Since its proposal in The Struggle for Recognition, the emancipatory potential of Axel Honneth's (1995) Hegelian interpretation of recognition has been called into question. Mainly, Honneth's defence of recognition as a normative ideal or telos to be attained has been significantly critiqued by feminist Foucauldian critical theorists (see Allen 2010; Butler 1997; McNay 2008a, 2008b) for undermining how recognition itself can be a conduit for malevolent ideological and subordinating ends. As a result, some critical theorists have argued for the ambivalence of recognition, where recognition is understood to take on contradictory and somewhat opposing ends. We see this most recently in the edited volume by Heikki Ikäheimo and colleagues (2021) titled Recognition and Ambivalence, where the assumption central to Honneth's earlier conception of recognition, which argues that it plays an unambiguously positive role on individuals is called into question, bringing into view how recognition can also be a conduit for ideology and antithetical to the self-realisation of those who seek it or are objects of it.
A concern arises with the ambivalence critiques of recognition, however, that makes one question the emancipatory utility of the concept altogether. This concern especially arises when we consider how conferring recognition can insidiously result in the reassertion of structures of social domination and oppressive ideology. This is a serious concern for those committed to the centrality of recognition in critical theory, in that any account of recognition that seeks to obfuscate or omit how recognition could be a conduit for oppressive power cannot be a useful one for the normative purposes of critical theory. What is needed is a conception of recognition that admits and allows for sufficient scepticism around its deployment and conferrals in a given society. For Hegelians who are interested in demonstrating the indispensability of Hegelian recognition in critical theory, I contend that the most promising approach would be to return to the later Hegel of the Phenomenology of Spirit ([1807] 1977; see Pinkard 2023) and Philosophy of Right ([1821] 1991) to engage in an exegesis of Hegel's discussion of the concept that unburdens it from the various incorrect teleological interpretative inferrals of it that have been made. I suggest here that we take Hegel to provide us with a strictly functional conception of recognition which does not necessarily require positioning it as a normative ideal as a means of demonstrating, contra Honneth, that Hegelian recognition lends itself to the support of the ambivalence insights as opposed to being subject to their critiques.
To combat the increasing dubiousness of the recognition concept in critical theory, I propose, after a brief exegetical turn to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, that we bring into question Honneth's own understanding of the recognition concept. With the help of parts of Timothy Brownlee's (2022) recent treatment of the concept of recognition in his book Recognition and the Self in Hegel, I exegetically demonstrate that Honneth provides what is an untenable reading of recognition simply because he fails to remain committed to the inherent functionalism that Hegel ascribes to the concept. Hegelians should and can, through a careful exegesis of the Phenomenology of Spirit, rescue the utility of recognition in critical theory by articulating recognition as a necessary but undoubtedly protean tool in the constitution and formation of a self in the social world. Under this interpretation of recognition, recognition is not domination as critics like Amy Allen (2010) would purport, but is more appropriately understood as a kind of necessary tool for actuality that can be appropriated for dominating ends. With a reintroduction of the concept of actuality as a crucial concept to understanding Hegelian recognition, we come to see that the appropriateness of recognition can then be determined by the extent to which it fulfils its function, which is to deliver on the actuality of individuals in the social world.
Honneth's Conception of Recognition as a Normative Ideal
In The Struggle for Recognition,1 Honneth (1995) mainly aims to explain the nature of social conflicts and effectively account for why these conflicts happen. Honneth immediately associates the reason for the emergence of social conflicts with the conditions for forming personal identity and a subgroup's failure to meet their expectations of mutual recognition. For Honneth, social conflicts happen because of a ‘violation of deeply rooted expectations regarding recognition’ (1995: 163). What is crucial for Honneth is that said individuals must engage intersubjectively with others, where sharing experiences and having feelings of indignation established as typical for a specific group with a shared identity is crucial (1995: 163). Honneth states that, in social conflicts, ‘we are dealing here with a practical process in which individual experiences of disrespect are read as typical for an entire group, and in such a way that they can motivate collective demands for expanded relations of recognition’ (1995: 162).
