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MUTUAL RECOGNITION AND SOCIAL CONFLICT

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ABSTRACT
MUTUAL RECOGNITION AND SOCIAL CONFLICT
By
James Eric Lambert
It has long been assumed that people engage in social conﬂict for distributive and
utilitarian reasons. Social thinkers have often explained social conﬂict by assuming that
people are motivated to engage in social struggle by economic self-interest, a view I call
economism. I propose an alternative interpretation of what prompts people to enter social
conﬂict, arguing that people are motivated by recognition demands at least as often as by
economic interests. To illustrate, I examine an economistic account of why many whites
in the US. oppose race-conscious social policies. To argue that whites oppose such
policies because they threaten white economic advantage vis-c‘z-vis blacks is untenable. It
is ahistorical and hampered by a narrow notion of reason: Economism is better construed
as itself a form of identity or form of agency. Identities, relations, norms, and institutions
are constituted by historically contingent recognition relations. In the U.S., whiteness is a
form of agency and social relation, a form of identity constructed historically and infused
with privilege, authority, and status. Thus if whites rankle at social welfare or afﬁrmative
action, I contend that such indignation is better interpreted as a recognition struggle than
as a defense of economic self-interest. The claims that some whites feel marginalized,
victimized or aggrieved should be taken seriously. But the threat they perceive, the
_ discomfort they feel, has its origin not in economic usurpation by blacks, but in the

increasing visibility of whiteness, as well as a growing awareness of its pretensions.

Copyright by

James Eric Lambert

2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction .......................................................................... 1
Chapter 2 Situating the Identity-Recognition Conception of Motivation .............. 24
A. Classical Liberalism and Marxism .......................................... 25
B. Critical Social Theory: Main Concepts .................................... 49
C. Identity-Recognition Theory as Diagnostic Tool ........................ 63
Chapter 3 An Economistic Theory of White Racism ..................................... 69
A. Deﬁning Economism: Concepts and Assumptions ....................... 71
B. Wellman: Racism as Defense of Economic Privilege ................... 76
C. Critique of Wellman’s Economistic Theory of Racism .................. 95
Chapter 4 The Recognition Theoretic Alternative ....................................... 108
A. Hegel .......................................................................... 111
B. Honneth ....................................................................... 129
C. Honneth’s Theory of Recognition: Recognition
and Social Conﬂict .......................................................... 147
D. Conclusion ................................................................... 169
Chapter 5 An Identity-Recognition Theory of Motivation for Social Conﬂict ...... 173
A. Critique of Economism ..................................................... 175
B. Social Conﬂict and Struggles for Recognition .............. . ........... 184
C. Conclusion ................................................................... 203
Chapter 6 Objections and Areas for Further Research .................................. 206
A. Objections .................................................................... 206
1. Recognition of another cannot be obligatory ................... 206
2. Not all identity claims seem to merit recognition .............. 209
3. Ambiguity in Honneth’s conception of solidarity ............. 216
4. Not all who are disrespected are motivated to resist .......... 220
B. Further Research ............................................................ 229
1. Working-Class Racism ............................................ 229
2. Conservative Religious Movements ............................. 236
3. Political Implications .............................................. 240
C. Conclusion ................................................................... 248
Chapter 7 Conclusion ........................................................................ 246
Bibliography ....................................................................................... 255

iv

Chapter 1

Introduction

The slave is a subject, subjected by others; the slaveholder is a subject, but he is the author of his
own subjection. There is more truth in the saying, that slavery is a greater evil to the master than
to the slave, than many, who utter it, suppose.

Frederick Douglass

My Bondage and My F reedoml

...It is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but. . . groups tend
to be more immoral than individuals.

Martin Luther King

“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
For the oppressors. . .it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call “the oppressed”
but. . .“savages”. .. or “subversives”) who are disaffected, who are “violent”. . .when they react to
the violence of the oppressors.

Paolo Freire
The Pedagogy of the Oppressea‘2

Over the past 30 years, the concepts of recognition and identity have achieved a
growing prominence in politics and social-political philosophy. Usually grouped under
the rubrics of multiculturalism and identity politics, theories of difference and putatively
new conceptions of subjectivity have been developed by postmodernists, post-
structuralists, feminists, critical race theorists, and critical social theorists. According to
the literature on, and the self-understanding of proponents of, multiculturalism and
identity politics, the 19603 and 19703 mark the decisive historical moment when identity

and demands for the recognition of difference gained salience as political and theoretical

 

I Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York: Dover, 1969), 105.

2 Quoted ﬁ'om excerpt reproduced in David Barash ed., Approaches to Peace (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 142.

concerns. 3 Second wave feminism, the Black Power movement, Stonewall, and anti-
colonialist wars of liberation are important historical struggles over the meanings of race,
gender and sexuality, no less than freedom and equality. Not surprisingly, the work of G.
W. F. Hegel provides a theoretical touchstone for many attempts to understand and to
justify moral and political claims articulated in the language of identity and recognition.
While such theorists as Brian Calhoun, Axel Honneth, and Charles Taylor dispute this
chronology4 -— arguing that 19th century labor struggles, as well as the Enlightenment
effort to establish legal rights and equality, involved distinctive recognition demands as
well - it is hard to deny that many contemporary theorists and social movements
understand themselves to be concerned with identity and recognition in a way that is
historically new.

The increasingly self-conscious focus on identity and recognition relations is, to a
degree, underscored by recent political events. Consider the Supreme Court ruling (as
well as continued legislative efforts in many States) aimed at restricting a woman’s right
to terminate a pregnancy; ongoing attempts to gain legal recognition for same sex
marriages; and national demonstrations in April 2006 over immigration reform. In light
of such conﬂicts, a mere glance at a newspaper is enough to convince oneself that
identity and associated struggles for recognition constitute a signiﬁcant source of social
conﬂict. At stake in these struggles is not only, and perhaps not most importantly, a more

just distribution of economic resources. Nor is each of the forms of conﬂict just cited

 

3 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princton University Press. 1990):
Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition: A Political-Philosophical Exchange
(London: Verso, 2003); Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Nancy Fraser, “Recognition without Ethics?” Theory,
Culture & Society 2001 18:2-3, 21-42.

4 See Taylor, ibid; Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of
Diﬂerence (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1995).

ﬁnally reducible to an appeal to be treated “just like everyone else,” i.e., a traditional
appeal to equal treatment on the basis, say, of human nature. The motives and goals of
these different forms of conﬂict are complex (not simple and unitary) and not easily
disentangled.

Of course, it would be a naive oversimpliﬁcation to construe forms of sexism,
racism, or xenophobia as uniquely “cultural” or identity—based. Economic interests are
involved as well. Corporations lobby to maintain a supply of cheap, exploitable labor,
even as (some) American workers condemn immigrant laborers for “driving down
wages.” Economic interests and concerns with identity and justiﬁed forms of recognition
overlap and interrningle to such a degree that the effort to characterize conﬂicts
disjunctively, deﬁnitively as “about” one or the other, often seems artiﬁcial and
reductionistic. The way economic interests and recognitive demands intersect can be
further illustrated by reﬂecting on so-called “wedge issues.” For just as journalists have
noted the perpetual pique and indignation of the Religious Right in the U.S., so have
activists and watchdog groups criticized the media for dwelling on “ﬂuff” stories and
“culture wars,” stories which purportedly divert attention from and therefore obscure
more substantial issues such as global warming, environmental degradation, militarism,
and growing economic inequality.5 Since social conﬂicts implicate and have
consequences for both the economic interests and the self-understanding and value
orientations of social agents, it is best to qualify the intersection of the economic and the

recognitive with a cautious “to a degree.”

 

5 See Al Gore, The Assault on Reason (New York: Penguin Books, 2007); Thomas Frank, What 's the
Matter With Kansas? (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2004)

In many cases, it would be difﬁcult to conclude whether the actions of a social
group or movement were motivated by economic interests, demands for recognition, or
some combination of the two. Illegalizing abortion would have both economic and social
consequences for women, just as a punitive immigration policy would have both
economic and cultural consequences for Hispanics in the US. And so it is neither helpful
nor necessary to divide the terrain of political practice and reﬂection into two exclusive
categories: the economic-distributive on one side, the identity-recognitive on the other.

Yet it is toward such a bifurcation that debates between proponents and critics of
identity theories have tended. Brian Barry and Todd Gitlin charge6 theorists of identity
politics and multiculturalism with neglecting questions of economic justice,
egalitarianism, and universal values. Focusing so heavily on social identity and on the
discourses, curricula, and practices that affect identity, they claim, ultimately obscures
the reality of economic inequality. This criticism is not unwarranted. The ambivalent
legacy of Foucault and post-structuralism is a case in point. While such theories
illuminate various non- or extra-economic ways that social power conditions subjectivity,
the tendency to focus exclusively on social structure and to reject subject-centered theory
left these approaches normatively rudderless.7 Theory described how individuals were
“subjectiﬁed,” “positioned” as racial or gendered subjects, but lacked the resources to

evaluate those social processes. Similarly, Iris Marion Young’s criticism of liberal

 

6 Brian Barry, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001); Todd Gitlin, The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by
Culture Wars (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 1995).

Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989), Chapter I “Foucault on Modern Power: Empirical Insights
and Normative Confusions”; Susan B. Hekman, ed., Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) Chapter 2 “Postmodernism and Political
Change: Issues for Feminist Theory”

theory’s commitment to the “distributive paradigm” combined a re—conception of
subjectivity with analysis of the ways in which social subjects experience oppression. On
her view, examining questions of justice in solely distributive terms veils the oppressive
features of social relations and institutions. Part of the reason that debates over how to
understand (and how to understand the value of) identity and recognition relations reach
an impasse is an overly narrow conception of identity. While theories of identity may
have failed rigorously to confront economic inequality in practice, there is no reason in
principle to think that they cannot do so. To insist on the signiﬁcance of identity and
mutual recognition, from the standpoints of morality and justice, in no way entails
sacriﬁcing a commitment to egalitarianism and economic justice.

One of the main contributions of identity theory to social-political thought has
been to provide a conceptual framework with which to identify various forms of injustice
or oppression experienced by persons, insofar as they are members of particular social
groups. A feminist demand of equal pay for equal work is not simply a demand for fairer
economic distribution, or a demand to treat likes alike. It is this, of course; but such a
demand has cultural implications as well, inasmuch as women as women are paid
unequally. To be demeaned or denied recognition because of one’s membership in a
social group, i.e., because of an aspect of one’s public identity, is to be denied a form of
treatment to which one is normatively entitled. Such experiences affect concrete
individuals emotionally because they signify a rejection of or threat to one’s self, one’s
individuality, and thus jeopardize a person’s ability fully to participate in society. The
focus on identity highlights the way that mutual recognition promotes or inhibits a

person’s ability freely to develop her identity, as well as the way that people, qua

members of social groups, experience justice or injustice, privilege or oppression.
Because experiences of disrespect, humiliation, or exclusion directly threaten the
sustainability of the identities of those affected, people who are disrespected or denied
recognition are motivated to resist, that is, to engage in struggles aimed at gaining
recognition or altering harmful forms of recognition.

Theories of identity and recognition in this way contribute to an understanding of
an inadequately examined aspect of social conﬂict, namely, the motivation for
participating in such struggles. They gesture at an answer to the question, Why do people
protest injustice? Why do they join social movements to resist discrimination, challenge
stereotypes, strike? Empirically, it seems undeniable that many social conﬂicts turn on
identity claims and demands for recognition. Identity matters, and it matters in both a
positive and a negative manner. Positively, the abilities, values, and traditions with
which a person identiﬁes are central to, largely constitutive of, her individuality. To be
denied recognition — say, to be marginalized because of one’s race — affects a person in
an immediate, emotional way; can be experienced as an insult or form of humiliation; and
can prompt distrust, shame, or defensiveness. Negatively, the abilities, values, and
traditions with which a person does not identify, but which are imposed on or ascribed to
a person, are also constitutive of individuality but (to use an existentialist locution) are so
in a mode of one ’s-not-being-so. Even when recognized in a hurtful way, e.g., slighted
because of one’s race, a person may feel more independent, may deﬁne herself as a
concrete individual, by rejecting given roles or challenging objectionable stereotypes.
Thus the refusal to identify with ascribed qualities or imposed values can be liberating.

Whether a person (or a social movement) struggles for or against the preservation of

some value or practice, theories of identity suggest that the motivation to enter and
participate in such struggles emerges from a person’s (or persons’) experience of, and
judgments about, the quality of institutionally secured recognition relations.

My aim in this study is to develop an account of how struggles for recognition
motivate social conﬂict. People are led to social conﬂict because of perceived threats to
their identity; that is, they are motivated to social or political resistance when exposed to
violence, humiliation, or exclusion. I want to note that I do not intend this to be a
universal claim about motivation — an unqualiﬁed claim about what motivates each and
every case of conﬂict. Instead, the conception of motivation I propose is meant to
provide a theoretical framework for what theories of identity usually only suggest:
namely, that many conﬂicts are, in reality, best conceived as struggles for recognition.
My goal is to understand how it is that perceived threats to identity, either personal
identity or a person’s identity as a member of a group, can lead a person to participate in
social resistance. I formulate my argument through an interpretation and critical
appropriation of the identity-recognition social theory of Axel Honneth. Because
Honneth provides a comprehensive framework for examining the link between social
conﬂict and experiences of disrespect and denied recognition, and because that
framework at the same time appreciates the weight of concerns about egalitarianism and
distributive justice, his identity-recognition theory is more compelling than alternative
identity political and multicultural theories.

I contrast my position with a conception of motivation that assumes the self-
interested and economic character of social conﬂict. In what follows, I will call

economistic the view that employs methodological individualism to explain social

interaction, and that conceives of motivation, action, and social struggle in terms of
economic interests. Economism is a theory of motivation which maintains that self-
interest, speciﬁcally economic self-interest, underlies and governs individual preferences
and decisions as well as social interaction and struggles (e. g., the labor movement, the
civil rights movement).8 I noted above that identity theories are sometimes criticized for
ignoring economic conﬂict. Assessing the merits of this criticism is important. Yet it
seems to me that prominent strains in both classical liberalism and modern political
thought have assumed that economic interest is not merely one of many possible
motivations for conﬂict, but is instead the most fundamental and important motivation.
There is a widely accepted social-ontological assumption, perhaps clearest in Hobbes and
Locke but also in contemporary rational choice theory, that human beings are by nature
self-interested, and that the nature of this self-interest is economic. There is a strain of
liberalism that assumes that life plans, relationships, and decisions are motivated above
all by self-preservation, or rather, by the pursuit of personal economic well-being. So,
the aim of my project is not only to show that disrespect and denials of recognition
motivate social conﬂict, which in itself is not an especially provocative claim; but,
equally important, to show that an identity-recognition conception of motivation provides
a better understanding of social conﬂict than an economistic account. Hence, I argue that
the motivation for engaging in social conﬂict is better conceived as a struggle for

recognition, than as a self-interested pursuit of economic well-being.

