain degree of commonality and a sense of meaning between perceived objects that are physically different from each other, i.e. between extremely varied and variable stimuli. The dilemma lies in understanding what allows us to observe the same meaning behind groups of heterogeneous stimuli, and subsequently how we can have information units, i.e. the invariants, which operate through our perceptual and cognitive apparatuses. In fact, according to cognitive psychology the recognition process is linked first to the fundamental translation operation, or rather the codification of perceptual stimuli useful for all subsequent cognitive system operations. Another equally large and significant territory of research (located transversely between the different schools) concerns self-psychology and psychopathology (primarily, psychoanalytic psychopathology). The concept of primary integration is widely used in psychoanalysis to denote an infant’s initial recognition of himself. However, such notions as selfrecognition span diverse theoretical and technical-practical approaches. When using the example in the book The Self Across Psychology: Selfrecognition, Self-awareness, and the Self-concept, edited by J. G. Snodgrass and R. L. Thompson (1997)11, we can initially determine that recognition is connected to a highly sophisticated conception of the self. (For example, Kihlstrom and Klein12 view this ‘self’ [1] as a concept, [2] as a story, [3] as an image, and [4] as an associative network), so that the problem of recognition simultaneously becomes an issue of conceptualisation; a question of memory and interpretation (hermeneutical question); a question of identification and of interrelational experience. It is divided between ‘wide variety of sources: from conventional personality and social psychology, from conventional cognitive psychology, from cognitive neuropsychology, and from clinical psychology’13. Secondly, a

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problematisation of intersubjective recognition connects and illustrates the field of the philosophy of recognition. This is a plane in which, as we shall see in the next paragraph, the dialectical interrelation within the social structure is not only the personality but also same personal identity. This occurs in terms of the Hegelian dialectic of recognition as well as in its variations. The works of Ulric Neisser14 indirectly call upon this, while the study by Jerome Bruner15 refers to it more directly (at least with reference to the philosophy of Ricœur’s narrative). Third, cognitive research regarding the mechanisms and processes of recognition is also significantly utilized in the field of clinical psychology, especially in relation to pathologies such as autism. For Robert W. Mitchell ‘autistic children present a good test case for the two theories because they frequently pass the mark test and have been tested on measures of imitation (of various forms), recognition of being imitated, pretense [sic] (bodily and other), intentional deception, empathy, theory of mind, planning, perspective-taking, and theory of mind. In addition, the evidence for self-recognition in autistic children is almost exclusively in the form of passing the mark test, rather than in the form of self-exploration, playing with their image, or verbal self-labeling [sic] observed in other children and animals’16. Studying the phenomenon of autism provides clear evidence regarding the close connection between self-recognition and imitation, as well as between self-recognition and action. It produces a result that is significant beyond the theoretical field of clinical psychology. Fourth, even studies of ‘mirror recognition’ prove extremely significant. Karyl B. Swartz was responsible for the theme, and highlights that, amongst different impacts, ‘mirror self-recognition does not imply selfconcept, nor is it appropriate to treat it theoretically in the comparative domain as we treat self-recognition, self-concept, [or a] sense of self in humans. However, the phenomenon can legitimately be termed selfrecognition [as] implies something about the animal’s understanding of itself in its environment, and it is a phenomenon worthy of investigation. What evidence supports the interpretation that the presence of self-directed behavior [sic] can be legitimately termed self-recognition? First, the behavior is directed back to the self, using the mirror as a guide. Second, the demonstration of self-directed behavior requires some experience with the mirror image … Third, the demonstration of spontaneous self-directed behaviors in great apes but not other animals is an important finding’17. This thematic line connects with face recognition; an important research topic particularly in terms of recognition of one’s face18. Of particular interest is the observation that primates have a spectrum of significant cognitive abilities, but do not possess knowledge of their own face. It is

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Chapter I

also important that man’s extremely complex operations are involved and have an effect upon a wide sphere of psychic life. Recognizing one’s own face is an integral and constitutive part of the process not only of self recognition but also of self formation. The investigations of neurophenomenology into cerebral life produce the idea (which tends to become invariant over time) of man’s own identity, his own sense of self, and of his interesting autopoiesis. Neurophenomenology seeks a neurobiological connection between life, mental life, and the experience of existence. Only an interdisciplinary approach and vocabulary can develop and deepen the vocabularies and approaches shared by cognitive science and neuroscience, including psychology and psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. This is again demonstrated by inadequacy of recent discoveries and theories regarding mirror neurons; subcortical re-entrant circuits; corollary discharge and feed forward control systems for explaining self-recognition; and self-formation. The vocabularies and explanatory systems of neurobiology and psychology do not sufficiently account the richness and depth of the human phenomenon. In addition, Katherine Nelson’s Finding One’s Self in Time provides another important development in the critical-theoretical field. This work is based on a study conducted in children’s psychology, and evidences the centrality of the autobiographical self in the process of formation and maturation of the self, as well as in the process of self-recognition (also according to a scientific perspective that impacts those fields investigating memory, language, narrative, [inter-personal] relation and knowledge)19. In terms of psychiatry, we can also note the recall of its acquisitions in the field of psychological research. This can be considered using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth edition, DSM-IV). A clear reference to the research and testing of the cognitive psychology of memory and object recognition exists under the heading ‘dementia’ in which, amongst diagnostic features, it recommends testing the memory ‘by asking the person to register, retain, recall, and recognize information. The ability to learn new information may be assessed by asking the individual to learn a list of words. The individual is requested to repeat the words (registration), to recall the information after a delay of several minutes (retention, recall), and to recognize the words from a multiple list (recognition)’20. A similar reference applies to pathologies representing a ‘mathematics disorder’ and include ‘a number of different skills may be impaired … including “linguistic” skills (e.g., understanding or naming mathematical terms, operations, or concepts, and decoding written problems into mathematical symbols), “perceptual” skills (e.g., recognizing or reading numerical symbols or arithmetic signs, and

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clustering objects into groups), “attention” skills (copying numbers or figures correctly, remembering to add in “carried” numbers, and observing operational signs), and “mathematical” skills (e.g., following sequences of mathematical steps, counting objects, and learning multiplication tables)’21. Within the context of psychopathology, recognition assumes a marked difference in meaning, and the patient’s reflexive response and awareness take on a certain diagnostic relevance and (general) significance. One example is provided by the so-called specific phobia, or the social phobia (social anxiety disorder), in which ‘adolescents and adults… recognize that their fear is excessive or unreasonable’22. Other relevant examples include, obsessions or, even more specifically, the case of obsessive-compulsive disorder in adults who typically ‘have at some point recognized that the obsessions or compulsions are excessive or unreasonable’23, and ‘at those times … he or she may desire or attempt to resist them. When attempting to resist a compulsion, the individual may have a sense of mounting anxiety or tension that is often relieved by yielding to the compulsion. In the course of the disorder, after repeated failure to resist the obsessions or compulsions, the individual may give in to them, no longer experience a desire to resist them, and may incorporate the compulsions into his or her daily routines’24. However, recourse to the concept of recognition is quite different in the context of the complex diagnosis of pyromania. In this case, the question of individual and social recognition seems to be more involved, given that anti-social behaviours can have distinct and not necessarily pathological sources and ‘reasons’. The paragraph entitled Differential diagnosis reads: ‘It is important to rule out other causes of fire setting before giving the diagnosis of Pyromania. Intentional fire setting may occur for profit, sabotage, or revenge; to cancel a crime; to make a political statement (e.g., an act of terrorism or protest) or to attract attention or recognition (e.g., setting a fire in order to discover it and save the day)’25. An analogy can be partially established, with narcissistic personality disorder, both in terms of the fact that the narcissistic personality ‘has a grandiose sense of self-importance’26, and does not recognize his or her own exaggerated achievements and talents. Both of these elements apply to the fact that subjects suffering from this pathology have a lack of empathy, and are ‘unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others’27. The issue of recognition is particularly important in the clinical field of psychoanalysis, as well as to the aforementioned notion of ‘primary integration’. This is especially relevant, for the therapeutic process of the patient-analyst relationship. The dynamism of transferencecountertransference can be understood as a social dialectic of recognition

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(in the clinical context this is therapeutic conduct). Philosophically, Paul Ricœur offers this interpretation as we shall see. In a study on how psychoanalysis functions, he writes: ‘Not only does desire speak, it speaks to someone else, to the other person. This second starting point in analytic practice… does not lack theoretical implications. It reveals that from its beginning human desire is, to use Hegel’s expression the desire of another’s desire and finally for recognition’28. Using a different expressive formula, a similar idea is proposed by psychoanalysts themselves. Salomon Resnik, for example, discusses the experience of transference and countertransference, and explains that both the therapist and the patient bring their own identities into this process. The fundamental therapeutic factor is the possibility of mutual recognition in this rapport. Jessica Benjamin presents the same interpretation, and argues that intersubjectivity is the real field of intervention for psychoanalysis. The essence of this process can be defined as a space of recognition, wherein both analyst and patient must be aware of their own subjectivity and recognize the other’s subjectivity. The analyst’s subjectivity is also that of a fallible human being who perceives the patient as a person able to both know and speak with authority29. This examination will now analyse the theme of recognition by comparing two important contemporary philosophies. It seeks to show how, on the one hand, certain perspectives of scientific psychology have productively impacted philosophical inquiry, and on the other hand, how the same philosophical research can enrich the vocabulary and conceptual theorisation of the theme of recognition. We will note the combination of psychology and philosophy in how the issue of recognition is considered. This combination’s maximum expression and appreciation exist in the field of philosophical anthropology and critical social theory, especially in terms of self-interpretation and intersubjectivity.

2. Two philosophical psychologies of recognition in comparison The theory of recognition was developed in the Parcours de la reconnaissance (2004), an essay penned by a ninety-year-old Paul Ricœur30. In addition to being explicitly connected to Honneth’s Kampf um Anerkennung31, it shares some features with the theoretical background of that work. These include: [1] a dialogical connection to the Hegelian dialectic of recognition; [2] a theorisation essentially developed in terms of the social psychology of recognition, and relying on a Hegelian

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‘psychological’ core. (This can be summarized by the expression ‘struggle for recognition’ [in fact, Kampf um Anerkennung] or by the ‘dialectic of recognition’ [Dialektik der Anerkennung]); [3] a substantial agreement about the normative perspective [according to Hegel] of a social theory. These are not simply common references but rather, as this paragraph explains, comparable analysis, although aimed at different theoretical outcomes. Ricœur opposes Honneth’s ethics of conflict, which include a philosophy of recognition developed between struggle and gift, or in other words, between the struggle for recognition and what he calls ‘states of peace’ (états de paix). Before proceeding to examine these ‘psychologies’ of recognition, I must introduce Ricœur’s The Course of Recognition, because it contains a comparison of the two philosophers32, (which will be gradually developed here). We must inquire where the exchange with Honneth takes place. Similarly, why Ricœur seeks an active confrontation with the latter, and the meaning of this comparison in the context of The Course of Recognition must be examined. This work is a combination of three different studies, collected in units after a final recapitulation, as well as the ‘phenomenology of the capable human being’ found in the central study, (which connects Ricœur’s entire philosophical conception of the human being to the principle unifying the theme of recognition). This work ‘was born of a wager, that it is possible to confer on the sequence of known philosophical occurrences of the word recognition the coherence of a rule-governed polysemy capable of serving as a rejoinder to that found on the lexical plane’33. According to Ricœur, philosophy lacks such criteria. Effectively, ‘it is a fact that non theory of recognition worthy of the name exists in the way that one or more theories of knowledge exist’34. Therefore, the methodology already used in works such Temps et récit and Soi-même comme un autre [a] puts forward a preliminary pre- or non- to the philosophical, and [b] develops this investigation, and proceeds by levels or by distinct (chained) stages. As such, Ricœur expands the initial lexicographic course on recognition into a greater examination of purely philosophical terms (referring to the philosophical tradition). Within this expanded version there are ‘three philosophical approaches that seem to have nothing in common’35. These include: [1] the approach expressed by Kant’s concept of recognitio (analysed in the first study); [2] the idea expressed by Bergson’s concept of reconnaissance des souvenirs (analysed in the second study, in connection with the aforementioned phénoménologie de l’homme capable); and [3] the Hegelian approach of Anerkennung (discussed in the third). The articulation of these three studies follows the transition from

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Chapter I

the ‘Recognition as identification’ to ‘Recognizing oneself’, to ‘Mutual recognition’, respectively. In this last section, and according to another typical Ricœurian strategy of searching and provoking conflict (between ideas and theories) and complications (rather than simplifications), the theme of the struggle for recognition is placed in dialectical tension with other theories favourable to the conception of recognition via the gift. This comparison takes place following Jacques Taminiaux and Axel Honneth’s review of the Hegelian dialectic of recognition. Honneth’s Kampf um Anerkennung begins playing a role at this point in the discussion. However, in contrast to Taminiaux’s work, this concept does not perform a purely historiographical function. This is proven by what Ricœur writes in the opening of the section Systematic Renewals of Hegel’s Argument. The following passage summarizes the meaning of this comparison. Although it is actually a concluding paragraph, it nonetheless expresses the introduction extremely well. Let me begin by acknowledging my debt to Axel Honneth. I have borrowed more from him that just from the title of part 2 of his book. I want to think of this section as a dialogue with him, where my contribution will run from some complementary to a few critical considerations, which will in turn open the way to an argument directed against the exclusive emphasis on the idea of a struggle, in favour of a search for more peaceful experiences of recognition36.

2.1. An empirical research on recognition Honneth’s book aims to elaborate an ethics of conflict, as the subtitle indicates. This is an ethics connected to theoretical perspectives on social philosophy, as well as to the contemporary debate on identity and politics of recognition. He pursues his project as a preliminary topic (both historical-philosophical and empirical), although it occupies two-thirds of the final work. The first of the three sections contains ‘the systematic reconstruction of the Hegelian line of argumentation’ regarding the issue of recognition. This encompasses Hegel’s early writings, including System der Sittlichkeit (1802), and Jenaer Realphilosophie (1805-06), and considers the differences generated by the final formulation (in our understanding) of the Phänomenologie des Geistes. Honneth begins to illustrate the Hegelian interpretation of the three forms of recognition: love, rights, social esteem. Within the section dedicated to the social psychology of Mead, or rather to the renewal of Hegelianism through Mead, these investigations help to profile the ‘intersubjective conception of the person’ located at the base of this theory. In the first of these three

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Hegelian moments, the discussion of recognition in terms of psychology originates from both Honneth and Ricœur. If, on the one hand, Hegelian idealism provides the key to this reading, on the other hand its implementation occurs within the coordinates of Mead’s empiricism (second section37). If Ricœur faces some difficulties in accepting these empirical renewals of a Hegelianism without idealism, in contrast he nonetheless remains somewhat bound to Hegel (at least in its third study), as the following passage indicates: I see this pairing of Hegel and Mead as the model for an interweaving of speculative conceptualization and the test of experience. And I shall propose several variations on it38.

Therefore, for both Honneth and Ricœur the empirical approach to love constitutes a fundamental passage in their respective psychologies of recognition. The dynamic of the Hegelian theme of love is connected to a psychology of recognition containing an empirical matrix. It must be initially noted that this psychology can be better integrated in a social theory if taken from Hegel’s early writings, rather than from his Phenomenology of Spirit. This is because the dialectic of recognition is disconnected by the figures of the spirit; that is to say, within the coordinates of an interior dynamism39. Honneth thus places readers before the psychologistic assumption of Hegelian recognition by examining the interrelation of these works with Fichte’s The Foundations of Natural Law. In its essence, this essay contains a discussion of the key to ‘juridical recognition’, to which the Hegelian System of Ethical Life contributes the evolution of personal identity. In Honneth’s words: Within the framework of an ethically established relationship of mutual recognition, subjects are always learning something more about their particular identity, and since, in each case, it is a new dimension of their selves that they see confirmed thereby, they must once again leave, by means of conflict, the stage of ethical life they have reached, in order to achieve the recognition of a more demanding form of their individuality. In this sense, the movement of recognition that forms the basis of an ethical relationship between subjects consists in a process of alternating stages of both reconciliation and conflict40.

As we can see, Honneth increases the hegemony of ethical discourse over the Hegelian innovation. This can be clearly tested in the following passage:

16

Chapter I By thus using a theory of conflict to make Fichte’s model of recognition more dynamic, Hegel gains not only the possibility of providing a first determination of the inner potential of human ethical life but also the opportunity to make its ‘negative’ course of development more concrete41.

However, this is not incompatible with his interpretation, in terms of the psychology of recognition, but rather provides it with an ethical characterisation: the conflict that breaks out between subjects represents, from the outset, something ethical, insofar as it is directed towards the intersubjective recognition of dimensions of human individuality42.

The following passage lessens any doubts regarding the correspondence between what the young Hegel defines as a ‘natural ethical life’ and this psychology of recognition, and furthermore provides evidence that Honneth’s text offers a psychological interpretation (even during the examination of the System of Ethical Life): Hegel initially describes the process by which the first social relations are established in terms of the release of subjects from their natural determinations. This growth of “individuality” occurs in two stages of mutual recognition, which differ from each other in the dimensions of personal identity that receive practical confirmation. In the relationship between “parents and children” … subjects recognize each other reciprocally as living, emotionally needy beings. Here, the component of individual personality recognized by others is “practical feeling”, that is, the dependence of individuals on vitally essential care and goods. The “labour” of raising children … is directed towards the formation of the child’s “inner negativity” and independence, so that, as a result, “the unification of feeling” must be “superseded”. Hegel then follows this (now superseded) form of recognition with a second stage, still under the heading “natural ethical life”, of contractually regulated relations of exchange among property owners43.

This passage allows us to proceed directly to the second section of Honneth’s book, where he specifies that the theme of love occurs in the context of Hegelian psychology (i.e., within the dialectic of the family, and between parents and children). The full recognition of personal identity comes exclusively and necessarily from social recognition; but it begins within the dynamic of the family. Loving primarily confirms the natural individuality of those participating. The theoretical difference between Honneth and Ricœur in this discussion resides between the first stage and the second. In fact, according to Honneth, the transition from the first to the second maintains the configuration of the fight, which adheres

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to the Hegelian formula of the evolutionary power of the negative. Admittedly, in its mature form, social recognition is an intersubjective recognition of legal capacities (their own and others, in a peaceful and regulated state), but is not within social conflicts. These include ‘that shattered natural ethical life’, which can ‘prepare subjects to mutually recognize one another as persons who are dependent on each other and yet also completely individuated’44. To return to our point, expanding the Hegelian theme of love, leads into the core of the second section of Honneth’s Kampf um Anerkennung, where the psychology of recognition undergoes an anticipated naturalistic metamorphosis. The decision to resort to Mead’s social psychology to renew Hegelianism should not be attributed to the coherence of a work established on the assumption that human subjects owe their identity to the experience of intersubjective recognition. Rather, it is connected to the fact that Mead’s writings ‘allow for a translation of Hegel’s theory of intersubjectivity into a postmetaphysical language, they can prepare the way for the project undertaken here’45. Honneth argues that Mead’s social psychology reproduces Hegel’s three forms of recognition in any way: Although Mead has no appropriate replacement for the romantic concept of “love” to be found in Hegel’s writings, his theory of mutual recognition: the emotional concern familiar from relationships of love and friendship is distinguished from legal recognition and approval associated with solidarity as particular ways of granting recognition. Already in Hegel, these three patterns of reciprocity are mapped onto particular concepts of the person … But not until Mead does the intuition implicit in this acquire the systematic cast of an empirical hypothesis, according to which, in the sequence of the three forms of recognition, the person’s relation-to-self gradually becomes increasingly positive46.

