Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy:
Dilemmas of Honneth’s Critical Social Theory
Christopher F. Zurn
What does social justice require in contemporary societies? What are the
requirements of social democracy? Who and where are the individuals and
groups that can carry forward agendas for progressive social transformation?
What are we to make of the so-called new social movements of the last thirty
years? Is identity politics compatible with egalitarianism? Can cultural
misrecognition and economic maldistribution be fought simultaneously? What
of the heritage of Western Marxism is alive and dead? And how is current critical
social theory to approach these and other questions?
Much of the most productive work done in recent social theory has revolved
around such issues, in particular, around those concerning the relationship
between the politics of recognition and the politics of distribution. After the
intense theoretical focus over the last fifteen years or so on the issues of
recognition politics—multiculturalism, multi-nationalism, identity politics,
group-differentiated rights, the accommodation of difference, and so on—some
social theorists have worried that attention has been diverted from important
issues of distributive equality—systematic impoverishment, increasing material
inequality, ‘structural’ unemployment, the growth of oligarchic power, global
economic segmentation, and so on. While some critics seem to have adopted a
blunt ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ line of criticism,
1
others have attempted to
develop an overarching, integrative theoretical framework adequate to the
diverse issues concerning both economic and cultural justice. For example, Axel
Honneth proposes that a suitably developed and normatively robust theory of
intersubjective recognition can adequately integrate an analysis of apparently
diverse contemporary struggles: those for a just division of labor and hence, a fair
distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as those for a culture free of
identity-deforming disrespect and denigration.
2
In two recent papers (Honneth 1998; 2001), Honneth appropriates John
Dewey’s political theory as a way of bridging the gap in critical, democratic
theory between attention to economic struggles and struggles for recognition.
And in a recent book exchanging views with Nancy Fraser, Honneth further
develops his theory to show how everyday experiences of misrecognition can be
understood as the normative and motivational well-springs of struggles against
both economic and cultural injustices (Fraser and Honneth 2003a). I take it that
the background motiv ation for these moves is to reanimate the critical thrust of
the Marxist heritage of critical theory—namely, to ground a strong normative
European Journal of Philosophy 13:1 ISSN 0966-8373 pp. 89–126 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005. 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
critique of unjust relations of production and distribution—without the baggage
of an empirically discredited labor theory of value, overextended hopes for a
revolutionary proletariat class, or a dubious philosophy of history. The idea here
is to find an alternative normative standpoint for the evaluation of contemporary
economic relations that is tied to more universalizable—and hence justifiable—
claims concerning deliberative democracy and the social bases of personal
integrity. At the same time, the strategy insists on the distinctive social-theoretic
claim of the Frankfurt School: that it can locate in actual, everyday life aspects of
the same critical standpoint that the theory itself develops and relies upon.
3
The
strategy is thus to renew the critique of the distributive patterns of capitalism by
means of a normative standpoint implicit in everyday experiences: reactions to
violations of appropriate relations of intersubjective recognition.
In some ways, this appears to an American reader as a double return of the
repressed: both for the history of critical theory and the development of
Honneth’s thought itself. At least since the domin ance of Ju
¨
rgen Habermas’s
theories of communicative action and deliberative democracy, interest in a
critique of the relations of production seems to be confined to the history of
theory, while issues of justice and morality, methodological rationality, formal
legal and political relations, and cultural representation have occupied the
forefront of debates. It can sometimes appear that the agenda of critical theory
has been set more by the philosophical significance of questions than by their
importance to achieving just social relations.
4
So, a theory that holds out the hope
of returning economic justice to the forefront of critical theory promises a return
to traditional questions too long deferred.
That a focus on the division of labor may represent a return to a relatively
occluded topic for Honneth as well is indicated by the contrast between some of
his earlier and more recent work. For example, several of his early publications
from around 1980 specifically address the extent to which Habermas’s newly
developed framework of communicative action can be used to address trad-
itional Frankfurt School concerns about the protest and emancipatory potentials
of class consciousness growing out of experience s of alienated labor.
