The dialectic of recognition: A post-Hegelian approach

Abstract

This article aims to make two points. First, seeking and granting recognition is an ambivalent process that may lead to results completely the opposite from what was intended. Certain social pathologies, including reification, develop because of the way the desire for recognition is expressed and satisfied. Nevertheless, the concept of recognition remains central to critical theory. A normative concept of recognition is needed in order to identify these pathologies. Second, a critical theory of society that understands itself as praxis must justify the possibility of its ‘reception’ by members of society. The theory’s addressees must ‘recognize themselves’ in the theory. They must recognize in it the conceptual expression of their own experience of society. Therefore, social theory must account for the emergence of a critical standpoint on society. These two main points are addressed by means of a ‘dialectical’ approach. The tensions and interactions between global society, states, and value-communities – the dialectic within and between these spheres – account for the diverse and conflicting meanings of the concept of recognition. At the same time, such a dialectic makes it possible to understand the emergence of a critical viewpoint on society.