When beginning to consider the theme of love, Honneth proposes giving this concept the more neutral meaning of ‘strong emotional attachments among a small number of people’, based upon Hegel’s ideas. The concept is thus freed from the constraints of romance, and opened up to refer to the experience of friendship, and especially to the parent-child relationship. Furthermore, it is made more adaptable to Meadian theorisation, and to being articulated in the field of psychotherapy. Honneth quickly retraces the steps that led psychoanalysis to recognize the centrality of the interpersonal aspects for identity formation. Spanning the works of Freud to René Spitz, and John Bowlby to Daniel Stern, this discipline has progressively moved away from its initial psychopathological model. According to the latter, mental illnesses can be understood as intrapsychic conflicts (i.e., conflicts between mental instances) rather than interpsychic

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(i.e., interpersonal disturbances). The psychoanalytic object-relations theory represents the first concrete progress made in this conceptual direction. Honneth notes that this theory ‘can convincingly portray love as a particular form of recognition only owing to the specific way in which it makes the success of affectional bonds dependent on the capacity, acquired in early childhood, to strike a balance between symbiosis and self-assertion. The path to this central insight, in which the intuitions of the young Hegel are confirmed to a surprising degree, was prepared by the English psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott’47. Using Winnicott’s theory, Honneth expands the psychology of recognition to its most profound and original application in the mother-child relationship: [he] conceived the child’s maturational process from the start as a task that can only be accomplished collectively, through the intersubjective interplay of ‘mother’ and child. Since both subjects are initially included in the state of symbiotic oneness in virtue of their active accomplishments, they must, as it were, learn from each other how to differentiate themselves as independent entities48.

This education begins within the family sphere, but then continues in the social sphere. It seems to completely concord with Hegel’s ideas, not only in terms of the analogy that can be established between the concept of ‘symbiosis’ and the harmonious state of ‘natural ethical life’, but also regarding the recognition of the centrality of emotional recognition49. Finally, this applies to the recognition that the evolutionary basis of personal identity is an irreducibly conflicting dialectic (which Winnicott recognises as already at work in the familial context). However, recognition in love has several limitations, or stated more simply, it contains several differences when compared to recognition through rights (juridical recognition)50. The first is a limited reference; the second is a necessary and unavoidable reciprocity, which fully recognizes individualities, but only within the sphere of affections. In speaking of recognition as a constitutive element of love, what is meant is an affirmation of independence that is guided – indeed, supported – by care. Every love relationship, whether between friends, lovers, or parent and child, … presupposes liking and attraction, which are out of individuals’ control51.

Psychoanalysis has also highlighted the delicacy of the dialectic of affections52, and its potential to be problematic, which Honneth does not fail to notice.

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2.2. A phenomenology of recognition On the one hand, Ricœur’s realisation of the renewal of the Hegelian theory of recognition incorporates the natural perspective of Honneth’s proposal. However, on the other hand, this renewal nonetheless still remains in a philosophical (phenomenological) anthropology, which the author presents as phénoménologie de l’homme capable. When introducing his third studies, he writes: Self-recognition … found in the unfolding of the figures of the “I can,” which together make up the portrait of the capable human being, its own space of meaning. But what is most important for our pursuit of the course of recognition is that identification … not only has changed its referent in passing from something in general to the self but has been elevated to a logical status dominated by the idea of the exclusion between the same and the other, and to an existential status thanks to which the other is likely to affect the same53.

The effect of naturalistic ‘contamination’ is evident and significant. Ricœur, welcoming the input of Honneth via Winnicott, facilitates the entry of psychoanalysis in to his own analysis. However, it is precisely at this point, interwoven with an expansion of Simone Weil’s theory, that Ricœur introduces phenomenology through an old formula that, retaining its Hegelian influence, leads the psychoanalytic lesson to a new ground. This process is not easy to grasp but is nonetheless undoubtedly present. It can be initially observed when comparing the following passage of the Parcours de la reconnaissance with an excerpt taken from the Ricœurian essay Image et langage en Psychanalyse (1978): a. Simone Weil extends to forms of friendship the potentially conflictual configuration that erotic love implants in the depths of the unconscious and its drives. (Did Hegel not already at the beginning of the nineteenth century give the name Trieb to this power more primitive than desire, in that it is the desire of the desire of the other?)54. b. Not only does desire speak, it speaks to someone else, to the other person. This second starting point in analytic practice … does not lack theoretical implications. It reveals that from its beginning human desire is, to use Hegel’s expression the desire of another’s desire and finally for recognition55.

In Ricœur’s work the idea of the dialectic of recognition is connected to the psychoanalytic doctrine, including all of the relevant problematic aspects of Freudianism. The latter’s mental model does not make or

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operate on behalf of the other (in contradiction to what psychoanalysis does in its clinic). Honneth recalls and mentions this difficulty, which Ricœur has studied since the seventies in his psychoanalytic research; which exercised a strong influence upon his narrative hermeneutics, as well as in his philosophy of human beings. This deep influence can also be found in The Course of Recognition, and in fact characterizes the phenomenology of recognition in that book. This phenomenology emerges in connection with psychoanalysis via a second comparison found in the essay Le Self selon la psychanalyse et selon la philosophie phénoménologique (1986). This work begins with a discussion of the ‘analytic’ of Heinz Kohut’s psychoanalytical theory56, in order to remedy the lack of Freudian metapsychology. This brings the results of Kohut’s examination of self-psychology to a philosophy of otherness or, in other words, to a philosophy of intersubjectivity. Psychoanalysis is placed in ‘dialectical’ relation with three main models, in which modern and contemporary philosophy articulate subjectivity and intersubjectivity. These include: ‘the Hegelian model of the master and slave, as we find in the Phenomenology of Spirit’; ‘the model proposed by Emmanuel Lévinas in his Totality and Infinity’; and between these two, ‘the notion that Husserl elaborated in his fifth Cartesian Meditation of an analogical grasping of the other, as another ego, an alter ego, similar to me in that he too says “I” just as I do’57. As compared to Hegel’s theory, the Parcours takes advantage of Honneth’s work to enrich Ricœur’s own analysis via the writings of the young Hegel. It is equally true that this does not constitute a denial but, on the contrary, a further reason for connecting the dialectical to psychoanalysis (via Winnicott, as determined above). In terms of Lévinas and Husserl’s concerns, the Parcours contain a series of analyses substantially identical to those contained in the essay on Kohut. These are found in the opening chapter of the study on ‘mutual recognition’58, and constitute proof of the phenomenological incline of the Ricœur’s psychology of recognition.

3. The constitutive dynamic of the struggle; the emancipative horizon of the gift Many intertwined elements are at work in Honneth and Ricœur’s approaches, and extend beyond their differences. In some way, each can be framed within the scope of social anthropology: [a] to observe the anthropological element in the two philosophies of recognition, and [b] for the centrality that assumes the psychological and sociological theme of interrelation in such anthropologies. Both scholars reveal the centrality

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and function of the dialectical process at all stages and in all modes of recognition. However, if Honneth emphasizes the character of constitutive dynamic of the struggle more firmly, Ricœur highlights the emancipatory strength of the gift behind the dialectics of recognition. In fact, in the recent development of his philosophy of human beings (those made around the Parcours de la reconnaissance), evidence emerges that both aspects, i. e., the constitutive dynamic of the struggle and identity as a process of emancipation, are present and operate on an equal status. The anthropological conception revealing the centrality of the dialectic between Hegelianism and Freudianism can be usefully expanded. This is, because it allows one to observe the level at which the psychology of recognition began to define and form a new conception of human being in the field of philosophy. The Course of Recognition is a book composed of three studies, which found reasons to support unification in the philosophy of man, as thematised in the second chapter of the second study. This was A Phenomenology of the Capable Human Being59, and it again assumes the ‘hermeneutic phenomenology of the self’ of Soi-même comme un autre. In this way, the term ‘parcours’ indicates and signifies not only the route or routes of a ‘research’60, an ‘investigation’61, or a theoretical ‘inquiry’62, but also the emancipatory subject’s way within the dialectic of recognition. This is marked by the progression of the theme of identity, of otherness, and of the dialectic recognition/misrecognition63. On the one hand, the book traces the thematic sequence of recognition-identification, self-recognition, mutual recognition, and recognition-gratitude along a dynamic regulated by the gradual transition from abstract to concrete, and from the theoretical to the practical. However, on the other hand (and from another perspective), the book can be read as a research manual seeking to determine and assume the meaning of self-recognition in the word; in the action; in the memory; promise; responsibility; and through its signs; its actions; its failings; in his superiority or inferiority; etc. This logical progression continues until recognition is offered appeasement via gratitude. Clearly, the latter perspective identifies in fundamental term of the parcours within these practical interests. This therefore leads to the opening of the second study: The road to recognition is long, for the “acting and suffering” human being, that leads to the recognition that he or she is in truth a person “capable” of different accomplishments. What is more, this selfrecognition requires, at each step, the help of others, in the absence of that mutual, fully reciprocal recognition that will make each of those involved a ‘recognized being’64.

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Chapter I

The theme of recognition has not assumed significance previously, as Paul Ricœur’s philosophy of human beings makes explicit. And yet, it is possible to trace problems in his work that are related to the topic of recognition. This trend began in his 1955 Histoire et vérité, in essays such as Le ‘socius’ et le prochain, amongst others. However, it is especially observable in the ‘conflict of interpretations’, which was discovered during the sixties. At that time the question of recognition emerged in Ricœur’s philosophical-anthropological discourse through the aforementioned and notoriously paradigmatic dialectic of Hegelianism and Freudianism. From this comparison between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, Ricœur drew the idea of subjectivity as a hermeneuticdialectic process, stretched between the binary of arché and telos; the unconscious and spirit; necessity and freedom; destiny and history. He attempted to achieve a synthesis between Hegelianism and Freudianism by translating the psychic dynamism in terms of the dialectic of figures. In this way, the relationship between Id and Ego (Ricœur quoted the famous Freudian adage Wo es war, soll ich werden) became a dialectic between lordship and bondage. This point also precisely illustrates the dialectic of recognition, as expressed in Le conflit des interpretations65. However this is already accomplished in De l’interprétation. Essai sur Freud, in the third chapter of the ‘Dialectic’, entitled Dialectique: archéologie et téléologie. These pages are worth returning to, and one must immediately note that the concept established between Freudianism and Hegelianism is a homology66, and brings out the teleological element inherent to Freud’s psychoanalysis. I will try to express one of these homologous relations by discovering in Freudianism a certain dialectic of archeology and teleology that is clearly evident in Hegel. The same connection is in Freud, but in a reverse order and proportion. Whereas Hegel links an explicit teleology of mind or spirit to an implicit archeology of life and desire, Freud links a thematized archeology of the unconscious to an unthematized teleology of the process of becoming conscious67.

The Phenomenology of Spirit outlines an explicit teleology of consciousness that emerges in the background of desire and life without radically transcending them. What is surpassed in terms of spirit and truth remains unsurpassed in terms of reality. Hegel and Freud find commonality via the concept of desire. In Hegel, ‘desire is revealed as human desire only when it is desire for the desire of another consciousness’68. Ricœur explains that ‘Desire is desire only if life manifests itself as another desire; and this certainty in turn has its truth in the double process of reflection, the reduplication of self-consciousness. This reduplication is the condition for

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the emergence of self-consciousness in the midst of life’69. Therefore, Hegel’s desire is closely related to recognition. The phenomenology of desire is fulfilled in the dialectic of recognition. Readers are familiar with the famous Phenomenology, where this dialectic is expressed between lord and servant. According to Ricœur, the process occurring in clinical psychoanalysis is substantially similar. A sort of dialectic lordship/bondage is established between analyst and patient, and turns the analytical process into the therapy of recognition. As Alexandre Kojève explains, ‘The analytic situation is directly intersubjective. The analytic situation does not bear merely a vague resemblance to the Hegelian dialectic of reduplicated consciousness; between that dialectic and the process of consciousness that develops in the analytic relation there is a remarkable structural homology. The entire analytic relation can be reinterpreted as a dialectic of consciousness, rising from life to selfconsciousness, from the satisfaction of desire to the recognition of the other consciousness. As the decisive episode of the transference teaches us, insight or the process of becoming conscious not only entails another consciousness, the analyst’s, but contains a phase of struggle reminiscent of the struggle for recognition. The process is an unequal relation in which the patient, like the slave or bondsman of the Hegelian dialectic, sees the other consciousness by turns as the essential and as the unessential; the patient likewise has his truth at first in the other, before becoming the master through a work comparable to the work of the slave, the work of the analysis. One of the signs that the analysis is ended is precisely the attainment of the equality of the two consciousnesses, when the truth in the analyst has become the truth of the sick consciousness. Then the patient is no longer alienated, no longer another: he has become a self, he has become himself. Furthermore, what occurs in the therapeutic relationship, which is a type of struggle between two consciousnesses, should lead us to something even more important: the transference – in the course of which the patient repeats, in the artificial situation of analysis, important and meaningful episodes of his affective life – assures us that the therapeutic relation acts as a mirror image in reviving a whole series of situations all of which were already intersubjective. A desire or wish, in the Freudian sense, is never a mere vital impulse, for it is from the very beginning set within an intersubjective situation. Hence we can say that all the dramas psychoanalysis discovers are located on the path that leads from “satisfaction” to “recognition”’70. This analysis by Kojève engages with the issue of recognition, and focuses upon the element of desire within this interpretation of the struggle for recognition expressed in the lord-slave dialectic.

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Chapter I

Research conducted on Ricœurian texts allows us to locate the second stage of the intellectual progression of recognition within studies on psychoanalysis conducted during seventies and eighties. The aforementioned article Image and Language in Psychoanalysis contains the very important and significant following step: The analytic situation offers desire what Freud, in one of his technical texts, calls “a playground in which it [the patient’s compulsion to repeat] is allowed to expand in almost complete freedom”. Now why does the analytic situation have this virtue of reorienting repetition toward remembrance? Because it offers desire an imaginary face-to-face relation in the process of transference. Not only does desire speak, it speaks to someone else, to the other person. This second starting point in analytic practice … does not lack theoretical implications. It reveals that from its beginning human desire is, to use Hegel’s expression the desire of another’s desire and finally for recognition71.

In the clinical context, the psychoanalytic operation intervenes therapeutically in the dialectical process of the recognition, redefinition and reformulation of the history of life, as well as of the psychological responses to the progress and achievements reached within this dialectic. As explained above, the fundamental matrix of this possibility of interpretation is found in Kojève, whose philosophical position on the issue of recognition is very particular. Even the meaning of the entire human experience is interpreted as the desire or search to be recognized. In his introductory study of the Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit he writes: ‘to desire the Desire of another is in the final analysis to desire that the value that I am or that I “represent” be the value desired by the other: I want him to “recognize” my value as his value. I want him to “recognize” me as an autonomous value. In other words, all human, anthropogenetic Desire – the Desire that generates Self-Consciousness, the human reality – is, finally, a function of the desire for “recognition”. And the risk of life by which the human reality “comes to light” is a risk for the sake of such a Desire. Therefore, to speak of the “origin” of Self-Consciousness is necessarily to speak of a fight to the death for ‘recognition’. … Indeed, the human being is formed only in terms of a Desire directed toward another Desire, that is – finally – in terms of a desire for recognition’72. The 1990 essay Oneself as Another contains a new and important step for the concept of recognition. This involves the concept of identity being expressed as a hermeneutical-narrative process, and as a dialectic of recognition both vertically: of the self relative to the otherness in itself,

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and horizontally: of the self relative to the other. On the one hand, this represents the relationship of the self with its otherness. On the other hand, the other and the dialectic of recognition become a part of the processes of identification and emancipation. This does not represent two separate movements, but rather the two movements are elements of a single process. This conceptualisation remained unchanged until the Parcours where it is summarized as follows: ‘We do not mistake ourselves without also being mistaken about others and our relations with them’73. Psychoanalysis contributes to the essential formation of the Ricœurian philosophical discourse on human beings. Within the conception of the homme capable, the most significant contribution to the transition to psychoanalysis comes from the idea of the narrative constitution of identity. In Oneself as Another Ricœur repeatedly returns to the centrality of the role of narrative in the constitution of self-mediation. Although the mediation of action and language is fundamental to the formation of selfhood, it does not introduce the dimension of temporality, which transforms an individual into a historical subject. Instead, narrative mediation relies on this dimension of the self. This explains why Ricœur, having previously discussed the constitution of subjectivity via both its linguistic dimension and action, then focuses on the narrative discourse, or rather, on the relationship between temporality and narrative, upon which the narrative mediation is based. The path of reflection that leads the individual back to himself requires that its historicity be traced through the articulation of temporality and narrative. More precisely, it is necessary to integrate temporality into itself, and thus understand it as the alternation of permanence and change. It is not possible to directly access time. Instead, the mediation of language, or rather the mediation of the narration that brings time to discourse is required. Thus the narrative category of ‘character’ makes it possible to probe identity within temporality, or more precisely in the dialectic of permanence and change. If we understand the individual as the one performing the action in the story, he himself therefore becomes the object of the storyline. Consequently, the idea emerges that the narrative structure realizes not only the action, but also the identity of the character; an identity can now be understood as narrative identity. For Ricœur the identity is constituted through a process of interpretation that is simultaneously interpretative and narrative. This process assumes the form of the dialectic of recognition, the recognition of the self and recognition of the other, within which the phenomenon of emancipation becomes established. Finally, the idea of identity provides a hermeneutical process (or path) of emancipation.

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This discourse includes the new and innovative element of the ethical factor, which intersects with all of Ricœur’s work, as we have seen above. This relation is not announced and contained in the element of ‘emancipation’ (most significantly, in the psychological and practicalpolitical side), but rather is far more present in the ‘process’ or ‘path’. These extremely important concepts recover and reaffirm the ancient diatribe against Freud and Heidegger of being against death. For Ricœur, the notions of ‘process’ or ‘path’ contain the idea of life against death, which is continuously advancing vivant jusqu’à la mort (‘living up to death’). In this regard, one of Ricœur’s final text should be considered once again. In a fragment titled Résurrection, Ricœur sketches an anthropological and mythological interpretation of the pair Eros/Thanatos (i.e., the life instinct/death instinct) as the dynamic not of life/death but rather of life vs. death (as opposed to Heidegger’s being-for-death and in contrast to Freud’s pessimism)74. If we reconnect this discourse to the earlier concept of identity as a hermeneutical process, we can understand how hermeneutics are closely connected to the experience of living. Several practices make life bearable, even in the face of obstacles or suffering, even that of mental illness. These encompass the continuous search for meaning through reflection, the continuous process of interpreting the self, the continuous recounting of a story, and the transformation of life into a journey via narration, amongst others. Ultimately, the development of the self and the fulfilment of the human individual (as a person), always connote an emancipatory process of self-recognition (to themselves, of itself, and with respect to the other), which extends beyond the particularity and uniqueness of the experience. The emancipated subject recognizes himself as a person, and recognizes the other as one-self. Becoming capable of the full and complete recognition of an other as a person results from a complex, difficult, and varied interrelational and spiritual dialectic. This challenge is created by being and living as a free, emancipated and realized human being.

