Alle Publikationen
2018
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(2018): Li Zehou's notion of subjectality as a new conception of the human self. In: Philosophy Compass 13 (5). DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12484
Abstract: Li Zehou stands among the most influential Chinese philosophers in the post-Mao era. His notion of subjectality(zhutixing) is of paramount importance for current developments in contemporary Chinese philosophy. It belongs to the central concepts in Li's theoretical framework, around which his entire philosophical system is constructed. With his elaboration of this concept, Li expanded the problem of the self in post-revolutionary modernism. The present article analyzes the theoretical bases of this concept, exposes its importance in the scope of contemporary Chinese theory and shows why and how it represents a call for a new humanism. Through a multidimensional comparative perspective, the author also explains why the human subject, which is based upon Li's notion of subjectality, has the potential not only to transform (post-)modern alienation into a real human condition, that is, into spiritually fulfilled society of autonomous individuals but also to fill up the prevailing vacuum of values.
2017
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(2017): To be or Not to be Authentic. In Defence of Authenticity as an Ethical Ideal. In: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (3), S. 567-580. DOI: 10.1007/s10677-017-9803-4
Abstract: It has recently been pointed out that the cloudiness of the concept of authenticity as well as inflated ideologies of the 'true self' provide good reasons to criticize theories and ideals of authenticity. Nevertheless, there are also good reasons to defend an ethical ideal of authenticity, not least because of its critical and oppositional force, which is directed against experiences of self-abandonment and self-alienation. I will argue for an elaborated ethical ideal of authenticity: the ambitious ideal of a continuous self-reflective process of 'self-authentication'. For this purpose, the ideal of being authentic in expressing and unfolding one's individual personality and characteristics will be combined with the ideal of being 'an authentic person' - whereby 'a person' is to be understood in a Kantian sense as an autonomous person who is (at least potentially) reasonable and morally responsible.
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(2017): Subjetividad y biopolítica. La pregunta por «la vida». In: Daímon. DOI: 10.6018/daimon/269911
Abstract: With modernity a new definition of the political is established. This article will reflect on the implications of what authors such as Michel Foucault or Hannah Arendt have called "the entrance of life" in the political. From the sharing of these insights, a range of questions will emerge about the possibility of contemporary subjectivity. These questions will be approached by using the contributions of Judith Butler and her theories about precariousness, vulnerability and acknowledgment.
Keywords: acknowledgment, acknowledgment and subjectivity, Anerkennung, biopolitics, Butler, Disziplin, Favoriten, Konstitutionen des Selbst (Anerkennung), life, Modelle/Theorien, Philosophie, (post)strukturalistische Ansätze, postmodern, postmoderne Theorien der Subjektivität, precariousness, Soziale Angemessenheit, Sozialphilosophie, subject -
(2017): Affective recognition and social freedom - the psychoanalytic and normative-reconstructive logics of grounding social critique in Axel Honneth’s work. In: Filozofija i drustvo 28 (3), S. 415-434. DOI: 10.2298/FID1703415E
Abstract: The task of this paper is the following: how should one explain and solve the theory- immanent tension in Honneth's recent works, i.e. the tension that reflects the difference between the concept of social freedom (a concept grounded in Hegel's social philosophy methodologically articulated through normative reconstruction) and the concept of 'affective recognition' (which has replaced the earlier normative concept) - in other words: is there a certain logically-factually grounded path from the question of subjective-individual recognition to the intersubjective recognition of free (legal) subjects in society? My thesis is the following: this supposed tension is a pseudo-tension. It loosens up - without completely resolving itself - as soon as we combine the two logics of grounding critique that we find in Honneth. However, unrelated to my claim about the pseudo-nature of the mentioned tension, the psychoanalytic mode of grounding critique is erroneous, since one cannot directly arrive at collective components of society starting from the empirical constellation of individual consciousnesses. The relation between subjective individuality and objective (intersubjective) generality is an objective contradiction (as opposed to a purely theoretical tension). If we still decide to pursue this path of grounding critique, we we inadvertently introduce a psychologistic approach into social theory. Such an approach can be found in Honneth's theory of intersubjective (normative) recognition as well.
