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Review essay: Identifyingrecognition in the ageof neo-liberalism

Jonathan Trejo- Mathys J. W. Goethe Universitat, Germany

Emmanuel Renault, Le m ´ epris social: ´ ethique et politique de la reconnaissance, 2nd edn

(Paris: Editions de passant, 2004)

Emmanuel Renault, a scholar of German Idealism and Marx and a critical theorist in his

own right, has worked to promote the recognition-theoretical turn in France, comple-

menting recent work by the late Paul Ricoeur. When Axel Honneth’s The Struggle for Recognition (a translation of the German original Kampf um Anerkennung ) was pub-

lished in 1995, some reviewers greeted it as the most promising attempt to develop the

tradition of critical social theory beyond the lines along which Jurgen Habermas has

taken it in his long and prolific career. Peter Dews’ blurb on the back cover of the book,

for instance, hailed it as a ‘major step’ towards a ‘‘‘post-linguistic’’ paradigm’ for critical

theory. The notions of recognition and identity at play in Honneth’s seminal work have

received a great deal of attention in Anglophone political theory since Charles Taylor’s

famous essay on the ‘politics of recognition’. That two very visible mainstream figures

such as Amy Gutmann ( Identity in Democracy, 2004) and Kwame Appiah (The Ethics of

Identity, 2005) have each recently published books on identity shows that there is no sign

that this trend has come to a close. Other notable philosophers on the continent besides

Honneth, Ricouer and Renault have taken up these notions as well. The Spanish philo-

sopher Carlos Thiebault, in his very interesting La historia del nombrar: dos episodios

en la historia de la subjetividad (Madrid: Visor, 1990) has developed a reading of mod-

ern ‘identity’ explicitly meant to be serviceable for a critical history of the present.

Emmanuel Renault’s slim, economically argued book will come as a welcome contribu-

tion to this literature. It manages to touch on some of the important issues that Honneth’s

Corresponding author:

Northwestern University; J. W. Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt am Main, beethovenstrasse 36 apt 22, Germany

60325

Email: [email protected]

Philosophy and Social Criticism

000(00) 1–6

ªThe Author(s) 2010Reprints and permission:

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DOI: 10.1177/0191453710379034psc.sagepub.com

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earlier (and subsequent) work left open. In this way it both breaks some new ground and

also reveals in a starker form some of the major problems with the proposed paradigm-shift

to a theory of recognition.

Renault begins his book with a deft, though familiar, social diagnosis of contempo-rary society. There is a trend, which Renault acerbically names ‘la vague morale’,

towards the reduction of all social pathologies to moral categories understood in a par-

ticular, ideological (read ‘neo-liberal’) fashion via a ‘triple process’: political norms are

reduced to technical norms, social problems are reduced to moral problems, and moral

problems are reduced to matters of individual responsibility (13). This exaggeration of

the significance of personal morality makes an impossible demand on the individual.

It tells her that she must herself exert effective control over the conditions of her personal

and social life, while it diverts her from the traditional political avenues of collective

action that made such control possible in the past (14). (In passing, Renault makes the

very interesting suggestion that the sudden explosion of the demand for and interest in

‘business ethics’, both in and out of university settings, in a time of nearly omnipresent

de-regulation, is related to this trend.)

As alternatives to this ‘new liberal common sense’ (14) view of politics, Renault men-

tions the Kantian, the Hegelian and the Marxian traditions. There is, of course, no short-

age of ethical and political theorists in the roughly Kantian vein. Renault makes clear

that he is interested in extending the latter two traditions. In this he can be seen as joining

Honneth in the attempt to bring some balance into a critical theory that has become so

heavily ballasted towards the Kantian side that it is threatening to merge with the liberal

stream in political philosophy, effectively becoming a minor variant of it. He presents

very briefly some characteristically Hegelian criticisms of the Kantian view of politics:

(1) it treats politics as the mere application of moral rules to social institutions or con-

certed action; (2) in addition, moral rules do not have a determinate content in abstrac-

tion from social institutions and practices; and (3) the realization of freedom or

autonomy, which is the content of moral norms, is only possible in a political community