 

8 I use economism as a term of criticism. The thinkers I describe as economistic, e.g., David Wellman,
whose theory I examine in chapter 3, do not employ the term economism, or describe their positions as
economistic. My usage of the term is intended to pick out reductionist assumptions and tendentious
reasoning. In this way, the use of the term economism parallels the use of the term scientism, which aimed,
not to criticize the totality of scientiﬁc inquiry and practice, but to question a particular conception of
scientiﬁc practice that relied on hypertrophic assumptions.

Liberalism is not monolithic, of course, and I do not mean to imply that
economism is an unavoidable feature of liberal theory. One would be hard pressed to
ﬁnd a contemporary theorist who unqualiﬁedly embraced “atomic individualism” or a
Bentharnite utilitarianism. It is not my intention to criticize liberalism as such, or the
Enlightenment ideals associated with it. Insofar as I argue against a position, it will be
against the speciﬁc social-ontological presuppositions and mode of thinking about
personhood characteristic of economism.

In arguing that the motivation for social conﬂict is often better understood as a
struggle for recognition than as a pursuit of economic self-interest, I follow the line of
thought developed by Honneth in his Struggle for Recognition.9 It is here, chieﬂy by
returning to the early work of Hegel, that Honneth elaborates his recognition-based social
theory. As do theorists of identity politics and multiculturalism, Honneth afﬁrms that
individuality requires socialization, or rather, that identity formation presupposes
reciprocal recognition. But, going beyond the bare assertion that socialization and
recognition are necessary for identity formation, Honneth argues that social reproduction
itself is the result of recognition relations.

Social institutions stabilize consensual norms, and in this way structure and
govern the processes of socialization and interaction through which persons develop
identities and become concrete individuals. For Honneth, the norms embodied in social
institutions are the results of prior struggles for recognition (say, demands to be
recognized as a moral equal, a rights-bearing individual, a member of a community).

Once these norms have gained practical force through social consensus, social agents

 

9 Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: the Moral Grammar of Social Conﬂicts (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1996). Hereafter referred to as SR.

subsequently experience them as justiﬁable expectations to be recognized. There is a
dialectical relation between individual and collective demands for certain forms of
institutional recognition and, on the other hand, the type of individuality made possible
by existing institutions. A society’s normative and institutional framework, then, is
grounded in recognition relations as well as reproduced through processes of
socialization and social conﬂict.

By social conﬂict, 1 mean forms of interaction wherein norms, values, practices,
and social meanings and expectations are publicly examined and either defended or
contested. While conﬂict can manifest as violence or coercive force, I use the term to
refer to communicative and nonviolent efforts to alter public perception, to criticize
power relations, or to question or change laws, policies, or economic practices. A
conﬂict involving a demand to be recognized (or to be recognized less disrespectfully)
thus possesses both a material and symbolic character. Although part of the purpose of a
struggle may be to eliminate stereotypical language or demeaning media representations,
these symbolic forms of disrespect are not easily separated from the material settings and
practices that permit or even encourage them. Because recognition relations are
structured institutionally and sustained by regulations, laws, practices, and so on, it is
through institutional change that recognitive demands must be resolved. Thus,
recognition relations and correlative conﬂicts exist in a reciprocal relation with
institutions. Institutions codify forms of recognition and identity, while recognitive
demands, insofar as they challenge customary forms of recognition, generate an impetus

for institutional change.

10

Honneth maintains that historically contingent recognition relations structure a
person’s identity. The self is not a metaphysical given, existing prior to and independent
of experiences, relations, and institutional settings. Instead, a person’s identity is
structured relationally; or more precisely, structured by forms of recognition relations that
have emerged as a result of historical change and the institutional codiﬁcation of norms.
Two implications follow from this claim. First, not only is it mistaken to think of identity
as pre-given, but it is inappropriate to think of identity as unitary, transparent, or
“atomic.” To conceive identity as historical and structural is to acknowledge that the self
is complex, plural, or, as Honneth commonly says, “differentiated.” Of course, to reject a
conception of identity as unitary does not entail denying that identity is unified in some
manner. In fact, the claim that identity is “differentiated” implies the opposite: that the
different traits and abilities that comprise a person’s sense of self must be integrated, or
actively uniﬁed, before a coherent and distinctive identity is achieved.

The second implication is that there is no ahistorical and a priori structure of
selﬂrood or identity. Honneth’s assertion that the modern structure of identity is
differentiated into three forms of self-relation — conﬁdence, respect, and esteem — is to be
taken as an historical (i.e., contingent) rather than as a metaphysical (i.e., necessary)
claim. This implies that a person’s demand to be recognized as a moral equal, or to be
treated with respect in the Kantian sense, is not justiﬁed on metaphysical grounds (say,
because she is a rational entity who freely determines and wills the principles on which
she acts). Rather, Honneth argues that modern conceptions of autonomy and moral
respect grew out of actual historical struggles (e. g., the French Revolution) and gained

intellectual as well as normative legal force as a result of communicatively mediated

ll

institutional change. Consequently, one cannot speak of the structure of identity in
abstraction from social practices, roles, and relations, a society’s institutional
organization, and so on.

The type of social conﬂict I examine in this paper is racial conﬂict in the U.S., or
more exactly, anti—black racism among whites. I develop my thesis concerning the
motivation for engaging in social conﬂict by contrasting economistic and recognitive
accounts of what prompts white resistance to race-conscious social policies and practices.
In this way, I show that the recognitive account offers an understanding of racial conﬂict
that is more nuanced, historically sensitive, and philosophically defensible than the
economistic alternative. My purpose, however, is neither to develop a theory of white
racism nor a theory of racial identity.10 Race and racial conﬂict instead serve as
examples of social conﬂict, which I examine from the perspective of motivation. While
it will be necessary to venture substantive claims about white identity and about race
relations, such claims are intended only to elucidate more general conceptual points about
the nature of motivation, points which could equally well be ﬂeshed out through analyses
of gender, religious, ethnic or class identity (and concomitant relationships and social
struggles).

My reasons for analyzing racial conﬂict, in particular, are historical. The social

and legal construction of race and racial categories in the US. has not only been central

 

10 Valuable works on the construction of white identity include the following, some of which contribute to
the relatively recent ﬁeld of Whiteness Studies: David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the
Making of the American Working Class_(London: Verso, 1991) and Colored White: T ranscending the
Racial Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the
White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America (London: Verso, 1997); George Lipsitz,
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Proﬁt ﬁom Identity Politics (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2006); Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1997); and Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, ed., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance_(Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2007); Bernard Boxill, ed., Race and Racisim (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001) “Introduction,” 142.

12

in shaping cultural notions and ideals of what it means to be “an American” but, equally
important, has inﬂuenced legal reasoning, political decision-making, and economic
policy. Although race and racial categories are social constructions and not natural kinds,
they have nonetheless obtained social objectivity, i.e., have become part of the fabric of
modern societies. In the US. especially, it is hard to deny that the categories “white” and
“black” shape how people experience their physical abilities, occupational skills, political
values and cultural activities, as well as the social relations and conﬂicts that involve
blacks and whites as social groups. Examining racial conﬂict with a view to linking
disrespect (or denied recognition) and motivation to engage in social conﬂict thus allows
me to illuminate the way recognitive expectations emerge historically, are internalized by
subjects through processes of socialization, and achieve social efﬁcacy, commonly as
forms of conﬂict. While the same points could be explored vis-a-vis other social
categories, the speciﬁc color-based system of racial classiﬁcation so entrenched in and
deﬁnitive of social reality in the US. — according to which whiteness has long been taken
to exemplify personhood and blackness non-personhood — provides a localized, isolable
topic of research.

David T. Wellman’s Portraits of White Racism“ provides an example of an
economistic explanation of racism. His thesis is that white racism is a defense of racial
privilege, where “privilege” is shorthand for economic advantage, so that racism at
bottom is alleged to consist of efforts by whites to maintain their access to and control
over “scarce resources.” For Wellman, racial conﬂict arises when proposals for social

change aim at remedying racial inequality, and in this way threaten (or are perceived to

 

11 David T. Wellman, Portraits of White Racism, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993). Hereafter referred to as PWR.

I3

 

threaten) the economic well-being of whites. This account is economistic because it
assumes that economic self-interest is the wellspring of social relations, interaction, and
conﬂict. Concrete individuals, and groups qua aggregates of such individuals, are said to
be motivated to engage in social conﬂict not by moral considerations, but by the more
basic imperative of self-preservation and material well-being.

By contrast, I argue that what motivates social interaction and conﬂict is the need
to achieve and sustain the integrity of identity. In chapter 2, I will explicate what I mean
by the important concept, integrity of identity. For present purposes, the integrity of
identity refers to the precarious and contingent ability of a social agent to establish a
relatively stable, uniﬁed, and autonomous relation to self. As I elaborate later, such a
self-relation involves conceiving of identity as a reﬂexive subjectivity with self-
understanding. Because identity formation requires reciprocal recognition, successful
individualization -— or the degree to which persons are able reﬂexively and coherently to
develop their identity — is bound up with the quality of recognition relations. A corollary
can thus be argued: to humiliate or systematically disrespect a person is to assault that
person; the terrain of the assault may be psychological (e.g., slurs) or physical (e.g.,
violence), but the object of the assault is the person’s self-experience as a social and
moral agent. Disrespect is experienced by the affected as an attack on her social
existence, her integrity as a subject. For that reason, disrespect typically generates in the
victim aversive emotions (shame, anger, etc.), reactions which motivate resistance against
the source of misrecogrrition. Returning to the question of anti-black racism among
whites: an identity-recognition account of motivation suggests that if whites resist social

welfare, afﬁrmative action, or reparations, it is because they experience such policies as

14

threats to their identity, or take them to embody norms and practices that would deny
them forms of recognition to which they feel justly (as well as morally) entitled.

In this light, I want to explain why I began this Introduction with quotes from
Douglass, King, and Freire. Frederick Douglass’s observation that “slavery is a greater
evil to the master than to the slave” is provocative, counterintuitive, and insightful. The
claim shifts attention from the obvious injustice experienced by those persons held as
slaves, to the ways in which the slave system also harmed slave owners. As a social
group, whites inarguably beneﬁted from slavery. But as Douglass careﬁilly details, the
cultural and political privileges as well as the economic advantages enjoyed by whites
came at a cost. Familial relations were poisoned by violence and mistrust; religious
beliefs were disﬁgured in an attempt to rationalize blatant injustice; economic inequality
among whites was sustained by stoking resentment of freed slaves. The social world
created by (and for) whites as a group, effectively planted the seeds of their own cultural
and moral depravity. While congratulating themselves for their status as the world’s ﬁrst
modern democracy, as well as for their Judeo-Christian moral rectitude, white Americans
discovered themselves bound, legally bound to the degradation and oppression of other
human beings. And, as Douglass reminds us, those chains were all the more durable for
being self-imposed.

The subjection of whites to a racistinstitutional framework is therefore internal,
self-imposed, a result of their own volition and action. In this way, Douglass gestures
toward a conception of an intersubjectively constituted moral community. By pointing
out that whites were morally harmed by slavery even as their economic and political

interests were satisﬁed, he intimates that values, meanings, and expectations are not

15

 

purely internal and private matters that social agents pursue independently of others; and,
moreover, suggests that moral experience is not exhausted by the category of self-
interest. On the contrary, he illuminates the fact that well-being and a sense of social
belonging are contingently linked to embodiment, to the exercise of agency, and to the
types of social institutions and practices in which social agents participate.

King makes a similar point when he notes that morally acceptable behavior and
norms differ relative to the perspective adopted: “groups tend to be more immoral than
individuals.” A person may privately feel that a joke, tradition, or law is offensive and
unjust. But when that individual views or discusses the custom or law as a member of a
group, as a white, say, he may suppress his previous misgivings or ﬁnd a justiﬁcatory
rationalization. Douglass illustrates such moral dissonance in his recollection of Sophia
Auld, who, when ﬁrst directly exposed to slavery, treated her slave with kindness and
compassion; but, after being rebuked by her husband for not upholding the norms and
customs of the slave system, grew increasingly embittered, morose, and detached from
her husband as well as her slave (i.e., Douglass). As an individual, Sophia Auld was
warm, magnanimous; as a member of the social group, slave-holding whites, she was
curt, quick to anger, and ungenerous.

But King also expresses lucidly a proposition at the heart of my project: namely,
that moral progress is achieved through struggle. People who belong to, or are members
of, socially dominant groups — whether as white, male, or heterosexual — experience
social reality primarily, though not solely or exhaustively, through historically
conditioned categories, meanings, norms, and practices. But those values and practices

are not typically apprehended as contingent and historical. More often they are regarded

l6

and lived through as merely given, the way “things always have been” — or rather, as
“natural.” When racist categories and practices systematically privilege and advantage
one social group vis-t‘z-vis another, and when such inequality structures social institutions,
relations and practices, then what is perceived as unjust from the ﬁrst-personal
perspective can be hidden from view, rendered invisible from the third-personal
perspective. In spite of personal qualms, then, people who belong to dominant social
groups can (and, I assume in this project, typically do) perceive demands made by
subordinate groups for greater equality or freedom as signs of ingratitude, or as self-
evidently unjust, threatening, or “unnatural.”

Consequently, King’s assertion that privileged groups rarely surrender their
privilege voluntarily need not be interpreted to mean that the members of such groups
clearly apprehend, or that they explicitly understand, that the preservation of their status
and power depends on the oppression of others. Such an interpretation would be
question-begging and implausible, since it would assume that whites were self-
consciously aware that their privilege required inequality and oppression. A more
plausible interpretation, I contend, is that dominant groups do not give up their power
because they perceive the demand to do so as unjust, as an unwarranted “power grab” by
minorities. On this interpretation, if they do not voluntarily surrender their privilege, it is
because their social world has been historically shaped so as to allow them merely to
assume that their privilege, power, and economic advantage are the result of a natural
social order. Put differently, members of dominant groups generally view the social
world as justiﬁed (even if it is cavalierly conceded that “no society is perfect”) and view

challenges to or encroachments on the norms and practices of that social world as suspect

l7

and impetuous. It is unlikely, therefore, that members of a dominant group will reform
themselves. As I have argued, it is quite plausible that, typically, they fail to see the need
for change. So it falls to the oppressed to insist on social change. In any case, members
of subordinated groups are more apt to perceive and feel the need for social change, since
it is they who cope with injustice as a matter of course.