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(2017): On recognition and self. A discussion based on Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Buddhism. In: Asian Philosophy 27 (4), S. 292-308. DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2017.1389388
Abstract: The phenomenon of recognition is a point of contention in the debate between the orthodox Hindus and Buddhists on whether the self (tman) exists. The Hindus, including Naiyyikas and Mm?sakas, argue that recognition evidences the existence of the self, while Buddhist philosopher ntaraksita maintains that there is no self and recognition should be explained in another way. This article examined two disputes, focusing on the two subsidiary aspects of a recognition: memory and self-recognition. For Hindus, it is the existence of the self that makes memory and self-recognition possible. For Buddhists, it is due to the phenomena of memories and self-recognitions that people postulate the existence of the self. I argue that Buddhist explanation of memory is more acceptable, while their debates on self-recognition should be considered as a tie.
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(2017): Noumenal Alienation. Rousseau, Kant and Marx on the Dialectics of Self-Determination. In: Kantian Review 22 (04), S. 523-551. DOI: 10.1017/S1369415417000267
Abstract: This article argues that alienation (as Entfremdung) should be understood as a particular form of individual and social heteronomy that can only be overcome by a dialectical combination of individual and collective autonomy, recovering a deontological sense of normative authority. If we think about alienation in Kantian terms, the main source of alienation is a denial of standing or, in the extreme, losing a sense of oneself as a rational normative authority equal to all others. I call the former kind of alienation, where persons deny others equal standing as a normative authority in moral or political terms, first order noumenal alienation, as there is no proper mutual cognition and recognition of each other in such a social context. I call the latter kind of alienation, where a subject does not consider themselves an equal normative authority - or an 'end in oneself' second order noumenal alienation (again, in a moral and a political form). In this sense, alienation violates the dignity of humans as moral and political lawgivers - a dignity seen by Rousseau, Kant and Marx as inalienable: It can be denied or violated, but it cannot be lost.
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(2017): The Formation of Social Technologies. Stages and Examples. In: Russian Studies in Philosophy 55 (1), S. 10-25. DOI: 10.1080/10611967.2017.1296289
Abstract: The concept of social technology, as used in science and journalism, has yet to reach theoretical maturity. This is related to the general state of the social and human sciences, which have not given rise to sociotechnical sciences, and is also related to a number of sociopolitical circumstances. On the one hand, social technology involves solutions that require an empirical, interdisciplinary synthesis; on the other hand, it represents a series of new theoretical conceptualizations. The article offers a working definition of a number of theoretical positions and typologies, and provides examples of the development and application of social technologies that represent steps toward the construction of a synthetic theory.
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(2017): Ein pleonastisches Oxymoron. Konstruktionsprobleme von Pierre Bourdieus Schlüsselkonzept der symbolischen Gewalt. In: Berliner Journal für Soziologie 27 (1), S. 7-33. DOI: 10.1007/s11609-017-0335-5
Abstract: According to Pierre Bourdieu, it is due to symbolic violence that social domination can be sustained without resorting to physical force. Because the dominated perceive their situation by means of categories which themselves are structured by power relations, they accept their own domination as legitimate, necessary, or functional. While the concept of symbolic violence takes center stage in Bourdieu's sociology, upon close analysis it turns out to be highly problematic. The paper shows that symbolic violence runs counter to the intentional and experiential structure of acts which are usually perceived as violent. As a result, the relation between symbolic and physical aspects of violence remains ambiguous in Bourdieu's writings. This, again, contributes to an inconsistent view on the history of violence and compromises the very normative grasp the extended notion of violence was actually intended to facilitate. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation, the article argues that the conceptual inconsistencies do not constitute a rhetorical artifice, but result from an unintended deviation from Bourdieu's fundamental terminological strategy to interlink the emic perspective of the actors and the etic perspective of sociology by means of seemingly contradictory phrases. Furthermore, Bourdieu's account of symbolic violence is not convincing with reference to the conceptualization of socialization and the (re)production of symbolic domination in concrete interaction. In a constructive vein the paper finally calls for the continuing analysis of the subtle and manifold modes of symbolic dominance by the use of more appropriate concepts.
2016
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(2016): What We Can Intend. Recognition and Collective Intentionality. In: The Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (1), S. 5-26. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12162
Abstract: The concept of recognition has played a role in two debates. In political philosophy, it is part of a communitarian response to liberal theories of distributive justice. It describes what it means to respect others' right to self-determination. In ethics, Stephen Darwall argues that it comprises our judgment that we owe others moral consideration. I present a competing account of recognition on the grounds that most accounts answer the question of why others deserve recognition without answering the question of what is involved in recognizing them. This paper answers the latter. I argue that, in general, recognition is something that we do to others rather than something that we think about others. In particular, recognition is an intentional action to treat another individual as a legitimate, self-determining agent. I then show that recognition's realizability requires that agents understand their intentions as dependent on others for their satisfaction. Thus, relations of recognition are instances of collective intentionality.