(33–4). Renault seems to accept these criticisms of Kantian approaches, and thus leaves

the negative thrust of Hegel’s philosophy as it stands. It seems to me, however, that only

the second criticism touches the nerve of Kantian approaches. The first is simply a

description of an objection, and not yet an objection itself with any content. While thesecond and third objections provide content, the third seems plausible only when free-

dom and liberty are qualified, as Renault does indeed qualify them, by adjectives like

‘true’ (v ´ eritable). If ‘true freedom’ means ‘freedom in its fullest form’, then perhaps the

statement as it stands is sound, but in this case it is not clear that Kant denies it. For Kant

was perhaps the first author to justify the entrance into a political community from a state

of nature not on naturalist grounds, as in Plato and Aristotle, or prudential grounds, as in

the case of Hobbes and arguably Locke as well, but on expressly moral grounds, in the

sense that there is a rationally derived moral obligation to enter into a legally defined

political community with other human beings to escape the lawless, and thusinevitably unjust, state of nature (cf. Metaphysical Elements of Justice [ Rechtslehre],

§§ 8–9). The second criticism, however, has finally been addressed by Kantians, who

often deny that Kant was unaware of the point.1 So it is not clear that Renault’s

objections to Kantian moral theory have the desired force.

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The positive element that Renault, like Honneth, seems to retain from Hegel is the

insight into the social character of recognition and its motivational power, both posi-

tively in the striving for recognition, and negatively in the instinctive protest against mis-

recognition (what Strawson very aptly named ‘reactive attitudes’). The simultaneousrejection of the philosophy of history and Kant has consequences, however. Renault

writes that ‘if the critique of the existing order can no longer be founded on history, it

must necessarily be based on moral norms’ (35). The grounding of these moral norms

cannot be Kantian, however, for according to Renault the moral norms we find in the

Kantian approach are so abstract and indeterminate that they permit, on reasonable

understandings, the justification and the denunciation of one and the same practice (as

Hegel pointed out, for instance, both private property and communism are compatible

with the categorical imperative). Still, like Kant, and like the entire tradition of critical

theory, Renault’s guiding theoretical ideal is that of freedom or autonomy, and the over-

riding practical project is that of emancipation. So the Hegelian-Marxian model, itself

incorporating and reworking the Kantian idea of freedom, must be reconstructed on other

grounds than the implausible philosophy of history underlying the systems of Hegel and

Marx. Given these commitments the task Renault sets himself, and contemporary critical

theory, is to answer the following question: ‘How do we define an ethics that allows us to

measure the injustice of society according to moral norms and at the same time directly

leads to its denunciation and to political struggle for the realization of those norms?’

(35). In other words, how do we combine both adequate, universal moral norms and

enough concrete contact with social and political reality to give practical political gui-

dance in one and the same theory?

Renault’s own proposed answer to this question is an ethics of recognition that largely

follows the work of Honneth and Ricoeur, while supplementing their more academic and

theoretical sketches with a rich array of sociological and political applications to contem-

porary society drawing on some recent, informative work by writers in other disciplines

like Bourdieu and his collaborators, Robert Castel, and Eve Chiapello and Luc Boltanski.

In doing this, Renault aims to elaborate an ‘anthropology’ of politics and morality (76).

According to Renault, the three conditions of moral action are (1) a certain form of self-

esteem (estime de soi-me me), (2) the belief that one’s action depends on oneself, and

(3) a positive self-relation that lends (a) value to an intended action and (b) an abilityto see that action as a realization of oneself (37). Two fundamental presuppositions or

leading concepts of the entire approach are (1) autonomy, defined as a ‘mastery of the

subjective contribution [investissement ] to actions and the capacity of finding oneself

in action’, and (2) the afore-mentioned positive form of self-relation [rapport positif a

soi-me me] (38). Both of these are said to depend upon intersubjective relations of recog-

nition as their necessary conditions. Without recognition one cannot develop a positive

relation to oneself, or an understanding of oneself as one among others meriting equal

respect, and this inhibits the development of autonomy. Social conditions that hinder

such interpersonal relationships, then, cut at the very root of what makes moral person-ality possible, and are both unjust and debilitating.