CHAPTER II THE SOCIOLOGY OF RECOGNITION BETWEEN STRUGGLE AND DIALECTICS OF RECOGNITION

1. The question of recognition in Sociology The sociological theme of recognition is relatively recent, and is more widely and critically applied in the disciplinary fields of social theory and sociology of institutions, as compared to sociology tout court. The concept emerges [a] in relation to the questions of (the ethnic) identity of a group; [b] with respect to settlement disputes (in political anthropology, social anthropology and anthropology of law); [c] in the analysis of the continuity/discontinuity of social systems; and [d] in relation to the theory of social conflicts. The discussion of sociology in wide and general terms should consider that interaction assumes a greater significance in a wide spectrum of fields of study75. These range from social exchange to social interaction, and from symbolic interaction to the question of personality (i.e., interaction processes: interaction and the social system; conditions of integration; roles, pluralism and personality; organisms and environment; generalized medias of integration). Essentially, Talcott Parsons’ General theory of social action76 distinguishes the use of recognition from the sociology traditionally used in anthropological and ethnological research, namely via research investigating intersubjectivity and interrelation related to behaviours, as well as the social behaviours and rituals revealing reciprocity. Mauss’ work77 (1923-24) provides the first and most important study in this area, and remains a foundational reference for the study of the dynamics of recognition (in philosophy as well as in the narrower field of social theory). As one of his most important contributions, Mauss brings the issue of reciprocity into the field of economic anthropology78, where experts such as Marshall Sahlins79 (1972) would later develop a new paradigm of analysis and understanding of the social phenomenon of interrelationships as reciprocity. Sahlins transforms reciprocity by measuring the change in social distance, and therefore the degree of integration and, to an extent,

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the quality of inter-relationships in a given, specific social reality. He identifies three forms of reciprocity: balanced, generalized, negative. The first expresses an intermediate degree of solidarity, within which one is expected to return the gift; this kind of reciprocity concerns relationships outside of the family circle; those between relatives; and that between families in the community itself. The second expresses the highest degree of solidarity, as the value of the goods traded is scarcely considered. This form it has no precise contents, does not set time limits, and does not even require that the item returned has the same economic value as the item originally relationships within family members are included in this category. These two types of reciprocity are united by the fact that such relationships are morally governed. They contain an economic component, which is nonetheless subordinated to the moral element, and resembles the forms of reciprocity expressed via the gift, which is itself the result of economy. The last form of reciprocity indicates a complete lack of reciprocity, i.e. the maximum social distance. For example, robbery and theft were recognised and accepted in archaic societies during wars, and were believed to provide honour. Currently, some notions are related to both the classical concept of interaction and the more contemporary concept of recognition. Amongst these, the concepts of solidarity and reciprocal altruism are particularly notable. Closely related to this modern usage is the Meadian concept of symbolic interaction, which almost assumes the function of a thematic connection (between interaction and reciprocity) and disciplinary factor (between philosophy and sociology). Social interaction assumes especially strong sociological significance in the study of group dynamics. However, determining the forms of interaction is a prerequisite to fully understanding the processes of interaction (between these different studies, Niklas Luhmann has best highlighted the strategic importance of the distinction between direct and indirect interaction80). Georg H. Mead’s81 (1934) Social Behaviourism or rather his Symbolic Interactionism, (and more precisely the work of H. Blumer82), postulates that the Mind and the Self are social products. It also argues that language constitutes the place of their emergence: language is the medium through which experience and (social) reality can be formulated symbolically, and subsequently built and shared. A central element of symbolic interaction is an individual’s ability to assume the other within oneself, and to regulate his own conduct using this perspective. Obviously other influential factors exist, such as emotions. But scholars have established that Meadian symbolic interactionism is also a fundamental reference for the cultural approach to emotions. The fact that we are capable of understanding the other is not only the result of an

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interrelational experience, (thus proving our mental ability to mentally recapitulate all of our interactional experiences), but is also the result of our emotional interrelational dynamism. It is not a coincidence that Mead (and after him Hochschild83 [1979, 1983] et al.) discusses symbolic interactionism rather than linguistic or rational interactionism84. Mead’s social theory shares both aspects of functionalism and structuralism, due to Weber’s theory of social action. The constitution of social actors (Self) is at the core of Mead’s, and demonstrates how the size of the mind and thought (Mind), as well as social organisation (Society) are formed. Self, Mind and Society are parts of how a single whole functions. While external behaviour originates in interior attitudes, some internal elements come from outside, as an internal attitude is an integral part of an external act. While there are absolutely no subjective meanings that are radically internal, the same meanings and individual acts can be understood and explained throughout the relational context of a collective consisting of a set of social relations. Individual conduct must be explained using the behaviour of organized social groups, for society as a whole is anterior to the individual, who is only a part of its larger whole. (This theory pertains to a philosophical perspective that leads to a true metaphysics of the interrelation. In this model, relationality proceeds, establishes and governs all of the specific phenomena in the world). The way of thinking is itself interrelational, as it ‘mimics’ the exchange of social dialogue, while thought arises when an individual develops an internalized conversation with himself. The internalized gesture is significant as a symbol. It holds the same meaning for all individuals in a given society or in a certain social group, and it is within this common meaning that these people develop conscious thought and relationships with themselves. Therefore, thought would not be possible without social relations or language. Social interaction always provides a basis for common meaning, as a gesture is only clearly meaningful in the reaction it causes in the other. However, the fact that I can consciously objectify this meaning, and abstract it from the immediate reaction of other, allows me to universalise this meaning. I can also therefore autonomously develop a specific re-elaboration based upon the general framework of reference that Mead calls the generalized other. Mead’s perspective applies sociological research to both philosophy and psychology, and has some important implications. In addition to the evolution of sociological research and subsequent critical developments, the Meadian approach leads us to address the phenomenon of interaction using the peculiar perspective of social psychology. This explains its significance for Honneth and Ricœur’s research, as well as in phenomenological studies, as implied by the previous chapter on the

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psychology of recognition. In this regard, conflict is another key concept in social psychology, and is fundamental for studying the dialectics of social interaction. If Hegel gives philosophy the highest speculative and critical importance, then Karl Marx elevates sociology to the dignified role of a true paradigm. The latter believed that social behaviour is formed from conflict, and more precisely from the attempt to dominate others and to avoid being dominated. Studies on Marx have generally focused especially on the struggle between social classes, but Georg Simmel’s investigation is more systematic85. For Mead, both the attitude of the community (i.e., as the ‘other generalized’) in relation to personal individuality, and the control it exerts on the behaviour of its members become determining factors in the type of relationship a person has with his Self. Assuming the same attitudes that others exhibit toward him, the individual participates in a common universe of discourse. In addition to being a prerequisite for developing the reflection of the mind, this is also the basis for the feeling of the Self; the structure that establishes both a character’s personality and his self-consciousness. The attention that sociological research gives to Mead’s work on emotions strengthens the possibility of a more rigorous approach to phenomenological sociology. To explain the phenomenon of intersubjectivity, Husserl applies the concept of Einfühlung, or empathy. However, Husserl’s original transcendental intersubjectivity precedes this concept, as it explains the formation of areas of common meaning and action (language, society, history). The process of recognizing the other is analysed on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenological description of intentionality based on the preliminary element of the experience or constitution of material nature (space, time, causality); the psyche (the ‘I’ as lived temporality, as faculty sensitive, as will); and of the body. The other experiences myself as another for him, as I experience him as another for me. From an analogical association, which is constituted throughout an immediate emotional identification (empathy), the other is never merely a body, but also an inner being with a psychic life similar to mine. The series of intentional relations are reciprocal and allow Husserl to realise the concept of intersubjectivity. The Austrian philosopher and sociologist Alfred Schütz has made an important development to the phenomenological approach to sociology. The comprehensive phenomenological sociology, which exists in a strong but productive critical dialectic with Weber, focuses on the formation of the significants experienced, and the relationship between action and meaning, thus deepening the various methodological problems that arise for the interpretation of action. Nonetheless, society is interpreted as a dynamic interrelation, although its operations are not

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intelligible through the analysis of its structure, but rather via its processes. These include the social world, which is actually the complex result of the encounter of different spheres of experience, as well as the overlapping of different defined areas of significance86. When generally considering the development of sociological research surrounding the issue(s) of recognition, we can argue that, over the decades, it has transitioned from being polarized on the issue of the philosophical and sociological theme of intersubjectivity, into the sociological-ethical and sociological-political theme of reciprocity. Recognition in sociology emerges in the ‘dialectical’ theoretical-practical realm of intersubjectivity and reciprocity. It is necessary, interesting, and important to expand the general theory of action and the sociology of intersubjectivity found in the work of Jürgen Habermas. If dialectic and recognition appear to be strategic terms from a psychological perspective, in sociology the concepts of social action and intersubjectivity are key terms for philosophical research on recognition, which seeks to incorporate this sociological perspective.

2. Habermas: The intersubjectivity between philosophy and social theory The core of Jürgen Habermas’ vast and structured research is occupied by the question of the public sphere as a space for mutual relationships and communicative rationality. He derives similar political commitment from the same (essential) conceptual triad of public sphere, discourse and reason. His espoused profile of the philosophy of man implies, nourishes and sustains all speculative developments surrounding this triad. It refers to a strict interpretation, literal, and nourished by evolutionary biologism, of the Aristotelian idea of man as zoon politikòn; as a ‘political animal’, living in the public space. A comparison with biology and the behaviour of newly-born mammals reveals that no other species in the world emerges as imperfect and helpless as humans. We are radically dependent on each other, and are thus constitutively intersubjective; we become persons in public space because we continually learn from each other87. This specific dimension of human intersubjectivity is echoed throughout Habermas’ entire corpus. In fact, if his comprehensive structures are essentially sociological on a more strictly theoretical plane, Habermas has focused his research on the political public sphere on the thematic and reflexive plane. The construction and organisation of public spaces, whose structural framework is of a social nature, reveals the constructive or decadent; the

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harmonies or rifts; of a communitarianism that is either emancipatory or repressive. In comparison with the specific context of our social reality, Habermas initially observes a general dynamism of coercive and repressive natures, within which the work of the social critic and the ‘militancy’ of a free and emancipatory communication were considered necessary and urgent for ensuring authentic human coexistence in a positive state. Subsequently, he has changed the angle of his diagnosis by considering the importance of the progressively complex modern society. These societies are only help together by the abstract concept of solidarity, mediated between juridical citizens of the state. This community, which today cannot always be strong (as it is now impossible to know oneself personally and properly) only reaches an acceptable degree of stability and cohesion via the formation of public opinion and will. Therefore, the condition of a given democracy is not isolated in its ability to test itself via evaluating the forms and quality of its political public space. Rather, research on the forms and methods of communication assume the meaning and significance of systematic sociological research. This occurs because communication is now the ultimate structure of social reality. The basic reference for this notion is Habermas’ The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), which is entirely centred on a theory of action. One could also say that, on the one hand, this text focuses on the dialectic between instrumental action and communicative action, and on the other hand between the lifeworld and system (That is to say, from the point of view, or ‘power of action’, of subjects who act in society, and the point of view, or power of action, which is either external or ‘objective’, and has its roots in the lifeworld. However, this force also progressively develops its structural characteristics, such as the family, the Law, the State, and the economy). Several critical passages of major theoretical models reveal the rich network of dialogical and dialectical confrontations, including the following: Weber (with particular attention to his theory of rationality); Lukács and Adorno (because of their alternative perspective on critical Marxism); Durkheim and Mead (regarding their outline of the change from the paradigmatic perspective of a philosophy of the subject to an communicative intersubjective understanding); and Parsons (for clarifying the relationship system and lifeworld). One could also add Winch and Wittgenstein, Austin and Searle and Piaget and Popper to this list. The research originates from the concept of rationality, which is clarified in relation to its [multidisciplinary] different usages. It is connected to the central notion of communicative action, (which is elevated to the highest level of scientific and heuristic importance, due to the linguistic turn). This notion is first clarified in contrast to instrumental

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action (expressive of a different rationality), and then in connection with it. This is done via the dialectic operating between the system: namely, the economic organisation, the political-administrative apparatus of the State and Power, and the lifeworlds which are the sets of values shared by a given society in a manner not immediately reflected. This final theoretical development constitutes the final and more current theme in this topic. The modern system responds, for the first time, by interfering in the life of the world, to a degree far exceed the direct needs of material reproduction. For Habermas, this problem is both speculative and political, and is radically and directly connected to the human condition, which is essentially intersubjective. As a constitutively intersubjective condition, critical sociology’s approach is decisive for a framework including both scientific research and diagnostic analysis, and working from the perspective of political action. On the other hand, in such circumstances the examination of reality and the structuring and functioning of interrelationships (especially communication) depend upon the efficiency, explicatory power, and significance of a critical sociological approach. Linguistic communication incorporates a telos of mutual understanding. At this point and (linguistic) level, [a] a theory of rationality is closely connected to [b] a theory of communicative action, to [c] a dialectic of social rationalisation and [d] to a concept of society that reunifies systems theory and the theory of action88. In the theory of communicative action, an analysis using the specialized contributions of linguistics, sociology and hermeneutics is developed with initial reference to Popper’s theory of the three worlds. This operates ‘according to the model of self-criticism’ and applies to ‘an epistemic subject who is capable of learning and has already acquired a certain knowledge in his cognitive-instrumental dealings with reality, or as a practical subject who is capable of acting and has already formed a certain character or a superego in interactions with his reference persons, or as an affective subject who is sensitive, “passionate” in Feuerbach’s sense, and has already demarcated from the external world of facts and norms a special domain of subjectivity marked by privileged access and intuitive presence’89. In addition, the lifeworld must be added, as proponents of communication have used it as a contextualizing referent and background. The lifeworld is essentially connected to the concept of communicative action, while its counterpart, the system, is essentially bound to the concept of instrumental action. This combination is expressed primarily in the State, especially in light of its apparatus and its economic organisation. Therefore, as individuals and members of the community, each person expresses a set of values, and experiences them in a spontaneous and natural way. The crucial focus of

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Habermas’ (negative) diagnosis of contemporary society addresses the massive and growing interference of the system in the lifeworlds, (which is not to be understood only in the sense of the public’s pervasive interference in the private sphere). The lifeworlds are threatened by an ‘internal colonisation’ expressed via a new form of social violence at the level of communication and in the conduct of life: ‘a progressively rationalized life-world is both uncoupled from and made dependent upon increasingly complex, formally organized domains of action, like the economy and the state administration. This dependency, resulting from the Mediatization of the lifeworld by system imperatives, assumes the sociopathological form of an internal colonization when critical disequilibria in material reproduction – that is, systemic crises amenable to systems-theoretical analysis – can be avoided only at the cost of disturbances in the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld – that is, of “subjectively” experienced, identity-threatening crises or pathologies’90. Systemic imperatives currently intervene in areas of structured communicative action, namely on the level of cultural production, social interaction, and in socialisation itself. Alternatively, they engage on the level of activities related to individual choices of cultural types, and of types of style, belief, and so on. The Marxist and neo-Marxist criticalsociological model of class struggle fails, because the new dialectical phenomenon is expressed through this process of formalized colonisation, which is systematic and represses the lifeworlds. Regarding Habermas’ Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Thomas McCarthy provides the following interesting synthesis: [Habermas] sketched a critical theory of modern society that focused on “the colonization of the lifeworld” by forces arising from the economy and the state: systemic mechanisms such as money and power drive processes of social integration and symbolic reproduction out of domains in which they cannot be replaced. The phenomena that Max Weber pointed to in his vision of an “iron cage” and that Marxists have dealt with in terms of “reification” arises from an ever-increasing “monetarization” and “bureaucratization” of lifeworld relations. This relentless attack on the communicative infrastructures of society can be contained, he argued, only by a countervailing expansion of the areas of life coordinated via communication, and in particular by the subordination of economic and administrative subsystems to decisions arrived at in open and critical public debate91.

This synthesis compares the entire dialectical continuity of Habermas’ perspective with Marx and Weber, and considers the repressive violence of modern systematic colonisation, which he perceives us occurring in our

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society. However, it does not offer a complete picture of synthesis, nor does it consider the perspectives of either the ‘diagnostic’ or the positive response strategies that Habermas identifies. Firstly, it is not possible to develop a comprehensive synthesis of the entire colonisation of the lifeworld, nor can a unified strategy be proposed as a counter-action or policy response. The ‘systematic’ nature of this colonisation must be broadly understood, i.e. in light of its diffuse and pervasive character. In fact, it occurs in so many and varied forms. Secondly, Habermas tends to emphasize the negation of a radical resolution, or any antirationalistic resolution (the latter is a typical post-modern attitude). He therefore maintains not only the early perspective of a strong critical rationalism, but also a communicative and interpretative framework. On the one hand, critical work provides the only measure of at last counter-balancing these colonizing forces. These assume the right distance of occurrence (procedural, factual and institutional), which result from the work of Western rationality. On the other hand, one of the most important mature additions to Habermas’ theory is the consideration of social movements dedicated to specific causes, such as: environmentalism, Feminism, and so on. Operating within these specific social, moral, and cultural contexts, these citizen-led movements might be able to restore the independence, uniqueness and value of the lifeworld. Habermas argues that the lifeworld provides an arena for emancipation, and interrelation, and therefore the subsequent realisation of the ‘individual’ as a person. When combined with a system, the second aspect of Habermas’ theory of ‘society’, the lifeworld concept becomes strategic. This occurs first in relation to a theory of social evolution that distinguishes between the rationalisation of the lifeworld and the increased complexity of the social systems. That is to say, this leads to a critical theory that must empirically focus upon the node between the forms of social integration and the levels of systematic differentiation (Durkheim). From the conceptual perspective of an action oriented toward mutual understanding, the concept of lifeworld appears to have a limited range in terms of the theory of society92. In fact, the dialectical relationship between lifeworld and system provides the best apparatus, which includes the broader social reality and emancipatory processes, both individual and social. The lifeworld is composed of culture, society and personality. However, the faculty and the heuristic power operating in relation to the dynamism of social evolution are assumed by a dialectic existing with the system. Societies establish connective actions and systematically stabilize socially integrated groups according to a formula. This is explained by clarifying that it indicates the proposed heuristic when considering society

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as an entity, which was differentiated during evolution both as a system and as lifeworld. This systemic evolution is comparable to an increase in the capacity for societal control, while the gap between culture, society and personality indicates the state of development of a symbolically structured lifeworld. Each area of the lifeworld, including culture, society and personality, has unique and specific requirements and interpretive perspectives. These exist in relation to [a] the influence of culture on the act, [b] forms of appropriate behaviour in society, and [c] the types of people and ways of behavior, that is with respect to the formation/expression of socialized personalities. As a result, an individual brings commitment [i.e., the communicative action] to the reproduction of the lifeworld on a cultural, social and personal level, which strengthens the culture, the social integration and the individual’s personality. If these areas were closely interconnected in archaic societies, Weber’s notion of the rationalization of the world produces increasing, distancing, differentiation, and complexification. In the hypercomplex and hypertrophic situation that will emerge from our contemporary socialisation, the system dominates, invades, bends, and subdues the lifeworld. Mead is one of Habermas’ main references, and leads him to the explicit theme of individual and social recognition within his theory of communicative action. When considering Habermas’ theory from this Meadian perspective (but also considering some important steps from Schütz’s social phenomenology), the notion of intersubjectivity appears to be more significant on the philosophical plane. Habermas applies his theory in order to locate useful elements for developing (philosophical) research on the sociology of recognition. In addition, Thomas McCarthy explains that Habermas applies his theory of communication (developed in Volume 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action) not simply to re-read the Meadian conceptual or logical analysis of the genesis of the self and society, but also to develop a social analysis form the individualistic model of social action. ‘Habermas argues that individuation processes are simultaneously socialization processes, (and conversely), that motivations and repertoires of behavior [sic] are symbolically restructured in the course of identity formation, that individual intentions and interests, desires and feelings are not essentially private but [rather are] tied to language and culture and thus inherently susceptible to interpretation, discussion and change’93. Evidently, such a reading reflects an optimistic and rationalist approach, which views societies as (potentially) progressive and emancipatory realities, operating under a dynamism of socialisation, and connected by internalized symbolic and communicative competences