5
There
Honneth argued that Habermas’s categorical framework precluded access to
working-class experiences and falsely presupposed that structural transforma-
tions had effectively deactivated class struggles. In contrast, Honneth sought
ways to recover a pointed critique of the apparent success of the welfare-state
compromise and its class structure.
In contrast to this earlier focus on the connection between class experiences
and a capitalist division of labor, Honneth’s more recent work from the 1990’s has
focused on the normative significance of new social movements, especially those
that have centered around expanding extant relations of social recognition in the
domains of the family, legal-political rights, and diverse ethical communities of
shared values.
6
Thus while, he has made suggestive comments about the
relationship between the social division of labor and social structures of esteem
(e.g., 1994: 266–267, and, 1995c: 88–91 and 146–151), the main focus of Honneth’s
work on recognition seemed more directly connected to the historical emergence
90 Christopher F. Zurn
r
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
of identity politics and diverse attempts to reconfigure extan t cultural and
symbolic structures of val uation and interaction. It is only in his most recent
work on Dewey and in response to criticisms from Nancy Fraser, that Honneth
has now attempted to bring back to the fore issues of material distribution by
systematically integratin g them into an overarching theory of intersubjective
recognition.
Of course, like any repression, there may have been good reasons for
avoidance in the first place. In this paper I would like to explore some potential
problems with this attempt to reinvigorate critical social theory’s attention to
economic injustices by means of a focus on the just division of labor required for
individual self-realization. For instance, Honneth himself takes Marx to task for
focusing exclusively on relations of production as the entirety of relations of
mutual recognition in capitalist societies, and hence for reducing the diversity of
recognition struggles to those over ownership of the means of production:
In his early writings, then, Marx narrows Hegel’s model of the ‘struggle
for recognition’ in the direction of an aesthetics of production. As a
result, however, all aspects of intersubjective recognition that do not stem
directly from the process of cooperative, self-managed labour get
excluded from the moral spectrum of the social struggles occurring in
Marx’s day. (1995c: 148)
While I believe that Honneth’s general theory of intersubjective recognition can
successfully avoid the type of sociologic al dedifferentiation and consequent loss
of diagnostic acumen he detected in the early work of Marx, I am concerned that
analogous difficulties return in this recent proposal for integrating distributive
concerns into a theory of recognition struggles. In particular, I am worried that
the attempt to integrate a theory of distributive justice within the categorial
framework of the theory of recognition—whether in the form of democratic,
social justice, or critical social theories—risks either falsifying social reality or
forgoing insigh tful practical guidance.
I begin in Section 1 by considering how Honneth proposes to broaden the
claims of his original recognition theory (A) to encompass distributive injustices,
both by appropriating John Dewey’s theory of democratic cooperation and by
developing a theory of social justice in terms of a society’s cultural evaluation of
various careers and accomplishments—its ‘esteem dispositive’ (B). After a brief
consideration of the advantages of such an integration of distributive issues
within recognition theory (C), I consider in Section 2 whether it rests on a
sufficiently differentiated social theory. In particular, I look to Nancy Fraser’s
critique of Honneth’s claim that a society’s distributive arrangements should be
conceived as the expression of that society’s esteem dispositive, and then
consider how Honn eth might respond to the critique by moving to a high level of
theoretical abstraction. Finally in Se ction 3 I argue that such an attempt to save
the integration is caught in a theoretical quandary: employ a social theory that is
either empirically accurate but too abstract for critical use, or one that is
Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy 91
r
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
normatively incisive but empirically deficient. Given that a critical social theory
ought avoid claims that distort social reality, I conclude that Honneth’s proposal
to analyze and justify fair distributions in terms of the requirements of
undistorted recognition cannot do the work it promises.
1. Honneth’s Democratic and Social Justice Proposals for Integrating
Recognition and Distribution
A Honneth’s Theory of Recognition
Honneth’s well-known theory of recognition intends to connect a theory of
psychic development with a theory of social change in order to develop an
account that is both empirically grounded in real experiences and normatively
robust enough to critically evaluate contemporary social relations.
