Recognition, Non-Domination and Global Justice

Vortrag von fiph-Fellow Ndidi Nwaneri M.A. (Chicago)

I engage with Axel Honneth’s central thesis that societies function on prevailing recognition regimes or systems. This means that social pathology is thereby always traceable to inadequate, or flawed recognition between moral agents. To Honneth therefore, justice and recognition mutually illuminate each other because what counts as an injustice depends on our reasonable expectations of recognition. So an institution (say, a constitution) can disrespect (not adequately recognize) persons because institutions, besides effectively regulating behavior, always express—as well as reinforce—underlying attitudes of those who designed or keep on reproducing them.

I argue that inter-subjectivity between moral agents implies an already occurring recognition. While it is possible to deny this already occurring recognition, it is not possible to misrecognize another. I also argue that at the level of society, questions of who gets what are really questions of who is allowed to get what. I therefore propose that the argument for a right to recognition could be understood as an argument for the right and duty of non-domination. I also raise the question of whether global injustice could be understood as resulting from a flawed global recognition regime. And if so, whether Honneth’s theory provides a means of repairing such a regime.