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that are shared and rationally organized. Thus, recognition essentially becomes an issue of participation, membership and communicative dialectic between social actors. The quality of the inter-relationships in general do not determine or evaluate the degree of social development and the evolution of its members; rather these depend upon the quality of the communicative relationships. Here McCarthy explains, ‘Habermas argues that our ability to communicate has a universal core – basic structures and fundamental rules that all subjects master in learning to speak a language. Communicative competence is not just a matter of being able to produce grammatical sentences. In speaking we relate to the world about us, to other subjects, to our own intentions, feelings, and desires. In each of these dimensions we are constantly making claims, even if usually only implicitly, concerning the validity of what we are saying, implying, or presupposing – claims, for instance, regarding the truth of what we say in relation to the objective world; or claims concerning the rightness, appropriateness, or legitimacy of our speech acts in relation to the shared values and norms of our social lifeworld; or claims to sincerity or authenticity in regard to the manifest expressions of our intentions and feelings’94. Therefore, what is fundamental in this passage is not the general concept of communication, but rather the concept of communicative rationality; i.e., the ability and competence of being able to translate personal feelings, desires, intentions, values, and beliefs into rationalcommunicative concepts and ideas. ‘This concept’ Habermas explains, ‘carries with it connotations based ultimately on the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech, in which different participants overcome their merely subjective views and, owing to the mutuality of rationally motivated conviction, assure themselves of both the unity of the objective world and the intersubjectivity of their lifeworld’95. Of course, communicative rationality has limitations, especially regarding the comprehensive study of all phenomena and social processes. On the one hand, it may help to understand the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld of social groups controlled internally. But, on the other hand, it is not possible to entirely explain social reproduction in terms of a single communicative rationality. However, an examination of Mead’s philosophical sociology is directly linked to this argument, (which actually forms the beginning of the second volume of The Theory of Communicative Action) and therefore provides a more detailed focus on the question of intersubjectivity. In conclusion, and although not explicitly thematized, Habermas’ theory of recognition is founded upon the notion of intersubjective

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communication. This concept is inserted into a theory that can be understood as both philosophical sociology and as critical social theory, and which indicates the dialectic between lifeworld and system. In this dialectic, the possibility of both progress and development/empowerment is not due to the adaptation, rupture or reorganisation of the system, but rather exists in the lifestyle choices of individuals and groups, in terms of the quality of their intersubjective (communicative) relations. The choice of recognition is of pivotal importance, as only individuals and groups can reach such. Their struggles may provide a counterbalance to the invasive pressure, levelling, and hyper-rationalizing of the system. This is the only possibility for progress and emancipation available in this model.

3. Ricœur: The intersubjectivity between psychology and sociology Sociology and critical theory’s approach to recognition exemplifies the continued persistence of the category of intersubjectivity as well as heuristic and factual centrality. If the psychology of recognition (explored in chapter 1) has essentially brought the central functionality of the dialectical element into the foreground, sociology has brought back the issue of intersubjectivity (or in the specific case of Habermas, intersubjective communication). The generalized and speculative outcome extractable from this study of the psychology of recognition is that recognition cannot exist without the dialectic process. It will not function without relational and communicative commitment, and in short, without intersubjectivity. The recognition process will not be activated as a process of emancipation, as determined by our investigation into the sociology of recognition. However, we can observe that the psychological and sociological are interrelated on two planes; they include many elements of correlation, mutual reference, and connection, which emerge in the philosophical structure of our research with even stronger evidence (later we shall see how this also occurs in relation to the question of the politics of recognition). This is also due to the specific character of philosophical discourse, which moves and is openly interdisciplinary. One must not overlook this aspect, as it in fact requires a new level of philosophical analysis that, by considering psychology and sociology, connects the concept of dialectics to intersubjectivity. There are several ways to accomplish this task, but the essentially Ricœurian perspective of our research, and the possibilities inherent in his philosophy, encourage us to assume and expand the discourse already observed in the final stages of the first chapter’s comparison of Honneth-Ricœur. We must specifically

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refer to the psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut’s analysis of self-psychology, which Ricœur discussed in his essay Le Self selon la psychanalyse et selon la philosophie phénoménologique (The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy). This article focuses upon a specific theoretical development of psychoanalysis, in critical reference to Freud’s theory of man. However, Ricœur also examines Kohut’s theory in order to develop an expanded theme of intersubjectivity. This extends beyond the change in his perspective on the hermeneutics of psychoanalysis, and results in a dialectical interpretation that will be central to the final development of his philosophical anthropology. At the conclusion of the third chapter we will find that the inquiry into the politics of recognition leads us to focus upon the notion of recognition as responsibility. This concept is well knows as a crucial part of Ricœur’s philosophy of the capable human being; a philosophy established on the three constitutive concepts of dialectics, intersubjectivity and responsibility. There is a possibility that the triad constitutes a comprehensive philosophy of recognition. Let us now examine the Ricœurian essay on Kohut in detail, in order [a] to immediately indicate its connections with Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self, as expressed in his 1990 Soi-même comme un autre, and [b] to explain that this philosophical perspective does not lead too far from the communicative perspective of Habermas’ critical sociology. In fact, both Ricœur and Habermas stress intersubjectivity as terms or fields of recognition; the first developing a discourse of intersubjective narration; the second of an intersubjective communication as explained previously. The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy was published in English in 1986 in the journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry96, and in Italian in the psychoanalytical journal Metaxù the same year. This article is connected to another that Ricœur published only in Italian in 1988 (again in Metaxù). It remained long unpublished in its original French version, La componente narrativa della psicoanalisi (trans., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis97). The article was intended to contribute to studying the 1984 last work of Kohut, How does Analysis Cure?98. This philosophical interest does not concern the dispute between the psychoanalytic schools, but rather the place occupied by consciousness, ego and self99. Its first speculative suggestion regards the size of the self in psychoanalysis, particularly in relation to the experience of the other, by which this work can be categorized via the subject line Soi-même comme un autre (Oneself as Another), which reveals how Ricœur has also clarified the problem of defining the self through a survey carried out in the psychology of the

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unconscious. The presence of psychoanalysis in Oneself as Another is thus also illustrated relation to the problem of intersubjectivity. Before delving into this point, we must consider the essay’s second interesting element as it allows us to develop this argument in reference to the essay’s specific content. This element can be immediately discerned from the paper’s general structure and procedure. Resembling Freud and Philosophy (1965), the article The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy is divided into two parts100. In the first, Ricœur presents an analytic of the metapsychology and technique of self-psychology; in the second, which is a dialectical section, he asks about their possible contribution to philosophical reflection (in particular relation to the question of the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity). This represents Ricœur’s first use of a similar transaction regarding a school other than Freudian psychoanalysis. (The reading of Lacan’s school does not constitute a precedent, because despite having approached it earlier, Ricœur never wanted to ‘let one learn’ from it. In contrast, in Freud and Philosophy he presents his interpretation as an alternative to Lacan’s). Ricœur’s, the articulation of ‘analytic’ and ‘dialectic’ expresses the movement of the reflection proceeding from a non-philosophical to a philosophical level. Put more precisely, it transitions to a level where Ricœur ‘lets one learn’ from the analytical experience, and where the latter enters the sphere of philosophical reflection. This movement was already applied to psychoanalysis in Freud and Philosophy and in The Conflict of Interpretations (1969). As such, we must inquire why it is repeated in this second passage, and especially in relation to Kohut’s psychoanalysis rather than Freud’s? Ricœur think that Kohut’s self-psychology can ‘instruct’ philosophy concerning ‘the relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity’101 better than Freud’s psychoanalysis can or could have. He had already found in the 1965 essay on Freud that this latter thinker’s model was unable to account for the phenomenon and experience of alterity and intersubjectivity. In the Introduction Ricœur wrote: In what sense … is the Freudian “topography” abstract? In the sense that it does not account for the intersubjective nature of the dramas forming its main theme. Whether it be the drama of the parental relation or the drama of the therapeutic relation itself, in which the other situations achieve speech, what nourishes analysis is always a debate between consciousnesses. Moreover, in the Freudian topography that debate is projected onto a representation of the psychical apparatus in which only the “vicissitudes of instincts” within an isolated psychism are thematized. Stated bluntly, the Freudian systematization is solipsistic, whereas the

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situations and relations analysis speaks of and which speak in analysis are intersubjective102.

This passage from Heinz Kohut’s psychoanalysis compensates for its lack of Freudianism, in addition to contributing to the philosophy of the theme of intersubjectivity. Two passages of the 1988 article confirm this claim. The first (from the first Italian edition), reads: ‘The review Metaxù published an article I had written about the self-analysis of Heinz Kohut. I am, in fact, very interested in the fact that this author has assigned a primordial place at the relationship with the other’103. He then discusses the entire 1986 article, and as evidenced by identical conclusions reached in the work, his primary interest is clearly the three configurations of selftransference that Heinz Kohut describes (mirror transference, the idealizing transference, and twin transference). Specifically, these parallel the three paradigms of intersubjectivity derived from the more radical thoughts of modern and contemporary philosophy104 (Hegel, Husserl, Lévinas). However, the second passage reaffirms the criticism of Freud’s systematisation, which closes subjectivity and confirms ‘there never is the other’: Freud always presents his model as a sort of egg closed in on itself. He represents it through a schema: preconscious, conscious, unconscious, or, in the second topology: superego, ego, id, but there never is the other. The other is never thematized as an element of the structure even though the analytic experience is the relationship of desire to another. Analytic experience consists in bringing back old relations to others105.

Considering Kohut’s thought, we should perhaps speak of the abandonment or, even the overcoming (in the Hegelian sense of the term) of Freudianism, rather than of its integration or completion. In fact, for Kohut the dimension of intersubjectivity is constitutive of subjectivity in itself, and as such the entire metapsychological model leads to a redefinition. In Kohut, the other is always thematised as a structural element because it determines the cohesion of the subjective self. We require lifelong help from other human beings who trust us, and who position the supportive function of the psychic cohesion against the tendency of fragmentation. In the article The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy Ricœur explains, ‘We have already seen that the self always needs the support of a self-object that helps it to maintain its cohesion. In this sense we might even speak of an autonomy through heteronomy’106. On the one hand stands Freud’s solipsistic and closed model, in which the principle of cohesion depends on an intrinsic autonomy, and in which fragmentation is mostly related to internal

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dynamism. On the other hand is Kohut’s opened model, in which the cohesion of the self gives and maintains intersubjectivity. Ricœur is sensitive to the differences between these two models. In fact, his interest in Kohut appears to mark an important step in his progressive distancing from Freud (to whom he now claims to feel a ‘increasing dissatisfaction’); a distancing marking a new phase of Ricœur’s philosophy of psychoanalysis. Since the beginning of the eighties, he has become [1] increasingly attentive to the experience of the clinic, and particularly to the phenomenon of analytical narration or, more precisely, to the technical/therapeutic phenomenon of re-constituting the narrative identity. In conjunction with this, he is [2] increasingly attentive to the experience of the encounter with the other. This latter theme has held Ricœur’s attention since his early studies on Husserl, and has become central for the anthropological construction of Oneself as Another. Here, in fact, the subject (soi) seems to resemble Kohut’s self significantly more than Freud’s. This change of perspective has not only affected the interpretation of psychoanalysis, but consequently has also made this interpretation suitable for and compatible with the contents and the ‘necessities’ of Ricœur’s philosophy, which he developed during the eighties. Proof of this lies in the theme of intersubjectivity, which prompts Ricœur to overcome (via Kohut) the ‘Freudian’ (and solipsist) idea of the semantics of desire, and to assume the broader and clearly directed conception that ‘the human desire has a dialogical structure’107. This change in perspective has allowed psychoanalysis to support and, in some way, legitimize the Ricœurian theorisations of intersubjectivity and alterity (although obviously not simply due to the introverted dimension of otherness within in the ‘figure’ of the moral consciousness). The article Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis explains that analysis seeks to illuminate old relationships, especially those with one’s father, mother, and anyone related to a child’s desires. The analytic experience itself (in each Freudian case) is thus based upon the first reported desire with the other, via language. The other may correspond to this desire, as evidenced by the psychoanalysis revolving around fundamental dramas. The relationship with the father and the mother is one of language, because the child is born into an environment of language, meaning and discourse. In this pre-constituted realm, the father and mother are not only the ‘beings’ or ‘parents’ that nourish him, but rather also bring him into the community of language, and therefore into the lifeworld108. The issue of narration presents a second piece of evidence, and broadens and, in a sense, overtakes the hermeneutical perspective on the

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interpretation of symbols. Ricœur recognizes (and in fact, seeks to indicate) that ‘Freud himself never thought to theorize’ the ‘basic fact’ that ‘each session of analysis … [includes] some narrative element, as when one recounts a dream’109. Freud never discussed the possibility of establishing a correlation between the narrative and analysis. Therefore, by extension he would not have theorized the possibility of reading psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic, in the sense that man is a being who understands himself both through interpretation110 and via the comprehensive method of narrative interpretation (which is to interpret himself narratively). This is the main reason behind Ricœur’s ‘increasing dissatisfaction’ with Freudianism. ‘I became more and more convinced’ he writes in the article of 1988 ‘that Freudian theory is discordant with its own discovery and that there is more in this Freudian discovery than in the theoretical discourse Freud offers regarding it. In saying this I am in complete agreement with Jürgen Habermas and others, as well as with a number of English-speaking interpreters of psychoanalysis. They all see a growing gap between its theory – which is ultimately based on a mechanistic model, an economic one, hence an energetic one, which completely misses the key dimension of Freud’s discovery – and its practice’111. He later writes: then, with this narrative dimension it is no longer possible to preserve the economic, I would even say quasi-energetic model of Freudianism. It is necessary to reincorporate the linguistic element, the dialogical element, the element having to do with the relation between appearance and truth in the imaginary (an element one can call Platonic), and the narrative element, and to coordinate these four elements to make up the basis of a theory appropriate to the analytic experience, a hermeneutics. I will say that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics in the sense that human beings are beings who understand themselves by interpreting themselves, and the way in which they interpret themselves is a narrative one112.

Thus, in the course of the 1980s Ricœur departs significantly from Freudianism. As the third chapter will better illustrate, his departure from the theoretical-hermeneutic model has significant implications for philosophical anthropology, particularly regarding the conceptual connection between dialectic and intersubjectivity. In fact, this connection had already begun to form in the critical comparison between Honneth and Ricœur (chapter 1). It now clarifies and further defines this contrast, specifically regarding the narrative characterisation of Ricœur’s dialectic of intersubjectivity, which properly assumes this narrative nature and dimension. The article Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis clearly defines this aspect. Ricœur follows two independent lines of thought to

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reflect on the place of ‘narrative function’ in psychoanalysis. One line comes from narrative theory, and while not having or bringing anything to the depths of psychology, Ricœur first encounters psychoanalysis during the mediation between the two modes of storytelling. These include the historical and the fictional, and contain ‘narrative identity’. He also encounters psychoanalysis in relation to the concept of ‘narrative identity’, and in the hermeneutics of the self, where the process of selfunderstanding is always constituted narratively (even when storytelling), and resembles the process of the analytic situation. In contrast, the second line of reflection on the theory and epistemology of Freudianism leads Ricœur [1] to accept ‘in full formula’ the thesis of Habermas (et al.); that is, of the ‘scientistic [sic] selfmisunderstanding of Freud’ and ‘hermeneutical nature of psychoanalysis’. This line of thought, in combination with his ‘increasing dissatisfaction regarding Freudianism’ pushes Ricœur [2] to reinterpret psychoanalysis. He does not begin with theory, but rather the analytic experience itself, i.e. the relationship between the analysed and the analyst especially during the transference process113. This change of perspective convinced Ricœur ‘to reintroduce the narrative element into the structure of the analytic experience’114, via first examining Freud’s evidence produced via his practical activity (in contrast to his theory), and secondly by considering the testimony of other French psychoanalysts, such as Piera Aulagnier and Mannoni (in addition to the German-speaking psychoanalysts Mitscherlich and Lorenzer). One should determine ‘the “criteriology” of the analytical fact’, which Ricœur seeks to explain in four steps. The last of these allows him to relocate this discussion from the epistemological to the hermeneutic plane of narration. As the first hypothesis making the use of the story possible, the first step allows Ricœur to demonstrate a link to the language of psychoanalysis (via Habermas’ line of argumentation). This becomes a central and constitutive practice of language: everything happens in or through language, in order to ‘resymbolize what had been desymbolized’115. The second step, relies upon Kohut’s self-analysis to allow Ricœur to discuss the ‘dialogical structure’ of human desire. The third emphasizes that our relationships to reality and to the other cross the imaginary, (for although the imagery may be complicated, it can also become a place of illusion). Finally, the fourth reaches the narrative dimension, which allows him to ‘add’ time dimension as an element. Ricœur conducts this re-interpretation of psychoanalysis by connecting the ‘warp’ of hermeneutics, the analytical experience of ‘plot’, the narrative theory of Temps et récit (1983-1985), and the narrative conception of hermeneutics of the self (Oneself as Another).

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We therefore must consider the following passages: a. The relation of desire with the other or with the fantasy was in a way a kind of instantaneous insight. But it is necessary to bring in time, the time of a lifetime. A life unfolds from birth to death and is necessarily a central problem for analytic experience inasmuch as each age is bound up with the other ages of life. Freud himself takes account of this temporal aspect with the fundamental role of infancy and turns psychoanalysis into a kind of archeology. Psychoanalysis, as an archeology of desire, has to deal with beginnings, with developments, and hence with a temporal dimension116. b. ([Note:] Here I note in passing the role, which is so important for a number of French analysts, of the notion of what Freud calls “after the factness” (Nachträglichkeit), indicating by this that a traumatism is only operative when it has been repeated by another traumatism that reactualizes it and thereby retrospectively recreates the destructive, dangerous character of this first occurrence). I will say that this temporal dimension becomes a narrative element and seems to me to play two roles in analysis: on the one hand, in the constituting of the illness and, on the other, in the carrying out of the cure117. c. (Previously quoted:) It is necessary to reincorporate the linguistic element ... I will say that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics in the sense that human beings are beings who understand themselves by interpreting themselves, and the way in which they interpret themselves is a narrative one.