And yet, as Paolo Freire points out and as I argue below, when members of
subordinated and oppressed groups demand social change, their claims are frequently met
with derision and distrust by members of the dominant group. I allude to the reason for
such suspicion above: from the standpoint of the dominant group, the constellation of
social practices, expectations, roles and norms that constitute their way of life has been
suddenly disrupted, so that what was previously taken for granted is now called into
question and rendered problematic. But because the social status quo was experienced as
“natural” — and, thus, as “justiﬁed” — challenges to the norm arising from groups claiming
to be demeaned or marginalized are likely to be regarded as unjust, insulting, or even
incomprehensible. Or to return to F reire’s observation above: when the oppressed
confronts the oppressor with his responsibility for perpetuating (or beneﬁting from)
oppression, the oppressor, rather than concede his complicity, is apt to turn the tables and
assume the posture of aggrieved victim, accusing the oppressed of laziness, criminality,
etc. A perverse consequence of this phenomenology is that, in societies marked by
oppression, it should come as no surprise that members of the dominant group feel
morally justiﬁed in contemning members of subordinated groups for resisting their own
oppression. Indeed, when the oppressed speak or act against oppression, the oppressors

commonly experience themselves as the wronged party.

18

It is this phenomenon that I examine in my project, speciﬁcally by developing an
account of why white Americans oppose such policies as social welfare and afﬁrmative
action. I contend that white resistance to race-conscious social policies stems less from
utilitarian concerns about economic distribution and more from an historically established
sense of political, cultural, and moral entitlement. The importance of such an
interpretation, in part, is that it helps to explain why members of dominant groups,
purportedly those best served by unequal and unjust social arrangements, can nonetheless
experience themselves as morally wronged or threatened (say, as victims of
discrimination or exclusion) when those arrangements are questioned. My thesis, that
what motivates people to engage in social conﬂict is perceived disrespect or denied
recognition, in this way gains a rather novel hue. For while there is ample literature
examining how members of subordinated groups experience social disrespect and
exclusion, and are thereby motivated to resist such injustice, there are few studies that
analyze the experience of members of dominant groups in the same way. And this is the
analysis I aim to provide by reﬂecting on race relations in the US. More exactly, I want
to understand white opposition to afﬁrmative action and social welfare, not as a disguised
means of protecting economic advantage, but as a reaction against what many whites take
to be a political and moral wrong. So, my study examines the experience of injustice
from the perspective of the dominant (racially dominant, in this case) group.

Seen in this light, my thesis constitutes a speciﬁc contribution to understanding
the white backlash against the political gains of the civil rights movement. In “The

9912

Social Dynamics of Disrespect, Axel Honneth notes an increase in the number of neo-

 

12 Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: Situating Critical Theory Today,” in Peter Dews.
ed., Haberrnas: a Critical Reader (Malden.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999)

19

 

Nazi youths in Germany and wonders what experiences of disrespect or exclusion drove
them to participate in such a group. Correlatively, he muses about the type of recognition
that would be required to restore to them a sense of social belonging. The question I
formulate here is similar. But instead of asking why disaffected youth turn to violent
subcultures, I ask why members of the racially dominant group, who may be culturally
mainstream and who belong to the social group historically regarded as the moral and
political norm in the U.S., would express such opposition and sometimes hostility to race-
conscious political policies. Put more summarily: why a white backlash to the civil rights
movement, a struggle that embodies political and moral progress in a country scarred by
racial oppression? The answer I propose is consonant with the conclusions of Charles
Mills: that white resentment is fueled, not principally by conﬂicts over economic
interests, but by an entrenched sense of “white skin privilege,” of the entitlements and
social status conferred solely by virtue of being white.l3 Distributive struggles are
undeniably an aspect of such struggles. But economic self-interest does not capture the
basic motivations underlying racial division. Racial conﬂict in the US. is better
understood, speciﬁcally, as a struggle over the meaning of personhood.

While perhaps counterintuitive, my approach aims at understanding, not excusing,
forms of injustice such as racism. By construing social conﬂicts as struggles over
recognition, I hope to illuminate the moral dimensions of social struggle and historical
change. If it is plausible to understand white resistance to race-conscidus policies as
motivated by perceived disrespect or unfair treatment, then — even if that perception is

ﬂawed or demonstrably false — the full moral intricacies and depth of the struggle can be

 

13 A claim frequently argued for in Charles Mills, From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black
Radicalism (New York: Rowrnan and Littleﬁeld Publishers, 2003) and The Racial Contract.

20

 

brought into view. There are good political reasons why this is desirable, among them
the goal of identifying precisely what moral and political issues are at stake in order to
develop more effective political strategies. Aside from the value of forming a more lucid
and pointed public discourse concerning race than currently exists, there is the additional
(strategic and moral) value of enriching the self-understanding of members of the
dominant group. If it is plausible to argue that whites are suspicious of race-conscious
policies, not primarily because of the economic threat but because they apprehend,
however vaguely, that the policies threaten their privilege and status, then heightening
awareness of their complicity in a racial hierarchy would force them — or afford them the
opportunity — to engage in a truer and more transparent moral reﬂection about the values,

norms, and principles they claim to honor.14

In chapter 2, I discuss the distinction between recognition and redistribution. I
begin by reviewing various attempts to understand the connection between social conﬂict
and the reasons and motivation for engaging in such struggles. After examining classical
liberal and Marxist approaches, I introduce the identity-recognition social theory of Axel
Honneth in order to demonstrate, at least in a preliminary way, its advantages in
addressing social conﬂict.

In chapter 3, I present David T. Wellman’s theory of racism, which exempliﬁes
the view I call economism. For Wellman racism is a structural phenomenon ensuring

that white economic advantage is maintained at the expense of blacks. Racial conﬂict is

 

‘4 My suggestion is consonant with Bernard Boxill's when he argues that social programs designed to
alleviate the poverty and isolation of blacks should be defended on moral grounds, not strategic ones.
Public discussion should appeal to principles of justice, in other words, rather than to self-interest. See
Bernard Boxill, “The Underclass and the Race/Class Issue.” in Bill E. Lawson, ed., The Underclass
Question (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 19-32.

21

conceived as a struggle over economic resources. Given the fact of scarcity, Wellman
avers that whites resist race-conscious forms of social change because the latter would
threaten their economic security. In this context, 1 deﬁne the concept of economism,
identify the features that make Wellman’s theory of racism economistic, and conclude the
chapter by developing internal and external criticisms of the theory.

In chapter 4, I present the identity-recognition alternative to economism on which
the defense of my thesis rests. The aim of this chapter is expository. I begin by
discussing the historical and conceptual genesis of recognition theory in two early works
by G. W. F. Hegel, then trace the development of the concept of recognition through the
work of the early Frankfurt School and Jurgen Habermas. The relevance of Hegel’s
conception of mutual recognition to the question of motivation for engaging in social
conﬂict is given its clearest formulation in the social theory of Axel Honneth. So, in
effect, I interpret and defend a thesis that Honneth has been developing for nearly two
decades. But I do not accept the latter’s conceptual framework whole cloth. Rather, I
critically appropriate Honneth’s theory with a view to illuminating features of racial
conﬂict in the US.

In chapter 5 I defend my thesis that the motivation for entering social conﬂict is
better conceived by recognition theory than by economistic theory. I critique economism
by showing that it is not only inadequate as a theory of motivation but is conceptually
untenable as well. The strategy I employ consists in linking race relations in the US to
the complex structure of modern identity, as well as to the recognitive expectations
underlying and normatively governing identity formation. I draw on contemporary

sociological studies about white attitudes concerning social welfare in order, on the one

22

hand, to dispute the assertion that white opposition to race-conscious social policies has
little to do with identity or prejudice; and, on the other, to support my claim that such
opposition is motivated by white fears that afﬁrmative action, social welfare, and so on,
would deny them rights and privileges to which they feel morally entitled.

To defend the claim that social programs intended to beneﬁt blacks are perceived
by whites as forms of disrespect, and thus motivate opposition, I focus on the forms of
recognition Honneth calls legal and solidaristic relations. Given the history of racial
domination in the U.S., which includes inherited social privilege and economic
advantage, programs such as social welfare are perceived as threats to white identity to
the extent that they jeopardize privileges to which whites feel entitled. It is the
perception that race-conscious social policies violate the expectations underlying legal
and solidaristic relations that explains why whites as whites feel threatened by such
programs, and explains why they are motivated to resist them.

In chapter 6, I reply to objections and discuss political implications. As I mention
at various points in the following chapters, Honneth is not always the clearest expositor
of his own views. As a result of his sometimes incomplete or obscure argumentation,
commentators have posed objections that, on a clearer rendering of Honneth’s position,
do little to unsettle his basic claims. Uncharitable or inaccurate interpretations
notwithstanding, I identify arguments and concepts that require more rigorous
explication, and suggest argumentative strategies that would strengthen the force and

persuasiveness of Honneth’s insights. In chapter 7, I offer concluding remarks.

23

Chapter 2

Situating the Identity-Recognition Conception of Motivation

The aim of my project is to develop a conception of what motivates people to
engage in social conﬂict. I argue that social conﬂict should be understood as a struggle
over recognition. The thesis that social conﬂict is motivated by demands to be
recognized, or in some cases to be recognized differently, provides a sorely under-
appreciated alternative to a more widespread way of thinking about social struggle in the
liberal tradition. Speciﬁcally, the thesis challenges and offers a better, more ﬂexible
mode of analysis and interpretation than economism. Economism is the view that a
person’s principal motivation for participating in social life, whether economic
competition or political activity, is best explained in terms of the calculation of economic
self-interest. By contrast, I propose that people are motivated to engage in political
action, which at times includes social protest or opposition, as a consequence of having
experienced systematic disrespect or of having been denied forms of recognition to which
they feel morally entitled. Put differently, what often motivates social conﬂict is the
demand by people to have their identity recognized, or the demand to be recognized
differently, as when, say, members of minority groups resist practices or laws felt to be
degrading or insulting. My intent is to demonstrate that in many important cases, an
identity-recognition theory is more attuned to what prompts social dissent'than an
economistic account, and for this reason is better able to speak to the question of

motivation.

24

Towards the end of the chapter, I introduce Honneth’s identity-recognition theory
and try to show that it possesses a greater interpretive breadth and ﬂexibility than other
social theories. In this context, I augment Honneth’s position by explicating a conception
of identity, which I then use to shed light on the normative content of the concepts of
motivation and recognition. Although the concept of identity formation is central to
Honneth’s argumentation concerning the structure of modern identity, he neglects
directly to explicate a conception of identity. In order to strengthen the conceptual links
between identity, recognition, and motivation to enter social struggle, I develop a
conception of identity that is consistent with Honneth’s argumentation. In the meantime,
I discuss two prominent social theoretic traditions, namely classical liberalism and
Marxism, with a View to identifying their limitations in grasping the sources of social
conﬂict. More exactly, I want to show that often, though not unavoidably, both classical
liberalism and Marxism remain too wedded to economistic presuppositions, and that
consequently their understanding of what motivates social struggle is overly tendentious

and one-dimensional.

Classical Liberalism and Marxism

In order to show that an identity-recognition theory affords greater ﬂexibility in
making sense of what actually drives people to enter social struggle, and that such an
analysis constitutes an under-appreciated alternate understanding of social struggle, I
begin by examining conceptual tendencies in classical liberalism and Marxism. My aim

is not comprehensively to critique either liberalism or Marxism. Rather, it is to sketch a

25

composite, against which I can later contrast and identify advantages of an identity-
recognition approach.

Before developing this contrast, it is necessary to clarify what I mean by
liberalism and Marxism, and what my expository aims are with respect to them. As
tempting as it is to speak sweepingly about liberalism and Marxism, neither social theory
is monolithic, so neither yields to summary characterizations or categorical
pronouncements. To switch metaphors: each form of theory is polyvocal, comprising a
variety of theoretical positions, which may share basic assumptions and concepts but
nonetheless differ in important aspects. On the side of liberal theory, while the individual
remains the unit of analysis for conceptualizing rights and duties, it is clear that the
Hobbesian individual is only distantly related to the Hegelian “I that is a We.” Indeed,
under the title of liberalism fall the various ﬁgures of Hobbes and Kant, Mill and Nozick,
Hayek and Haberrnas, and such positions as libertarianism, multiculturalism, and welfare
liberalism. On the side of Marxist theory, though a form of analysis focused on social
groups and power relations remains fundamental, it is clear that an Althusserian
conception of ideology only tenuously resembles a Lukacsian concept of reiﬁcation.
And, as with liberalism, there is such a panoply of thinkers and intellectual points of view
grouped under the title of Marxism that it can become a challenge to state exactly what
features establish a viewpoint as Marxist. As a result, any attempt to speak about
liberalism or Marxism, in general terms, must rely on a certain idealization of those
theories, or on a distillation of features relevant to one’s expository aims.

Moreover, I do not intend to formulate criticisms of liberalism and Marxism.

Although part of the tangential interest of my project is the way that it relates to

26

contemporary debates in political theory over how best to frame concepts of justice, and
inter alia conceptions of injustice and oppression, I will not enter into debates about the
merits or weaknesses of rival conceptions. My goal in examining liberalism and
Marxism is rather to illuminate some of the ways in which an identity-recognition theory
better captures the phenomenological core of putative experiences of injustice. And so,
far from constituting a rejection or a criticism of other political theories, my
argumentation can be viewed as complementary to liberalism and Marxism, or as an
enrichment and deepening of the ability of these theories to think about social conﬂict
with resources less committed to the utilitarian-inﬂected vocabulary of interests.

I should note that this argumentative strategy is consistent with Honneth’s
approach, which has long consisted of an engagement with rather than a rejection of
liberal theory. In a recent essay,15 Honneth and Anderson contrast identity-recognition
and rights-based conceptions of justice and argue that the latter provides an inadequate
basis for meaningfully protecting the autonomy of embodied subjects. While
acknowledging the importance of rights for a theory of justice, Honneth and Anderson
maintain that an identity—recognition theory offers a fuller and more ﬁnely-grained
understanding of the vulnerabilities of human beings, and in this way sheds light on the
capabilities, competences, and needs that underlie and support autonomy. This contrast
between identity-recognition and r1 ghts-based conceptions of justice further articulates
the work begun in Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition, where he juxtaposed recognition

theory to the atomistic and strategic model of social interaction formulated by Hobbes

 

'5 Joel Anderson and Axel Honneth, “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition and Justice,” in John
Christman and Joel Anderson, ed., Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, New Essays (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 77-100.

