Global Justice and the Politics of Recognition

A. Burns, S. Thompson, A. Burns, S. Thompson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780230205970
• eBook ISBN: 9781137318169
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Social Sciences

Global justice is of every increasing importance in the contemporary political world. This volume brings a hitherto overlooked perspective – the politics of recognition – to bear on this idea. It considers how discussion of each of these illuminates the problems posed by the other, thus addressing an issue of vital concern for the years to come.

1

Honneth, Hegel, and Global Justice

Andrew Buchwalter

Recent philosophical discussions of the concept of recognition are indebted to the work of Axel Honneth, who has sought to appropriate original Hegelian insights for contemporary social theory. For the most part, however, Honneth has made little effort to mine the resources of recognition theory for issues of global justice and globalism generally. It is telling that his Suffering from Indeterminacy (Honneth, 2000), which seeks to rejuvenate Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from the perspective of a reconstructed account of recognition, devotes virtually no attention to the concluding sections on international law and world history.

Part of the explanation for this apparent lacuna may lie with the very nature of Honneth’s project. His approach to recognition focuses more on the relation of individual persons than states, peoples, and larger forms of collective agency. It is concerned more with conditions for individual self-realization and personal identity formation than general ‘deontological’ issues of justice. And it is structured around a tripartite differentiation of the domains of love, law, and achievement that may entail commitment to a form of social theory largely applicable only to modern Western societies. Still, given the increasing prominence of matters of global justice for social theorists, some clarification on Honneth’s part on how these issues might be addressed from the perspective of recognition theory – given its increasing prominence as a tool of social theory – would seem desirable.

It is thus noteworthy that recently Honneth has expanded his focus to include some consideration of international affairs. Especially significant is the 2012 essay ‘Recognition between States: On the Moral Substrate of International Relations’ (Honneth, 2012a, 2012b).¹ While not directly addressed to the theme of global justice, this essay does represent a welcomed and instructive effort on Honneth’s part to apply the tools of recognition theory to the general domain of international affairs. Honneth’s particular aim in the essay is to fashion an account of nation-state agency distinct from what is the still dominant view in international relations theory.

For the latter, the relations of states are constructed in terms of the paradigm of self-interested strategic, purposive-rational conduct associated with the tradition of political realism. By contrast, Honneth seeks to develop a moral or quasi-moral account rooted in strivings for respect and recognition. He does so first as an explanatory thesis, detailing the extent to which as an empirical matter the desire for respect and recognition rather than simply strategic self-assertion does in fact shape the motives of state actors on the global stage. In addition, he considers certain normative consequences entailed by his proposed ‘paradigm shift’ (Honneth, 2012b: 27) from an international politics based on strategic self-assertion to one focused on strivings for respect and recognition. From this perspective, actors on the international stage would be scrutinized in terms of contributions to transnational cooperation and the ‘conditions for civilizing world politics’ (Honneth, 2012b: 36).

At the beginning of the essay, Honneth notes that Hegel’s theory of recognition can be seen as a source for an effort to understand the collective agency of groups in a moral-theoretical language rather than one of strategic self-interest. He also asserts, however, that Hegel himself develops no such account in his own theory of international relations. Instead, Hegel, according to Honneth, remains fully committed to the conventional realist account, one that understands state action in terms of strategic self-interest and nationalist self-assertion. Honneth does acknowledge that Hegel may on occasion in his oeuvre employ the tools of recognition theory to accommodate the experiences of underdeveloped and unrecognized nations. But in his explicit theory of international law, focused as it is on the ‘enlightened constitutional states of the West’, Hegel’s attention is solely to ‘the aims of maximizing welfare and preserving national security’ (Honneth, 2012b: 26). Thus, while Honneth may appeal to resources of Hegelian recognition theory generally to fashion a moral account of international affairs, he finds little of value in Hegel’s own formulated account. Indeed, he claims that a recognition-theoretical approach to international relations is one that perforce ‘differs from the view of Hegel and the political realists following in his wake’ (Honneth, 2012b: 36).

In my view this reading misrepresents the value of Hegel and his theory of recognition for an account of international affairs and, particularly, a notion of global justice.² I do not dispute that there are strongly realist and even Hobbesian features to Hegel’s theory of international relations. Indeed, I acknowledge that elements of his employment of recognition theory itself support such a reading. But I contend as well that this reading, common though it may be, does not represent the whole story and must be supplemented by a different and more capacious account, one attentive in Hegel to issues of mutual respect, transnational cooperation, interculturalism, global responsibilities, as well as shared norms of right and justice.