Therefore, the first passage connects the concept of temporality in Ricœur’s narrative and anthropologic theory to the (interpretive) psychoanalytical concept of the archaeology of the subject, in order to create homogeneity between Ricœur and this psychoanalytic conception. The same pattern applies to the second passage, although the effect of homogeneity is not produced in the concept of temporality, but rather in narration. Ricœur’s work unites the concepts of time and narrative, as well as introducing the theme of narrative identity, and narration as a method of self-understanding. In terms of the latter point, he approves of psychoanalysis in the last passage: psychoanalysis interprets mediation through the element of self-understanding, and men in psychoanalysis ‘are beings who understood themselves by interpreting themselves’ via narrative. To conclude, Ricœur’s research is rooted in a social psychology perspective, and extends back to the philosophical-anthropological discourse. We cannot grasp the dissonance and distance using this perspective. Nevertheless, Habermas uses this and the context in which it is applied, i.e. strictly speaking, the sociological scope and the scope of a

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social critical theory, to develop his ‘philosophy of intersubjectivity’. We cannot hide this discrepancy, and cannot locate its resolution. It will undoubtedly reoccur in the next chapter, although perhaps we will soon possess more elements with which to reconstruct a theoretical elaboration of the inter-subjective split between psychology and critical social theory.

CHAPTER III THE POLITICS OF RECOGNITION BETWEEN ETHICS AND RESPONSIBILITY

1. The question of recognition in Politics The concept of recognition has only emerged in the field of political theory since the nineties. This is particularly due to Charles Taylor’s 1992 The Politics of Recognition, although the political and legal foundations of the concept’s use have a longer history. Civil law includes the notion of recognition debt and recognition of natural children (i.e., the legal act by which one or both parents formally recognize the state of the natural son, a son born from their marriage, thus equating him to a legitimate son). Recognition of legal personality specifies the attribution of such status to institutions of a private nature on the part of the State. Criminal law uses it to describe ‘enforcement of foreign judgment’ as the recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment in one’s legal jurisdiction. International law uses the phrases: Recognition of a State, of a Government, of a new territorial annexation. These are unilateral acts that can or cannot reach a consensus between different nations. In fact, the concept of recognition constitutes the normative component, regardless of whether one remains in the field of the Law, or moves into the social, ethical and political field. ‘Recognize’ the other means considering the other as a depositary and bearer of your own universal rights, that is the bearer of ‘equal dignity and respect’118, and, depending on the case, of your same social, civil and legal rights and duties. (The latter aspect is relative. Consider, for example, the condition of a foreigner, of a minor, of a disabled person, of a mentally ill person, or the gender differences, between men and women. In fact, the entire phenomenon of Feminism can be understood through the perspective of the struggle for recognition). Simon Thompson argues that, after the second half of the twenty-first century, the configuration of Western political and social life has been essentially re-modulated. It has not been developed under a social

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democratic consensus (as it was for at least two decades after the end of the Second World War), but rather by the series struggles for recognition that followed (anti-segregation, or anti-racial, or civil rights movements; women’s movements; peace movements; green movements; gender movements; etc.), several of which are still in progress. For Thompson, scholars such as Taylor, Honneth and Nancy Fraser ‘believe that contemporary politics has seen a shift away from ideas of class, equality, economy and nation towards those of identity, difference, culture and ethnicity. They also believe that it is possible to understand this political transformation as the result of the rise of the politics of recognition’119. However, Charles Taylor was the first to emphasize this characterisation of our contemporary situation with full clarity. Politically, the concept of recognition has assumed great importance, and thus invests, (in various ways, at different levels and with different meanings) not only the political world in the strictest sense, but also the worlds of political theory, political philosophy, political sociology, political ethics and social politics (naturally, interconnecting itself with questions of Law, International Law, Intercultural Law, Human Rights and so on, as well as questions stricto sensu of sociology, psychology and moral philosophy). From the perspective of theoretical philosophy, Paul Ricœur’s operation is entirely appropriate and his The Course of Recognition brings together the different uses of the concept of recognition in three groups, namely: ‘recognition as identification’, ‘recognizing oneself’ and ‘mutual recognition’. However, from a social-political perspective recognition’s uses must be intentional (and this is the predominant theme), depending either on the theoretical-ideal models that characterize or the modalities that recognise a person. In fact, in political-social terms, recognition can be only understood as a basic acquisition regulation. (This resembles Robert Brandom’s argument that recognition is an essential ‘social achievement’, and that ‘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’120). Taylor distinguishes between three kinds of recognition, expressed respectively in the politics of universalism (recognition as respect), in the politics of difference (recognition as esteem), and in the private relational context (recognition as love). The first is based upon respect by virtue of recognition, or affirmation of the (common) humanity of all people (and is often associated with the theme of human rights). The second subsumes the difference and specificity of groups and cultures (and is often associated with communitarianism). The

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third focuses on personal individuality, and does not express a politics of recognition (including friendship, a relative form, spontaneous, limited and intimate of relationships), but nonetheless it constitutes a central element of human life and society. The next section of this chapter will discuss the philosophy of Taylor, while here we will reconsider the importance of that research upon Honneth. The latter begins with Hegel in order to develop dialectical theory of recognition. In this model, Taylor’s categories are transformed into genealogical stages of the process of a person’s individual and social emancipation (from self-confidence to selfrespect; from self-respect to self-esteem)121. This theoretical perspective outlined by Taylor and recovered by Honneth was attacked by scholars such as Nancy Fraser and Richard Rorty in the mid-nineties. Fraser’s critical analysis is particularly broad and structured, and presents a practical theory in itself (well known as an ‘integrated theory of justice’)122. In her understanding, globalisation has significantly altered the question of justice, and created new structures and dynamics (including internationals and transnationals) through which it finds expression, obstruction, diversion and denial (today, for example, the decisions [or the action or relapse of the public] of a specific territorial state increasingly impact lives in other countries). When actualized, this question is expressed in a twofold manner: ‘How much economic inequality does justice permit, how much redistribution is required, and according to which principle of distributive justice? What constitutes equal respect, which kinds of differences merit public recognition, and by which means?’123. However, even before this level of theoretical-practical problematisation, Fraser underlines the reconfiguration of the ‘justice question’ at the theoretical or, as she writes, the ‘meta-level’: ‘What is the proper frame within which to consider first-order questions of justice? Who are the relevant subjects entitled to a just distribution or reciprocal recognition in the given case?’124. She argues for combining the term recognition with redistribution. Under the social-political regulative ideal of participatory parity, one can establish a proper kind of justice. This is actually a model of ethical-normative and pragmatic justice, based upon the conjunction of recognition and redistribution, or rather recognition, redistribution and participation. Interpreted from Fraser’s perspective, there can be no justice only for declared recognition, or by the simple economic policies, or even via participation subjected to misrecognition or out of a concrete possibility of participatory parity. Rather, her theorisation proceeds from an analysis of political theory and lends itself to application in the political field. This is contrary to both the capitalist model and global capitalism, as characterized by national, international

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and multinational enterprises. These enterprises increasingly pursue the maximisation of profit, thus creating radical inequalities, marginalisation, expressions of social disqualification and injustices125. (The diagnosis espoused by Fraser’s model is that global capitalism is founded on misrecognition). ‘The result is a new sense of vulnerability to transnational forces’126. The issue of recognition has also been developed by Habermas and Honneth as the inheritors of the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, through the dialectical notion of recognition as emancipation. This book makes extensive reference to emancipation, not because it shares the Frankfurt School’s perspective, but rather because it is a comprehensive concept capable of synthesizing and expressing psychological, sociological, and political perspectives and philosophical levels of discourse. However, the late Critical Theory generally seeks to affirm the moral and civic emancipation of the (peaceful) political and social struggles for recognition. This prospect is opposed to other models and points of view (even classic ones, such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Sartre, etc.). It is not universally recognized that struggles for recognition produce emancipation. In contrast, as currently expressed, the contractarian model still retains a crucial importance and supports an order that is not centred on the civic-moral emancipation of citizens, but rather on simplifying the mechanisms of administrative and governmental legal regulations. This is also clearly reflected in Habermas’ neo-Kantian formalism, which Ricœur’s study Oneself as Another fully highlights. Ricœur focuses upon Rawls, Apel, Habermas, Walzer and Taylor in order to connect the theoretical and practical; ethics and moral; and the sense of justice and rules of justice. Consequently, Habermas’ approach is more formalistic and externalizing, as if he considers recognition to be initially and primarily a matter of internalizing and respecting rules. In contrast, and contrary to the radical autonomy of the individual, Ricœur proposes an ethical model that incorporates the ancient Greek notion of phronêsis, or wisdom. Beyond specific research (on practical or moral philosophy), this emerging perspective interprets practical-social recognition as a fact of experience and ethics, and thus a question of phronêsis. We will return to this study at the end of this chapter, after having retraced Taylor’s thesis and its critical reworking by Simon Thompson. In contrast to Fraser, Taylor and Habermas, Thompson develops an original and interesting argument. However Ricœur’s perspective can also productively contribute to a philosophy of recognition characterized by a greater emphasis on its ethical component. Ultimately, an ethics of recognition appears to provide the best reference, [a] both in terms of

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meaning and transformative power in relation to: the ideas; trends and human needs; as well as to social dynamics that are; inter-relational; interethnic; intercultural; [b] both in terms of the transformation of the politics of recognition, which Nancy Fraser argues must necessarily pass for redistributive economic policies. In conclude, this section must provide at least a hint of the two major thematic strands that have affected the public debate and academic research surrounding the field of recognition for more than two decades. Firstly, even if it does not entirely relate to the scope of the politics of recognition (being a matter of culture and [dominant] ideology), the themes of cultural relativism and multiculturalism largely depend on it. This is because certain political choices and operations can emerge in terms of organisation and social life, and impact cultural via changes in perspective and behaviour. In fact, the political philosophy of recognition has simultaneously been tied to the question of ‘multiculturalism’. This is demonstrated by the anthology edited by Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (1992). This includes Taylor’s The Politics of Recognition and Habermas’ Kampf um Anerkennung im demokratischen Rechtsstaat, and was reedited in a 1994 expanded edition titled Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (with contributions by K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, Susan Wolf127). In fact, Charles Taylor’s essay The Politics of Recognition already contains a broad discussion of multiculturalism as problematic, and he forms his theory around this very issue. The speculative survey on recognition assumes a ‘practical significance’, to the extent that we consider the current phenomena of globalisation in a multicultural perspective, and asks where this perspective leads to, when beginning from this intrinsically problematic dimension. This issue is found in the coexistence of cultures; the value of cultures; the correlation of cultures; the merging of cultures; etc. It is a part of the discourse of cultural relativism (as well as morally, and in relation to values, etc.), as a mode of recognition (the bearer of instances that are potentially self-misrecognizing, or self-denying). It is also possibly a form of dialectical opposition to cultural monism, cultural absolutism, and cultural imperialism. If anarchism and totalitarianism are the political counterpart of cultural relativism, then fanaticism, dogmatism and ideologism provide counterparts to moral or ethical relativism. The ethnic, cultural, and moral diversity of major urban centres thus poses challenges to coexistence. These do not only exist in relation to the differentiation of social needs in terms of services, environment and public space, lifestyles, patterns of coexistence and social behaviour. Rather, and above all, they

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exist by virtue of the fact that they represent the diversification of identitarian order. Taylor notes that this problem of recognition is increasingly an identitarian problem. He refers to ‘the new fact’ of contemporary life to describe the entirely modern action of developing mindfulness regarding the value of identity, the uniqueness of identity, and the meaning of identity. The Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau used the term ‘multiculturalism’ in 1971 to describe the political proposal of tolerant coexistence between the many ethnic groups in his country. This directly opposed the American concept of a melting pot, which describes the policy of culturally assimilating foreigners (asking them to accept and unconditionally follow ‘the American way of life’). The theoretical basis for Trudeau’s multiculturalism is found in H. P. Kallen’s book Culture and Democracy128, which discusses ‘cultural pluralism’. However, modern uses of the term ‘multiculturalism’ are large, diverse and not always rigorous, and in fact its political meaning is applied most accurately and significantly when ethnic rights are being considered. In this sense, multiculturalism is not only distinguished form the monoculture, but also by the same cultural pluralism. The latter assumes a hegemonic culture that practices tolerance towards other cultures that are auxiliary or orbiting on its reality. It assumes that these are of marginal significance and social presence, and therefore of lesser ‘contractual’ power. Multiculturalism challenges the ‘egalitarian recognition of the parties in the statement of the specificities’. This contestation includes the discourse of ethnic rights, which tend to be united by the discourse of universal human rights. It also incorporates the idea that multiculturalism tends to approach and connect to communitarianism. The latter is of course an open and complex dialectic, representing nothing more than the relation between communitarianism (McIntyre129) and liberalism (Rawls130). The second thematic strand is not separated from the first but is more closely related to an ethical-legal field. It addresses the question of conflict-mediation and of intercultural rights. This theme of practical and legal order questions political philosophy as much as politics tout court; philosophy of law as much as law tout court. It especially interrogates international law, such as peace studies, and includes the specialized practices in the mediation and management of conflicts resolution. Today this area can be most closely compared to Philosophy, Law, Politics, Religion and Ethics. Yet, the increasingly pluralised societal presence of cultures, worldviews, and faiths causes the development and relevance of this theme. Tensions and conflicts are inevitable, permanent and structural. They can no longer be avoided or eliminated, but rather now must be

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managed and utilized as an opportunity for growth, including enrichment and intercultural development. This situation thus constitutes the new horizon of social, individual and collective moral challenges. However, the law does not appear to be adjusting to this new trend and set of societal requirements. On one hand, the basic elements of multiculturalism are penetrating the public sphere131, while on the other hand disciplines such as Law act regulatory social mechanisms. They continue to ‘think’ and act according to an imperative and coercive ratio; to some extent, multiculturalism as a publically accepted idea and new dimension of social life reflects only its own ‘use’ in order to be politically promoted. It lacks any real problematisation of the challenges and issues related to concrete multiculturalism, or the support of multiculturalism beyond the context of cultural politics and the politics of tolerance132. However, [a] a number of challenges exist, and not only at this level. These include the acceptance and rejection of the conceptual project of multicultural companies: de facto, [b] the differences in ethics, culture, values, and world-vision. These complicate the possibility of action and conduct (on these grounds and in terms of methods and consequences) to such a degree that it does not seem appropriate to enrich and further develop this formalisation. The multicultural world cannot be standardised merely via a compelling and imperative ratio, nor can this be considered effectively ‘up to standard’ when lacking a connection to the concrete and practical exercise of wisdom. This is especially relevant when a singular judge and jurist represents such knowledge, even though this man may have acquired experience in Comparative Law as well as a multicultural Weltanschauung. Multiculturalism raises the question of personal emancipation professionally, morally and culturally, in terms of singular agents who represent laws and institutions. Within these ‘specific cases’ the exercise of an experiential and practical wisdom is applied to evaluate and appreciate the singularity and uniqueness of a situation. We are therefore forced to return to the discursive terrain of identity and recognition. However, the dialectic between the new normative formalisation and practical-emancipatory engagement of men collides with the non-negotiability of the values of the individual. Today, these constitute the basis of individual and collective identity, and are therefore untouchable values. Consequently, the same conflicts appear to remain unresolvable. The challenge posed by the Law can be newly applied to the issue of internationalisation. Mass movements such as interculturalism, cultural relativism, and transculturalism establish new scenarios where, on the one hand, the identities of individuals and groups are differentiated by geographical or national constraints. On the other hand, values rooted in .

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the differentiation of identity are often internal to these nations, and require the political, social and cultural attribution of recognition and ‘contractual’ power. (Currently, minority identities prioritise the recognition of their rights to self-qualification before their own specificities). Regarding the policies of Rights, the current challenge seems to be not to provide anything more in terms of the resolution/dissolution (normative and political) of differences; of identitarian politics; and of separatist politics, than it does in terms of the reception and management of differences; the acceptance and management of conflicts; and the acceptance and management of the increasingly identitarian distances-diversities. The only possible resolutions seem to be provided in the dialogicalcommunicational sense by Habermas; in the practical-technical sense by Johan Galtung (transcend method); in a politico-spiritual sense by Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela; or in the philosophical and religious sense as conceived and practiced by Lev Tolstoj133, Martin Luther King, John Paul II, Desmond Tutu, Daisaku Ikeda134, and others. However, inter-religious relations must also be considered, as in many cases the challenge of multiculturalism resides in the differences between beliefs, rather than merely cultures. Indeed the challenge between Law and Faiths, and between social order and the practice of religion, including laws and doctrinal laws, is more complex and delicate than the studies and practice of multiculturalists. (One recent emblematic example is the headscarf debate in France. On the one hand rests French Statism which is strongly secularist, and does not consider that any non-legal normative within its territory could become greater, provide an alternative, or become integrated with or connected to the laws of the State. This force has banned the use of the veil in public places. On the other hand is the Islamic belief in the use of the veil. Reasons for supporting its validity and legitimateness can be found among human rights principles declaring the universal right to freely express one’s faith).