These feelings of moral indignation, Honneth argues, follow from the perception that an injustice has occurred qua having one's expectations for recognition not met. What is important to note is that to experience moral indignation is for a subgroup of individuals to find themselves being unjustly treated relative to how they expect to be treated in their recognition relations with others. That is, it must be the case that one group experiences themselves as having recognition or affirmation of who they are unjustly withheld from them (Honneth 1995: 165). According to Honneth, one must interpret the injustice of experiencing a lack of recognition within the context of the historical development of relations of recognition in the social world. As Honneth states: ‘The significance of each particular struggle is measured in terms of the positive or negative contribution that each has been able to make to the realisation of undistorted forms of recognition’ (1995: 170). Considering this, we can explain feelings of unjust treatment as warranted in the social struggle for recognition in so far as the envisaged recognition would contribute positively to the moral progress of furthering undistorted and unrestricted recognition. Here, we see that the telos is the attainment of undistorted recognition patterns as a normative ideal.
Honneth's treatment of recognition in The Struggle for Recognition has mainly been read as having certain teleological pretensions, where recognition is articulated as a moral goal to be attained and whose attainment is also synonymous with the self-realisation of an individual and an enhancement of their autonomy. The attainment of recognition is articulated as normatively good for the individual, where its absence is also considered to be tantamount to an injustice. As Ikäheimo and colleagues note, Honneth's account of recognition in The Struggle for Recognition seemingly depends on a dichotomy between ‘recognition as a relation between self and other that affects individual lives for the better and disrespect as a relation . . . that affects individual lives for the worse’ (2021: 3). In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth (1995) argues for the positive normative significance of recognition, maintaining that recognition ought to be granted based on its positive contribution to moral progress, which is itself measured according to the extent that recognition relations are perfected to guarantee freedom, autonomy and self-realisation for all. The Honneth of The Struggle for Recognition has mainly been decisively read as taking the attainment of recognition to make a positive emancipatory contribution – particularly given how he associates the attainment of recognition as a moral good about moral progress and how its lack animates the reasons behind social conflict. This interpretation of Honneth is one that he has continued to be committed to – often reiterating the importance of retaining recognition's role as a normative ideal in critical theory (see Honneth 2007a, 2007b).
However, the trouble with positioning disrespect (the relational undermining of individuals’ autonomy and self-realisation) as a relation contrary to recognition relations is that it leaves out a third possibility, where recognition relations do not necessarily affect individual lives for the better but further enable disrespectful relations. Disrespectful relations are those relations that undermine individual self-realisation and autonomy – including those of social subordination.
Ambivalence Critiques against Honneth's Recognition
Feminist critical theorists like Lois McNay (2008a, 2008b), Allen (2010) and Judith Butler (1997, 2021a, 2021b) have demonstrated that Honneth's distinction between recognition and disrespect may have been drawn too quickly, claiming that Honneth's treatment of recognition in his earlier work is overly optimistic about the nature of recognition in the social world. McNay (2008b), in her book Against Recognition, targets Honneth's view that social conflicts should be understood within the normative context of a historical development towards perfect (undistorted) patterns of recognition in the social world. She argues that such accounts, which depend on the normative ideal of recognition significantly, underplay the effects of power appropriating recognition patterns in creating and maintaining subordination in the social world (2008b: 8). The closest that Honneth (2007b) may get to accounting for malevolent power is a rather cushioned understanding of injustice as not having your expectations of recognition met by others, as opposed to a discussion of how one could be structurally prohibited by others, who are in dominant positions of power, from fulfilling one's self-realisation. Simply, as McNay puts it: ‘The idea of recognition obscures the extent to which identity and subjectivity are penetrated by structural dynamics of power’ (2008b: 9).
Butler (2021a, 2021b) has also raised their pessimism about recognition as an ethical ideal, expressing scepticism about whether recognition and disrespect can be separated. For Butler, once we take into full account power and particularly the dominating and ideological aspects of power, there arises the possibility of recognition relations that are both dominating and ideological in nature – demonstrating how one could be recognised at the cost of one's autonomy and the maintenance of a negative self-relation. Furthermore, in her work The Psychic Life of Power, Butler uses the Foucauldian subjectivation thesis and various Althusserian traditions to link recognition with subjection, where recognition is argued to be best understood as ambivalent in that it paradoxically conditions the possibility of autonomy whilst also initiating and subjecting individuals under power and dominating social relations (1997: 9).