Renault is a faithful follower of Honneth in that he claims there are three basic forms

of recognition (love, respect, social esteem) that yield corresponding forms of self-

relation (self-confidence, self-respect, self-esteem). What he adds to this general

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framework is a Ricoeurian element in the form of a concept of narrative identity.

The different biographical strata of the triadic scheme of self-relations must be narra-

tively unified if they are to have a concrete form in an identity, that is, if one is success-

fully to have a life of one’s own. Renault states that while the three basic forms of recognition and their requisite social conditions are necessary conditions for the consti-

tution of personal identity, only their narrative unification is sufficient . With regard to

personal identity, Renault says that it consists of ‘the ensemble of enduring [durables]

representations of ourselves in which the value of our own existence consists’ (78). In

addition, and perhaps for this reason, the need for recognition does not just express the

desire to have our dignity as a human being recognized, but also our desire to be recog-

nized as the particular individual we are beneath the masks of the different identities or

roles we bear in social life (79–80). It would seem that this last claim entails that recog-

nition of who we are involves the recognition of some relatively coherent and concrete

narrative of our lives. This would seem to place rather strenuous demands both on (1)

individuals, who would have to shoulder the responsibility of articulating such a coher-

ent narrative – not a simple task for everyone, and on (2) others, who would have to be in

a position to ‘recognize’ such a narrative, and disposed to do so. Depending on what

these two processes involve, the theory might imply rather implausible, and certainly

very controversial, claims about the requirements for a good , let alone just, society. Still,

this use of narrative does seem to be another way that Renault links the establishment of

positive self-relations to the achievement of autonomy.

Which brings me to what seems to be a crucial point. Autonomy here occupies two

places within the theory. On the back end, it is an achievement requiring the appropriate

forms of recognition and positive self-relations. On the front end, it is the normative jus-

tification for the value placed on those forms of positive self-relation. We desire positive

self-relations because they are necessary for full autonomy, or an ‘intact identity’, in

Honneth’s terms, and the forms of recognition that help us develop these are justified

insofar as they enable the development of autonomy. But why should we develop auton-

omy? Why is autonomy the guiding concept here? I am not sure what the theory of

recognition’s answer to this question is, but it would seem that there may be more of

Kant lurking around in the background than its Hegelian-Marxian rhetoric seems to indi-

cate. This hunch is backed up by a trend in recent Hegel scholarship. More and morescholars are stressing that Hegel is in fact quite a bit more Kantian than it was common

to recognize a few decades ago. In a complemenary fashion, Kantians like Korsgaard and

O’Neill have made Kantianism seem rather more Hegelian, stressing the importance of

notions like ‘practical identity’ (Korsgaard) and the ‘embodiment’ of universal norms in

social practices (O’Neill). For these reasons, I suspect that the justification of autonomy

as the telos of the anthropology of the theory of recognition will require a rather familiar

Kantian line of thought, unless some of its proponents come up with a novel argument.

The question I have just raised concerning the justification of autonomy as the guid-

ing normative concept in the theory crops up again in another way. In an interesting pas-sage, Renault claims that any critical political theory requires two elements (58–9). First,

is a set of ‘feelings of protest’ (affects protestataires) discoverable in the social and polit-

ical realm. These serve, says Renault, using Marx’s phrase, as the ‘weapon of critique’.

Second, there must be a theoretical element that yields (1) a justification of the claims


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embedded in these feelings and (2) a perspective that shows how action in accordance

with these feelings can possibly succeed. This would be, again following Marx, the ‘cri-

tique of weapons’. What seems important to me in this reading of the tasks of a critical

theory is that it brings psychology, both social and individual, back into the center of our attention. Psychology had moved to the periphery of critical theory in the systematic

treatises Habermas wrote after he took his own version of the linguistic turn. Renault,

along with Honneth and others, is pushing for its explicit reintroduction. I believe this

is a welcome development. In addition, the focus on justification and an attempt to assess

the reasonable chances of success helps to prevent any return to the excesses of the

philosophy of history of earlier generations of Marxism and critical theory. Far too often

the issue of normative justification was suppressed and tacitly absorbed by theses about

the logic of history that supposedly guaranteed the victory (via revolution) of the inter-

ests in whose name social criticism was made.