2. Taylor: The politics of recognition Taylor’s political philosophy, or more appropriately, his philosophicalpolitical theory of recognition, is firmly anchored anthropologically. In other words, it is built and developed around a particular vision of man, which does not relocate and thus marginalise the ethical dimension on a secondary plane. In fact, Taylor’s entire corpus reflects this theorisation as a modus philosophandi as well a ‘speculative horizon’. Taylor is amongst the most important and influential thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, and has addressed identity and human agency, as well

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as language, epistemology, social science, ethics and, of course, democratic politics. His work reflects a particular sensibility for uniqueness, particularity, and the specificity of models, theories, schools, concepts and traditions. His methodological approach is expressed via a plural philosophical approach, which is oriented toward the multicultural opening via his particular ethical sensitivity. The debate on recognition is largely indebted to his work in terms of its general setting, references and developments. He is responsible for the widespread correlation of the theme of recognition with the combination of politics and psychology. He is also responsible for the speculative grounding of Hegel’s dialectics on the one hand and Mead’s human psychology and philosophy on the other. Honneth, Ricœur and Fraser are also deeply in debt to Taylor, either directly or indirectly. Fraser’s anti-psychologism is opposed to Taylor’s perspective, and was developed in ‘dialectical response’ to it. Hegelian theory assumes fundamental importance in Ricœur’s theory of recognition. However, it lacks a systematic and centralized treatment, not only for the indirect effect of the transition to Honneth’s work, but also for the specific characterisation of human philosophy, which is combined with that theory. In contrast, Honneth’s proposals are based on a detailed review of Hegelianism, as well as a full appreciation of the Hegelian perspective. His theory can be defined as Hegelian recognition theory to a greater degree than Taylor’s, although the latter also operates in the same realm of Hegelianism. Another difference between Honneth and Taylor’s theories resides in the use and reference of psychology, as well as the emphasis upon the moment of psychic development and the formation of personal identity. Thompson claims that even Honneth’s ‘entire political theory of recognition depends on his psychology of recognition’135. However, Taylor contains a denser theoretical and practical perspective on connecting psychology and politics more closely and directly. ‘He expresses considerable ambivalence about the place of a psychological account of human identity in a political theory’136. For Taylor, psychology operates in a philosophically adapted form. It expresses itself through repercussions found within the sensitisation of the model describing the discourses: of the subjective experience; of the modern individual life; and of the practical-ethical plane. In short, psychology is reflected by the anthropological philosophy and practical philosophy underlying Taylor’s own theory of recognition. This resembles Ricœur’s elaboration. (The latter is certainly more indeterminate, open and theoretical, [strictly speaking, we cannot speak of a true ‘theory of recognition’] and is characterized by philosophical use, such as Hegelianism, [which was frequented by Ricœur since the sixties], or Freudianism [Idem] and the

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psychoanalytical school[s]). Hegel (1975), Taylor’s first important work, demonstrated the presence of a continuous and significant Hegelianism within contemporary developments in social theory and political theory. (This significance would be strengthened by his work in the early nineties). The book Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1984) then created a profile for modern individuality. This anticipated the fundamental theoretical-philosophical circularity of Taylor’s philosophy of recognition, which tightly binds identity and recognition together. Today the demand for identitarian recognition is very prevalent, due to a close dialectical interconnection between the idea of recognition and the (internalized) project of self-realisation. As a result of the modern concept of the idea of identity, recognition has assumed a vital role individually, socially and politically. In the essay, The Politics of Recognition, this historical-philosophical and sociological interpretation of identity is characterized as a true conception of man. Taylor writes that, ‘Due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital human need’137. In addition to the historical reference, this need for recognition assumes the form of an ontological category. For a person, to be recognized is as vital for them as eating and breathing. Taylor explains how this instance has emerged, and why it has reached this level of attention, awareness and enhancement. To accomplish this, he quickly analyses the change in perspective that (both socially and politically, in terms of political theory and in terms of common sense) determine [1] ‘the collapse of social hierarchies, which used to be the basis for honour’138, and [2] how a vision of identity is passed to a social identity; and how individual socialisation moves towards either an increasingly radical individualisation or to the idea of the social realisation of individual identities within society. The first ‘change of perspective’ involved society moving to a democratic model, and thus we can observe the decay of the existential significance of the concept of honour, in favour of the notion of universal dignity. Consequently, the second ‘change of perspective’ reveals the uniqueness and significance of a new notion of authenticity. Personal and social realisation are no longer outwardly measured by social positions and the corresponding (social) roles, but rather by the full expression of the self, and the attainability of one’s own aspirations (as individuals or as groups)139. Taylor thus locates the historic reason for the link between the discourse on recognition and the discourse on dignity, even though he must introduce another element in order to fully articulate identity and recognition. This element leads to the fundamental contribution provided by Mead’s psychology, as well as a new focus on the ontological dimension of the human. He explains that the ‘crucial

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feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression’140. Humans are constituted by interrelatedness, for within relations and dialogue we learn a language that we can then use to [inter-]act, as well as to define and express ourselves and our own personal identities. ‘We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us’141. Modernity emphasises this dialogic characterisation of identity as a compelling and vital need. Authenticity does result from an intimate and isolated journey of self-discovery, or a journey in search of the self, but rather is a construction that ‘I negotiate … through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. That is why the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity gives a new importance to recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others’142. In short, being recognized is vital in order for one to be authentically oneself, or to realise oneself as a person. Yet, Taylor also considers this character of human psychology as that of our time: ‘What is new’ he argues ‘is that the demand for recognition is now explicit. And it has been made explicit … by the spread of the idea that we are formed by recognition’143. In Mind, Self, and Society Mead reflects on the notion of ‘significant others’, which Taylor uses to illustrate the close and intense dialectic operating behind the various policies of recognition and struggles for recognition. This occurs between ‘communicative or dialogical [inter-]action’ as well as the process of the realisation of personal identity. ‘And so the discourse of recognition has become familiar to us, on two levels: First, in the intimate sphere, where we understand the formation of identity and the self as taking place in a continuing dialogue and struggle with significant others. And then in the public sphere, where a politics of equal recognition has come to play a bigger and bigger role’144. This dialectic is complicated and varies the complex structure of recognition as an anthropological and political category to a greater extent than the different shades of interpretation related to the reading and reception of the universalism of dignity. On the one hand, the passage from honour to dignity leads to a ‘politics of universalism’, through which ‘recognition’ becomes a ‘vital demand of equality’. On the other hand, the characterisation of modern dignity is essentially expressed as a ‘process of individuation’, within which ‘recognition’ becomes a ‘vital question of differentiation’. ‘With the politics of equal dignity, what is established is intended as universally the same, an identical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of

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difference, what we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or group, their distinctness from everyone else’145. Taylor identifies not a strict dichotomy, but rather a kind of dialectic that is clearly expressed on the level of public life. Different movements for recognition are gradually transforming the exceptions to meaning and the interpretations of the oldest universalistic principles. Social and political conflicts are currently increasingly complex and structural, and reflect the dialectic between instances of new movements and more consolidated/institutionalized realities. Furthermore, they even reflect the dialectic between the different orientations of actions that are inspired by universalistic-egalitarian politics rather than by the politics of difference(s), or vice versa. For Taylor, these two modes of politics …, both based on the notion of equal respect, come into conflict. For one, the principle of equal respect requires that we treat people in a difference-blind fashion. The fundamental intuition that humans command this respect focuses on what is the same in all. For the other, we have to recognize and even foster particularity. The reproach the first makes to the second is just that it violates the principle of nondiscrimination. The reproach the second makes to the first is that it negates identity by forcing people into a homogeneous mold that is untrue to them146.

A productive dialectic would be maintained if its opposition remained at this ideologically neutral level. In fact, a critique of universalistic politics underlines the ideology of cultural hegemony behind universalism (where the politics of difference not only pose problems of relativism[s] but can also lead to antisocial degeneration that transforms a multicultural society in an anarchical differentiator). Taylor faces this ‘nest of issues gently and gingerly’147, and considers theories by Rousseau, Kant and Dworkin in comparison with different liberal models, such as the American and Canadian. Consequently, he reaches the outcome that ‘the politics of equal respect …, at least in … [its] more hospitable variant, can be cleared of the charge of homogenizing difference’148. On the one hand, this form of liberalism promotes and supports the concept (from a Kantian matrix) ‘of the human agent as primarily a subject of self-determining or self-expressive choice’149. On the other hand, it fully reflects Dworkin’s idea that ‘a liberal society is one that as a society adopts no particular substantive view about the ends of life. The society is, rather, united around a strong procedural commitment to treat people with equal respect’150. However, tensions continue to occur at more difficult and profound levels, due to the issue of relativism, which directly attacks the idea that the ‘difference-blind’ liberalism would

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provide a neutral ground on which people of all cultures can coexist. The experience of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, demonstrates that this is in fact not the case. This is not simply an example of Islam struggling to separate religion from politics, but rather is as a cultural difference that liberalism cannot adopt. In fact, ‘liberalism is not a possible meeting ground for all cultures, but is the political expression of one range of cultures, and quite incompatible with other ranges’151. Therefore, it seems that even liberalism represents ‘a fighting creed’. However, our societies are becoming increasingly multicultural and thus ‘more porous’ (culturally, morally, ideologically). This allows new cultures to bring a defence of their own culture, as well as the general ideal ‘that we all recognize the equal value of different cultures; that we not only let them survive, but acknowledge their worth’152. This is now a pressing issue, for the dialectic of recognition/misrecognition can decide a society’s fate. This applies even though we may in a transitional phase, during which the demand for recognition is often observed in movements presenting themselves as fighting against inequality, exploitation and injustice. Due to the spread of disregard, struggles for recognition have risen and often undergo painful conflicts and destabilizing social tensions. These are potentially capable of collapsing societies (de facto, conflicts in the world and ‘reasons for conflict’ have increased rather than diminished). Without reproducing a summary of Taylor’s thesis, I will only note that he emphasizes that we must ‘learn to move in a broader horizon, within which what we have formerly taken for granted as the background to valuation can be situated as one possibility alongside the different background of the formerly unfamiliar culture’153. This approach would allow us to reach judgements via transformed criteria. These can be alter through the meeting of cultures, as well as through what Gadamer called the fusion of horizons, or an experience and mental attitude, that is both moral and practical. However, to be inherently meaningful on both the argumentative-reflective plane and the attitude of individuals (in the conduct of life, in social practices, in communicative context), this destination must differ from the discourse of normative and institutional subsumption. On this topic, Taylor writes, ‘Just as all must have equal civil rights, and equal voting rights, regardless of race or culture, so all should enjoy the presumption that their traditional culture has value. This extension, however logically it may seem to flow from the accepted norms of equal dignity, fits, uneasily within them … because it challenges the ‘difference-blindness’ that was central to them’154. On the other hand, the affirmative politics of multiculturalism pose an additional problem by seeking to neutralize any opposition ab origine. ‘The peremptory demand

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for favorable judgments of worth is paradoxically – perhaps one should say tragically – homogenizing’155. Taylor does not remain inconclusive, but rather clearly suggests that the entanglement between universalistic instances and differentiation remains indeterminate if maintains the search for rational solutions adhering to the perspective of their horizons of knowledge, understanding, evaluation, values and conceptualisation. One must meet other cultures in order to open one’s horizon of experience, understanding, and life. This requires a third synthesis of culture(s), values and laws (i.e., true multiculturalism), that is both mediating and dialectic. This is because ‘there must be something midway between the inauthentic and homogenizing demand for recognition of equal worth, on the one hand, and the self-immurement within ethnocentric standards, on the other. There are other cultures, and we have to live together more and more, both on a world scale and commingled in each individual society’156.

3. Thompson: A new critical perspective Simon Thompson’s research is motived by an interest in the philosophical theory of politics. His Critical introduction to The Political Theory of Recognition not only contains a critical synthesis of the dominant and most representative theories of recognition (Taylor, Honneth, Fraser), but also provides a critical examination that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the different models. It therefore produces an alternative perspective, and a new theoretical proposal of recognition, and thus contains some interesting critical remarks. It engages with the psychology of recognition, which is supported by Honneth and Taylor, but opposed by Fraser, with respect to whom Thompson assumes a defensive position. He recognizes the indispensability of accounts based on subjective and psychological attitudes, which characterize the world of interrelational relationships. This also applies to the policies of recognition, including the series of risks that emerge from an unbalanced consideration of subjective and psychological aspects. (This presents the danger of blaming victims, which is the consequence of an oppressor’s lack of psychological recognition. It also considers the risk of a rationalised empirical theory of recognition, which is hostile to the annexation of psychological components because one might be wrongly convinced of the relativistic/subjectivist character of psychological data. Finally, Fraser addresses the risk of character of improperly accusing the model of the self-realisation of sectarianism157). Fraser’s criticisms reveal the weakness and indeterminateness of this aspect.

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The second critical movement contains three different theoretical perspectives on recognition as respect. The first underlies Thompson’s significant thesis in the field of the theory of justice. Only via considering respect and esteem as two complementary moments of recognition can a defensible general theory of justice be achieved. Fraser’s observations provide a productive survey, and allow us to avoid easily misunderstanding Taylor and Honneth’s theories. Despite having assumed that an individual only has to be a ‘subject’ of respect, they did not ‘explicitly’ reject ‘the possibility that collectivities could be the objects of respect’158. This discourse differs by considering the political mechanisms of recognition: on the one hand Thompson agrees with Honneth ‘that modern systems of rights are the essential medium for the expression of respect’159. On the other hand, he notes ‘there are specific circumstances in which it is possible to show respect by removing certain rights’160. (This could also be formulated as removing the privileges of advantaged ‘groups’: for example, de-institutionalizing heterosexual marriage as a ‘remedy for the non-recognition of same-sex relationships’161). Contra Fraser he argues that it is not possible to elaborate a comprehensive theory of recognition thinking which would establish the purely cultural roots of injustices of disrespect. However, he consequently postulates that considering the ideas of respect and esteem as two modes of recognition would strengthen all three theories. The next movement follows this line of reasoning (i.e., of recognition as esteem) and retraces the theories of Taylor, Honneth and Fraser (respectively, and via a study of the issues of ‘politics of difference’, of ‘principle of achievement’ and of ‘revaluation of values’). Thompson is interested in, firstly clearly distinguishing respect and esteem, in order to demonstrate that this distinguishes between (the issue of) the protection of cultures. Secondly, he seeks to illustrate the possibility of connection; namely non-incompatibility. His critical dialectic between these different models sensitizes the approach to the individual theories, often via the suggestions or characterisations of ‘rival’ theories, which cause a cyclical dialectic of mutual reinforcement. Therefore, if on the one hand Thompson can recognize the vulnerability of Taylor’s theory regarding the accusation of ‘idealism’ through Fraser’s pragmatic perspective, while simultaneously, identifying a defensive strategy162, on the other hand, this strategy alone closely links Fraser’s proposal and Honneth’s account of value horizons. This web is productive and meaningful primarily during the critical step of this new analytic moment, (which is focused upon the theme of recognition and redistribution). Indeed, Thompson supports the idea of the

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opportunity/necessity of a synthesis between Honneth and Frasers’ models as both require mutual completion. While Honneth’s model overcomes its theoretical shortfalls by examining the economic dimension of justice, Fraser’s model finds decisive support for its deficiency in the political dimension of justice. Thompson thereafter thematises the risks inherent to a theory of recognition, which are sensitive to psychological issues. These must also consider cultural, economic and political elements. Of course, only a politics of recognition encompassing all of these elements can express a new theory of justice that is balanced, open, and both responsive and appropriate to the present. However, ‘if a political theory of recognition chooses to include a psychological dimension, this must remain independent of cultural, economic and political dimensions’163. This new analytic movement leads Thompson through the important thematic and problematic relationship between recognition and democracy. Therefore, each of the tree theories he examines reveal the unceasing cyclical problem between recognition and democracy (or rather, democratic justice). Simultaneously, Fraser notes the role of democratic deliberation in determining the content of Justice. This represents the role of recognized citizens for determining the rules, and Thompson also emphasizes the precondition of justice in relation to the democratic reality, i.e. the role of recognition that citizens affirm and practise in order to ensure equal participation and, therefore, a democratic life. Taylor does not resolve this dilemma, for democracy is required to determine when or how recognition is due, or rather the recognition of the preliminary sine qua non is the condition required for democracy. This is the same in Honneth: recognition is the necessary condition for democracy; democracy is a necessary condition of recognition. Thompson’s solution for overcoming this circularity is the principle of the struggle for recognition and the dialectical approach connected to it. He finds those Hegelian aspects and prospects in Taylor and Honneth’s models (which are otherwise internalized and expressed), as well as in Ricœur. Of course, this weakens the impact of Thompson’s theory as an alternative criticaltheoretical model, for by reconnecting his work to Hegelianism, he transforms his theory into a critical Hegelian variation on recognition. Its only novelty is therefore its critical comparison and attempt to subsume Nancy Fraser’s significantly alternative productive model. However, this is not to deny Thompson’s significant contribution and critical excavation, which occurs beyond his attempt to generate a higher synthesis. Indeed, the latter is a significant analysis and criticism of Honneth’s Hegelian model. This interpretation of the nature of struggles for recognition can therefore form a productive and regulative connection between, on the one

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hand, the sufferings of everyday life and, on the other hand, the most effective and progressive instances of an adequate moral theory. In addition, Thompson’s critical work, generally considered, produces a close connection between justice and recognition on the one hand, and recognition and moral responsibility on the other. This reflexive result thoughtfully motivates our re-examination of Ricœur’s philosophy in terms of the so-called ‘little ethics’ incorporated in Oneself as Another. These appear to be structured and articulated, but not as an explicit theory of recognition. Instead, this theory contains the philosophy of a human being, and an ethical and a practical theory of justice, which we will examine in the next paragraph.

4. Ricœur: Recognition as wisdom A formalistic impression of the Habermasian model of recognition was mentioned at the end of the first paragraph of the previous chapter. This allows him to partially move away from the perspectives on recognition that are designed and based upon the practical theory of emancipation. Ricœur’s speculative perspective seems to evidence the practical theory of emancipation, according to a formula developing an evaluative reconsideration of Taylor’s theoretical work, and thus moves beyond Thompson’s proposal. In fact, the interpretation containing the strongest moral grounding actually opposes Thompson’s. Habermas is invoked in the ninth of Oneself as Another’s ten studies. Entitled The Self and Practical Wisdom: Conviction, this study is developed by asking the cardinal question ‘Who is the subject of the moral imputation?’ It exists in addition to the two previous studies, which are also dedicated to the ethical and moral dimension of the self. In the first, and the seventh, The Self and the Ethical Aim, Ricœur considers ethics (i.e., ‘the aim of an accomplished life’164) and morals (i.e., ‘the articulation of this aim in norms’165), in order to develop a thesis of the primacy of ethics on morals. He accomplishes this via analysing the predicate ‘good’, through which he constitutes ‘three phases of a discourse extending from the aim of the good life to the sense of justice, passing by way of solicitude’166. The eighth study, The Self and the Moral Norm, ‘falls [to] the task of justifying the second proposition, namely that it is necessary to subject the ethical aim to the test of the norm’167. Ricœur explains that one must show ‘in what way the conflicts provoked by formalism, itself closely tied to the deontological moment, lead us back from morality to ethics, but to an ethics enriched by the passage through the norm and exercising moral judgment in a given situation’168. Here Habermas’ moral

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communication is applied to the extremely dense and dialectical context of an analysis between Hegel and Kant. Within the framework of this tense movement of return, the Aristotelian phronêsis as practical wisdom also emerges and assumes a central role. From the beginning of the ninth study, the fractures and conflicts are placed in negative dialectic with moral formalism. This piece begins not with philosophy, but rather the tragic action brilliantly expressed and represented in Sophocles’ Antigone (rather than in his Oedipus Rex). Moral formalism is therefore traced ‘into the thick of ethics’169. ‘Conflict – in fact – is the goad that sends us to this court of appeal in the three areas we have already crossed through twice: the universal self, the plurality of persons, and the institutional environment’170. Ricœur traces these regions backward, beginning with the conflict feared by ‘the equivocal structure of the idea of just distribution’171, and via a dialectic that raises the issue of the ‘Hegelian plea in favor of Sittlichkeit’172. The ‘plurality of the persons’ invokes Kant into the discussion, as conflict ‘is marked out by the applications of the second Kantian imperative: treat humanity in one’s own person and in the person of others as an end in itself and not simply as a means’173. However, Ricœur returns to at least one of Kant’s perspectives because the universal self is connected to the idea of autonomy, in the sense that a universalist claims is made in historical and communitarian contexts. That is to say, given and novel situations demand a particular wisdom for assuming the burden of determination. Ricœur writes: My thesis is here that there would be no room for a tragedy of action unless the universalist claim and the contextualist claim had to be maintained each in a place yet to be determined, and unless the practical mediation capable of surmounting the antinomy were entrusted to the practical wisdom of moral judgement in situation174.

However, if the concept of autonomy is the cornerstone of Kantian morality, upon which, Ricœur’s thesis rest without exception, then formalism (a pervasive element in Kantianism) should be placed in dialogue with its counterpart (i.e., revised) in order to provide autonomy with its complete value in the practical order. Within the interpretations of Kantian heritage, Habermas occupies a prominent position that resembles the work of K.-O. Apel. In fact, these two scholars reconstituted Kantian formalism in the same communicative manner. Ricœur judges this as a correct transaction, but one that also places the moral dialectic into the sole line of justification ignoring the conflicts that emerges in the complete dialectical cycle with actualisation. In other words, they are placed into the

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exercise of practical wisdom as a moral judgement en situation175. ‘Habermas by no means denies that the conflicts of daily life provoke the normative expectations contained in the logic of practical discourse’, but ‘it is ... not the historical conditions of the actualization of practical discourse that Habermas considers’, but rather ‘the foundation in reason of the principle of universalization underlying discourse ethics’176. The passage from Habermas’ Moralbewusstsein und Kommunikatives Handeln allows Ricœur to recast the moral dialectic in terms of the conflict between universalism and contextualism. This eliminates the ethics of communication, as neither a simple stance for Habermas, nor as the sole critical inclusion of communicative formalism, but rather as a solution of innovative synthesis. ‘What has to be questioned’ Ricœur writes when explaining his strategy ‘is the antagonism between argumentation and convention, substituting for it a subtle dialectic between argumentation and conviction, which has no theoretical outcome but only the practical outcome of the arbitration of moral judgement in situation’177. The term conviction becomes the centre of Ricœur’s ‘little ethics’ and the cornerstone of his critical alternative to Habermas’ ethics of discourse. Why ‘conviction’ is used will be explore in the following: For, finally, what do we discuss, even on the level of political practice, where the goods concerned transcend the gods immanent in various practices – for example, in the debate over the ends of good government or the legitimacy of democracy – yes, what do we discuss, if not the best way for each party in the great debate to aim, beyond institutional mediation, at a complete life with and for others in just institutions? The articulations that we never cease to reinforce between deontology and teleology finds its highest – and most fragile – expression in the reflective equilibrium between the ethics of argumentation and considered convictions178.