Taking on a Hegelian explanation for what happens at the moment at which the individual is constituted as a subject, Butler (1997: 10) argues that the desire for recognition is exploited by power, where the price of admission to being a subject is a ‘mandatory submission’ to power which structures the discourses around what counts as a recognisable subject in the social world. Therefore, subordination and ideological interpellation can occur even in the face of the achievement of recognition, as recognition can be a conduit through which relations of social domination that serve to continue subordinating people are maintained. Much of the critiques of Honneth's view of recognition have focused on power and ideology in order to press the sometimes-harmful role that can be played by recognition, or at least how recognition can be accompanied by malevolent ends antithetical to an individual's self-realisation and autonomy.
Of course, one could attempt to save the normative ideal of recognition by denying the claim that the moment at which one is constituted as a subject necessarily constitutes a moment of subordination. One such avenue is opened up by another sceptic of the optimistic readings of recognition, Allen (2010), who critiques Butler for conflating vulnerability, dependence and subordination in their conception of subjectivation. Allen claims: ‘Butler does not distinguish between actual subordination of the subject and vulnerability to subordination that is inherent in the process of subjection’ (2010: 27). Here, one could argue that the moment one becomes constituted as a subject is better understood as a moment of vulnerability which can be exploited such that one can become subordinated in the process. A distinction between vulnerability and outright subordination creates room to conceive of varying forms of recognition at the moment of being constituted as a subject that could either be subordinating or not. As I will later demonstrate, this gap between vulnerability and subjection is one that I think is maintained in my reading of Hegel's social theory and the process of becoming an Individualität (“individuality”) in the social world.
Even if we do not accept Butler's thesis that the moment where one is constituted as a subject through recognition is necessarily one where one is subordinated, we cannot ignore that the treatment of recognition as an ideal is significantly undermined by how it can be manipulated in service of the reproduction of relations of power-as-domination. In Against Recognition, McNay argues that recognition often plays the role of reproducing structures of social domination by enticing subjects to enter into unjust and unequal social relations, with some occupying positions of oppression under the promise that they will attain actuality and a determinate existence (2008b: 8). In particular, McNay encourages us to focus on the insidious nature in which social domination operates, such that even seemingly positive and morally justified forms of recognition can just turn out to be a way in which social domination seeks to reassert itself. Here, we should perhaps even be sceptical of forms of recognition that appear good. Citing the recognition of housework as work, for instance, McNay considers how such seemingly positive and morally justifiable forms of recognition work consistently with subordinating gender ideology.
Neutralising the Recognition Concept: A Brief Exegetical Return to Hegel
What we witness from the ambivalence critiques is a serious question of whether the achievement of recognition, as Hegelians like Robert Pippin (2007, 2008) and Honneth would like to believe, is a normative ideal whose attainment is good for the individual. Recognition can be accompanied by or even be a Trojan Horse for maintaining subordinating and oppressive ideological social relations. This risks optimistic readings of recognition being inadvertently implicit in perpetuating the work of malevolent power. For Hegelians committed to the centrality of recognition in critical theory, Honneth's concept of recognition makes its utility largely questionable in fulfilling the emancipatory potential of critical theory. As such, there is a need to reestablish the centrality of the Hegelian concept of recognition, which, in my view, comes with neutralising the exaggerated and optimistically normative readings of recognition in favour of a functionalist account of recognition. With this return to Hegel's recognition, we will establish its necessity in a manner compatible with the ambivalence it can assume when interacting with power.