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(2016): Filiation, corps, sexe et genre dans le parcours ricoeurien de la reconnaissance-identité. In: Symposium 20 (2), S. 64-91. DOI: 10.5840/symposium201620218
Abstract: Dans Parcours de la reconnaissance, « se reconnaître dans le lignage » est conçu comme la première expérience de reconnaissance de soi paisible. Traitant de filiation, Ricoeur cite deux auteurs peu compatibles entre eux : Françoise Héritier et Pierre Legendre. Cet article élucide ce passage, montrant que ce double appel est motivé chez Ricoeur par un souci de voir l’« ordre des places » filiales rester intact. La référence à Héritier exprime un féminisme en germe chez Ricoeur, différencialiste, plaidant pour un binarisme des sexes sans hiérarchie. Quant à la référence à Legendre, elle sert de propédeutique à la phénoménologie ricoeurienne du don « sans prix », mais dénote aussi l’appréhension de Ricoeur quant à certaines demandes contemporaines de reconnaissance. Dans le parcours ricoeurien de la reconnaissance-identité, où « se reconnaître dans le lignage » paraît essentiel, trouve-t-on la place pour des personnes intersexuées, transsexuelles, transgenres ou issues de familles monoparentales, homoparentales, alloparentales? En plus de répondre à cette question, j’explique pourquoi Ricoeur rejette le lacanisme de Legendre, et comment il critiquerait le structuralisme d’Héritier s’il avait pris le temps de le faire.
Keywords: Anerkennung, Disziplin, Philosophie, RECOGNITION, Ricoeur, Soziale Angemessenheit, Sozialphilosophie -
(2016): What (if Anything) Is Wrong with Capitalism?. Dysfunctionality, Exploitation and Alienation: Three Approaches to the Critique of Capitalism. In: The Southern Journal of Philosophy 54, S. 44-65. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12188
Abstract: What is the problem with capitalism? Is it wrong, unjust, irrational, or bad? Is it evil or dumbor is it just not working? While critiques of capitalism have become commonplaceparticularly since the most recent global economic crisisit is often unclear what exactly is being condemned. Likewise, the normative presuppositions and criteria of such criticisms have been left unspecified. In this paper, I distinguish between three approaches to the critique of capitalism, distinguishing a functional, a moral, and an ethical argumentative strategy and paying special attention to the distinctive types of argumentation they mobilize. First, I consider the functional critique, typically directed against capitalism's straightforward dysfunctions or crises. We will find, however, that this sort of criticism presupposes a normative criterion that is frequently unarticulated, namely: the implied purpose of a well-functioning economic system. Second, I examine a common moral critique, that is, that capitalism is premised on exploitation. Yet, the concept of exploitation, too, introduces certain difficulties, since the kind of moral wrong associated with itunequal exchangeis hardly obvious to everyday observation and must be derived systematically. Third, I introduce and address the ethical critique, broadly, that capitalism constitutes a bad form-of-life. However, while I object to some of the forms this criticism has takenin particular, I argue that much alienation diagnosis is tainted by nostalgia and naiveteI nonetheless recommend developing a critique of capitalism as a form-of-life that would include ethical and functional criteria. I conclude with some remarks in this direction.
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(2016): Hegel's social and political philosophy. Recent debates. In: Philosophy Compass 11 (12), S. 804-817. DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12384
Abstract: This article discusses three topics that have been the subject of debate in recent scholarship on Hegel's social and political philosophy: first, the relevance of Hegel's systematic metaphysics for interpreting Hegel's social and political writings; second, the relation between recognition (Anerkennung), social institutions, and rational agency; and third, the connection between the constellation of institutions and norms that Hegel calls ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel's theory of freedom. This article provides a critical overview of the positions in these three debates. In the case of the first debate, I clarify the conceptual terrain by distinguishing between several kinds of systematicity that are at issue. In the case of the second debate, I argue that the views of two of the major participants, Axel Honneth and Robert Pippin, are in fact compatible. In the case of the third debate, I seek to clarify the connection in Hegel between two different ideas of freedom in ethical life, each of which has been emphasized by different interpreters of Hegel: the idea of freedom as non-alienation and the idea of freedom as social freedom. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which ethical life, for Hegel, enables the freedom of individuals.