The essay L’universel et l’historique (1996) is located in the book Le Juste 2179, and resembles Ricœur’s analysis of Habermas in the ninth study of Oneself as Another. This continuity must be noted, as the study of the Habermasian proposal varies throughout this book, and assumes a more explicit political and legal stance. It varies throughout Oneself as Another’s ethical discourse and proceeds in a manner that immediately becomes accessible to legal, political and social discourse. The essay has ‘two main focuses’, including Rawls’ Theory of Justice and Habermas and Apel’s ‘ethics of discourse’, which are compared as representatives of the analytic tradition and the continental tradition, respectively. The essay begins with the question or dilemma, common to both parties, of ‘si on peut formuler au plan éthique, juridique, politique, social, des principes universels, valables indépendamment de la diversité des personnes, des

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communautés et des cultures susceptibles de les appliquer, et sans limitation tenant aux circonstances particulières d’application et principalement à la nouveauté des cas apparus à l’époque moderne’180. This issue of universal principles is addressed in an interdisciplinary context that makes philosophical reflection difficult. Indeed, the context is complicated by cultural variations and intercultural dialectics (which are connected with the demand of ‘shared rules of life’ in communitarian practices181). Consequently, Ricœur chooses to strategically order the debate by placing it within the three levels of the moral problems which he formulated in Oneself as Another. These are synthesised by the adage quoted above, which defines morality ‘par le souhait de vivre bien, avec et pour les autres, dans des institutions justes’182 (‘to aim ... a complete life with and for others in just institutions’). This choice situates the comparison between Rawls and Habermas within the same coordinates as the ethics of discourse; that is within the dialectic of formalism and wisdom. Initially the two thinkers appear to interpret Kantian formalism from dissonant perspectives. However, Rawls’ attempt at a universal definition of the principles of justice is based on the issue of distribution, namely on the formalism of a procedure of distribution, then Habermas’ formalism focuses on the issue of communicative consent183. However, Ricœur resolves this difference with his typical ‘gesture’ of dialectical mediation. This assumes the implications of reciprocity, but within a formula of linguistic synthesis, i.e. more favourable to Habermas’ thought184. This linguistic basis implies that discourse represents a compulsory passage for all human relationships. As such, the dialectic formalism/wisdom alternates between the fact of linguistic mediation and the right of the argumentation. Therefore, this more closely reflects Habermas, as the first question concerns the conditions of the possibility of universal rules for each discussion and rational argument. Habermas’ answer to this is positive, and Ricœur does not directly attack him, even if he does note the three main lines of objection in the contemporary philosophical debate. These include the decisionist moral (deciding case by case); the emotional moral (right criteria are not established by reasons but rather by emotion and feeling); and the juridical positivist moral (rules arbitrate social conflicts according to the principle of utility, and in relation to a provision of authority). One must ask why Ricœur does not attack Habermas’ analysis of these objections. This question can be resolved by considering the strategy of a work planned in 1990, wherein Ricœur introduces the concept of sagesse pratique (practical wisdom). In this text, he rearranges or even transposes discourse

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onto the privileged axis of the moral-philosophical analysis, which interrupts this comparison with Habermas to some degree. He thus establishes his own alternative according to a synthesis that, instead of forcing the ‘little ethics’ of Oneself as Another, rather enriches it with a more direct and detailed reconciliation between the theory of justice and ethics of discourse. Universalism and contextualism are not opposites, but rather reveal the two different levels of morality: the level of presumed universal obligation and the level that assumes charge of cultural heritage differences. The transition from the universal plane of obligation to the historical plane of application requires an ethics of bien vivre (living well) in order to balance the contradictions expressed by (inevitable) excessive demands of the theory of justice, or by a theory of discourse only based on formalism, and following strict procedural principles185.

A CONCLUSION

The study was developed through the philosophical work of Ricœur, Honneth, Habermas, Taylor, and Fraser, and has not followed a systematic or comparative analysis. In addition to desiring completeness, the study has responded to a need to understand issues related to the theme of recognition. These are found in disciplinary fields of greater use and value, including psychology, sociology and politics. Simultaneous, it maintained the usefulness of a theoretical-speculative definition of recognition, or a general philosophy of recognition. None of the various authors examined were insignificant, and correspondences and productive dynamical correlations have emerged between their works. These connections allow the identification of some theoretical elements, which are central and essential to the general theory of recognition, and are expressed through the conceptual pairs of dialectics/emancipation; fight/gift; intersubjectivity/ communication; esteem/respect; norms/rights; identity/realisation; and participation/responsibility. A dense network of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and politics has emerged on several occasion and at each of these moments. These have consistently demonstrated the centrality and indispensability of the level of anthropological discourse. In short, no philosophy of recognition can be solidly built or achieve epistemic strength and practical-operational forcefulness without a level of psychological and anthropological excavation; that is without a ‘discourse on man’. This discourse establishes recognition as a general principle, and allows us to speak of recognition principle. Recognition, as noted by Taylor amongst others, constitutes a ‘vital human need’. Thus recognition cannot constitute an ‘end’, nor ‘means’ or ‘instrument [of]’ or ‘term’ or ‘element’ or ‘paradigm’ or ‘perspective’, but rather only principle; a ‘fundamental reason’; a ‘basic [natural, moral and juridical] law’. The journey through the psychology of recognition has illuminated the complexity of the process of recognition, stretched between the dialectic of opposing forces (constructive and destructive; negative and positive; emancipatory and regressive; socializing and pathologizing; etc.). The transition to a sociology of recognition stresses the centrality of other, as well as the intersubjective dynamism in the process of emancipation. Finally, the transition to a politics of recognition has revealed the relevance of this term for the contemporary world, and how

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the stability, progress, and well-being of individuals and their community depend upon recognition. Therefore, the future of human civilisation is at stake within emancipation and intersubjective relationships. Human civilisation is increasingly differentiated and becoming more complex; more tense and divided; increasingly unequal; suffering and contradictory. However, it is simultaneously increasingly aware; more mature; and progressively more determined. When examining the situation from the perspective of the international complexification of social systems (complex and contradictory at a political and cultural international level), or when considering the emergencies related to an increasingly conflictual reality, we can reach a few conclusions. Humans are increasingly dominated by individualistic selfishness and the irrationality of presently immoral, unjust and pernicious overwhelming capitalist liberalism. This realization should compel us to establish a philosophy of recognition that, first of all, locates the vision of a new intercultural humanism, espousing the recognition principle as its central and pivotal node. This would allow us to understand a new humanism, founded on the culture of human rights and of interculturalism (i.e., mutual recognition). In order to promote the real progress of individuals and society, it is necessary that [1] a philosophy of emancipation is established, in order to promote and spread the education of human rights, intercultural education and the education of self-control and self-discipline. In addition, [2] a philosophy of communitarian participation and the intersubjective recognition must return, in order to nourish social life and the reality of everyday life, or to promote and spread a culture of dialogue and active participation. As such a ‘vital need’, its absence deeply injuries and causes people assume inevitable defensive response. This in turn causes destructive action, conflict and denial; in one word, hate. Research shows the psychological and moral (or spiritual) bases for recognition. A practical theory can thus manifest, which is concentrated firstly on human emancipation, rather than on structural reforms and policies of recognition. We must first consider the human being. To do so, we must initially rethink culture, education and morality, in order to reshape society’s policies in terms of humanism and the search for a new form of welfare; emancipatory welfare (i.e., material and cultural, as well as moral, civic, political and social well-being). Within this context, Paul Ricœur’s philosophy of man (beyond his epistemological and methodological approach) becomes appropriate and useful for the development of a general philosophy of recognition that is ethically and anthropologically oriented. Ricœur has extensively worked and reworked many of his research topics, including the theme of human nature. Since

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the fifties and sixties, he has developed this notion, which is located between reflective philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and was brought to maturity in his masterpiece during the nineties (Oneself as Another, in the philosophy of a capable human being). The last book, The Course of Recognition, contains a detailed examination in which the formation of personal identity is precisely configured as a hermeneutics of recognition. In The Course of Recognition, the ‘hidden’ thematic pillar is the dialectic between Hegelianism and Freudianism. The book stems from a ‘sentiment de perplexité’, and from his observation of the theoretical vacuum in philosophy. However, it also contains the last major axis of his discourse on Man and human. The book begins with the idea of developing research on recognition, which is then enacted in the three following studies. These profile a real philosophy of man, centred on the concept of recognition as well as parcours (sing. and plur., course[s]). ‘Parcours’ are the research courses on a theory of recognition, or philosophical courses oriented around the concept of reconnaissance. ‘Parcours’ provide(s) the passage out of the level of recognitionidentification (in which thought aims to dominate meaning) and into the level of mutual recognition (in which the subject remains in a reciprocal relationship), ‘passing through self-recognition in the variety of capacities that modulate one’s ability to act, one’s ‘agency’’186. ‘Parcours’ represent(s) the way (or ways) of a search (recherche); an investigation (investigation); a theoretical inquiry (enquête). ‘Parcours’ are the path of a subject’s emancipation within a dialectic of recognition, as marked by the progressing themes of identity, otherness, and the recognition/misrecognition dialectic. The book traces the thematic sequence of [1] recognition-identification, [2] self-recognition, [3] mutual recognition, [4] recognition-gratitude following a dynamic, which is regulated for the gradual transition from abstract to concrete, and from theoretical to practical. However, from another perspective it can be read as the itinerancy of a query to discover and assume the meaning of selfrecognition (through word, action and memory, and promise and responsibility), as well as the meaning of other-recognition (through his signs, actions and failings, and his superiority or inferiority) along this path until it reaches the resolution of gratitude that recognition offers (recognition as gratitude). Clearly, the latter perspective identifies practical interests as fundamental terms of parcours. It projects the philosophical deeper meaning that precedes and determines it upon these terms, and is constitutively and wholly configured as ethical. In fact, when returning to the second study we find the following passage:

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A Conclusion The road to recognition is long, for the “acting and suffering” human being, that leads to the recognition that he or she is in truth a person “capable” of different accomplishments. What is more, this selfrecognition requires, at each step, the help of others, in the absence of that mutual, fully reciprocal recognition that will make each of those involved “a recognized being”187.

In Ricœur’s work one can find an interesting set of problems, which have been related to the topic of recognition since Histoire et vérité (1955)188. In particular, the discovery of the ‘conflict of interpretations’ in the sixties allowed the issue of recognition to fully enter into Ricœur’s philosophical discourse. This emerges precisely through the paradigmatic dialectic of Hegelianism and Freudianism. As we have seen, this comparison between phenomenology and psychoanalysis allows Ricœur to draw the idea of subjectivity as a hermeneutic-dialectic process, which is uninterruptedly stretched between the opposites of archê and telos; of unconscious and mind; of necessity and freedom; destiny and history. He sought a synthesis between Hegelianism and Freudianism, via translating psychic dynamism in terms of the dialectic of figures. In this manner, the relationship between Id and Self (Ricœur quotes the famous Freudian adage Wo es war, soll ich werden) becomes a form of the dialect between master and slave. The problem of recognition also becomes relevant precisely at this point. This is explained in Le conflit des interprétations (1969), and in some of the densest passages of La question du sujet. However, it is accomplished in De l’interprétation. Essai sur Freud [trans., Freud and Philosophy], especially in the third chapter of Dialectic (book III), entitled Dialectic: Archeology and Teleology. In addition, a further step on the Ricœurian path of recognition can be found in Soi-même comme un autre, within which his phenomenological hermeneutics of Selfhood assumes this concept of identity as a hermeneutic-narrative process, as well as a dialectic of recognition. While the issue of recognition is not clearly revealed, it is nonetheless assumed. His masterful work of 2000 develops via a work on memory, history and forgetting, and hides assumptions in the narrative conception of identity, in which men ont une histoire, sont leur propre histoire. Similarly, his 2004 book develops and transits the assumptions behind this ancient ‘conflict of hermeneutics’, through a work on recognition (reconnaissance), as well as by outlining a possible horizon of reconciliation between the simple gesture of gratitude (reconnaissance) and the difficult ‘parcours’ of emancipation, which eventually lead to achieving and realising it. In conclusion, let us trace the characteristic features of the philosophy of the capable human being. This represents a philosophical anthropology

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that, in addition [a] to incorporating the main instances of Hegelianism and Freudianism, and beyond [b] characterising a general concept interpreting the construction of personal identity as emancipatory hermeneutics of recognition, [c] reveals an explicit and constitutive essential connection with the level of action and interaction; with the level of reflexive and intersubjective communication, with the level of moral and political responsibility; and with the level of ethical and legal obligation. One of its fundamental conceptions is the idea of emancipatory human subjectivity, i.e. the idea that personal development occurred according to a historical-reflexive and practical-experiential process. At the centre of this notion rests the notion of narrative identity, developed via long reflection upon the modern problem of identity, as well as a lengthy reflective and critical research regarding the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. The dialectical tension between the selfish ego, (which is immediate and natural), and the self as a social product of mediation (primarily realised through the works of culture) is instrumental for Ricœur’s 1990 text. This dialectic runs through the whole work, and has is possibly ontologically rooted in the Aristotelian conception of Being as a Power/Act dynamic (Ricœur ‘explores’ this in the last study). This not only places the idea of expressive power (exactly in the same sense of the ancient Greek idea of ȑȡȝȘȞİȣIJȚȤȩȢ įȪȞĮȝȚȢ) at the centre of Ricœur’s anthropological conception, but also ensures that the problematic uses of the modal verb ‘I can’ are established as the central node, which unites Ricœur’s entire work. In short, the idea of subjectivity as expressive power thematically connects Ricœur’s entire work by explaining the milestones of Soi-même comme un autre. The ancient conception of subjectivity as symbolic life, or rather of subjectivity as a dialectical process between the rivals of symbolic hermeneutical perspectives, is connected to the idea of expressive power, which Ricœur discovered and developed in the sixties (via Freud’s psychoanalysis). This conception was developed into a reflective philosophy (J. Nabert), which Ricœur never abandoned. It can be summarized by the famous adage: ‘la réflexion est l’appropriation de notre effort pour exister et de notre désir d’être, à travers les œuvres qui témoignent de cet effort et de ce désir’ (‘Reflection is the appropriation of our effort to exist and of our desire to be, through the works which bear witness to that effort and desire’189). Therefore he established a strong equivalence between reflection and self, and between the path of reflection and self-realisation. In Oneself as Another this ‘equivalence’ is articulated in three directions. The first is the integration of various objectifying procedures concerning the discourse and action of the reflexive operation.

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The second concerns the nature of identity assigned this subject of discourse and action. Finally, the third concerns the passive or/of otherness, around the dual dimension of identity-self, ipse-identity/idemidentity: the distinctive brand of a subject who speaks, acts, and is able to narrate, and thus to narrate to oneself. The second contains the heart of Ricœur’s conception of human being, at an (not more, or not yet) ontological level, occupied by the concept of narrative identity. Thus, the third contains Ricœur’s return to the philosophical themes of experienced otherness, such as involuntary, passivity, the body and the unconscious. This series of themes articulate a conception of subjectivity that is no longer substantialist. Ricœur divides the dialectic of the self between identity and self, or rather between idem-identity and ipse-identity (or even selfhood/sameness). The Latin word idem indicates a subjective characteristic related to the objective/objectified aspects of a subject. The Latin word ipse expresses the personal historical experience of a subject (not only with reference to the words and acts of responsibility and imputation, but also with regard to changes over time, i.e. the historical evolution). The first refers to the dimension of the subjective ‘character’ (caractère), which is connected to a physical and exterior experience of permanence in time. The second can be symbolically expressed in the dimension of promise, or rather, of ‘keeping one’s promises’. This expresses the distinct idea of retaining over time, and is thus connected to the experiential and responsible dimensions of speech and action. One must mediate and modulate the relationship between these two figures of subjectivity the concept of narrative identity. First introduced in the general conclusions of Temps et récit (1985), via an articulation of narrative theory and a philosophical reflection on the experience of time, the narrative identity is articulated in Oneself as Another by using a theory of personal identity. While the function differs, the concept remains the same: self-understanding is an interpretation; interpretation of the self, in turn, finds, in the narrative, among other signs and symbols, a privileged form of mediation; the letter borrows form history as well as from fiction, making a life story a fictional history or, if one prefers, a historical fiction, interweaving the historiographic style of biographies with the novelistic style of imaginary autobiographies190.

On the one hand, this concept draws on Ricœur’s first texts on psychoanalytical clinical experience, wherein it is possible to experience and practise therapeutic narration and narrative re-appropriation of the history of one’s life. On the other hand, this concept refers to Ricœur’s

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textual hermeneutics, within which the original matrix connects the development narrative conception to the theory of action. In Ricœur’s conception of the subject, the first factor describing the self is to act. This essentially defines the primacy of the ontological dialectic of Power/Act as regarding expression rather than power. As such it becomes not simply ‘I can’, but rather ‘I can act’; not simply ‘I act as I can’ but rather ‘I can, because I act’. ‘I can act’ emerges via speech acts, acts of making, through narrative-actions, and acts of responsibility. In conclusion, Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology questions the method of re-considering and re-examining the psychological, sociological, and political question of recognition in terms of the civic and ethical responsibility of the person. Put another way, it re-considers and readdresses it as a matter firstly of moral and civic responsibility, and secondly of (emancipatory) participation for people (for all people, and for each person). This provides the basic general premise of his philosophy of recognition (even though his practical-operative proposal is explicitly outlined in dialectic with Honneth, when addressing the cluster of meaning concerning the recognition of the other). Of greatest importance is that the recognition of self and other is always tied to mutuality, respect, and gratitude. Ricœur uses Honneth as his fundamental dialectical-critical reference, and particularly relies upon his analysis of the threefold recognition as mutuality: the pre-juridical form of mutual recognition as love; the juridical instrument of political and social recognition as legal rights; the practical and cultural instrument of social confidence as social esteem. Ricœur is aware of the importance and centrality of this analytical grid. De facto, the absence of love can cause non-acceptance, exclusion, humiliation; the absence of legal rights causes disrespect, unbalanced relations, illegality, injustice, and so on; the lack of social esteem can cause suspicions, tensions, troubles in social order, misrecognition, and so on. However Ricœur surpasses these levels of analysis, and leads his research on recognition to the level of a moral, even religious, problematisation. This is a level on which recognition is reflected by the practice of ideal mutuality as gift-giving. Through the exchange of gifts and gratitude, the philosophy of recognition reveals the human/spiritual ‘logic’ of superabundance. This applies to the love of our enemies and to offering pardons, and provides a very advanced conception and vision for personal and social emancipation and realisation. The challenge for the present and the future will be realising the ideal and ethical values for the lives of individuals and groups (of different backgrounds) within multicultural societies, which are institutionally

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ordered and freely inhabited. This challenge exists between responsibility and empowerment; between justice and rights/obligations; including compliance with ethical and political integration, and with forces of redistribution. This challenge is significant, but must nonetheless be overcome, for as Charles Taylor explains, ‘there must be something midway between the inauthentic and homogenizing demand for recognition of equal worth, on the one hand, and the self-immurement within ethnocentric standards, on the other. There are other cultures, and we have to live together more and more, both on a world scale and commingled in each individual society’191.