7
Very briefly,
his theory starts from an account of identity formation as an on-go ing,
intersubjective process of struggling to gain mutual recognition from one’s
partners in interaction. Through this process of struggle, individuals develop
three different forms of relation-to-self through three different types of social
interaction: 1) self-confidence is gained in primary, affective relations, 2) self-respect
in legal relations of rights, and 2) self-esteem in local communities defined by
shared value orientations.
8
These intersubjective processes of learning ‘to view
oneself, from the normative perspective of one ’s partners to interaction, as their
social addressee’ (1995c: 92) are the media through which individuals become
who they are, and within which social forms of life are continually maintained
and reproduced.
The first and most basic form of recognition is achieved in intimate relations of
love and friendship, through which individuals are first able to achieve a
measure of confidence in themselves as distinct from their environment and in
the constancy of the world around them. To develop self-confidence in the
stability of their own identity and the world, children need to be continually
recognized and attended to in strong emotional relationships which provide a
stable reality within which they can overcome their originally indistinct
symbiotic relationships to primary others.
The second basic form of recognition is that achieved through the acknowl-
edgment of one’s formal capacity for autonomous moral action. Through the
universal rights accorded to all me mbers of a society, just insofar as they are
members of that society, individuals are able to achieve self-respect for
themselves as equals of other members, entitled to make their own decisions
about how to conceive of and realize their own life plans. Thus, this second form
of relation-to-self—self-respect—is realized through legal relations which
recognize one as equally deserving of rights to negative liberty, acces s to political
processes, and the burdens of legal responsibility.
The third form of recognition occurs through one ’s valued participation in and
positive contributions to a shared way of life that expresses distinctive,
92 Christopher F. Zurn
r
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
communally held values. In a group defined by social solidarity (usually a group
smaller in size than the group of citizens as a whole in which self-respect is
realized), one is able to achieve self-esteem by being recognized as a distinct
individual, with particular traits and abilities that positively contribute to the
shared projects of that solidaristic community. In modern societies, this third
form of relation-to-self is separated—and must be separated—from the second
form of self-respect. This is because, to be fair, legal relations must recognize in all
citizens the abstract characteristics of moral autonomy, whereas, in esteeming a
person, what is at issue is precisely that person’s characteristic traits that are
positively evaluated with in a local community’s shared horizon of values. Thus
while self-confidence and self-esteem involve the understan ding of oneself in
one’s concrete particularity, self-respect involves a relation to oneself in one’s
abstract universality.
Corresponding to the three positive forms of recognition, Honneth analyzes
three forms of disrespect. At the most fundamental level, when one’s control over
one’s own body— one’s physical integrity—is violated by physical abuse, torture,
rape, etc., then one looses trust in the stability of one’s basic identity and
constancy of one’s world necessary for a healthy sense of self-confidence.
Secondly, one’s chance for developing moral self-respect can be negatively
affected through the systematic denial of rights bestowed on other ci tizens.
Finally, one’s self-esteem can be undermined by the denigration and degradation
of one’s way of life, for in these cases one’s way of life is not receiving the social
esteem necessary for a healthy understanding of one’s unique capacities and
achievements.
Honneth then develops his critical theory through an account of the structural
interconnection between a) the three levels of individual identity development,
b) the three forms of intersubjective recognition required for each level, and c) the
forms of social organization needed as preconditions for the heal thy, undistorted
self-realization of that society’s members. This structural interconnection then
provides a basis for explaining processes of social change—explicating both the
impulse for expanded recognition and the normative claims raised in social
struggles for individual and group recognition. For, when individual experiences
of disrespect are understood as the norm for all members of a certain group—
when disrespect is experienced epidemically—the potential motivation exists for
collective political resistance to the structures of society which systematically
deny the members of that group the recognition they need for full self-realization.
And these struggl es are normatively justifiable on the grounds that such
systematic forms of disrespect impede the mutual recognition required for the
maintenance and reproduction of healthy forms of self-relation and self-
realization.
9
A salient strength of this internally differentiated and subtle account of
intersubjective recognition is that it is particularly well-suited to analyzing not
only those recent social movements that have demanded the recognition of
group’s specificity and difference, but also those movements that, for close to two
hundred years, have insistently demanded an equal role in social affairs for those
Recognition, Redistribution, and Democracy 93
r
Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005