S. 39: "My project in this paper is to develop the initial distinction which I have drawn between recognition and appraisal respect into a more detailed and specific account of each. These accounts will not merely be of intrinsic interest. Ultimately I will use them to illuminate the puzzles with which this paper began and to understand the idea of self-respect." 42 " Thus, insofar as respect within such a pursuit will depend on an appraisal of the participant from the (...) perspective of whatever standards are held to be appropriate to the pursuit, such respect will depend on a judgement to which excellences of character are thought relevant. Note that exactly what aspect of the person's character is thought to be relevant in this instance is his recognition respect (or lack of it) for the standards of the pursuit." 44 "This attitude fails of being appraisal respect in that my having it toward the person is conditional on those traits being such as to make him server a particular purpose that I happen to have" 44 - 45 "To sum up: Appraisal respect is an attitude of positibe appraisal of a person either judged as a person or as engaged in some more specific pursuit. In the first case, the appropriate grounds are features of the person's character: dispositions to act for particular reasons or a higher-level disposition to act for the best reasons. In the second case, though features of character do not exhaust the appropriate grounds for appraisal respect, some such character traits will be relevant (recognition respect for the standards of a particular pursuit). Also, the other features which constitute the appoprate excellences of the pursuit must be related to traits of character in the way specified. In both cases, the positive appraisal of the person, and of his traits, must be categorical. It cannot depend on the fact that the person, because of his traits, serves an interest or purpose of one's own." 45 "To have recognition respect for someone as a person is to give appropriate weight to the fact that he or she is a person by being willing to constrain one's behaviour in ways required by that fact." 45 "This is rather different from having an attitude of appraisal respect for someone as a person. The latter is a positive appraisal oif an individual made with regard ti those features which are excellences of persons. As such, it is not owed to everone, for it may or may not be merited. When it is, what is merited is just the positive appraisal itself." 47 "Second, the only beings who are approriate objects of appraisal respect are those who are capable of acting for reasons and hence capable of conceiving of various facts as meriting more or less consideration in deliberation.". (shrink)

It is, by now, a well-established thesis that one major path that runs from Kant, through Fichte and Schelling, up to Hegel is defined by the conception of freedom as autonomy. It is less known and has been less frequently the object of study that from Kant to Hegel a new idea of life takes shape as well. Even less taken into account is the fact that these two paths from Kant to Hegel might be systematically intertwined. If the notion (...) of life in German Idealism is discussed at all, it has been discussed mostly in dealing with the philosophies of nature and biology of Kant and his successors. This framing is, of course, not wrong in itself; yet to my mind we can only fully account for the thought of what is living and the new interest that the idealist philosophies of nature actually deserve if we regard life as a practical notion. For the idealists, life is, as Fichte has it, an “analogue of freedom in nature,” and it describes the one form of object we can encounter in nature that possesses a kind of unity and organization that comes close to the unity and the organization of spirit. In various accounts of German Idealism, life is not only regarded as an analogue of a self-grounded order, but figures furthermore as a precondition of the actuality of freedom: It is in being alive that we might become free. How exactly this is so is of course not only a very complicated issue but also a contested one among Kant and his successors. In order to outline at least two basic approaches to relating ‘life’ and ‘autonomy,’ I would like to present a sketch of a reading of Kant, in whose works the analogy of life and autonomy first manifests itself, and of Hegel, who has to my mind most fully developed the potential of this constellation. (shrink)

Kant’s treatment of teleology and life in the Critique of the Power of Judgment is complicated and difficult to interpret; Hegel’s response adds considerable complexity. I propose a new way of understanding the underlying philosophical issues in this debate, allowing a better understanding of the underlying structure of the arguments in Kant and Hegel. My new way is unusual: I use for an interpretive lens some structural features of familiar debates about freedom of the will. These debates, I argue, allow (...) us to see more clearly the underlying structure of a great many philosophical issues. Aside from some suggested avenues of approach, however, I do not aim to interpret what Kant or Hegel has to say about freedom of the will. The idea is to use this interpretive lens to better understand the philosophical issues at stake in their disagreement concerning teleology and life. This will clarify the precise philosophical burden that must be met by Kant’s argument in defense of his skepticism, and why his case has considerable philosophical force. But it will also explain why Kant’s argument itself inevitably provides the opening for Hegel’s reply, and sets a standard that Hegel will meet in a surprising way. Finally, this approach will explain why we can learn a great deal from the philosophical arguments in Kant and Hegel about this topic, despite the intervening years of such great progress in the biological sciences: by looking to Kant and Hegel we can better understand the structure of underlying philosophical terrain of the issues concerning teleology and life—terrain we are still fighting over today. (shrink)

Previous edition, 1st, published in 1971.

The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western (...) liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s _Philosophy of Right_ and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society. (shrink)

This study examines the philosophical foundations of Hegel's social theory by articulating the normative standards at work in his claim that the central social institutions of the modern era are rational or good.

For post-Kantian philosophy, “life” is a transitional concept that relates the realm of nature to the realm of freedom. From this vantage point, what is living seems to have the double char- acter of being both already and not yet free: Compared with the external necessity of dead nature, living beings already seem to exhibit a basic type of spontaneity and normativity that on the other hand still has to be superseded on the path to the freedom and normativity of (...) spirit. The origin of this constellation is to be found in Kant’s discussion of natural purposes in the third Critique; its most articulated shape, however, is developed in Hegel’s conception of life. To introduce the questions that this volume discusses, I will briefly characterize the way in which Kant opens up this conception of the living (I) and outline the way in which Hegel develops this approach (II, III). I will close with a brief outlook on the contributions collected in this volume (IV). (shrink)

Neuhouser’s book is one of the most important contributions to the revival of Hegelian philosophy that has been taking place in Anglo-American philosophy over the last few years. Much of the debate in moral and political philosophy of the last few years has been set in terms of “the right” versus “the good,” and it is tempting to want to put Hegel in one of those categories and thereby also to classify him as either a “liberal,” a “communitarian,” or perhaps (...) a “romantic.” Neuhouser develops a powerful case for understanding him as none of these things. Instead he wants to understand Hegel as developing a social and political philosophy around the central conception of “self-determi- nation.” At first blush, that makes Hegel sound very much like the post-Kantian many now take him to be, but Neuhouser argues that, however true that might be, Hegel is best understood as continuing and developing certain key Rousseauian insights. In Neuhouser’s treatment, both Hegel and Kant are “post- Rousseauians,” and his understanding of what this means throws new and great light on understanding why Hegel’s social philosophy may still be of importance to us. (shrink)