NOTES

1

Hénaff, M., Le prix de la vérité. Le don, l’argent, la philosophie, Paris: Seuil 2002. In his book, Hénaff tray to resolve the enigma of ceremonial reciprocal gift giving throughout the idea of symbolic mutual recognition. 2 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, trans. by D. Pellauer, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 2005 (Parcours de la reconnaissance. Trois études, Paris: Éditions Stock 2004). 3 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. IX. 4 Ricœur, P., ‘On Interpretation’, in Id., From Text to Action, trans. by K. Blamey and B. Thompson, Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press 1991 (Du texte à l’action. Essais d’herméneutique II, Paris: Seuil 1986), p. 12. 5 The hermeneutical reference remains central because Ricœur conceives explanation and understanding as related internal moments to the more general and complex process of interpretation. This idea has been summed up in his motto expliquer plus pour comprendre mieux, which seems to shine through Ricœur’s dream of a future unification of the various bodies of knowledge. 6 Ricœur, P., ‘Intellectual Autobiography’, in L. E. Hahn (ed.), The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur, Chicago: Open Court 1995 (Autobiographie intellectuelle, Paris: Esprit 1995), pp. 3-53. 7 Ricœur, P., Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. by K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2004 (La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris: Seuil 2000), p. XVII. 8 See: Busacchi, V., Pour une herméneutique critique, Paris: Harmattan 2013. 9 Newell, A. and Simon, H. A., Human Problem Solving, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall 1972. 10 Newell, A. and Simon, H. A., ‘The Logic Theory Machine’, IRE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-2, n. 3, (1956), pp. 61-79; Newell, A., Shaw, J.C., and Simon, H. A., ‘Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity’, IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 4, n. 2, (1958), pp. 320-335; Newell, A. and Simon, H. A., GPS: A Program that Simulates Human Thought, in H. Billings (ed.), Lernende Automaten, Munchen: R. Oldenbourg 1961, pp. 109-124. 11 Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology. Self-recognition, self-awareness, and the self-concept, New York: New York Academy of Sciences 1997. 12 Kihlstrom, J. F. and Klein, S. B., ‘Self-Knowledge and Self-Awareness’, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., pp. 5-17. 13 Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

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Neisser, U., ‘The Roots of Self-Knowledge: Perceiving Self, It, and Thou’, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., pp. 19-33. 15 Bruner, J., ‘A Narrative Model of Self-Construction’, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., pp. 145-161. 16 Mitchell, R. W., ‘A Comparison of the Self-Awareness and Kinesthetic-Visual Matching Theories of Self-Recognition: Autistic Children and Others’, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., [pp. 39-62] p. 42. 17 Swartz, K. B., ‘What is Mirror Self-Recognition in Nonhuman Primates, and What is it Not?’, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson R. L. (eds.), The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., [pp. 65-71], pp. 68-69. 18 See, for ex.: Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A., Gobbini, M. I., ‘The Distributed Human Neural System for Face Perception’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 4, n. 6 (2000), pp. 223-233; Keenan, J. P., Wheeler, M. A., Gallup, G. G. and Pascual-Leone, A., ‘Self-Recognition and the Right Prefrontal Cortex’, Ibid., vol. 4, n. 9, (2000), pp. 338-342. 19 ‘The objective represented self is an achievement of the later preschool years, constructed collaboratively with others in conjunction with developments in personal memory and in understanding differentiated mental states (theory of mind). The critical constructions involve an understanding of self and other as continuous but changeable over time, differentiated from one another not only in ongoing present experiences but in present and past mental states, which may have implications for the present. Once the continuous self is established, a future self may be imagined; thus talk about tomorrow may begin to have a new significance for anticipating events, and a grown-up self may even be contemplated’ (Nelson, K., Finding One’s Self in Time, in Snodgrass, J. Gay and Thompson, R. L. [eds.], The Self Across Psychology, op. cit., [pp. 103-116], pp. 114-115). 20 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Washington DC: American Psychiatric Association 1994, p. 134. Yet, beyond that, it reads: ‘Individuals with dementia may exhibit agnosia (i.e., failure to recognize or identify objects despite intact sensory function) … For example, the individual may have normal visual acuity but lose the ability to recognize objects such as chairs or pencils. Eventually they may be unable to recognize family members or even their own reflection in the mirror. Similarly, they may have normal tactile sensation, but be unable to identify objects placed in their hands by touch alone (e.g., a coin or keys)’ (p. 135). 21 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., p. 50. 22 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., p. 411. 23 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., p. 418. 24 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., pp. 418-419. 25 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., p. 615. 26 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, op. cit., p. 661. 27 Ibidem. 28 Ricœur, P., On Psychoanalysis, trans. by D. Pellauer, pref. by J.-L. Schlegel, postf. by V. Busacchi, Cambridge: Polity Press 2012, p. 96.

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See: Benjamin, J., Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge 1998. 30 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit. 31 Honneth, A., The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. by J. Anderson, Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press 1995 (Kampf um Anerkennung. Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1992). 32 There are no references to Ricœur in The Struggle for Recognition, nor in others previous works of Honneth, even though he has returned on the subject several times in the course of his long career. However, he never produced before 2004 an essay with a structured and systematic discussion capable in attracting Honneth’s interest. A one-way dialogue, then; although not devoid of connections, by virtue of the common reference to Hegel, and to Habermas. 33 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. X. 34 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. IX. 35 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 17. 36 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 186. 37 In his Introduction Honneth writes: ‘The second, theoretical part of the book (…) starts from the attempt to develop an empirical version of the Hegelian idea by drawing on the social psychology of G. H. Mead. In this way, an intersubjectivist concept of the person emerges, in which the possibility of an undistorted relation to oneself proves to be dependent on three forms of recognition: love, rights, and esteem’ (Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 1). 38 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 187. 39 ‘In the end, the programme of the philosophy of consciousness gained the upper hand, within Hegel’s thought, over all intersubjectivist insights to such an extent that ultimately, in the final stage of the formative process, even its substantive content had to be conceived completely according to the pattern of a self-relation of Spirit’ (Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 62). 40 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 17. 41 Ibidem. 42 Ibidem. 43 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 18. 44 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 24. 45 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 70. He writes: ‘Mead’s unsystematic social psychology … exhibits parallels with Hegel’s early work even with regard to the core issue that interests us here: Mead also aims to make the struggle for recognition the point of reference for a theoretical construction in terms of which the moral development of society is to be explained’ (p. 71). 46 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 94. 47 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 98. 48 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., pp. 98-99. 49 As Honneth writes, ‘this fundamental level of emotional confidence – not only in the experience of needs and feelings, but also in their expression – which the intersubjective experience of love helps to bring about, constitutes the

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psychological precondition for the development of all further attitudes of selfrespect’ (Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 107). 50 It should be noted that Honneth develops his theory by keeping Hegel’s three phases and, with them, a progressive idea of the development of recognition. Ricœur does not do the same, because in order to support his argument of mutual recognition via the gift he breaks up the dialectical movement of the three phases bringing affectivity only at the end. He writes: ‘the struggle for recognition would lose itself in the unhappy consciousness if it were not given to humans to be able to accede to an actual, albeit symbolic, experience of mutual recognition, following the model of the reciprocal ceremonial gift’ (Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 153). 51 Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 107. 52 ‘We can … proceed from the hypothesis that all love relationships are driven by the unconscious recollection of the original experience of merging that characterized the first months of life for ‘mother’ and child. The inner state of symbiotic oneness so radically shapes the experiential scheme of complete satisfaction that it keeps alive, behind the back of the subject and throughout the subject’s life, the desire to be merged with another person. Of course, this desire for merging can only become a feeling of love once, in the unavoidable experience of separation, it has been disappointed in such a way that it henceforth includes the recognition of the other as an independent person’ (Honneth, A., The Struggle of Recognition, op. cit., p. 105). 53 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 151. 54 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 190. 55 Ricœur, P., On Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 96. 56 See: Ricœur, P., On Psychoanalysis, op. cit., pp. 74-83. 57 Ricœur, P., On Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 84. 58 See: Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 153-161. 59 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., pp. 89-109. 60 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 2. 61 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. IX. 62 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. XI. 63 See: Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 249. 64 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 69. 65 Ricœur, P., The Conflict of Interpretations, Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1974 (Le conflit des interprétations. Essai d'herméneutique I, Paris: Seuil 1969) pp. 236-237. 66 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. by D. Savage, New Haven and London, Yale University Press 1970 (De l'interprétation. Essai sur Freud, Paris: Seuil 1965), p. 472. 67 Ibidem. 68 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, op. cit., p. 477. 69 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, op. cit., p. 478. 70 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, op. cit., p. 485. 71 P. Ricœur, On Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 96.

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Kojève, A., Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. by A. Bloom, trans. by J. H. Nichols, Jr., Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1980 (Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, Paris: Gallimard 1947), p. 7. 73 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 257. 74 Ricœur, P., Living Up to Death, trans. by D. Pellauer, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2009 (Vivant jusqu’à la mort, Paris: Seuil 2007), p. 90. 75 The very term, inter-action, directly connects to the notion of action, or rather to the notion of social action, basic in sociology since the time of Simmel and Weber. According to Weber’s definition (the founder of the social action theory), an ‘action is “social” insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course’ (Weber, M., Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 3 vols., ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, New York: Bedminster Press 1968 [Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, Tübingen 1922], p 4). 76 Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, Glencoe (IL): The Free Press 1949. 77 Mauss, M., The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. by I. Gunnison, New York: Norton & Co. 1967 (Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1925). 78 See, Ibidem; Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston: Beacon Press 1944; Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M. and Pearson H. W., Trade and Market in the Early Empires Economies in History and Theory, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company 1957. 79 Sahlins, M., Stone Age Economics, Chicago & New York: Aldine-Atherton 1972. 80 Luhmann, N., Social Systems, trans. by J. Bednarz, Jr. with D. Baecker, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995 (Soziale Systeme. Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1984). 81 Mead, G. H., Mind, Self and Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1934. 82 Blumer, H., Symbolic Interactionism, Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs 1969. 83 Hochschild, A. R., ‘Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure’, American Journal of Sociology, n. 85, (1979), pp. 551-575; Id., The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings, Berkeley: University of California Press 1983. 84 See, Kemper, Th. D., Emotions, in Borgatta, E. F., and Montgomery, R. J. V., Encyclopedia of Sociology, vol. 2, New York: Macmillan Reference USA 2000, pp. 772-788. 85 One cannot highlights the fact that a third issue, on the borderline between sociology and psychology, namely the question of socialization, has not received particular attention in the contemporary philosophies of recognition. But through Habermas’ philosophy of communicative action and through Ricœur’s approach to

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identity as a hermeneutic-emancipatory process of recognition we can develop a different perspective. 86 See, Schütz, A., The Phenomenology of the Social World, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press 1967. 87 See: Speech delivered on the occasion of the conferment of the Kyoto Prize, November 11, 2004, published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 11-12th 2004, now in: J. Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2005. 88 See: ‘The dialectics of rationalization: An interview with Jürgen Habermas’, Telos, 49, Fall Issue, 1981; reprinted in Dew, P. (ed.), Autonomy & Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, London: Verso 1992, pp. 95-130 (‘Dialektik der Rationalisierung’, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, n. 45/46, October 1981, pp. 126-155). 89 Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. by Th. McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press 1985³, p. 75 (Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Band 2: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1981). 90 Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 305. 91 McCarthy, Th., Habermas, Jürgen, in Borchert, D. M. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 4, Farmington Hills (MI): Thomson Gale 2006², p. 200. 92 See: Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, op. cit., p. 119. 93 McCarthy, Th., Translator’s Introduction, in Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1. Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. by Th. McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press 1984 (Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, Band 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 1981), p. XX. 94 McCarthy, Th., Translator’s Introduction, op. cit., p. X. 95 Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action, op. cit., p. 10. 96 Ricœur, P., ‘The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy’, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, (1986), n. 3, pp. 437-458; now in Ricœur, P., On Psychoanalysis, trans. by D. Pellauer, Cambridge: Polity Press 2012, pp. 73-93 97 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, in Ibidem, pp. 201-210. 98 Kohut, H., How does Analysis Cure?, ed. by A. Goldberg and P. Stepansky, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1984. 99 See: Ricœur, P., The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy, op. cit., p. 73. 100 Ricœur reminds us his essay of 1965 establishing the homology of method: ‘I will assume the same attitude that I held when I was writing Freud and Philosophy, namely, to let myself be instructed by analytic experience in order to learn what it can teach us about what philosophical reflection cannot draw from its own grounds’ (Ibidem). 101 Ibidem. 102 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy, op. cit., p. 61.

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Ricœur, P., La componente narrativa della psicoanalisi, in Jervolino, D., Martini G. (eds.), Paul Ricœur e la psicoanalisi. Testi scelti, Milano: Franco Angeli 2007, p. 146. 104 See: Ricœur, P., The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy, op. cit., p. 93. 105 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 204. 106 Ricœur, P., The Self in Psychoanalysis and in Phenomenological Philosophy, op. cit., p. 82. 107 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 204. 108 See: Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., pp. 204-205. 109 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 207. 110 See: Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 208. 111 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 202. 112 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 208. 113 See: Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 202. 114 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 203. 115 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 204. 116 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 206. 117 Ricœur, P., Narrative: Its Place in Psychoanalysis, op. cit., p. 207. 118 This Kantian formulation, on which is based the idea of universal human rights, is accepted in the field of practical philosophy even by those who reject the category of ‘recognition’ (although the latter is now firmly tied to the formula of ‘equal dignity and respect’). One scholar who has built a theory on that conception is Thomas Scanlon (Scanlon, Th., What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press 1998; Id., Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame, Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press 2008). 119 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press 2006, p. 3. 120 Brandom, R., ‘The Structure of Desire and Recognition. Self-consciousness and Self-constitution’, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 33, (2007), [pp. 127-150], p. 136. 121 See: Honneth, A., The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, op. cit.; chapter 5 - Patterns of Intersubjective Recognition: Love, Rights, and Solidarity, pp. 92-130. 122 Fraser, N., Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition, London: Routledge 1997; Id., ‘Rethinking Recognition’, New Left Review, n.3, (2000), pp. 107-120; Id., ‘Recognition without Ethics?’, Theory, Culture and Society, 18, n. 2-3, pp. 21-42. See also: Lovell, T. (ed.), (Mis)recognition, Social Inequality and Social Justice: Nancy Fraser and Pierre Bourdieu, London / New York: Routledge 2007. 123 Fraser, N., ‘Re-framing Justice in a Globalizing World’, in T. Lovell (ed.), (Mis)recognition, Social Inequality and Social Justice, op. cit., [pp. 17-35], p. 19. 124 Ibidem. 125 See: Fraser, N., ‘Distorted Beyond All Recognition. A Rejoinder to Axel Honneth’, in N. Fraser, A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, London: Verso 2003, [pp. 198-236] pp. 214-215.

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Fraser, N., ‘Re-framing Justice in a Globalizing World’, op. cit., p. 18. Gutmann, A. (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press 1994. 128 Kallen, H. P., Culture and Democracy in the United States, New York: Arno Press 1924. 129 MacIntyre, A., After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, London: G. Duckworth 1981. 130 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press 1971. 131 See: Xanthaki, A., ‘Multiculturalism and International Law: Discussing Universal Standards’, Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 32, n. 1, (2010), pp. 21-48. 132 We have to give full reason to Patchen Markell, who considers ‘multicultural exchanges of recognition as instruments through which many contemporary states and their citizens attempt to reconstruct sovereign agency in an era marked both by pronounced anxiety about “difference” in liberal societies, and by a heightened sensitivity to these societies’ own histories of injustice in relations of identity and difference’ (Markell, P., Bound by Recognition, Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press 2003, p. 153. 133 Tolstoj, L., The Kingdom of God is within You, trans. by C. Granett, New York 1894. 134 See: Urbain, O., Daisaku Ikeda’s Philosophy of Peace. Dialogue, Transformation and Global Citizenship, London / New York: Tauris & Co. 2010. 135 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 20. 136 Ibidem. 137 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, in Gutmann, A. (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 26. 138 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., pp. 26-27. 139 ‘In those earlier societies, what we would now call identity was largely fixed by one’s social position. That is, the background that explained what people recognized as important to themselves was to a great extent determined by their place in society, and whatever roles or activities attached to this position’ (Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 31). 140 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 32. 141 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., pp. 32-33. 142 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 34. 143 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 64. 144 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 37. 145 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 38. 146 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 43. 147 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 44. 148 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 61. 149 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 57. 150 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 56. 151 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 62. 152 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 64. 153 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 67. 127

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Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 68. Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 71. 156 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 72. 157 ‘Fraser’s assumption seems to be that all conceptions of self-realization express a particular ethical vision … I would suggest that “ethical-psychological” is quite a peculiar coupling: while the former element refers to normative values, the latter refers to the nature of the individual psyche. It seems likely that Fraser makes such an intimate connection between them since she believes that Taylor and Honneth move directly from the “psychological” to the “ethical” – from an account of the individual psyche to normative conclusions. … I see no reason in principle why he could not start from psychological premisses and get to moral rather than ethical conclusions’ (Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., pp. 3839). 158 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 56. 159 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 59. 160 Ibidem. 161 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 60. 162 ‘Taylor should make the link between horizons of value and their material contexts more explicit, in order to avoid accusations that his account is too abstract and idealist’ (Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 101). 163 Thompson, S., The Political Theory of Recognition, op. cit., p. 127. 164 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, trans. by K. Blamey, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press 1995 (Soi-même comme un autre, Paris: Seuil 1990), p. 170. 165 Ibidem. 166 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 203. 167 Ibidem. 168 Ibidem. 169 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 249. 170 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 250. 171 Ibidem. 172 Ibidem. 173 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 262. 174 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 274. 175 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 280. 176 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 282. 177 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 287. 178 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 288-289. 179 Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, Paris: Esprit 2001. 180 Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., p. 267. 181 See: Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., pp. 267-268. 182 Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., p. 268. 183 See: Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., pp. 275-276. 184 ‘Habermas, comme Rawls, peut tirer argument de la multiplicité des conceptions du bien dans une société comme la nôtre caractérisée par le fait du pluralisme; c’est donc en dehors de ce conflit que l’on doit chercher les règles d’un 155

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accord possible; mais où les chercher, sinon à l’intérieur même de la pratique langagière?’ (Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., p. 276). 185 Ricœur, P., Le Juste 2, op. cit., p. 285. 186 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 248. 187 Ricœur, P., The Course of Recognition, op. cit., p. 69. 188 See: Simon Kunnath, A. M., De l'homme faillible à l'homme de la reconnaissance. Une relecture de l'anthropologie herméneutique de Paul Ricœur, Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex: ANRT, 2009 [doctoral thesis]. 189 Ricœur, P., Freud and Philosophy, op. cit., p. 46. 190 Ricœur, P., Oneself as Another, op. cit., p. 114n. 191 Taylor, Ch., The Politics of Recognition, op. cit., p. 72.

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