27

and Machiavelli. In SR, Honneth explicates'6 the thesis that social conﬂict should be
seen as a moral struggle for recognition and not merely as a strategic effort to ensure self-
preservation; and it is that thesis that I want to develop and defend. More precisely, in
the remainder of this chapter I will show that strains of classical liberalism and Marxism
are too comrrritted to an economistic conception of social interaction and conﬂict. In
classical liberalism especially, the model of self-interested individualism, while not
ubiquitous, is nonetheless a recurring assumption, which, if too swiftly or uncritically
accepted as a unit of analysis, can incline social inquiry to misconstrue and in some cases
even distort the nature of social interaction and conﬂict.

It is almost a commonplace to associate classical liberalism with the values of
personal freedom, human rights, legal and political equality, and distributive justice. On
this view, a view standardly associated with thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Mill,

, the concrete individual is regarded as the relevant political agent. Rational, volitional,
morally equal to each other qua human, concrete individuals are conceived as rights-
bearing moral agents whose autonomy is honored by means of a social contract, which
ensures the universal observance of such rights as freedom of speech and belief, property
acquisition, participation in political decision-making, and so on. Social justice is
measured by the degree to which persons are able to pursue their own conception of the
good, choosing in accord with personal preference and interest, and free from
interference by others. Politically this requires institutions that allow free and equal

participation in political life and public will formation; and economically it requires

 

'6 Axel Honneth, SR, 7-10.

28

institutions that secure the fair (which is not to say equal) distribution of opportunities
and resources.

It has become equally commonplace, on the other hand, to critique classical
liberalism for its conception of atomic individualism, its formalistic and abstract
understanding of freedom and equality, and its commitment to a distributivist notion of
justice and social struggle. Political and social theorists, as well as social movements,
have urged a reevaluation of some of the central tenets of political liberalism. While
personal freedom is often cited as a core liberal value, it has been argued by Marx,l7
critical social theorists, and C. B. MacPherson that the liberal conception of ﬁ'eedom is
inﬂected economically, so that the value of liberty is effectively assimilated to the
freedom to secure one’s material (i.e., economic) well-being. The assimilation of
freedom to the economic is shown by the normative value attached to property rights in
liberal theory — from Hobbes to Locke, and Hayek to Nozick — and constitutes the core of
MacPherson’s thesis of “possessive individualism.”18 Yet, as feminists, race and
multicultural theorists have pointed out, not all forms of injustice translate into a
distributive grammar or have a distributive solution; the propensity to interpret social
conﬂict in distributivist terms risks obscuring or distorting the various ways that persons
experience social oppression and marginalization.” The concept of rights continues to

evolve, also, in part as a result of the dialogue between liberalism and identity theorists.

 

17 To give only one summary example, see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
(New York: Signet Classic, 1998), 65-74.
'8 C. B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1962).

Iris Marion Young, for example, proposes a complex concept of oppression in order to acknowledge
economic inequality differs in fundamental ways from sexist subordination or racial exclusion.

29

Honneth and Ingram20 detail how rights have been extended inwardly, on one hand, as
the range of freedoms and protections to which people are entitled has increased; and
outwardly, on the other, as already recognized rights are extended to new groups.

But as I mentioned above, liberalism is not monolithic. If the Hobbesian
individual is conceived as “springing up like a mushroom” and the Lockean as unusually
prepossessed and self-reliant, the Hegelian individual is relational and the Rawlsian
importantly reliant on “self-respect,” which is viewed as an inherently social “primary
good.” In fact, studies by Anthony Appiah” and Uday Singh Mehta22 argue that the
image of the liberal subject as an hermetically self—contained interest-calculator does not
properly apply even to those prototypically classical liberals, Mill and Locke. A brief
review of their main theses will provide me an Opportunity to highlight the basic
limitations of classical liberalism’s ability to disclose and yield insight into the
motivations underlying social conﬂict. Interestingly enough, I propose that even if we
grant Appiah and Mehta’s chief claim, namely that Mill and Locke conceived of
personhood in a more psychologically complex and relational manner than is commonly
acknowledged, the conceptual commitments that limit liberalism’s ability to grasp
intersubjectivity, or to theorize the social as a ﬁeld of relations, remain unaltered at the
level of social premises. Classical liberalism’s concept of the subject, of self-interest as
universal motivator, and of justice as fair distribution of social goods, collectively

diminish its ability to identify and speak to the wellsprings of social struggle.

 

20 See Young, ibid, for what is, in my view, still the best exposition and defense of such views. A more
recent work that addresses the same body of issues, though in a tone more conciliatory toward liberalism, is
David Ingram, Group Rights: Reconciling Equality and Difference (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2000)

2] Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

22 Uday Singh Mehta, The A nxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke's Political Thought
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)

30

To spell out the conceptual difﬁculties of a standard liberal conception of
individuality, I begin by reﬂecting on Appiah’s argument that Mill was more of a social,
i.e., relational thinker than is commonly supposed.” He attempts to do this by pointing
out that Mill well recognized and emphasized the human need for socialization. Because
he recognized this, it is not true that he was an atomic individualist or believed that
people were born as already individuated persons. Mehta makes a similar point with
respect to Locke.24 She argues that Locke fully acknowledged that humans needed the
sort of cultivation afforded by institutions — indeed, Locke, like others during the 17th
century, distrusted the passions and the undisciplined imagination. One was not born an
individual; rather one became one, principally through education. It is arguable, in fact,
that Hobbes was less rigidly individualist than is usually thought, since he afﬁrms that the
natural passions have to be restrained by a centralized state power and system of law. In
forfeiting one’s natural rights, on condition that others do likewise, everyone equally
secures her self-interest; but the important thing to note is that one did this in relation to
others. In short, then, the case can be made that three of the most prominent classical
liberals understood that human beings needed certain forms of socialization, required
cultivation and habituation through a well-structured set of institutions.

In her study of John Locke, for example, Mehta observes that, like other
Enlightenment ﬁgures, Locke viewed persons as naturally free, equal and rational. It is a
mark of the rationality of persons that they be capable of apprehending and governing
their behavior (as well as their relations with others) in accord with the “laws of nature,”

among which are the rights of private property and ownership of one’s labor power. But

 

23 Appiah, op. cit., see especially “The Ethics of Individuality,” 1-35 and “The Demands of Identity," 62-
113.

24 Mehta, op. cit, see especially “Molding Individuality: Direction and Compromise.” l l9-l67.

31

Locke also appreciated that humans are not unerringly rational; the “untutored”
imagination is subject to whim and fantasy, and the passions are often unpredictable and
capricious. For this reason, part of the political problem for Locke consisted of
identifying institutional norms and structures suitable for the cultivation and training of
social agents. Humans required habituation and shaping —— the inculcation of rational
patterns of thought and action — which was to be achieved by liberal education and
institutions. Appiah argues that John Stuart Mill, too, stressed the need for socialization
in human development. As is well known, happiness for Mill includes more than the
presence of pleasure and absence of pain. Enfolded in happiness, i.e., originally a means
to happiness which subsequently becomes part of the end of happiness, are such goods as
ﬁiendship, meaningful relationships, creativity, and the experience of autonomy. But
self-determination is not the purely private experience of a social monad. Rather, it
presupposes a social world, that is, institutionalized practices, customs and norms,
relations and roles, within which milieu a human being articulates her individuality and
learns to exercise autonomy. Since Mill appreciates the human need for socialization, he
construes the concrete individual, not as a. monadic isolate, but as a social, dialogical
subject.

My purpose is not to dispute these characterizations of Locke and Mill. For one
thing, the argumentative aims of Mehta and Appiah’s works differ from my own. For
another, my present concern is with the distinction between socialization and
intersubjectivity, which is a key distinction for appreciating the force of the concepts of
recognition and identity and which tends to be collapsed in discussions of the social (or

relational) nature of individuality, identity, and so on. Simply put, the concepts of

socialization and intersubjectivity are not equivalent. The latter concept tries to explicate
the conditions of the possibility of a subject’s independence and social objectivity as an
individuated subject. The normative force of the concept of intersubjectivity concerns
the genesis of reﬂexive subjectivity and the capacity of a subject to take itself and to be
taken by others (i.e., to be recognized) as an agent, a type of being with a distinct status in
the social world. The point of Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic, the locus classicus of this
body of arguments, is that for a “consciousness” (or what I refer to below as prepersonal
subjectivity) to become a “self-consciousness” (or a reﬂexive subjectivity) it must,
through mutual recognition, experience itself as an independent “center of experience,”
as a “standpoint on the world” whose abilities and competences, self-understandings and
values, possess validity only insofar as they are taken up (i.e., accepted or rejected) by
other subjects. The argument parallels Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument: there,
too, the less compelling claim is that language use assumes an already existing
background language; the more compelling insight is that communication is a type of
social action, and that linguistic competence and the meaningfulness of language involve
a type of transformation in the agency of the subject.

The concept of socialization trades on the rather unenlightening fact that a human
being requires a pre-existing social setting within which she acquires a language, these or
those beliefs and behaviors; learns to think of herself vis-a-vis social categories (e.g.,
gender, race); and so on. Whether the individual is viewed as a “blank slate” whose
identity is dialogically “ﬁlled in” by available social content, or as a slack muscle whose
individuality is exercised and shaped by social norms and institutions, the concept of

socialization unavoidably presupposes a concept of intersubjectivity, since what remains

33

unanalyzed by the former concept is how a human comes to be, or is transformed into,
the type of agent capable of having self-experience (of her intentions, beliefs, traits,
emotions). Yet, as I mentioned above and explain more fully in chapter 4, it is at the
level identity and agency formation, or at the level of mutual recognition, that the
motivation for entering social conﬂict is most fruitfully examined.

The conﬂation of the concepts of socialization and intersubjectivity brings into
view the problem with the category of self-interest. To be clear, my argument concerns
the category of self-interest and the way in which, when linked principally with economic
activity and relations, it inﬂects reﬂection on social interaction and conﬂict. I do not,
therefore, mean to indemnify the category of interests, as such. For my purposes, I deﬁne
an interest as a good or resource the acquisition of which is advantageous to a person.25
An interest is advantageous to the person whose interest it is, even when a person fails to
realize that something is to her beneﬁt, which is why interests are readily associated with
rationality: if a good or resource is in one’s interest, or is “an interest of” human beings
generally, then it is rational to pursue that interest. By contrast with the putative
subjective variability of emotions and desires, then, interests appear to be less
multifarious and incorrigible, or, put differently, appear more susceptible to rational
reﬂection, identiﬁcation, and generalization. Since interests can be identiﬁed with what

is advantageous to a person, they can be viewed as motivating in a way that other,

 

25 Albert 0. Hirschman’s The Passions and The Interests is an outstanding monograph on the concept of
interests. He traces the historical development of the concept ﬁ'om early modernity to the end of the 18‘h
century, and makes a compelling case that, over time, the meaning of “interests” came to be reduced almost
entirely to considerations of self-interest and, especially in the latter half of the 18th century, with economic
self-interest in particular. Also see Albert 0. Hirschman, “The Concept of Interest: From Euphemism to
Tautology,” in Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1992), 35-55.

34

contingent ends are not.26 Thus, to stress the self-interested character of action involves
the generalization that social interaction consists of the nexus of actions of persons
motivated to pursue their individual advantage. But the fundamental difﬁculty with this
conception of self-interest is that it presupposes a developed subjectivity for which things
already qualify as advantageous.

When one begins with, or accepts as a basic premise, the individual qua person—
to-be-cultivated, any subsequent relations that that person enters into will be
conceptualized as external relations. External relations are relations in which subjects are
conceived as existing alongside one another: perhaps cooperating with and dependent on
one another, but as persons already capable of assuming attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
Internal relations are relations in which subjects are conceived as co-constitutive or co-
generative of one another’s subjectivity. External relations, into which one either freely
enters or merely ﬁnds oneself, may well be described as formative or even constitutive of
concrete individuality, since humans are individuated through socialization. But they
will not be viewed as conditions for the possibility of a subjectivity that apprehends itself
reﬂexively. Given an individualist ontology and the correlative conception of external
relations, however, any such putatively universalizable interests acquire a ﬂavor of mere
givenness; and, because of the combination of individualism and externality just alluded
to, tend to be conceived on the model of self-interest. Yet because there is no reﬂexive

subjectivity — no person or “self” — prior to reciprocal recognition, the category of self-

 

26 Hirschman notes that when the concept of interest was ﬁrst, rather unmethodically being articulated in
the 17“I and 18th centuries, it was regarded as a type of action-guiding norm: one should act in his self—
interest in order to ensure personal well-being and the diminution of social strife. But in contemporary
rational choice theory, e.g., the concept of self-interest gets pushed back into human nature, as it were; and
comes to be regarded as the most universalizable motivation for behavior.

35

interest should rather be regarded as subsidiary to, or as a derivative of recognition
relations and identity formation.

Drawing these various threads together sheds light on why reﬂection on social
conﬂict in classical liberalism gravitates more naturally (which is not to say invariably)
toward the model of a conﬂict over interests, speciﬁcally, over self-interest. 1 next
discuss how this presumption of self-interested behavior is coupled with a proclivity in
classical liberalism to conceive of justice, and so struggles against injustice, in
distributivist terms. As stated above, my purpose is neither to critique nor suggest
alternatives to (some version of) a liberal conception of justice. Thus my aim, while
similar in some respects to that of Iris Marion Young in her inﬂuential Justice and the
Politics of Diﬂerence, is also importantly different from that work. Like Young, I
contend that attempts to evaluate political and moral conﬂict primarily in distributive
terms risk either failing to perceive some forms of conﬂict or, in other cases, distorting
what in fact motivates a conﬂict. Unlike Young, however, my concern is neither with
developing a theory of oppression nor with questioning the adequacy of a liberal
conception of justice in general. 27 The focus of my work is trained more speciﬁcally on
the question of how to conceptualize the seeds of social struggle, or rather, on what spurs
resistance to what people perceive to be immoral or unjust treatment. And so, despite
some overlap between our concerns, the projects pursue different goals.

In discussing distribution, I mean to call attention to the prominence in classical
liberal theory of economic activity, both as a social practice through which persons were

presumed to develop and exercise their freedom, and as a basis for personal agency. such

 

27 Iris Marion Young, op. cit., “Displacing the Distributive Paradigm” and “The Five Faces of Oppression.”
15-65.

36

that individual interests and well-being were gleaned from and secured through economic
means (e.g., rights to private property, contractually governed work relations, etc.). My
claim that Hobbes and Locke (and, to a lesser extent, Hume and Bentham) linked the
political value of freedom with economic activity and sometimes explicitly identiﬁed
justice with the fair distribution of social resources, is not intended to be an indictment of
liberalism en toto. If in the work of some liberal theorists freedom is understood in large
measure to consist in pursuing self-interest, and if both freedom and interests are given an
economic shading, I do not propose that these emphases are intrinsic, inescapable
features of liberalism as such. I intend only to point to certain conceptual strains
(excessively utilitarian strains) that seem continually to recur in liberal political
reﬂection, and that collectively form a predisposition, a settled inclination to view social
struggles through the lens of economic self-interest. Given space constraints, as well as
the modest, uncontroversial nature of my few observations, I will refrain from detailed
arguments and exegesis. Instead, I present certain themes and motifs, with a view to
sketching a composite of how some liberal thinkers have conceptualized economic
activity, self-interest, and the nature of justice.