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(2016): "Before you even know ..." - Big Data und die Erkennbarkeit des Selbst. In: IRIE - International Review of Information Ethics 24 (5), S. 44-54
Abstract: Der Big Data - Technologie wird das Potenzial zugeschrieben, durch Mustererkennung in aggregierten Daten Verhaltensweisen von Personen zu prognostizieren, noch bevor diese intendiert und reflektiert würden. Zumeist widmet sich die Big Data Debatte daher den Befürchtungen möglicher Einbußen von Privatheit und Freiheit. In unserem Beitrag wählen wir jedoch einen anderen Zugriff und fragen, inwiefern die Big Data Visionen das Selbstsein betreffen, also das Konzept davon, wer ich selbst eigentlich bin. Wenn Selbstsein, Martin Heidegger zufolge, eigentlich bedeutet, in kritischer Distanz zu vorgegebenen Möglichkeiten zu leben, stellt sich die Frage, welches Kriterium hier eine klare Unterscheidbarkeit gewährleistet: Wie kann ich wissen, echt ich selbst zu sein, ohne nur wiederum andere Üblichkeiten nachzuahmen? Wir fragen daher, ob die Big Data Technologie subjektive Verzerrungen und Täuschungen über das Selbst ausschalten könnte. Hierfür wird der Begriff „Selbstsein“ bei Heidegger erarbeitet. Dabei lässt sich allerdings zeigen, dass dieser letztlich ohne Trennschärfe bleibt, da die nur negative Charakterisierung von eigentlichem Selbstsein, Heidegger zufolge, echt oder unecht ausgestaltet sein kann – der aus der Möglichkeit echter oder unechter Selbsterzählung resultierende Relativismus wurde bisher nicht hinreichend beachtet. Big Data k ann zwar uneigentliche Erzählmuster vermeiden, nicht aber uneigentliches oder eigentliches Verhalten differenzieren; ob ich z.B. manches – unecht eigentlich – aus Trotz oder Kalkül gegen mein eigenes Selbstverständnis tat, bleibt verborgen. Fazit: Es muss entweder ein Kriterium für echtes Eigentlichsein entwickelt oder der Anspruch, darüber Auskunft zu geben, verworfen werden – bei Heidegger und Big Data. Verzichtet man jedoch auf die Idee einer (echten) Eigentlichkeit verzichtet man auf den Begriff des Sel bst.
Keywords: Anerkennung, Big Data, deutsche Community, Disziplin, Favoriten, Heidegger, Im (wissenschaftlichen) Diskurs, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Modelle/Theorien, Ontologie, Realtechnik, Philosophie, recognition and self, Reflexionen über MTR, Selbst, Selbst und Eigentlichkeit (Heidegger), Soziale Angemessenheit, Sozialphilosophie, Technik 2015
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(2015): Work, recognition and subjectivity. In: European Journal of Social Theory 19 (3), S. 340-354. DOI: 10.1177/1368431015594443
Abstract: Recently, following the social and subjective consequences of the neoliberal wave, there seems to be a renewed interest in work as occupying a central place in social and subjective life. For the first time in decades, both sociologists and critical theorists once more again regard work as a major constituent of the subject's identity and thus as an appropriate object of analysis for those engaged in critique of the social pathologies. The aim of this article is to present a succinct analysis of Axel Honneth's thoughts on the concept of work and to propose an approach granting it a more substantial role in social theory. To this end, this article will embark upon a reappraisal of the importance of the material and psychological dimensions of the subject's interactions in the world of work. It aims to demonstrate that the normative demands associated with these dimensions are, like the normative demands of recognition, immanent and universal. In other words, it will argue that the normative ideals related to individuals' bodily and psychic life (in the workplace and beyond) are not necessarily utopian in the negative sense (abstract and unrealistic). If this is indeed the case, theorists could take these normative demands for emancipation as a guide to analyzing the sociological, political and moral implications of the transition from the Fordist' to the post-Fordist' organization of labor.