Hegel claims that ‘self-consciousness is desire in general’ (PhG §167).2 What interpreters of Hegel have taken to be desired is the recognition of the other (Honneth 1995; Pippin 2008). I take it that this motivates the treatment of recognition as a goal or normative ideal to be attained. However, such an interpretation is largely incompatible with the comprehensive process of establishing self-consciousness. What a consciousness ultimately desires is not recognition but to establish its self-certainty or actuality regarding the being that it is. By ‘certainty’, I mean that we should take a consciousness to ultimately desire to affirm for itself the fact that what it takes itself to be is something that has an independent reality outside of its mere self-takings, demonstrating that what it takes itself to be is not a matter of mere fiction but a matter of fact about the world. As such, each consciousness, in order to be self-conscious, must attain the epistemic condition of self-certainty and the ontological condition of actuality, where the successful attainment of self-consciousness reflects its unquestionable understanding of what it is as a self and its complete freedom to be what it is in the social world as a being with actuality.
Understanding self-certainty and actuality to be what is desired – that is, the desiderata of a conscious being – we can understand recognition by the other to be that which, according to Hegel, can bring about the attainment of consciousness of a self as a self. Recognition is therefore best understood as instrumental or functionally necessary to attain the desiderata of self-certainty and actuality that make one adequately self-conscious.
Two self-consciousnesses need to see each other as capable of affirming and confirming the reality of their projections. Hegel importantly states that ‘self-consciousness is aware that it at once is, and is not, another consciousness, and equally that this other is for itself only when it supersedes itself as being for itself, and is for itself only in the being for itself of the other’ (PhG §184). In Hegel's Master–Slave dialectic, or more so the struggle to the death, we are told that each self-consciousness starts in its immediacy as pure being-for-self. It is only concerned with furthering its existence, being whatever it takes itself to be and doing whatever it wants. This has consequences for how it initially interacts with the other self-consciousness. The initial self-consciousness interacts with the other in so far as the other self-consciousness furthers its projection, such that the other is only available to be used or destroyed by the initial self-consciousness (PhG §186). However, in pursuing its being-for-self, the self-consciousness necessarily needs to be embodied – it must be for something. This means that the desire that each initial consciousness has in its being-for is for being-in; they each seek to be determinate beings who seek to be what they take themselves to be and bring actuality to that which they have projected into the world. It is here where the struggle to the death emerges. When encountering each other, the initial self-consciousnesses desire to make sure that what they project is what they are in truth. As Hegel states: ‘They must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth’ (PhG §187).
Why was this discussion of self-consciousness even necessary? A key takeaway from this brief, seemingly tangential discussion of self-consciousness is to demonstrate how exactly recognition figures in Hegel's social theory. The most appropriate reading of recognition here is to see it as a conduit, tool or instrument necessary for an individual's attainment of actuality – that is, the concretisation of the being that one is in truth. Notably, the only thing we can decipher from Hegel's treatment of recognition is that it plays a necessary role in establishing the actuality of one's self. The conception of recognition is hence minimal and does not necessarily have any normative pretensions of it being a normative ideal in particular. Recognition is instead normative in the very minimal sense. It is an intersubjective relation whose conferrals and acceptance will involve the deployment of norms regarding humanness and what constitutes the socially real. The closest to what I consider the most appropriate treatment of Hegelian recognition is Brownlee's (2022) treatment of recognition, where he argues against the treatment of recognition as a normative goal or ultimate telos in Hegelian scholarship. Brownlee (2022), in Recognition and the Self in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, reminds us that for Hegel recognition is only the process or the act or deed through which self-consciousness is attained, not the aim of self-consciousness. Therefore, articulating it in the context of the establishment of self-consciousness, recognition is best understood as the conduit through which one attains self-knowledge and hence self-consciousness (Brownlee 2022: 59). From this, I maintain that we should resist thinking of recognition in two ways: first as a goal that, when attained, constitutes our self-actualisation and second as a strongly normative ideal in the first place. I instead support a functionalist conception or, more strongly, an interpretation of recognition as an instrumental good.