In An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,2 8 Hume avers that the most
valuable social virtues are benevolence and justice. What makes these virtues superior to
others is that they promote social utility, which Hume deﬁnes as usefulness in promoting
stability and well-being. But although benevolence is regarded as a “natural sentiment,"
which can grow into a mature sense of empathy as humans increasingly communicate

and interact with others, justice is deﬁned in purely conventionalist terms. Justice, that is,

 

28 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1983)

37

is an institution that exists solely for the fair distribution of property: “The USE and
TENDENCY of [justice] is to procure happiness and security, by preserving order in

”29 In conditions of desperate scarcity, Hume insists that people would be

society.
justiﬁed in forswearing “a scrupulous regard to what, in other situations, would be the
rules of equity and justice”;30 likewise in conditions of abundance: with all needs
provided for, people would have no need of justice: “the cautious, jealous virtue of justice
would never once have been dreamed of.”3 I Hume continues:

Why give rise to property, where there cannot possibly be any injury? Why call

this object mine, when, upon the seizing of it by another, I need but stretch out my

hand to possess myself of what is equally valuable? Justice, in that case, being

totally USELESS, would be an idle ceremonial, and could never possibly have

place in the catalogue of virtues.32

To be sure, Hume does not advance the idea of “enlightened self-interest”; in fact,
he persuasively argues against that idea as a moral position. Yet he unmistakably
conceives of justice in a quasi-utilitarian way, as an instrumental necessity that is justiﬁed
in terms of utility. Later in the 18th century, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham33 would
employ a similar style of argumentation in defending both a market economy and the idea
of “enlightened self-interest.” Bentham, despite his admirable commitment to animal
rights, social welfare, and educational and penal reform, nonetheless maintained that the
most reliable way to secure the greatest overall good was for each person rationally to

pursue what was in his or her own best interests. As a utilitarian, of course, Bentham was

concerned with the collective good; but as a utilitarian, of course, he conceived “utility”

 

29 Hume, op. cit., 23.

3° Ibid, 23.

3' Ibid, 21.

32 Ibid, 21.

33 Jeremy Bentham, “Selections from Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation,” 1-91, in The

Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill, John Troyer, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,
2003)

38

in quantitative and additive terms, so that as individual stores of pleasure were increased
and pains decreased, at a higher, more collective level, the overall social happiness would
be maximized as well. Adam Smith argued in a similar fashion that it was not
benevolence that motivated economic interaction but “self-love,”34 the self-interest of
economic agents. Now, Amartya Sen advises us that Smith’s view of human nature was
more expansive, had more room for sentiments and motivations besides self-love than is
sometimes recognized. But what is notable here is Smith’s conception of the “invisible
hand,” according to which self-interested economic behavior leads vis-a-vis unintended
consequences — i.e., is guided as though by an invisible hand — to the greatest overall
good: the butcher, brewer, and baker act with a view to their own self-interest; and we,
the lucky consumers, get a burger and a brew.

These observations about Hume, Bentham, and Smith are few and selective. But
they do exhibit a pattern of reasoning that relies on the three features of classical
liberalism I have been discussing: namely, an individualist ontology, an emphasis on the
category of self-interest, and an assimilation (by contrast with a reduction) of freedom
and well-being to economic activity. These features emerge more starkly in the work of
Thomas Hobbes and, to a lesser extent, John Locke. Hobbes’s account35 of the transition
from the state of nature to civil society is an oft-told tale: in the state of nature, every
human being has a natural right to everything required for self-preservation. Since the
human machine is fundamentally motored by desire and aversion, any relations and
interaction between persons in the state of nature will be predicated on ubiquitous

competition over resources, fear of attack or encroachment by others, and simple vanity,

 

34 Amartya Sen, op. cit., and Albert 0. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests.
35 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Richard Tuck, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

39

which insists that others regard me as highly as I regard myself. The continuous conﬂict
or threat of conﬂict to which competition, fear, and vanity give rise can be subdued,
according to Hobbes, not by fellow-feeling or moral reﬂection, but rather by and in the
name of self-interest. Reason allows us to see that if each forfeits her “right to
everything” needed for self-preservation, on the condition that everyone else forfeit his
right to everything, then a transition to civil society (i.e., a legal system, codiﬁed rights
and mutual forbearance, and private property) is possible; and, more importantly, that by
consenting to be bound by the social contract, people secure the (relatively) peaceful
pursuit of self-interest.

Hence, Hobbes remarks that: “The ﬁnal cause, end, or design of men, who
naturally love liberty, and dominion over others, in the introduction of that restraint upon
themselves. . .is the foresight of their own preservation.” As Hobbes lived through a civil
war and at the end of more than a century of warfare across Europe, surely his
understanding of “self-preservation” includes more than property rights. Yet his account
of the state of nature, of the main sources of conﬂict, largely revolves around the invasion
of other people’s property, so that one of the great advances gained by the transition to
civil society is said to consist in the institutionalization and protection of economic
relations, more speciﬁcally, of private property accumulation vis-a-vis the pursuit of
economic self-interest. Indeed, here again is a version of Smith’s “invisible hand.” For
Hobbes, the formation of a centralized institutional framework will enable each person to
pursue her self-interest, within certain constraints, in a way that reproduces and reinforces
the greatest overall good, namely, a stable, more or less peaceful social order within

which individuals compete to ensure their self-preservation.

40

Locke has no proto-conception of the invisible hand; and, by contrast with
Hobbes’s, his portrayal of the state of nature is of a somewhat kinder, gentler place. And
yet, among the many concerns addressed in Two T reatises,3 6 ranging ﬁom punishment to
slavery to the justiﬁcation of representative government, he spends a considerable
amount of time formulating conceptions of property, a labor theory of value, the
conditions for and limits of private property, and the affect of money on property
acquisition. Accordingly, the state of nature for Locke is underwritten by natural law:
because every person is free and equal to every other, not only are there no natural
hierarchies, rational reﬂection reveals that there is a universal obligation to respect the
rights of others “in [their] life, health, liberty [and] possessions” — for, Locke adds a little
lower, humans are the “property” of nature’s creator. And since nature was given to
humans for their beneﬁt, it is every person’s natural right to acquire as much unclaimed
property as he can “improve,” so long as he does not let such property go fallow and is
sure to leave “enough, and as good” for others. Nature (i.e., natural resources) is
“improved” when a person has “mixed” his labor with it, so that a person’s mental and
physical exertion — i.e., his labor power — is taken to confer on objects the normative
status of possessions. In embryo, then, Locke has formulated a conception of the
commodiﬁcation of the human body and capacity for creative, practical agency, and in
this way naturalized private property rights as well as the sort of economic relations
predominant in a capitalist market system.

Articulating a labor theory of value and naturalizing private property rights is not

all that Locke has accomplished or intended to accomplish, of course. His afﬁrmations

 

36 John Iccke, Second Treatise of Government, C. B. Macpherson, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1980)

41

of natural liberty and equality, as well as the manner in which he later deploys them in
defense of a representative system of government, are surely advances on the conception
of an authoritarian state (Hobbes) or an absolutist monarchy (a view of some of Locke’s
contemporaries). Yet my concern here is with Locke’s understanding of what motivates
people to interact and organize socially and, more speciﬁcally, what prompts (or
threatens to prompt) conﬂict. An important clue is provided by the following comment,
in which Locke (quite like Hobbes) explains why people are motivated to consent to the
social contract. It is the ever-present possibility of “invasion [by] others” that

makes [a person] willing to quit [the state of nature] . . .and it is not without reason,

that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others. . .for the mutual
preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name,

property.37
From here, Locke states what he takes to be the purpose of civil society:

The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and
putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.3 8

As is evident in these passages, Locke includes more in his conception of property than
money and possessions. Yet by grouping personal freedoms and rights into the economic
category of property, his language suggests that rights and capabilities are divisible
properties (or qualities) of a human being rather than intersubjectively produced norms
and relationships. Although such argumentation does not entail conceiving of social
relations and action in an individualistic and self—interested manner, the assimilation of
“life” and “liberty” to the category of property does, I submit, obscure the various human
vulnerabilities, dependencies, relationships, and, importantly, forms of social conﬂict

presupposed in the concept of a social contract.

 

37 John Locke, op. cit., 66.
38 Ibid, 66.

42

To reiterate: I am attempting to demonstrate a tendency or settled inclination in
classical liberalism to view social conﬂict as arising from, or as motivated by, struggles
over economic self-interest. To the extent that that tradition conceptualized the purpose
of the social contract and interaction as the preservation of the material well-being of
social agents, it contributed to a diminished and unduly narrow understanding of
individualization, as well as of social struggle and change. It seems clear, for example,
that important strands of the civil rights movement, feminism, and the labor movement
challenged uncritically held cultural assumptions, meanings of social roles and
expectations, and deﬁnitions of fairness and merit, in addition to (not at the expense of)
conﬂicts over just distribution. In a similar way, contemporary efforts to undermine
afﬁrmative action, to outlaw abortion, and to exclude gays and lesbians from legal
marriage are forms of social conﬂict that revolve around moral beliefs and conceptions of
the good, at least as much as (if not more than) economic interests.

What’s more, not all forms of social conﬂict possess public visibility or
organization. Inconspicuous, everyday actions and behavior can constitute resistance, as
when minorities or women in hostile institutional settings act in subtle ways to protect
their dignity, preserve their independence, or afﬁrm their cultural beliefs. Although such
actions may pass undetected or fail to be regarded as instances of social conﬂict, there is
good reason to interpret them as signs of resistance to conventional social expectations
and mores. Social struggle includes more than economic motivations and ends, and
appreciating the experiential sources of and motivations for engaging in social struggle

requires attention to the intersubjective processes through which social relations,

43

practices, institutions, and, indeed, social agents themselves are constituted and
reproduced.39

Marxist and socialist positions, though often presented as alternatives to a market-
based liberalism, often share some of the economistic commitments of classical
liberalism. Prominent contemporary thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek, Nancy Fraser, and
Richard Rorty maintain (to differing degrees and in different ways) that stating questions
of social justice in the vernacular of identity politics and multiculturalism constitutes a
type of distraction, a diversion from what really matters, which is economic justice. As
Honneth observes: “Some proponents of [redistribution]. . .insist that identity politics is a
counterproductive diversion from the real economic issues, one that balkanizes groups
and rejects universalist norms. For them, the sole proper object of political struggle is the
economy.”40 Honneth’s point here is not that economic justice is less important than
identity-recognition demands; nor is it that struggles for economic justice are by
deﬁnition crudely utilitarian and economistic. The point is rather that historical conﬂicts
commonly involve both economic and recognitive demands, which means that attempts
to understand and evaluate the sources of a conﬂict cannot be a matter of abstract
stipulation or reduction of heterogeneous phenomena into a Procrustean bed. Or, as I
suggested above, the social-diagnostic question should not be formulated as an exclusive
disjunction, redistribution or recognition? but rather as an inclusive disjunction:

redistribution or recognition, or both?

 

39 In fact, this type of argument can be discerned even in The Communist Manifesto, where Marx lists a
number of liberal-capitalist criticisms of communism, then proceeds to show not only how capitalist society
subverts the very values its proponents profess to cherish but, more importantly, how historical processes -
e.g., transformations in institutions and economic practices — gave rise to those values and normative
commitments in the ﬁrst place. Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Penguin Books, 1998),
pg). 67-73 especially.

Honneth, RR, 15.

In this light, I want to identify some of the ways that the Marxist tradition has
drawn on economistic presuppositions. But before doing so, I need to make the same
qualiﬁcations as I made in respect to liberalism. In the ﬁrst place, there is no single
Marxist tradition; instead there is a plural and diverse ﬁeld of Marxist theorists and
positions, all of which may seek to preserve “the spirit” of Karl Marx’s philosophy and
social theory, but which differ nonetheless in politics and theoretical interpretation and
emphasis. Thus, to any generalization about Marxist theory or goals, there is sure to be
an exception or counterexample. In the second place, Marx himself was too complex and
proliﬁc a thinker to summarize neatly and accurately. Even if we bracket the socialist
and Marxist traditions, Marx’s writings are so fertile that it should come as no surprise
that there are, across as well as internal to his texts, countervailing arguments and
insights. To offer only one example — although, for my purposes, an important one —
Hirschman notes that “Marxism has in fact thoroughly habituated us to the possibility of
believing at one and the same time that historical forces move inexorably toward a certain
outcome and that those who wish for that outcome had better devote all their energy to
bringing it about?“

It is for these reasons that, in what follows, I aim only to sketch a composite of
Marxism, based on a winnowing of concepts and assumptions drawn from the tradition(s)
engendered by Marx. .As with liberalism, my goal is not to criticize or urge a rejection of
Marxist theory. On the contrary, my intent is constructive: by pointing out economistic

strains in appropriations of Marx’s thought, and by demonstrating how these strains lead

 

41 Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, 99-100.

45

to tendentious interpretations of social conﬂict, I hope to illuminate the ways that an
identity-recognition theory can speak to both economic and recognitive concerns.

According to the Marxist theory of historical materialism, historical change
results from a conﬂict between the forces and relations of production. When the forces of
production (i.e., the productive capacity consisting of technological advances and an
increasingly organized division of labor) exceed the integrative ﬁrnction of the relations
of production, social conﬂict ensues and a society’s economic practices and relations are
“burst asunder.” Leaving aside mechanistic or teleological interpretations of historical
materialism, a charitable interpretation of this model of social change would emphasize
the function of labor as a mode of social reproduction and socialization.42 For Marx, the
labor process constituted the foundation of social reproduction, integration, and
socialization. It was through their location in the division of labor that members of the
working-class would share experiences, communicate about working conditions and
expectations, and ultimately gain the awareness that as a class they were being exploited.
Class-consciousness — or the understanding of one’s self and one’s life not as a social
isolate but as a member of a group — emerged from practical activity, or, more exactly,
emerged from one’s participation in common tasks, commitment to shared goals, and
experience of collective deprivation, insecurity, and powerlessness. And so, with the
cooperative skills acquired from working in modern industry, the working-class would
(as a group) organize politically in order to contest, indeed to overturn, the political

dominance of the capitalist class.