Elsewhere I have generally addressed Hegel’s recognition theory and its value for a conception of global justice (see Buchwalter, 2007; Buchwalter, 2011a–b, 2012a–b). In what follows, I shall pursue some of these themes with regard to issues that Honneth addresses in this essay and elsewhere. My discussion is divided into eight sections. In Section I, I draw on the account of peoples central to his theory of international law to question the charge that for Hegel international law is to be understood solely in terms of purposive rationality and the strategic self-assertion of nation-states. In Section II, I address Honneth’s concerns about peoples and other large-scale collectivities as appropriate units of social analysis. In Section III, I sketch the distinctiveness of Hegel’s recognition theory and its application to a law of peoples, focusing – central to my analysis as a whole – on how recognition is a tool not just to secure the respect for an existing sense of self-identity (as with Honneth), but a condition for the intersubjective constitution of identity itself. Section IV considers how Hegel’s recognitive process at the transnational level serves tendentially to generate, through something like the ‘conflict-ridden learning process’ Honneth discerns in Kant (Honneth, 2007c: 16), a globally accepted and validated set of shared norms, values, and principles. Section V concretizes this analysis with respect to what I call an intercultural account of universal human rights, one where rights are not simply presumed (as with Honneth) by a theory of recognition, but – here I recall Hegel’s distinctive conjunction of teleological and deontological modes of normative analysis – generated and validated in the recognitive process itself. Section VI considers the unique way in which, for Hegel, recognition theory articulates a concept of humanitarian intervention, a concept generally supported by Hegel and Honneth alike. Section VII examines the two approaches to recognition theory with reference to the issue of global distributive justice. In Section VIII, I make some brief concluding remarks about the respective merits of the two approaches.

Section I

We begin by considering Honneth’s claim that states are to be understood by Hegel on the model of strategic action in the tradition of international realism. There is no doubt that this is a component of Hegel’s theory of external state sovereignty. Certainly, it accords with his empirical account of much state action on the international scene. Yet this view does not do justice to the more comprehensive notion of state that informs his practical philosophy and his general theory of objective spirit. On this view, a polity is not just a set of legal-administrative structures governed by requirements of strategic rationality. It is instead the broad assemblage of norms, practices, and traditions that constitute a political community generally. In its ramified expression, the state denotes the ‘spirit of a people’ – the ‘ethical universe’ (sittliche Universum) that conjoins individual and community and gives a polity its distinctive shape and character (Hegel, 1991 [1821]: §33, 21). And it is this concept of state as Volksgeist that comprises the content of his theory of international law, itself understood as Volkerrecht or a law of peoples.

In so characterizing states, however, Hegel is not reducing a polity simply to a matter of culture, practices, and traditions. In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls construes peoples along these lines, and while there are important affinities between the two positions, there are significant differences as well. Perhaps the most basic of these is that Hegel understands a people, or at least the Volksgeist that constitutes the subject of international law, not simply through ‘common sympathies’ (Rawls, 1999b: 23), but, above all, through the principle of subjectivity and self-consciousness (Hegel, 1991 [1821]: §257, 275). States are understood not simply as assemblages of practices, but through the shared self-consciousness of individuals in relation to them. It is this shared self-consciousness that gives a people its distinctive identity and articulates its specific character as a Volksgeist.

So understood, the subjectivity Hegel assigns to states is not properly understood, at least not exclusively, on the model of Honneth’s strategic action, one that simply objectifies and advances existing state interests. Instead, selfhood here is a dynamic and reflexive phenomenon, one that shapes and reshapes its identity even as it objectifies itself externally. Proceeding from the notion of subjectivity or self-consciousness as Bei-sich-selbst-sein, Hegel construes autonomous selfhood as the ability to establish, affirm, and maintain identity in the conditions of its existence. In the case of a political community, self-identity consists in the ability to establish and maintains itself in the social and historical conditions that always already shape it. Given that those conditions inevitably undergo change, so too does the need for subjective reassessment and recalibration. For Hegel, collective identity is subject to ongoing processes of ‘rejuvenation’ (Verjüngung) (Hegel, 2012: §134). On this view, the historicity that shapes any particular community’s self-understanding also entails an internal historicity, one characterized by ongoing practices of collective self-interpretation and self-renewal.