Brownlee begins by making it clear what the connection between recognition and self-consciousness is. For Brownlee (2022: 34), we should understand self-consciousness as the experiential process of the I attaining self-knowledge, which is itself constituted and achieved through the I partaking in the activity of mutual recognition. Here, the key claim is that we should instead focus on the shapes of consciousness that Hegel discusses and look at how each of them make a distinct claim to self-knowledge that is key to the process of attaining self-consciousness. The main way in which Brownlee distinguishes his interpretation of self-consciousness from those of his contemporaries lies in his view on preceding interpreters’ treatment of desire in accounts of self-consciousness. Brownlee takes on prior canonical interpretations, including those of Brandom and Pippin, to overdetermine the role of desire in Hegel's self-consciousness, looking mainly at how they cast recognition as a form of desire which must be satisfied in another self-consciousness.
What Brownlee is pointing towards here is what he considers to be a misinterpretation of Hegel on self-consciousness by pointing to how recognition is not the goal which attains results in self-consciousness, nor the thing which is ultimately desired by self-consciousness. Recognition is in an important sense a new way of consciousness coming to know itself, mediated by the new object which can secure its self-knowledge: another self-consciousness (Brownlee 2022: 59). Brownlee reminds us that for Hegel recognition is only the process or the act or deed through which self-consciousness is attained, not the aim of self-consciousness. Recognition is the conduit through which one attains self-knowledge and hence self-consciousness (2022: 59). In recognition, consciousness comes to see that securing its independence requires it to affirm its constitutive dependence on another self-consciousness, where it can only attain self-knowledge and self-certainty through the negating activity of another self-negating being like itself (2022: 61). Recognition, for Brownlee, contributes to our self-knowledge and attainment of actuality, positioning recognition as at best an instrumental aim that's only normative in the functional sense of whether it can secure self-consciousness or not.
The Functionalist Recognition Concept: Constitutive Necessity and Allowance for Ambivalence
Through the normative neutralisation of recognition, we see that recognition is best understood minimally and functionally as a conduit or step in achieving self-certainty and actuality. That is, it is the necessary means through which one comes to exist as they should and affirm the independence of their self-takings in the social world. What is important to reiterate is that the attainment of actuality without recognition is an impossibility, in that self-consciousnesses ontologically need the social reality of our self-takings to be affirmed and confirmed in the social world. In what follows, I want to reassert the constitutive necessity of recognition and demonstrate the basis through which we can raise questions about its ambivalence in the first instance. Suppose I am correct in my view that recognition is best understood as an instrument through which the actuality and self-certainty of an individual's self-takings are attained. In that case, we may have a conception of recognition that retains its necessity to individual self-realisation that also allows us to be adequately open to the potentially contradictory ways it can be appropriated in the process of an individual's self-realisation and attainment of actuality. Demonstrating the ontological necessity of recognition to the self-actualisation of the individual is essential, in that it reflects the indispensability of the concept in articulating the possibility of the self-actualisation of social beings.
[The] I is the transition from undifferentiated indeterminacy to differentiation, determination, and the positing of a determinacy as a content and object – This content may further be given by nature, or generated by the concept of Spirit. Through this positing of itself as something determinate, I steps into existence in general – the absolute moment of the finitude and particularization of the I. (PoR §6)
For Hegel, this transition of the ‘I’ is an instance where the I aims to determine and actualise itself as a concrete self. But perhaps in the most simplistic terms, what Hegel seems to be stating above is that one of the first things that we as ‘I's’ do is establish who we are, that which makes me distinctly me. The idea of positing a content or object in this instance can be taken to be synonymous with instantiating an identity as that which I am. It is to make its identity its object – the first thing that the I (at least attempts) to establish from its free state or the purpose of the process of self-negation being its identity.
The gaily coloured world is before me, I stand opposed to it, and in this relation I cancel and transcend the opposition, and make the content (of the social world) my own. The I is at home in the world, when it knows it, and still more when it has conceived it. (PoR §4, emphasis added)
At the moment of transition, there lies a pivotal encounter with the world and others in it that an I has, which involves its encountering the world as already coloured or populated with significances and content. The world is already populated with varying versions of what it is to be human, ways of being, norms and so forth that will play an essential role in shaping who I am and who I become. In this way, the existence of a social order precedes all those who enter it. Hegel can articulate that the transition to being a determinate I is marked by a desire for determinacy which can only be attained through the deed of recognition by others who share in the social world. To seek to be determinate is to opt for a concrete and independent social existence which can only be animated by something that is not in your control, as we saw in how the self-certainty of an individual is established (at least objectively from the individual). Perhaps, at its basis, the constitutive power is precisely the heteronomy of the social world over the I being what the I itself opts for to become someone or be determinate. In this sense, the social world that one must be affirmed by to be a determinate I is itself the power that acts on the individual at the moment of self-constitution as a guarantor of actuality or determinacy in this world. This is the insight we see in Butler's (1997) The Psychic Life of Power.