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(2015): Hegelian recognition. In: Thesis Eleven 126 (1), S. 100-122. DOI: 10.1177/0725513614567342
Abstract: If we think of recognition as the practical relation consciously enacted by concerned individual subjects as social actors, which allows them to fulfil their intersubjectively valid social roles, this by no means exhausts the significance that recognition is accorded by Hegel. In fact the problem of recognition is central to the understanding and evaluation of Hegel's metaphysical system. Thus a close scrutiny of the presentation of self-consciousness in Phenomenology of Spirit and the interpretative difficulties it poses leads on to the question of the subject and Hegel's distinction between finite, accidental individuals and the true subject in his system: the concept of Spirit, understood not as a separate entity but as a system of relations, objectified in the historical forms of the Absolute Spirit. But what is the price of Hegel's metaphysics of subjectivity? Hegelian recognition signifies the recognition by individuals of recognition in its truth, that is, the self-recognition by finite individuals that they participate in Spirit as the true universal subject to the degree that they recognize their shared world of actions as the world of their own making. Modernity is therefore defined for Hegel as the recognition and realization of 'conscious freedom', whose telos lies in the actualization of universal reciprocal recognition that brings the unfreedom of history to an end. The idea of freedom and the thesis of the 'end of history' remain, however, the preserve of the thinking few. Hegelian recognition and with it Hegel's whole metaphysical system founders on the rock of finitude, on the unfreedom of finite human beings.
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(2015) : The Neo-Idealist Paradigm Shift in Contemporary Critical Theory In: Dahms, Harry F.: Globalization, critique and social theory: Bingle, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited (Current perspectives in social theory$$vvolume 33), S. 135-163
Abstract: Purpose - To defend the thesis that critical theory has become unable to call into question and challenge the main impulses of modern capitalist societies. The reason for this is that the capacities of language on the one hand and the hermeneutic processes that underlie the process of "recognition" are insufficient to counter the power of socialization to shape subjectivity and the cognitive and evaluative capacities of subjects. Methodology/approach - I provide a critical reading of the methodology of linguistic and recognitive theories of intersubjectivity by means of a theory of domination derived from Rousseau which shapes the cognitive and epistemic powers of subjects thereby weakening their capacity to be socialized via the media of language and social recognition. Findings - By divorcing our cognitive ideas about the social world from the social-ontological processes that shape and deform it under capitalism, this brand of critical theory succeeds in sealing off the mechanisms of social domination and power relations that were at the heart of the enterprise from its inception. Research limitations/implications - Critical theory must move toward a more comprehensive theory of the social totality in order for it to retain its critical character. Originality/value - The paper questions the main ideas held by the mainstream of critical theory such as its reliance on hermeneutic and linguistic forms of consciousness and social praxis as well as a theoretical reliance on pragmatic theories of mind and Mead's conception of socialization.
2014
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(2014): Book review. Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation, written by Amy E. Wendling. In: Historical Materialism 22 (3-4), S. 505-519. DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-12341362
Abstract: Amy Wendling contends in this book that Marx's concern with alienation is not restricted to his early, more explicitly Hegelian writings, and that it can be seen to evolve throughout his work in tandem with his interest in technology. This evolution, according to Wendling, is marked by his transition between two successive scientific paradigms, both of which pertain to the status of labour and machinery within society. Wendling claims that Marx uses the distinction between them as a means of conducting an immanent critique of capitalist ideology. Consequently, although it is primarily a work of intellectual history, this book offers an interesting contribution to the hermeneutics of Marx's Capital. In addition, it also bears relation to contemporary discussions concerning real subsumption and the abolition of labour. The book's general argument raises questions as to the degree to which a conception of alienation must rely upon notions of human essence, and upon an idea of a 'natural' and 'authentic' humanity. Wendling's responses to those questions are described as problematic within this review, but they are also acknowledged to be both pertinent and intriguing.