While the avoidance of the perils of philosophical-historical theses that are ambitious

and difficult to verify is all to the good, feelings that are taken to justify political action

must themselves be justified, as Renault notes, and this justification will only go as far as

the importance of autonomy and the need for an ‘intact’ identity go. So here again, we

confront the question of justification in a stark form. Critical theorists have one option in

Habermas’ universal pragmatics and the discourse ethics he has developed along with

Apel. The onus is on the theorists of recognition, or critical theorists who are deploying

the notion of identity as a central concept, like Honneth, Renault, Thiebault, or Charles

Taylor, to provide us with a clearer exposition and defense of the normative foundations

of a critical theory based on these concepts. How does it differ from Habermas? How

does it differ from contemporary analytic Kantianism? How does it avoid over-

emphasizing the role of feeling and sentiment, and hence become a form of Humean

moral sentiment theory, ultimately anti-realist with respect to moral norms?

Renault does helpfully deal with two criticisms of recognition theory, though not at as

great length as one might have wished, given the general character of the problems. The

objection is that the norms provided by recognition are both too restrictive and too wide

(63). They are too restrictive because universal fulfillment of the desire for recognition

would not rule out the existence of domination. There are forms of domination accepted

by those who feel recognized, or who apparently do not care about recognition. They aretoo wide because the desire for recognition can lead to lots of different constellations of

interpersonal relations and social orders. One can imagine how such a desire could lead

to socialist, liberal, feudal, or dictatorial regimes. The norms one can derive from the

necessary and constitutive conditions of recognition thus normatively underdetermine

the range of social orders that can meet them. What can assure us that some of the social

orders that exist within this range are not unjust on independently plausible principles of

justice? Renault responds to the first worry by saying that while there are indeed circum-

stances in which resistance does not appear despite apparent relations of domination, or

in which the victims of domination appear to accept their condition, these cases are ingeneral caused by extreme deprivation or misrecognition. So, for instance, high rates

of drug abuse and violent crime and/or gang activity in the banlieues of Paris are ways

of escaping from the hell of misrecognition. To the worry that the norms are too

wide, Renault replies that the logic of recognition, as shown already by Fichte and Hegel,

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is strictly egalitarian. All forms of intersubjective recognition that involve lasting

inequality or domination lead to social institutions that are unstable for conceptual (or

‘quasi-transcendental’) reasons. The reader must decide how satisfactory these replies are.

Lastly, but perhaps most disappointingly, Renault falls back upon Honneth’s quite problematic idea of a ‘formal conception of ethical life’, though he disagrees about the

range of social orders allowed by the normative standards that can be derived from it. He

claims that it is incompatible with ‘neo-liberalism’ (69). He also claims that it requires a

subordination of private autonomy to public autonomy. This seems to me to be a step

backwards. Habermas has already made a very strong case that public and private auton-

omy depend upon and even imply each other, and that therefore there can be no question

of subordinating one to the other in any general way (as opposed to, of course, one being

favored to the detriment of another in particular situations on the basis of case-by-case

political judgments that are the stuff of everyday legislation, which is quite a different

matter). At the very least, the sense of ‘private’ being used here must be very carefully

specified if it is not to be used in such a way as to imply undesirable moral and political

consequences. Reservations concerning this claim seem to be related to the fact that

Renault does not make the ‘formal conception of ethical life’ clearer than it was in

Honneth’s original, rather vague formulation, and this unclarity seeps into the claims

Renault derives from that conception.

Notes

1. It has been recently reformulated, though from a rather non-Hegelian – i.e. individualistic – point

of view by Jon Garthoff, a former student of Barbara Herman’s, who is developing a line of

thought also found in Onora O’Neill’s work; see his article ‘The Embodiment Thesis’, Ethical

Theory and Moral Practice 7(1) (2004): 15–29. According to this argument, extra-socially valid

moral values or norms leave the obligations of individuals indeterminate until they are ‘embo-

died’ in social institutions or schemes of collective action: put otherwise, moral theory is incom-

plete without social theory.


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