It would be a mistake to take power at this constitutive moment to be necessarily subordinating and problematic tout court, and there two reasons why. First, it is important to note that the power administered through recognition as the heteronomy of the social world on the individual is demonstrated by Hegel to be a logical necessity for the possibility of a social existence. There is simply no social existence for the I without the I determining itself through the existing social world and without its existence being affirmed independently of itself in the social world. If it is determinacy you desire as an I, the only way to be determinate is to use the social world as you find it to shape an understanding of who you are. As such, I take it that Butler's (1997: 7) claim that the I chooses to be subordinated rather than not to exist may perhaps be an overdramatisation of what happens here – at least formally. There is an aspect of our relation to the social world that is a logical necessity to become determinate. What I am gesturing towards here is similar to Allen's critique of Butler's subjectivation thesis, where the constitutive role of recognition demonstrates our necessary dependence on the social world for our actuality as individuals.
Recognition as power is not necessarily subordinating and problematic at the constitutive moment because the power that acts upon us need not be heteronomous in the traditionally problematised sense. It is possible to see power as subordinating us from the constituting moment, like Butler does, if one considers the social world's constitutive effect on us to amount to a heteronomous limitation of our freedom tout court. For Hegel, however, something quite different occurs at the moment of constitution. What we witness at the moment of constitution is not a limitation of freedom but what is meant to be an enhancement, transmutation and sublation of our freedom. For Hegel, we are only, in principle, arbitrarily free before being induced into the social world. This arbitrary freedom comes with indeterminacy and an existence as mere contingent possibility. Therefore, the moment of constitution is an opportunity for an I to move from arbitrary to more substantial concrete freedom – that is, to begin its journey towards freedom as actuality. What is therefore drawn here is a conceptual distinction between our dependence on the world and our subordination to it, where the former can be more strictly articulated as the social world's acting upon us to offer us determinate existence and the latter involving the production of relations of enablements and disablements between individuals which structure dominant and subordinated social positionings.
The transmutation involves ‘the activity of the will . . . cancelling (aufzuheben) the contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity and in translating its ends from their subjective determination into an objective one, whilst at the same time remaining with itself in this objectivity’ (PoR §28). To be free as someone, the intervention of the social world is necessary in that it retains the positive aspects of arbitrary freedom (choice, particularity) but overcomes the limitations (indeterminacy, mere potentiality) by moving the individual away from being arbitrarily free to being free in their capacity as a determinate individual with content. Therefore, the intervention of the social world in an I's transition to determinacy is simply a move from freedom as potentiality to what promises to be the beginning of one's journey towards freedom as actuality. What is crucial here is that the constitutive element of power and hence the purpose of recognition has inherent in it the promise that it will deliver our actuality through the process of recognition – that is, that it will result in one existing as one should in the social world or having what Hegel calls Individualität. This promise also motivates I's transition to determinacy through interaction with a social world that precedes its very existence.
Having reiterated the constitutive necessity of the recognition process, we can now move to how the functionalist conception of recognition enables us to consider the sentiments of ambivalence discussed against Honneth's recognition. In Hegelian terms, the power and recognition relation becomes problematic when it fails to fulfil or deliver on its constitutive promise of delivering actuality to the I, which it plays a role in determining. As I stated above, the prevailing social order as power makes its constitutive intervention on the subject under the auspices that it will guarantee that one will have actuality in the social world – that is, that the I will exist as the individual that it should in the social world. Power can constitute the individual in a manner that makes them exist in a non-actual way. We should take it that the problematic aspects of power brought about by the inability to secure actuality are historically contingent aspects about the constitutive role of power. Power does not need to always be subordinating. Instead, power is only subordinating when brought about by a social order or social recognition relations that cannot deliver on actuality. Power becomes problematic when the structures of the social world distort an individual's relation to their actuality. This is precisely problematic because of Sittlichkeit-as-power's failure to secure the actuality of its members.