 

42 Benhabib, op cit.; Axel Honneth, “Domination and Moral Struggle” and “Work and Instrumental
Action,” in The Fragmented World of the Social; Jurgen Habermas, “Marx’s Metacritique of Hegel” and
“The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory,” in Knowledge and Human Interests, trans.
Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Maurice Merleau-Ponty Adventures of the Dialectic.
trans. Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 3-9.

46

Irnportantly, the reason the working-class is putatively well-situated43 to
transform society is that, given its position in the capitalist mode of production, the
interests of the workers, as a group, are at once the interests of human beings in general.
Stated differently, the interests of the capitalist class are particular, they represent only a
small segment of society; whereas the interests of the working-class are universal — the
emancipation of social labor44 ﬁom the constraints of the commodity form would allow
humans to order social relations and projects in a rational, reﬂective way. Although it is
unfair (and inaccurate) to accuse Marx and Marxists of presupposing a homo economicus
model of human action, there are nonetheless pronounced economistic tendencies in the
intellectual legacy of Marxism as a social theory.

The premise that economic activity is the basis of social interaction as well as the
lever of historical change is one such tendency. While not grounded in social ontological
assumptions about innate self-interest, the premise presupposes that identity, social
relations, and forms of life are essentially shaped by labor, or, more speciﬁcally, by a
person’s position in the division of labor. And although the concepts of class-
consciousness and proletariat capture the social and relational nature of social agents, the
formative aspect of this group-belongingness is predicated on struggles over material
resources and group interests. To be clear, I am not denying that there are social groups,

that groups have interests, or that material resources are important interests. The dispute

 

43 Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in The Marx-
Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), “-24; also see The
German Ideology ed. C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970).

44 In The German Ideology, Marx insists “’Liberation’ is an historical and not a mental act, and it is
brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions
of intercourse. . .” 6].

47

concerns whether the formation of groups and group interests should be theorized
fundamentally as a function of economic agents, relations, and practices.

Moreover, the assertion of a tight link between social change and economic
relations is reductionist. If the only important form of social conﬂict is assumed to be
economic, such that feminist or anti-racist political activity is construed as derivative,
“superstructural,” or merely a veiled manifestation of economic struggle, it would follow
that the sole agent of social change is an economic actor: namely, the working-class. But
to view racism as an initially non-apparent manifestation of class struggle, for example,
would be question-begging, on one hand, and, on the other hand, would be inadequate
fully to grasp the political and phenomenological speciﬁcity of racial injustice.45 As with
tendencies in liberalism, the tendency in Marxism to examine forms of social oppression
as, in reality, disputes over economic interests either narrows or distorts the concrete
experience of injustice, and assumes the primacy of economic interest (whether self-
interest or group interest) in social interaction and identity formation. By limiting the
range of social conﬂicts that appear on the diagnostic register, Marxism at the same time
limits its ability to evaluate and understand the heterogeneity of motivations underlying
struggles, which includes access to social goods and resources, to be sure, but also
includes demands to be treated with dignity and accorded moral worth.

Of course, as I did with classical liberalism, I have underscored certain

economistic aspects of the orthodox Marxist tradition. It can properly be rejoined that

 

45 Bernard Boxill argues against the claim that racism should be understood primarily as a means of
disciplining a labor force in Bernard Boxill, “Introduction,” Race and Racism (London: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 1-43. And Charles Mills proposes that although there may be a link between capitalism and
racism, inasmuch as racial division rninirrrizes economic unrest, the relation is historically contingent. In
other words, although racism may serve the interests of the capitalist class, it was not “invented” for that
purpose. See Charles W. Mills, “European Specters,” From Class to Race, 147-171. See 164-171
especially.

48

Marx does not have to be interpreted in this way. And that is correct. Between the 19305
and 19505, Gramsci, Adorno, and Merleau-Ponty each critically examined Marxism, and
produced interpretations more alive to the intersubj ective and cultural potentials of
Marxism, which have been too often ignored in more orthodox accounts. More recently,
Habermas and Honneth have done the same, neither uncritically accepting nor rejecting
Marxist theory, but rather reﬁning and enriching its social-theoretic concepts and
insights. In the next section, I introduce Honneth’s identity-recognition theory and, in a
preliminary way, indicate some advantages that approach offers in understanding the

motivation underlying social conﬂict.

Critical Social Theory: Main Concepts

My project is an exercise in critical social theory, 46 and the conceptual framework
within which I develop and defend my thesis is provided by the identity-recognition
theory of Axel Honneth. Critical social theory is a theory of society that combines
philosophical reﬂection and social scientiﬁc research for the purposes of the analysis and
normative criticism of social norms, practices, relations, and institutions. As a form of
critique, critical social theory attempts to identify and conceptualize the conditions for the
possibility of society. That is, it attempts to illuminate, and develop a theoretical
conception of, the forms of human interaction grounding and enabling social change and

reproduction, a conception that provides a standpoint from which to assess the normative

 

46 Excellent background on the Frankfurt School is provided in Seyla Benhabib, C ritique, Norm, and
Utopia, as well as Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), Douglas Kellner,
Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989) and Rolf
Wiggerhaus, The F rankﬁtrt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Signiﬁcance, trans. Michael
Robertson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).

49

character of social relations, practices, and institutional arrangements. This conception
rests on two premises: that society is oriented toward the ends of socializing and
individuating human beings as well as securing the material conditions for their freedom
and happiness; and that a society can be evaluated normatively by the degree to which it
realizes these ends in its norms, practices, and institutions. The standard that legitimates
such criticism is derived from the identiﬁcation of a form of action that serves as a
condition for the possibility of society, and which thereby possesses a type of
universality.47

A form of action is “universal” in this sense if social organization and
reproduction is possible only through, or by means of, that activity. Marx argued that
labor was a universal form of human agency in that political thought, religious
speculation, legal rules, were derivative of and conditioned by a society’s productive
capacities. Habermas, by contrast, contends that labor is not foundational insofar as
economic activity presupposes communication regarding the goals and techniques of
production, as well as discursively achieved agreement about the expectations, values,
and norms that co-habitants accept as valid. And so communicative action is universal,
in that any extant society presupposes linguistic interaction among its members. In
Honneth’s view, mutual recognition and identity formation are universal so far as labor
and communication are internally oriented toward the individuation and autonomy of
social agents. Said differently, mutual recognition possesses universality because it is a
necessary condition for society, or is a form of interaction that is necessarily presupposed

by social organization.

 

47 In the following discussion, I draw especially on Axel Honneth, “The Dynamics of Disrespect,” Steven
Seidman, ed., Jurgen Haberrnas on Society and Politics: A Reader (Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1989),
and Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. J. Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

50

But the sense of “universality” conveys more than simply “being an essential
feature of” social organization and reproduction. While critical social theory draws on
the social sciences, it is not a descriptive and explanatory science and does not aim at
ferreting out the necessary and sufﬁcient conditions of society. Instead it conceives of
society as the product of human agency, a totality that shapes and is shaped by the
reﬂective and purposive practical freedom of human beings. “Universality” thus refers to
a basic form of human freedom and agency, namely, that form of reﬂective agency
through which society is reproduced. Since universality is in this way linked with
freedom, critical theorists can speak of an “emancipatory interest” that is internal to
society and, for that reason, can claim to have found a normative standpoint for social
criticism. As mentioned above, for Marx this basic form of human agency consisted in
labor, for Habermas in communication, and for Honneth in mutual recognition. But
whatever form of action is taken to be basic, a society can be evaluated according to
whether it promotes or inhibits freedom. So, just as Marx identiﬁed the commodity form
as a product of human agency that nonetheless inhibited the productive capacity of social
labor, Habermas has decried the encroachment of strategic-technical imperatives into the
lifeworld as a product of discourse that, in fact, threatens the communicative resources of
persons in their everyday life. For this reason, critical theorists have often described their
endeavor as the “diagnosis of social pathologies.” A pathology is an abnormality or
disease that attacks the structure or normal functioning of an organism. To the extent that
social institutions, practices, or norms undermine or repress freedom, they can be judged

unjustiﬁable, since what they imperil are the conditions requisite for human freedom.

51

In Honneth’s view, mutual recognition and identity formation constitute the
foundation of social reproduction, integration, and socialization.48 For conceptual and
empirical reasons, he asserts that it is only insofar as a person is recognized by others that
she becomes an individuated subject capable of exercising autonomous agency. Identity,
on this view, refers to a person’s ability to establish basic self-relations, which are taken
to be constitutive of agency. To establish such self-relations presupposes recognition
from others: intersubjective recognition is a condition for identity formation as such, as
well as for the maintenance of a reﬂexively shaped identity through ongoing recognitive
relations. Linking the concepts of intersubjective recognition and identity formation
enables Honneth to identify certain basic conditions for personal agency and freedom.

To deny another recognition or to recognize her in degrading ways is condemnable (and
is commonly experienced as a moral harm by the person affected), because it threatens
the person’s normative standing or status, restricting her agency and impeding her ability
to develop skills and abilities, to express desires or attitudes, and so on. Thus individual
freedom, agency, and the integrity of identity depend on mutual recognition, on one hand,
and imply, on the other, that the speciﬁc historical forms assumed by recognitive
relations, social institutions and practices, are grounded in struggles over recognition,
struggles between and among individuals and groups to have their identities recognized
by others.

My thesis concerning motivation draws on the identity-recognition theory of

Honneth and focuses speciﬁcally on the connection between recognition and social

 

48 . , . . . . . . .
I examine Honneth s Identity-recognition theory, as well as the relation of hrs theory With the
communicative theory of Habermas, in chapter 4.

52

struggle.49 Although I examine in closer detail the connection between motivation and
identity formation in subsequent chapters, it is worth noting at the outset certain
distinctive features of Honneth’s conception of motivation. The concept of motivation in
Honneth’s identity-recognition theory is descriptive as well as normative. Honneth
argues that people are impacted emotionally when disrespected or denied recognition.
An insult or experience of ostracism can evoke feelings of shame, anger, or indignation;
and it is these aversive emotions that “signal” (or indicate) that a person has been treated
unjustly. People experience disrespect and denied recognition in an immediate, “pre-
reﬂective” way, only subsequently gaining the reﬂective distance required to reﬂect on,
evaluate, and articulate the source of their shame or anger. The motivation to resist
disrespect or denied recognition is thus viewed as the result of an immediately felt threat
or perceived harm to one’s identity when one is faced with disrespect, cultural
marginalization, or institutional exclusion.

Yet without further qualiﬁcation, the assertion that disrespect provokes aversive
emotions that spur social resistance sounds merely empirical and descriptive, as though
the premise linking disrespect and motivation for social conﬂict were no more than a
claim about the psychological causes of human behavior. But Honneth does not argue
that disrespect functions as an efﬁcient cause that mechanistically produces the eﬂect of
social struggle. To argue that acts of disrespect invariably cause negative emotional

states, which in turn reliably produce acts of resistance (e. g., a causal psychological

 

49 I analyze Honneth’s conception of motivation more closely in chapter 4. I want to point out here,
however, that in his social theory the concept of motivation is addressed differently than in traditional
approaches. In moral theory, the question of motivation usually arises with a view to answering, Why
should I be moral? The aim is to ascertain why a person would honor her moral duty. For Honneth. by
contrast, the question of motivation is examined from the perspective of the victims of moral wrongs or
injustice, and tries to understand their motivation in resisting or reacting against moral transgressions
committed by others. So, rather than ask Why should I be moral?, Honneth’s aim is to illuminate why such
violations prompt demands for the restoration of normatively justiﬁed moral relations

53

account) would leave a gap or separation between the premise concerning motivation, on
one hand; and the claim that recognition relations aim at self-realization,50 that is, at the
autonomous exercise of personal agency, on the other. What is needed to avoid a merely
descriptive account of social conﬂict is a way conceptually to link the normative concept
of self-realization and the aversive emotional reactions that prompt resistance to
disrespect, such that the concept of motivation gains normative content and is not merely
a theory of moral psychology.

Honneth establishes this link by arguing that identity is structural and historical. I
offer my own conception of identity below; at present, I will examine Honneth’s position
in order to clarify the sense in which his conception of motivation is normative and not
merely descriptive. A person’s identity is not an unchanging given. The ability to form
and sustain the self-relations on which identity depends is an intersubjective, recognitive,
and socially mediated achievement, which implies that as the material conditions
constituting one’s social milieu change, so changes the structure of identity. The criteria
of moral personhood, legitimate expressions of value, expectations of and demands for
personal freedom and fulﬁllment, are themselves results of historical change. As
evolving, historically new ways of thinking about and experiencing individuality are
institutionalized, i.e., as new dimensions of identity become possible and attain social
objectivity through their codiﬁcation in legal, political, and economic institutions, they at ‘
the same time acquire a normative status. Thus, the normative character of identity

formation is constitutive of agency: that identity is historical means that what it means to

 

SO Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. See chapter 9, “Intersubjective Conditions for Personal
Identity: A Formal Conception of Ethical Life,” for Honneth’s arguments linking recognition, identity. and
self-realization.

54

be an individual is structured by and grounded in historically established social norms, or
rather, in intersubjective agreement concerning social organization.

It is here that the normative quality of Honneth’s conception of motivation comes
into view. Human beings become concrete individuals through socialization, which to a
considerable extent involves the internalization of the norms and expectations underlying
a society’s practices, relationships, allocation of rights and duties, and so on. For this
reason identity formation, or the personal agency achieved through successful
individualization, is properly conceived as socially mediated. For Honneth, social
interaction, in general, and identity formation, in particular, are underwritten by
normative expectations to be recognized, since it is by virtue of recognitive norms and
practices that persons are assured the freedom to determine their personal idea of the
good, to develop and act according to their own life plan, or, more simply, to shape their
identity autonomously and reﬂexively.

The putative link between recognition, identity formation and personal agency
constitute, in Honneth’s view, the intersubjectively secured basis of both social
reproduction and normative criticism. Violations of recognitive norms (i.e., disrespect,
denials of recognition) are commonly experienced as types of assault, threats to the
coherence and sustainability of a person’s agency and social presence. But the aversive
reaction to disrespect is not solely affective. The negative emotions felt when a person is
disrespected or ostracized presuppose a type of judgment, an apprehension by the person
affected that a morally justiﬁed recognitive expectation has been violated. The

motivation to enter social conﬂict, then, while in important respects pre-reﬂective and

55

affective, nonetheless possesses both a normative and cognitive character, and is in no
way conceived as an innate property of human psychology.