The historical self-reflexivity expressed in processes of cultural self-renewal similarly entails processes of cultural self-transcendence. For Hegel, a community is distinguished by its consciousness of itself. On pains of circularity, however, no cultural community can ever make itself – its self-consciousness – a complete object of reflection. Any effort to achieve of a more complete comprehension will require appeal to a new and later cultural self-understanding, one more fully able to objectify the former’s self-comprehension. Thus the self-reflexivity that most defines the inner nature of a cultural community also engenders its transcendence. ‘[T]he completion of an act of comprehension is at the same time its alienation and transition . . . . [T]he spirit which comprehends this comprehension anew and which . . . returns to itself from its alienation, is the spirit at a stage higher than that at which it stood in its earlier comprehension’ (Hegel, 1991 [1821]: §343, 372). To be sure, it is also a feature of the historicity of Hegel’s thought that no culture can fully transcend its age; every culture remains a child of its times. Yet if every act of self-apprehension is substantively bound to the practices and traditions of its age, the ‘form’ of such self-reflection does nurture the emergence of new and, for Hegel, more adequate modes of cultural formation. One such formation is ‘the inward birth-place of the spirit that will later arrive at actual form’ (Hegel, 1974 [1833/36]: 55).

For Hegel, then, a polity cannot be understood simply in terms of structures of strategic self-assertion. Although such self-assertion is the part of the agency of a political community, such agency also includes a self-reflexive dimension, one linked to processes of ongoing self-interpretation and self-transcendence. Shortly we consider the significance this understanding of political community has for international law. But first some additional consideration must be afforded to the notion of peoples itself, for in Honneth’s theory such collectivities have little place.

Section II

In ‘Recognition between States’, Honneth questions the extent to which the concept of ‘collective identity’ can be used to characterize and comprehend large-scale entities like nation-states (Honneth, 2012b: 27). At issue, however, is not a general opposition on Honneth’s part to the notion of collective identity itself. Indeed, he acknowledges the usefulness of that concept as a means to comprehend the shared experience of minorities and other groups struggling for recognition in the face of social disrespect. Yet he asserts that this concept is not readily applicable to nation-states, certainly those belonging to the constitutional states of the West, which are too amorphous to articulate a viable notion of identity and in any event are preoccupied with issues other than those associated with struggles against exclusion.

It is questionable, though, if this characterization does justice to Hegel’s notion of collective identity. For one thing, identity for Hegel is not construed just in terms of struggles against misrecognition. Instead, it denotes the general form of self-relation specific to a community as it seeks to affirm and reaffirm itself in the face of the general conditions confronting and shaping its existence. Such self-relation may be triggered by experiences of disrespect; it may be shaped in and through its response to such experiences. However, rooted in a notion of selfhood in otherness definitive of Hegel’s general conception of self-determination, identity is shaped by many other factors as well.

This is not to say that conflict and struggle are not central to a Hegelian conception of self-identity. To do so would be to disregard Hegel’s characterization of subjective identity as itself a ‘self-referring negativity’ (Hegel, 1991 [1821]: §7, 41–42). Yet the relationship between struggle or conflict and identity is different and more complex with Hegel than it is with Honneth. For Hegel, struggle is not a process through which a community or group strives to secure recognition for an existing but disrespected sense of self-relation. Instead, struggle, as the animating principle of a notion of identity understood as ‘self-mediating activity’ (Hegel, 1991 [1821]: §7, 41–42), is constitutive of identity itself (see Siep, 2009: 200).

Another reason for Honneth’s resistance to the notion of collective identity at the level of nations or peoples is that it seems to entail a notion of ‘national homogeneity’ (Honneth, 2012b: 27) at odds with the pluralism and diversity that must be a part of a theory of recognition (and a theory of modern social life). But this, too, is not an issue that pertains to a Hegelian notion of collective identity. It may be one that pertains, say, to Rawls’ conception of peoples, but for Hegel identity is also affirmation of pluralism and diversity. On Hegel’s account collective identity is the self-consciousness of common or shared identity, but consciousness of what is shared is not fully possible without acknowledgement of what is not shared. Shared identity presupposes an appreciation of where parties differ as well. Nor is this just a theoretical observation. For Hegel, a central feature of collective identity is ongoing reflection of the conditions of identity. A basic source of such reflection is the engagement of different groups (for Hegel, this takes the form of corporatively differentiated group representation) attending to the conditions of their common existence. Both conceptually and as a practical matter, collective identity for Hegel affirms diversity as much as commonality.