When we hear the Idea spoken of, we need not imagine something far away beyond this mortal sphere. The Idea is rather what is completely present: and it is found, however confused and degenerated, in every consciousness. (The Logic §213)
Hegelian concepts of actuality and the Idea are crucial in articulating what we think goes awry in recognition patterns, such that recognition ends up facilitating subordinating power. When critical theorists consider what should be the case and perhaps what might be wrong with subordinating, they can be said to be deploying an appeal to the Idea as the normative standard, as opposed to the lack of recognition, in accounting for the deficiencies brought about by the self. Subordination facilitates a social reality that does not rightly constitute what it is to be human – it dampens the actuality of individuals by precluding them from their being-in-truth. We see recognition-as-subordination bringing about a social existence for individuals that does not match the Idea.
Allen (2010), in her essay ‘Recognizing Domination’, asks us to consider the counterexample of a girl named Elizabeth. Elizabeth's parents take her to be the best child in the world, often telling her how beautiful, sweet and well-mannered she is. Elizabeth's parents are extremely supportive with whatever she wants to do, buying her the Barbie doll she wants and supporting her dream to become a ballerina by paying for her classes. In Allen's view, the parents quite clearly recognise Elizabeth, considering that they are very affirming and supporting of her and her budding individuality. However, Allen also notes that the parents may be having an inadvertently pernicious effect on Elizabeth by inadvertently perpetuating subordinating gender norms and stereotypes on Elizabeth in the process of affirming her as an individual. As Allen notes, Elizabeth ‘is receiving recognition and subordinating gender ideology in a single stroke’ (2010: 26). This counterexample was raised as an ambivalence critique against Honnethian recognition. However, it appears that the functionalist understanding of recognition is in fact the exact one that helps us make sense of Elizabeth's induction into subordinating gender ideology too, in that it fosters a particular social existence for Elizabeth. However, the normative concern has much more to do with whether this recognition results in existing as she should – that is, whether it secures her actuality. A critical theorist is committed to demonstrating how it is that the normative femininity that Elizabeth is inducted into, through recognition as its conduit, does not amount to how Elizabeth should exist. In my view, the Hegelian toolkit of a functionalist account of recognition, actuality and the Idea helps us articulate the workings of power on individuals in such a way that does not necessitate making emboldened claims about the inherent positive significance of recognition.
A functionalist account, in my view, admits to the constitutive necessity of recognition to the establishment and actualisation of a self whilst allowing for the deed to be used in a manner contrary to one's appropriate self-actualisation. A functionalist account allows for and even grounds the sentiments of ambivalence raised against Honneth's recognition, in that functionalist recognition remains not only necessary but also necessarily open to varying uses, even those that stray from its intended purpose of delivering our actuality as participants in the social world.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the research supported by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the University Staff Development Programme (USDP). All opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this article are my own, and its funders accept no liability whatsoever in this regard.
Notes
It is important to note that Honneth has made some iterations of his conception of recognition to make allowances for how power interacts with recognition. See his article ‘Recognition as Ideology’ (2007a). Allen (2010), in her essay ‘Recognizing Domination’, has raised very compelling critiques against Honneth's attempt to provide a taxonomy of ideological versus morally justifiable forms of recognition, arguing that the method of telling them apart (where ideological recognition does not make good on its ‘evaluative promise’) is not convincing. My intention in focusing on the earlier conception of recognition is to demonstrate that Honneth makes a crucial error in conceiving of recognition in the first instance, which explains his long-lasting commitment to recognition as a normative ideal.
All translations of Elements of the Philosophy of Right (PoR) and Phenomenology of Spirit (PhG) are from the books cited below.
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