People are harmed by disrespect because it diminishes their ﬁeedom to develop
their identity and truncates their ability to exercise agency. Although the autonomous
development of identity presupposes recognition by others, denials of recognition,
degradation, disrespect, and so on effect precisely the opposite, inhibiting freedom and
self-realization. Yet since the structure of identity is governed by recognitive norms, or
normative expectations to be recognized in the fullness of one’s identity, disrespect both
is, and is experienced as, a moral transgressions ' When recognitive norms are violated,
persons are motivated to resist, to struggle against disrespect, not only by the need to
sustain a coherent identity, but by the perception that forms of recognition to which they
are rightly entitled have been transgressed. The motivation to enter social conﬂict is
therefore connected with the normative end of self-realization, which, like Honneth, I
take to be the autonomous formation of identity and exercise of agency.

Having argued that the concept of motivation is normative as well as descriptive,
insofar as motivation is internally linked to the preservation and to the further, freer
development of identity, I now need clearly to explicate what I mean by identity. To
reduce ambiguity, I will use the term, identity, to refer to both “self-identity” and “social
identity.” In my view, the concept of identity is essentially dialectical, such that it

includes an implicit reference both to the subject whose identity it is (“self”) and to the

 

5' It is worth mentioning that not every act of disrespect need be characterized as a moral transgression,
even if a particular action violates an agreed upon normative rule. Sometimes, for example, a rule of
decorum or etiquette may be violated, and the offending act may insult or embarrass, e.g., a host or guest.
But unless a person’s rights, needs, safety, and so on are endangered —— or, alternatively, unless a person is
disrespected in a systematic way — the act may qualify as disrespectful but would not count as a speciﬁcally
immoral or unjust action.

56

constellation of relations and practices in which the subject is situated (social). Although
there may be good analytic and heuristic reasons for distinguishing between these two
aspects of identity, the reasons usually consist of added emphasis or nuance. Similarly,
although I do not intend them as technical terms, I will use either the term person or
subject and will generally avoid the terms “ego,” “the Self,” “partner to interaction,” and
so on. Here, too, my aim is to try to reduce ambiguity and vagueness.

A further note: I take the deﬁnition of identity I develop momentarily to be
compatible with Honneth’s understanding of identity. I say “compatible with” because,
although Honneth offers a tripartite conception of the structure of modern identity and
indicates corresponding recognition relations needed to establish an identity, he fails to
provide a close analysis of a term that appears repeatedly in his work, namely “self-
identity.” The closest he comes to a deﬁnition of self-identity is the quasi-circular
formulation “self-relation.” Self-identity, therefore, consists of a person’s ability to relate
to herself in three characteristic ways: as an embodied subject; as a rights-bearing moral
agent; and as a concrete individual, unique or at least different from others, and whose
traits and achievements are socially valued and afﬁrmed. By virtue of reciprocal
recognition, one gains the ability to relate to oneself so as to achieve a sense of self or
concrete individuality. The difﬁculty with this conception is that it is too schematic. The
strengths of Honneth’s account are that it links identity with recognition, so that identity
is regarded as an accomplishment rather than as a metaphysical given; and, moreover,
that it construes identity as differentiated, which entails thinking of identity as
integrative, as a continually renewed process requiring the integration of affective

experience, cognitive capacities and competences, physical abilities, and so on. But a

57

more detailed account is needed to grasp the dialectical character of a subject’s ability to
“relate to self,” or rather, to unify the components of its experience.

By identity, then, I mean reﬂexive subjectivity, where reﬂexivity is understood to
be an aspect of subjective experience that emerges from the integration of bodily
functions, affective sensations and reactions, and linguistic and cognitive capacities.
When the various elements of a human being’s conscious experience acquire a sufﬁcient
degree of uniﬁcation or integration; and when that human being has, through recognition,
experienced itself as a normative subject, i.e., a subject whose emotions, utterances, and
actions possess social validity and meaning; then what is often called a self coalesces.
Put more simply, recognition produces reﬂexivity, the capability of a subject to take itself
as an “object” of reﬂection. Before reﬂexivity, a subject has what may be described as
pre-personal experience: there is motility, perception, sensation, consciousness; but not
the apprehension of these experiences as mine. The pre-personal only becomes personal,
only coheres as a “self,” subsequent to recognition and reﬂection. Although the content
of a person’s identity, i.e., the raw material out of which a concrete individuality is
fashioned, will be culturally and historically variable, depending on traditions, forms of
technology, languages, and so on, the presupposition of reﬂexive subjectivity is not
variable but, instead, is necessary so that a human being can organize and integrate her
affective and cognitive capacities, potentials, and experiences. Thus, to the formulation
given above should be added a conception of self, so that identity is deﬁned as reﬂexive
subjectivity, which, through the integration of bodily and mental experience, produces a

(relatively stable) self-understanding.

58

Understanding identity as reﬂexive subjectivity with self-understanding has
advantages for my thesis concerning motivation, for Honneth’s recognition theory, and
for thinking about identity generally. Consider once more the inclination to distinguish
between self-identity and social identity. For the sake of simplicity, I will regard theories
of self-identity as variants of a “narrative theory of self” and theories of social identity as
variants of a “social category theory of self.” Each of these approaches possesses a
“moment of truth”; each, that is, contains valuable insights about the meaning of identity
and how subjects experience themselves as concrete individuals. The narrative theory of
self captures the sense in which identity is ineliminably self-referring, or is always the
identity of someone. In immediate, unreﬂective experience, it seems to me that Sartre is
(qualiﬁedly) correct: the Cartesian cogito seems to be an irrefutable datum, a certainty.
To conceive identity in primarily categorial terms, to bracket the way that concrete
individuals take up or assume an identity thus risks divorcing the concept from the
experiential content of the persons living that identity.52

On the other hand, the social category theory of self speaks to the way in which
identity is largely socially conditioned and structured, and not fundamentally volitional,
introspective, or “the way I see myself.” People often deceive themselves, pursue pipe
dreams, and misjudge the value of their abilities and accomplishments. But more
relevant, on this view, is the manner in which social categories organize the social terrain
(i.e., roles, expectations, etc.) and classify persons by ascribing meaning to such
contingent traits as biological sex or skin color. To create meaning in this way — to select

and classify and position — is a function of social power, and so it is typically members of

 

This objection to concervrng of identity in overly conceptual or categorial terms IS akin to Kierkegaard s
criticism of Hegel.

59

subordinate or oppressed groups who experience themselves as not being who they are
supposed to be. Jean Amery offers an illustration of such alienation in “On the Necessity
and Impossibility of Being a Jew,”53 as do W. E. B. Dubois in his concept of “double

”54

consciousness and Simone de Beauvoir in her observation that “one is not born a

woman.”55

I grant that I have presented the narrative and social category theories of identity
in broad strokes. But to the extent that my sketch picks out central assumptions of those
views, it allows us to identify their one-sidedness and incompleteness, as well as the
conceptual virtues of a recognition theory. In thinking about identity, emphasizing too
strongly either the volitional and introspective aspect, or the socially constructed and
imposed aspect, serves analytic purposes but also occludes an important dimension of
identity formation: speciﬁcally, the integrative process through which a subject becomes
this person, a determinate and concrete individual.56 And it is likely the case, though I
cannot fully probe the question here, that the above-mentioned theories fail to illuminate
this process because they frame the concept of identity wrongly: on one hand,
presupposing a “self” substantive enough to “tell its own story”; on the other, rejecting
notions of a “core self” but at the same time diminishing the agency of subjects who

interpret, appropriate, and transform social categories. As stated above, the chief

weakness of such conceptions is that they are insufﬁciently dialectical, too unmediated.

 

53 Jean Amery, At the Mind 's Limits: C ontemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. Sidney
Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), “On the Necessity
and Impossibility of being a Jew”

5" w. B. B. Du Bois, The Souls ofBlack Folks (New York: Bantam Books, 1989)

55 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, H. M. Parshley, ed. and trans, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989)

56 For example, some post-structuralist theories, as well as tendencies in the work of Michel Foucault, have
been criticized for emphasizing social structure or power at the expense of a conception of agency and
subjectivity. Such is the gist of Nancy Hartsock’s argument in “Postmodernism and Political Change:
Issues for Feminist Theory,” in Susan J. Hekman, op. cit.

60

By contrast, Honneth’s identity-recognition theory examines the intersubjective
origin of identity formation, connecting the institutionalization of recognitive norms with
the process of individualization, through which subjects struggle to establish the self-
relations necessary for a coherent self-conception. If we bear in mind the explication of
identity I offered above, i.e., that intersubjective recognition is the genesis of reﬂexive
subjectivity, then Honneth’s use of the term “self-relation” loses its question-begging
ﬂavor. Instead, it redirects attention back to the way in which identity formation requires
the ongoing, continual integration and mediation of the inner and the outer, the subjective
and the objective. In Honneth’s view, the “subjective” consists of the ability of a subject
to relate to itself as a physically autonomous moral agent, whose abilities and traits
receive social esteem. The “objective” consists of social relations and practices that, at
an institutional level, correspondingly protect a person’s bodily security, ensure her status
as a rights-bearing equal, and accord worth to her projects and comrrritrnents. And it is in
this light that a novel implication of Honneth’s theory surfaces.

Not only is it a mistake to think of identity as a property of persons or as a
category for classifying or marking them; in fact, it constitutes a category error. Identity
is not a thing, a property of things, or a category circumscribing a certain type of thing.
Rather, identity can be constrained or cultivated, impeded or supported, such that identity
should be understood as co-extensive with agency. The demand to be recognized, or to
be accorded the conditions necessary to develop one’s identity freely and with as few
constraints as possible, should be interpreted as a normative demand for autonomy.
Systematic disrespect or denied recognition, on the contrary, should be viewed as

restrictions on personal agency; more than this: they should be viewed, as Honneth

61

frequently suggests, as real injuries or impairments. Disrespect impairs the ability of a
person to integrate the various physical and mental functions, capabilities, and
competences that comprise the raw material out of which identity is fashioned. It is for
this reason that Honneth speaks of “the integrity of identity” and frequently draws a strict
(i.e., not a merely metaphorical) analogy between physical and psychological injury. It is
for the same reason, moreover, that the thesis linking motivation to violated recognitive
expectations gains plausibility. Struggles for recognition are struggles for greater
freedom, struggles to institutionalize the conditions required for increased personal
autonomy and agency. Disrespect and denials of recognition diminish and truncate a
person’s agency, at least, and threaten to incapacitate it, at worst. Yet, because forms of
disrespect are typically experienced as harms, even as assaults on a person’s social-
ontological security, such normative transgressions motivate resistance.

I have argued that identity is co-extensive with agency and that identity formation
should be conceived as a basic form of practical autonomy. Because identity formation is
constitutively linked with recognition relations and the corresponding recognitive
expectations sedirnented in institutional norms, both identity and practical autonomy are
relational, vulnerable, and subject to moral and political conﬂict. The nature of such
conﬂict can be primarily distributive; or it can be recognitive, that is, a dispute over the
meaning of dignity, moral worth, or personhood itself. In this way, it becomes clear that
the indignation experienced when people are disrespected not only motivates resistance,
but links recognitive struggles to the end of self-realization. Hence, the critical promise

of an identity-recognition theory is that it can elucidate this intersubjectively engendered

62

sub-layer of meanings, dependencies, expectations, and experiences more acutely than an

alternative economistic account.

Identity-Recognition Theory as Diagnostic Tool

An advantage of identity-recognition theory consists of its social-ontological
insight concerning the openness and the multiplicity of the social. The Honnethian
approach used here resists the economistic tendency to privilege a single agent, social
location, or mechanism as the locus of social conﬂict and change, and so refuses to
accord ontological or motivational priority to, for example, economic interests. Critics
worry that identity theories encourage particularism and embrace contingency, and in this
way invite sectarianism, polarization, and the rejection of universal norms.57 The worry
is that formulating questions of social justice in the language of recognition relations will
diminish efforts to achieve distributive justice; and that if, in fact, there is no priority
accorded to the economic, distributive commitments will lose their centrality and come to
seem neither more nor less important than other forms of struggle.

But to deny that a society’s economic structure forms the basis of social
organization, or, put differently, to refuse to accord social-ontological priority to
economic practices and relations, does not entail that a social theory is neglectful of or
indifferent to distributive and egalitarian concerns. Even if some theorists and activists
have stressed the need to recognize particularist forms of life, and have thus seemed to
abandon universalism or to undervalue economic justice, it does not follow that every

identity-recognition theory must similarly eschew universalist or egalitarian

 

57 I have in mind here the above mentioned positions of Barry, op. cit., and Gitlin, op. cit., as well as Nancy
Fraser “Recognition Without Ethics?” Theory, Culture & Society 18(2-3): 21-42.

63

commitments. An identity-recognition theory like Honneth’s possesses the resources to
address distributive as well as recognitive concerns. Moreover, as Barrington Moore, E.
P. Thompson, and Craig Calhoun have shown,58 the history of the labor movement
involves more than efforts simply to protect economic interests or improve economic
well-being. Workers have experienced and resisted capitalist control over workers’ time
and effort, threats to traditions and community relations, and disregard for local customs.
Hence, the alternative “redistribution or recognition” is a false dichotomy. To underscore
the centrality of recognition relations in social interaction, including economic activity,
provides a standpoint from which distributive patterns can be linked to, and evaluated in
light of, pattems of granting or denying esteem to persons and to social groups.

These considerations shed light on why an identity-recognition theory is well
suited to grasp the motivation for engaging in social conﬂict. While economism assumes
that concrete individuals merely happen to have given interests and preferences, and that
the goal of every person is to satisfy as many preferences as possible, identity-recognition
theory conceives of identity as intersubjectively constituted. To theorize identity in this
way implies that interests and preferences are not given facts of nature, but are inﬂuenced
and shaped by social relations, practices, and institutions. Similarly, a society’s
economic structure is not a fact of nature but the result of human agency, an historically
contingent way of organizing social relations and power. Certain types of choices,
desires, interests, and so on are made possible for agents in a particular social order, so

that “self-interest,” as a putative action- guiding motivation, is itself the result of

 

58 Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Dijference (Cambridge:
Blackwell Publishers, 1995); Barrington Moore, Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1978); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
(London: Gollancz, I963).