Honneth also questions attaching collective identity to nation-states on the grounds that states must carry out certain systemic tasks – providing security, preserving power, and ensuring economic coordination – that obey rules of their own, and these tasks do not readily mesh with the phenomena of feelings and strivings addressed by recognitive notions of identity (Honneth, 2012b: 27). But, again, identity for Hegel is not understood in psychological terms. It is understood rather in terms of the ‘logical’ structure of autonomy or self-determination conceived as Bei-sich-selbst-sein, and this structure is as applicable to objective steering mechanisms as it is to psychosociological notions of self-relation. Indeed, on a Hegelian account, a community affirms an autonomous sense of collective identity when its members are able inter alia to express, locate, and maintain themselves in the face of the objective exigencies confronting and shaping them.

Section III

Thus far I have questioned Honneth’s contention that for Hegel international relations centre on the strategic self-assertion of nation-states. While undeniably one element of Hegel’s position, this view must be supplemented by a more capacious account, one acknowledging Hegel’s treatment of political communities as peoples or Volksgeistern. So understood, nations are characterized as well by a self-reflexivity that entails ongoing processes of self-renewal and self-transcendence. In addition, I have addressed Honneth’s concerns about the very concept of peoples or nations as instances of a notion of collective identity. I have argued that collective identity at the level of nation-states is intelligible if, following Hegel, it is construed through the notion of subjectivity understood as selfhood in otherness, that such a view affirms plurality and social differentiation, and that it encompasses – in a manner difficult for an approach focused on strivings for respect – attention to the objective economic and administrative exigencies that must be included in a theory of modern social reality. In the present section, I pursue these considerations further, detailing how Hegel’s account of peoples can contribute to the ‘transnational cooperation’ and ‘civilizing world politics’ that Honneth seeks to fashion in opposition to Hegel (Honneth, 2012b: 36).

It is a commonplace that for Hegel that self-consciousness and selfhood generally are understood intersubjectively.³ Against the tradition of Cartesian ‘privacy’, Hegel maintains that the self is conceivable only in relation to another self and that first self is properly known to itself only to the degree that it finds itself in the consciousness of an other (Hegel, 1977: §138). As regards the identity of collectivities, Hegel argues similarly, if not with the same detail. As noted, a political community fully affirms its distinctiveness in its self-consciousness – in its consciousness of its own identity. Such consciousness, however, is achieved, not introspectively but only through reference to another. It is in acknowledging and accommodating that which is other to itself that it comes to establish and validate its own sense of self. One political community forges its own identity only in relation to other peoples and cultures: it is in ‘the relationship of nations to other nations’ that a people is able ‘to perceive itself . . . and to have itself as an object’ (Hegel, 1975a [1837]: 101).

Hence while proceeding from the self-assertion of individual polities, here too Hegel does not simply affirm simply the strategic view of international relations common to the tradition of political realism. Rather, the very act of self-assertion includes a positive reference to other communities. Although appeal to the concept of self-consciousness is meant to define what is most specific to a political collectivity, its actual formulation culminates in an expanded and inclusive consciousness of self, an Arendt-like enlarged mentality that also challenges parochial self-understandings. This is so not only because communities require for their own identity the recognition of those other than their own, but because identity itself depends on incorporating diverse conceptions and self-conceptions. Collective self-consciousness is not only self-transcending; reference to an other is included in and constitutive of the structure of identity i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Honneth, Hegel, and Global Justice
• 2. The Recognition of Globalization and the Globalization of Recognition
• 3. Hegel, Cosmopolitanism, and Contemporary Recognition Theory
• 4. Recognition Beyond the State
• 5. Solidarity, Justice, and the Postnational Constellation: Habermas and Beyond
• 6. Recognition and Redistribution in Theories of Justice Beyond the State
• 7. Property, Justice, and Global Society
• 8. An Articulation of Extra-Territorial Recognition: Towards International and Supranational Solutions of Global Poverty
• Bibliography
• Index