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(2014): Kritik von Lebensformen. 1. Aufl., Orig.-Ausg. Berlin: SuhrkampKeywords: Anerkennung, Criticism (Philosophy), Disziplin, Ethik, Favoriten, Honneth und aktuelle Kritische Theorie, Kritik, Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften / Philosophie, Lebensform, Modelle/Theorien, Moralkritik, Normen, Philosophie, Philosophische Anthropologie, Philosophy, Politik, Politische Ethik, social sciences, Soziale Angemessenheit, Soziale Normen, Sozialphilosophie, Spielregeltheoretische Ansätze, Spielregeltheoretische Anstätze
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(2014) : Bringing the Critical Back in. Toward the Resurrection of the Frankfurt School In: Dahms, Harry F.: Mediations of social life in the 21st century, 32: First edition: Bingle, UK: Emerald Group Publishing (Current Perspectives in Social Theory), S. 195-227
Abstract: Purpose - To resurrect and renew the tradition of the early Frankfurt School, whose of Marxist-Hegelian dialectical approach to understanding the societal conditions of its emergence - post World War I Germany, the rise of fascism, New Deal politics, the defeat of fascism, and the subsequent rise of consumer society - remains relevant to studying present circumstances, stressing the cultural dimension of capitalism, the proliferation of alienation, ideology, and mass media, and, finally, the nature of the society-character/subjectivity nexus. Methodology - Employing a comparative historical approach to the study of alienation, ideology, and character, to articulate social-theoretical standards for critical social research today. Social implications - Global civilization faces an array of crises, beginning with economies whose lack of growth or stability the ability of a large segment of the world's population to obtain jobs conducive to a decent standard of life. With governments' inability to implement public policies to buffer instabilities, cultural values are in crisis as well. Findings - Reviving the framework of early Frankfurt School Critical Theory is necessary to promote a better world. Originality - Reconstructing key concerns of the Frankfurt School is conducive to critiquing this tradition's recent preoccupation with communication and recognition, and demonstrates how the first generation's legacy helps us understand contemporary social movements of the Right and the Left, in ways that are similar to the Weimar Republic in Germany. Both the Right and the Left being products of legitimation crises that trigger a desire for regressive or progressive social change - the Right would restore a mythical past, the Left would foster a new social order based on humanistic concerns.
2013
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(2013): Intimacy and the Possibility for Self-Knowledge in Hegel's Dialectic of Recognition. In: Idealistic Studies 43 (3), S. 133-152. DOI: 10.5840/idstudies201411710
Abstract: Abstract The achievement of self-consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology hinges on establishing a relationship with another self-conscious being. How this is accomplished, and even that it is accomplished in Hegel's text, are topics of dispute and misunderstanding in the literature. I show how Hegel argues for this intersubjective origin of self-consciousness, first, by comparing Hegel's analysis of lord and bondsman to Sartre's analysis of intimacy. Second, I focus on two interpretive challenges. First, I argue that the staking of life comes from an other-oriented epistemological relation, and not simply from an immediate concern with dominating the other. Second, contrary to many interpretations which see the bondsman's development arising out of an isolated activity merely between himself and the products of his labor, I argue that the slave's ability to gain knowledge of himself as a self is only possible by establishing a relationship with the lord. This point is essential because, if readings of the bondsman's development as isolated from the lord are correct, then Hegel has in fact not succeeded in showing that self-consciousness only develops out of intersubjective recognition.
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(2013): Recognition in Capital. In: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4), S. 713-727. DOI: 10.1007/s10677-013-9410-y
Abstract: In this paper it is shown that in his conception of value, published in the first volume of Capital, Marx relies on Hegel's concept of pure recognition to organise the relations between use- and exchange-value on the one hand and the relation between the social relations between things (goods) and actors (sellers) on the other hand. Establishing this thesis is important in three respects: Firstly it demonstrates that there is a strong continuity in the philosophical thought of Karl Marx, making visible an essential relation between his Economic-philosophical Manuscripts and his later writings. Secondly it helps to better understand Marx's conception of value; and thirdly it shows that "recognition" is an important conception in his critique of political economy.
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(2013): Three Marxian Approaches to Recognition. In: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 16 (4), S. 699-711. DOI: 10.1007/s10677-013-9413-8
Abstract: If it seems fully legitimate to introduce Marx in the contemporary discussion about recognition, it is more disputable to attribute to Marx an unified conception of recognition. There is no doubt that Marx hasn't provided any systematic account of recognition, but he has tackled the issue of recognition from various points of view. Could these various points of view be unified in a general conception of recognition? This article claims that this is not the case since three accounts of recognition should be distinguished that are hardly compatible one with the other: one Feuerbachian account of recognition of the species being in the other, one account of recognition related to the dynamics of disrespect as social experience, and one account of recognition through social roles.
