LFU:online

Department of Philosophy Department of Philosophy

Mag. Dr. Matthias Flatscher Mag. Dr. Matthias Flatscher

602029

SE Sozialphilosophie und Politische Philosophie II

SE 2

5

Block

every 2nd year

German

In recent decades, recognition has become a key concept in debates on social philosophy and political theory. Recognition is not merely an epistemological endeavor (the recognition of certain properties or facts); rather, the point is that it is through recognition that someone (e.g. a subject or a group) is first constituted in his/her being or status, i.e. recognized. And it is only through this act of (mutual) recognition that (egalitarian) possibilities of participation in social and political processes arise.
There is a whole series of diverse currents - such as phenomenology (Jean-Paul Sartre), postcolonial studies (Frantz Fanon), Marxism (Louis Althusser), psychoanalysis (Jessica Benjamin) and, above all, the more recent Frankfurt School (Axel Honneth) - that refer back to the concept of recognition, which was prominently introduced into the discussion by Rousseau and Hegel, and discuss it in a controversial way with regard to its subject-constitutive, social and political implications.
The term recognition is intensively discussed not least because it can be problematized in very different ways (cf. Honneth vs. Fraser, Honneth vs. Whitebook, Honneth vs. Rancière, or Honneth vs. Butler). Finally, a reciprocal understanding always entails identity-logical attributions and determinations of normality and thus threatens to level the otherness of the Other.

Honneth, A.: Struggle for Recognition. Frankfurt 1992.
Ikäheimo, H. / Lepold, K. / Stahl, T. (eds.): Recognition and Ambivalence. New York 2021.
Siep L. / Ikäheimo, H. / Quante, M. (eds.): Handbuch Anerkennung. Wiesbaden 2021.

15.03.2023