Interpersonal Recognition and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences

Abstract This essay defends a three‐dimensional response‐model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three‐dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response‐model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation‐specific reasons and requirements. This three‐dimensional response‐model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay…

Personales Leben und menschlicher Tod: Personale Identität als Prinzip der biomedizinischen Ethik, by Michael Quante

Persoonuus, identiteetti ja etiikka Charles Taylorin, Alasdair MacIntyren ja Paul Ricoeurin filosofiassa

Taylor on Solidarity

After characterizing Taylor’s general approach to the problems of solidarity, we distinguish and reconstruct three contexts of solidarity in which this approach is developed: the civic, the socio-economic, and the moral. We argue that Taylor’s distinctive move in each of these contexts of solidarity is to claim that the relationship at stake poses normatively justified demands, which are motivationally demanding, but insufficiently motivating on their own. On Taylor’s conception, we need some understanding of extra motivational sources which explain why people do (or would) live up to the exacting demands. Taylor accepts that our self-understanding as members of either particular communiti…

1. Recognition And Social Ontology: An Introduction

One of Hegel's big ideas is that creatures with a self-conception are the subjects of developmental processes that exhibit a distinctive structure. Call a creature 'essentially self-conscious' if what it is for itself, its self- conception, is an essential element of what it is in itself. How something that is essentially self-conscious appears to itself is part of what it really is. This chapter shows how the tripartite account of erotic awareness can be used in a natural way to build a notion of recognition that satisfies these twin philosophical constraints on the interpretation of Hegel's notion of self-consciousness in terms of recognition. Doing so it clarifies the nature of the trans…

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Collective Intentionality and Recognition from Others

This paper approaches questions of collective intentionality by drawing inspiration from theories of recognition. After making some remarks about “recognition” and “groups” the paper examines whether the kind of dependence on recognition that holds of individual agents is equally true of group agents. In the debates on collective intentionality it is often stressed that the identity, existence, ethos, and membership-issues of the group are up to the group to decide. The members collectively accept (recognize) status functions, goals and beliefs for the group. This paper asks whether this thesis of “forgroupness” should be re-evaluated: could the status functions, goals and beliefs be in som…

Recognition and democracy – An introduction

This is an introduction to a special issue on recognition and democracy. We outline the constitutive and enabling relations between democracy and recognition. We distinguish between pre-political and political forms of identity and recognition, between horizontal and vertical forms of recognition, and between democratic and other ways or arranging the vertical and horizontal aspects of political life. We also distinguish between the roles of a subject and a co-author of law. The intruduction also includes an overview of the individual articles in this special issue. The issue tries to fill some theoretical gaps in theories of democracy and recognition, with a special emphasis on feminist p…

Yhteisö : filosofian näkökulmia yhteisöllisyyteen

Analyzing Recognition: Identification, Acknowledgement, and Recognitive Attitudes towards Persons

There is a wide consensus today that ‘recognition’ is something that we need a clear grasp of in order to understand the dynamics of political struggles and, perhaps, the constitution and dynamics of social reality more generally. Yet the discussions on recognition have so far often been conceptually rather inexplicit, in the sense that the key concepts have remained largely unexplicated or undefined. Since the English word ‘recognition’ is far from unambiguous, it is possible, and to our mind also actually the case, that different authors have meant different things with this word. In what follows, we will make a number of conceptual distinctions and clarificatory proposals that are intend…

Recognition, Identity, and Difference

This entry discusses three forms of politics of recognition: politics of universalism, affirmative identity politics, and deconstructive politics of difference. It examines the constitutive, causally formative, and normative role that recognition has for the relevant senses of universal standing, particular identity, and difference in these approaches. peerReviewed

Strong evaluation without sources : on Charles Taylor's philosophical anthropology and cultural moral realism

Kanadalaisen filosofin Charles Taylorin teorioihin perustuvassa väitöskirjassaan Arto Laitinen esittää, että inhimillinen toiminta, identiteetti ja persoonuus perustuvat ns. 'vahvoille arvostuksille'. Hän myös väittää, ettei vahvoille arvostuksille perustuva kulturalistinen ja ei-relativistinen etiikka tarvitse moraalisuuden lähteitä.Laitisen mukaan Taylor on oikeassa ajatellessaan, että ihmiset on 'tuomittu' tekemään arvoerotteluja, kun taas eläimet noudattavat luonnollisia päämääriään tai välittömiä halujaan ja impulssejaan. Inhimillinen toiminta perustuu väistämättä vahvoille arvostuksille. - Arkikokemuksen näkökulmasta on selvää, että ihmiset tekevät arvoarvostelmia. Filosofisesti vaati…

Voiko representaatioilla olla kahta vastaavuuden suuntaa?

Paul Ricoeur's Surprising Take on Recognition

This essay examines Paul Ricœur’s views on recognition in his book The Course of Recognition. It highlights those aspects that are in some sense surprising, in relation to his previous publications and the general debates on Hegelian Anerkennung and the politics of recognition. After an overview of Ricœur’s book, the paper examines the meaning of “recognition” in Ricœur’s own proposal, in the dictionaries Ricœur uses, and in the contemporary debates. Then it takes a closer look at the ideas of recognition as identification and as “taking as true.” Then it turns to recognition (attestation) of oneself, in light of the distinction between human constants (and the question “What am I?”), and h…