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. (shrink)

The paper’s main purpose is to show that the new recognition paradigm could have a great impact on the philosophy of education. The author demonstrates that impact by a comparative analysis of both Axel Honneth’s theory of intersubjectively founded self-realisation and Robert Brandom’s concept of socially mediated propositional articulation. The focus of the analysis is the question of the social prerequisites and intersubjective mechanisms of the development of propositional thinking as a core dimension of subjectivity. On the ground of the (...) analytic work carried out by the paper some basic features of development-supportive pedagogical interactions can be formulated. (shrink)

This article argues that Axel Honneth’s ethics of recognition offers a robust model for a renewed critical theory of society, provided that it does not shy away from its political dimensions. First, the ethics of recognition needs to clarify its political moment at the conceptual level to remain conceptually sustainable. This requires a clarification of the notion of identity in relation to the three spheres of recognition, and a clarification of its exact place in a politics of recognition. We suggest (...) that a return to Hegel’s mature theory of subjectivity helps specify the relationship between the normative demand for autonomous identity and its realization in and through politics. (shrink)

At present, the debate on global justice, a debate which is at the core of global ethics, is largely being conducted by European and American scholars from different disciplines without taking into account views and concepts from other regions of the world, particularly, from the Global South. The lack of a truly intercultural, interreligious, and international exchange of ideas provokes doubts whether the concepts of global justice introduced so far are able to transcend regional and cultural horizons. The article introduces (...) concepts of justice from African scholars, whose voices have remained marginal until now, like the Kenyan philosopher Henry Odera Oruka, the Ethiopian philosopher Teodros Kiros, and the debate on ubuntu, one of the most controversial concepts in southern Africa today. These concepts focus on issues that are seldom considered in the debate on global justice, such as the importance of bodily needs as a prerequisite for human beings to act as moral beings and the importance of human rel.. (shrink)

The article starts with the observation of an ambivalence inherent to the politics of juridification. On the one hand, some spheres of the life-world such as the family and the school are often places of exploitation, degradation and humiliation and therefore seem to require the implementation of legal protection for their members. At the same time, the demand for rights seems somehow to grasp too little, would be inadequate or even counterproductive. How can this ambivalence be politically dealt with? I (...) first briefly reconstruct Jürgen Habermas' concept of juridification. I believe that Habermas works with an image of the family and the school as communicatively constituted and juristically uncompromised milieux, which proves to be highly questionable. In a second step I consider Axel Honneth's theory of the absolutization of legal freedom as offered in his recent work Freedom's Right. Honneth sidesteps several problematic implications of the Habermasian thesis of colonization, but still tends to underestimate the dominant patriarchal power relations in the spheres of the family and the school. Finally, I pursue Honneth's own suggestion that a new notion of politics is required for understanding contemporary struggles for recognition, which overcomes the statist tendencies of liberalism. I therefore propose to shift the perspective on the phenomenon of juridification, viewing it instead from the standpoint of the agents themselves, by turning to Wendy Brown's feminist theory on the paradoxes of rights. (shrink)

Recognition is a basic precondition of participation. This article applies the dimension of recognition to business ethics. A case is made for normative stakeholder management as a voluntary commitment at the level of corporate leadership; this also meets management’s strategic demands. A vitality criterion is offered as a heuristic instrument, suggesting that any operation should be avoided which would violate the legitimate interests of stakeholders. For this reason, the recognition of mutually-conditioned stakeholder claims is understood as the central management idea.

Purpose. The purpose of the study is critical reconstruction of gender issues within the framework of modern political philosophy and political anthropology, in-depth reflection of the phenomena of justice, identity, human dignity in the aspect of their gender measurements and the search for the answer to the fundamental question for leading gender discourses: is freedom and justice, in fact, possible only together with stresses, a feeling of one’s sense-rooted belonging to one or another community? Theoretical basis. The supplement of the (...) phenomenological and transcendental methodology by the method of contractualism directs the study of the topic specified in the article’s title into a new direction, and reflects its essential measurements and aspects. Understanding gender as an important philosophical and anthropological problem and a complex "social construct" precisely within the framework of the latest critical and self-critical versions of the theory of social contract reveal fruitful perspectives for political philosophy and anthropology. Originality. The study of the phenomena of "recognition" of "gender justice", "moral sense" outlines the possibilities and sense of filling the principle of social contract with a specific theoretical and practical content, substantiates the need to expand the philosophical and anthropological interpretation space of gender issues. Conclusions. Significance of the gender community for the sociocultural and existential identity of the individual enables his/her security and the ability to adequately orient in difficult life situations. However, the main purpose of human life is the ability to self-identity, even after profound changes in the structure of personality that arise in difficult situations of contempt and injustice. (shrink)