2012
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(2012): Web 2.0 Technologies of the Self. In: Philosophy & Technology 25 (3), S. 399-413. DOI: 10.1007/s13347-011-0032-9
Abstract: Although no scholarly consensus exists on the issue, the claim that a substantive reconfiguration of the Internet has occurred in the beginning of the 2000s has settled firmly in public common sense. The label tentatively chosen for the new turn in the medium’s evolution is Web 2.0. The developments constituting this turn have been contemplated from different perspectives in technical and business publications (O’Reilly 2005), in treatises on “convergence” or “participatory” culture (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2009), and could be usefully interrogated by means of political economy concepts such as the “social factory” and “free labor” (Terranova 2004). Marked, or rather symbolically constructed, by these discursive pickets lies a field of practice that the members of the participatory culture, the “produsers” (Bruns 2008) of open journalism, blogs, social networking sites and other characteristic Web 2.0 applications inhabit and animate with their everyday thought, decision making and action. This paper undertakes a theoretical exploration of the user practices emerging and consolidating around the new technological and organizational models making up Web 2.0. It is informed by a qualitative study of bloggers and Facebook users conducted through focus group methodology, although the concrete empirical data are not presented here. Rather, the analysis employs the concept of “technologies of the self” by Foucault (1988) as a heuristic device in order to situate Web 2.0 use, first, in a long history of culturally evolved forms of self-constitution and, second, in a complex matrix of relationships with other types of technologies, namely, those of production, sign systems and power. This conceptual choice, we argue, furnishes a study of Web 2.0 use, which holds in balance its liberatory potential and its susceptibility to new forms of domination, rationalization and commodification.
Keywords: Anerkennung, Art des Kommunikationsmediums, Blogs, critical Theory, Disziplin, Foucault, Im (wissenschaftlichen) Diskurs, Konstruktion des Selbst, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Philosophie, (post)strukturalistische Ansätze, Reflexionen über MTR, Selbst, Social networking sites, Soziale Angemessenheit, Sozialphilosophie, Technologies of the self, Web 2.0, Zeitschrift: Philosophy and Technology -
(2012): Perspectives and ideologies. A pragmatic use for recognition theory. In: Philosophy & Social Criticism 38 (2), S. 215-226. DOI: 10.1177/0191453711427260
Abstract: 'Recognition' is a normative concept denoting the ascription of positive status to a group or an individual by (an) other(s). In its larger meaning, it carries the implication that when a group or an individual can justifiably expect such a positive status-ascription, its denial (misrecognition) is unjustified and unethical. I discuss the role that the concept of recognition can play at the intersection of two philosophies, pragmatism and contemporary critical theory. My perspective is one that embraces the 'pragmatic turn' in critical theory and sees the possibility of reciprocal benefit for pragmatism in how critical theory handles issues of material culture, alienation and networks of power. I argue that a critical social theory incorporating pragmatist presuppositions ought to bring the concept of recognition to bear in how it isolates and treats the 'real interests' of groups and individuals who have suffered and continue to suffer from broad social ascriptions of negative status, or who, through lack of voice and access to the public sphere, remain paralysed to participation in a thriving liberal democracy. In doing so, I do not construe recognition primarily as 'positive tolerance' or understanding of cultural, ethnic, or gender identity, but as a minimally substantive tool for understanding, and potentially correcting, how misrecognition impacts the collective and individual agency of the historically oppressed.
Keywords: alienation and recognition, Anerkennung, Anerkennung als menschliche Grundkategorie, Disziplin, Favoriten, Honneth, Honneth und aktuelle Kritische Theorie, Modelle/Theorien, Philosophie, Pragmatische Einbettung der Anerkennungstheorie, Pragmatismus, Soziale Angemessenheit, Sozialphilosophie -
(2012): Being Oneself in Another. Recognition and the Culturalist Deformation of Identity. In: Inquiry 55 (2), S. 148-170. DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2012.661579
Abstract: Nancy Fraser raises serious doubts about the critical potential of identity theories of recognition on the ground that they encourage the reduction of personal identity to cultural identity. Based on a comparative analysis of Charles Taylor's and Axel Honneth's theories of recognition, this paper argues that Fraser's critique is justified with respect to some aspects of Taylor's theory of identity, but not with respect to his conception of recognition, or to Honneth's conception of both identity and recognition. Taylor's theory of identity recognition is vulnerable to Fraser's critique because under certain conditions of pathological socialization it cannot prevent the normative subordination of strong evaluation to whatever dominant goods are acquired through acculturation. Honneth's theory of identity recognition overcomes this normative weakness in three ways. First, Honneth differentiates between three types of self-relation that cannot be reduced to cultural identity. Second, he operates with a mixed, attributive-responsive model of recognition that normatively underwrites all these types of self-relation. Third, he makes the condition of reciprocity in recognition the criterion for successful self-realization that enables one to distinguish between misrecognition and non-normative experiences of human suffering