64

contingent material conditions and not a self-evident property of “human nature.” The
implication for economistic approaches is that economic self-interest, in particular, is
neither a feature of human nature nor a universal motivation underlying social
interaction, but is rather a contingent way of experiencing identity and organizing agency.
Honneth thus proposes that economic conﬂict be seen as a type of recognition
struggle, arguing that wealth and resource distribution in capitalist societies reﬂects value
judgments about the worth of certain kinds of occupations. Jobs judged to contribute to
growth and efﬁciency are esteemed and amply rewarded, whereas those judged to
contribute little are devalued and poorly remunerated. Decisions to reduce regulatory
oversight, automate labor, or outsource jobs turn on value judgments — for example, that
increased proﬁts are more important than worker safety and economic security,
community stability, and ecological sustainability. Put another way, human beings make
decisions that affect the distribution of opportunities, power, and wealth, and they decide
freely, in light of some system of values, and not solely as a result of economic necessity.
Moreover, the harm of inequality is not reducible to unequal distribution, is not
solely a matter of some having more resources and wealth than others.59 Much of what is
wrong with economic inequality consists of the blame and near contempt heaped on the
choices, practices, and social circumstances of the poor, working poor, and working-
class. Similarly, efforts to unionize are not always about workers trying to protect their
economic interests, but often are motivated by the desire for workplace autonomy,

grievance procedures, and time management — measures intended to acknowledge the

 

59 See Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Vintage Books
Edition, 1973). For another moving and eloquent reﬂection on the emotional injuries of poverty. see
Dorothy Allison, “A Question of Class,” in The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race,
Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation, Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis
(New York: The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., 1996), 184-192.

65

dignity and independence of the workers. And since class identity is not unitary and
neatly separable from other forms of identity, but is shot through with religious beliefs,
ethnic customs and traditions, experiences of discrimination, and so forth, the harm of
economic inequality can be experienced in multiple ways (e.g., the violation of religious
beliefs, eradication of cultural tradition, public shame).

For these reasons, and for reasons to be elaborated in chapter 4, Honneth’s
identity-recognition theory can speak to concerns about economic justice as ably as it can
address those issues usually associated with multiculturalism and identity politics. But I
should note that his remarks on economic relations and conﬂict are too ﬁagmentary and
incomplete to be wholly satisfying. 60 For while he correctly notes that economic
decisions are prompted by values, and are not mere reﬂexes triggered by “market
ﬂuctuations” and “volatility,” his cursory comments stress the volitional aspects of
economic activity almost to the exclusion of structural elements. To acknowledge
structural elements of economic inequality, e.g., the transfer of property and wealth in the
US. under the long history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, is consistent with
Honneth’s conceptual framework and, in fact, would only strengthen its critical force.

I critically examine the details of Honneth’s argumentation in chapter 4. For now,
it is worthrecalling that his (and my) reﬂection on classical liberalism and Marxism is
aimed at an enrichment and defense of the normative commitments of these theories,
which requires sifting out economistic traces so that the moral character of the
motivations for social struggle can be properly disclosed and appreciated. When

successful, recognition struggles lodge in a society’s institutional framework the

 

60 . . . . .
Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?

66

recognition of identity and protection of those recognition relations that support identity
formation — including economically oriented policies and programs. In this way,
successful recognition struggles increase freedom both intensively and extensively,
serving as stepping-stones for further recognitive demands and thereby enabling the
meaningful pursuit of self-realization. A conception of social progress thus takes shape:
social progress results from recognition struggles, which are motivated by experiences of
(perceived) disrespect and directed toward the expansion of social protections for
autonomous agency.61

Thus, the advantage of critically appropriating Honneth’s identity-recognition
theory is that it offers a comprehensive, ﬂexible, and internally complex conceptual
framework for social analysis and criticism. Although his argumentation sometimes
needs to be supplemented and sharpened, the intersubjective framework he takes over
ﬁ'om Hegel, Marx, and Habermas yields the resources necessary to disclose and
understand the crux of social change: namely, struggles over recognition. Because
identity is co-extensive with agency, or rather, because reﬂexive subjectivity with self-
understanding is best conceived as a form of action, identity formation constitutes a locus
of political and moral conﬂict concerning practical autonomy and equality. Insofar as
disrespect imperils a person’s ability to unify her somatic and cognitive competences,
functions, and so on, disrespect is often experienced as a threat to a person’s ontological
security, an assault on her personhood and freedom. For this reason, the experience (or

perception) of disrespect commonly motivates resistance, not solely or primarily as a

 

6' Honneth argues that a conception of progress is discernible if one assumes that “[modemity’s] normative
constitution is the result of past directed development” (RR, 184) towards greater freedoms in the
development of identity. Thus, for Honneth the “two criteria” for measuring a society’s legitimacy are
whether it provides increased opportunities for individualization, and whether it becomes more inclusive of
differences (RR, 187).

67

means of protecting one’s economic self-interest, but as a means of sustaining one’s
coherence and integrity as a subject.

In the following chapter, I present and criticize David T. Wellman’s theory of
racism, which exempliﬁes an economistic explanation of social conﬂict. Aside from
internal conceptual difﬁculties, Wellman’s theory trades on the questionable
presuppositions concerning economic agency and interests that I discussed in connection
with classical liberalism and Marxism. After concluding the chapter with an external
critique of Wellman’s economism, I examine Honneth’s identity-recognition theory in

chapter 4.

68

Chapter 3
An Economistic Theory of White Racism

My thesis is that recognition theory provides a more tenable account of what
motivates people to engage in social conﬂict than does economistic theory. In this
chapter I present, analyze, and criticize one well-known economistic account, namely,
David T. Wellman’s view in Portraits of White Racism that anti-black racism is best
conceived, not as prejudice, but rather as an effort by whites to defend racial privilege.
Against Wellman’s claim that his theory of racism is novel — since it rejects the idea that
racism is marked by prejudice or hostility, and thus is intractably subjective and
psychological — I argue that his sociological and “objective” account presupposes a
common assumption about human nature, dating back at least to Hobbes, that people are
motivated to act principally, if not solely, from economic self-interest.

Even if Wellman relies on traditional assumptions about human nature and
motivation, his theory of racism may still be more compelling than alternative views. Yet
this is what I deny. Construing racism as a struggle over scarce resources returns social
theory to untenable notions of subjectivity and action, and reduces our understanding of
the ways in which racism constitutes (in part) personal and social identity. A view that
focuses on utilitarian calculations of economic self-interest fails to address the moral
logic, as well as the motivation, governing much of human interaction. By contrast,
identity-recognition theory begins with the reciprocity of sociality, a starting point which

more clearly illuminates the moral structure turd motivation of interaction.

69

I begin this chapter by explicating the concept of economism. As there are
numerous theoretical and historical sources to this conceptual strain of liberal theory,
ranging from Hobbes to utilitarianism and modern rational choice theory, I draw on
various sources and try to distill what I take to be the core features of the concept. To
sketch my conception of economism I examine its roots in liberal political theory, starting
with Hobbes. Hobbes is an important ﬁgure historically because he so decisively broke
with Aristotelian teleology and set about developing political theory on a modern,
scientiﬁc basis. He is important philosophically because such a break demanded radical
changes in notions of social ontology, subjectivity, the role of the state, and the nature of
politics. More important, Hobbes is perhaps the ﬁrst inﬂuential social contract theorist
and his arguments about the rationality of and motivation for forming civil society, i.e.,
for consenting to the social contract, remain a striking illustration of the conceptual style
I call economism. Another important historical ﬁgure to assume an economistic view of
sociality is Kant. Like Hobbes, in his political writings Kant was a social contract
theorist who maintained that people should consent to the contract for ultimately self-
interested reasons. Against this background, I examine the contemporary sociological
view called rational choice theory, which is a direct descendant of the self-interested
individualism frequently found in classical liberalism.

In the next section, I present and analyze Wellman’s theory of racism, and then
develop both internal and external criticisms of the view. As noted above, Wellman’s
theory of racism is marred by the assumption that social action is fundamentally
motivated by economic self-interest, or, in the case of anti-black racism, by the “defense

of racial privilege.” Near the end of this chapter, I criticize Wellman’s interpretation of

70

the qualitative data with which he supports the claim that when whites oppose policies
like afﬁrmative action, what they are really doing is telling a story that allows them to
maintain the (racially unequal) status quo, without thereby appearing to be prejudiced and
without obviously contradicting the “American Creed” of egalitarianism. I then proceed
to demonstrate that Wellman relies on economistic assumptions about motivation and
action, and critique his project both for its instrumentalization of social relations and its
distorted conception of individuality. The latter arguments constitute my external

criticism of Wellman’s theory.

Defining Economism: Concepts and Assumptions

In this section I deﬁne the concept of economism. I do not formulate an
independent criticism of economism in this chapter. I reserve that task for chapter 5,
where I try to show that identity-recognition theory is better able to understand
phenomena like racial conﬂict than is economistic theory. After developing the
conception of economism, I propose internal as well as external criticisms of Wellman’s
theory.

Economism is a theory of motivation, a theory about what motivates individual
and collective social action. In the liberal tradition, it is commonly assumed that action
should be evaluated in terms of rationality. Social contract theorists, beginning with
Hobbes, have long argued that the motive for consenting to the social contract is to
establish a framework within which conﬂict arising from human nature can be

constrained; and economic self-interest, which, in conditions of scarcity, involves

71

competition, can be pursued in a peaceable, law-govemed way. For Hobbes,62 consent to
the social contract was rational, even if this meant that persons had to forfeit their natural
“right to everything,” because universal adherence to the social contract would end the
fear, insecurity, and rampant lawlessness characteristic of the state of nature. Leaving the
state of nature and establishing civil society would therefore provide people a peaceable
environment in which to enjoy the rights they retained, including the right to acquire and
accumulate private property. Hence, the motivation to enter civil society was assumed to
be the preservation of self-interest. And for Hobbes, at least, this was deemed a matter of
rational calculation, not of empathy or of moral reason.

Similarly, in the contemporary social sciences the notion of practical reason
commonly assumed is rational choice theory, which combines a thin concept of
subjectivity with strategic reason.63 By “thin concept of subjectivity” I mean a way of
conceiving a subject’s, i.e., a social agent’s, action and rationality by reference to goals,
preferences, motivations, or interests. By “strategic reason” I mean a type of reason
utilized by individual subjects in isolation from other subjects, which consists of
determining the means necessary or adequate to achieve given ends.”4 On this view,

action is conceived as the intentional behavior of subjects vis-c‘z-vis objects, whether those

 

62 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); chapters
13-15 especially. Also C. B. MacPherson, Possessive Individualism, section II, “Hobbes: The Political
Obligation of the Market,” 9-107.

63 In the following account, I draw heavily on Stephen K. White, The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas:
Reason, justice and modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Hereafter referred to as
RWH. Other works that critically examine rational choice theory are David Schmidtz, Rational Choice and
Moral Agency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New
York: Anchor Books, 1999), and Albert 0. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests.

Strategic reason is a type of reason utilized by a single subject and evaluated in terms of success in
matching means to ends. Connnunicative reason, by contrast, is a type of reason that is intersubjective, i.e.,
that presupposes interaction between subjects and is evaluated in terms of reaching mutual understanding.
See Jurgen Habermas, “Social Action and Rationality,” in Steven Seidman, ed., Jurgen Habermas on
Society and Politics: A Reader (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

72

objects are things or other subjects. Rationality is the determination or calculation of
actions necessary to achieve given goals. Rationality, then, consists of linking means to
ends, where means are actions and ends are goals (choices, interests, preferences, etc.).
Thus, subjects are conceived as acting on or manipulating objects in order to attain
subjectively given ends, and the rationality of their action is evaluated in light of their
success or failure in doing so.

Rational choice theory therefore presupposes subj ect-obj ect dualism. This is a
social ontological presupposition about the way subjects relate to themselves, to other
subjects, and to objects. If one subject can be used as a means to another subject’s ends,
it follows that subjects are at once subjects and objects. Further, if the rationality of a
subject’s action is determined by success in matching means to ends or manipulating
objects to achieve given goals, without regard to the ends, purposes or understanding of
the other, it also follows that subjects can relate to one another strictly as objects. Were
subjects to communicate about mutually acceptable norms or the meanings of proposed
actions, they would be engaging one another as subjects. But when a subject deliberates
without regard for how others (particularly those who might be affected by possible
decisions or actions) might understand or interpret an action, those others are effectively
treated as props, as means to an end. In this way, social relations can assume a purely
instrumental character, so that subjects are related only externally to other subjects.

Rational choice theory abstains from normative judgments about the ends of
action. Unlike Hobbes, who made successful self-preservation a criterion of rationality,
rational choice theory does not posit speciﬁc ends or actions as a priori rational. What

matters, given certain ends and regardless of their content, is how successfully a subject’s

73

actions achieve them. Yet if ends are regarded solely as subjective givens, it is a
tempting step to construe such ends as self-interested. In a trivial sense, it is practically a
matter of deﬁnition that a person’s interests are hers, and are thus self-regarding. But
more signiﬁcantly, self-interest is assumed to serve as a motivation as well. As White
observes, “This assumption is made because self-interest seems to be the most easily
universalizable motivation, that is, it can explain a larger fraction of collective behavior
than any other single motivational assumption.”65 Rational choice theory thus seems to
have predictive power for collective and individual action. Even if people in a pluralist
society have different values and goals, the logic of individual and collective behavior
can be reliably forecast so far as choices and actions are governed by self-interest.
Collective interests would consist merely of the aggregate or combination of the interests
pursued by discrete subj ects.66

To assume that action is motivated by self-interest does not entail that there are
not or could not be other motivations, e.g., moral considerations. Nonetheless, many
liberal theorists have identiﬁed self-interest as a basic motivation: Hobbes, Kant (in his
political theory), and countless utilitarians among them. In any case, a strong reductionist
claim is unnecessary. It sufﬁces for my purposes to note that many contemporary social
scientists, like their theoretical forbears, assume that self-interest is “the most easily
universalizable motivation.”

I have not yet shown that self-interest is speciﬁcally economic. The assumptions

of rational choice theory acquire an economic hue when situated in the liberal-capitalist

 

6" Stephen K. White, RWH, 10-11.

66 Consider in this regard Kant’s argument in “Perpetual Peace” that, in republics, self-interest would
reduce the likelihood of war. Since citizens would have to ﬁnance and ﬁght in any war they authorized,
self-interest would make them reluctant to ever do so. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, and Other
Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).

74

tradition. I mentioned Hobbes’ assertion that consent to the social contract is motivated
by economic self-interest. While Hobbes is perhaps the least embarrassed by this feature
of “human nature,” he is far from alone. In economic theory, the beliefs that people have
“inﬁnite needs,” that freedom is tied to satisfying such needs by maximizing utilities, and
that this is best accomplished in market economies are hardly questioned. Even as
sensitive a critic of utilitarianism as Amartya Sen argues that economic exchange is
ﬁrndarnental to human freedom.67 I am not claiming that Sen is an economistic thinker.
On the contrary, he conceives of freedom in terms of “capacities to function,” which
involves a thicker understanding of action and personhood than is characteristic of
economistic theory; and he attempts to show that the economic freedoms created in
market economies have a value independent of utility-generation. But the assertion that
the rights to choose employment by “freely” agreeing to a labor contract, to participate in
market-based economic transactions, and so on, are intrinsic to human ﬂourishing is
nonetheless colored by an economistic assumption, namely, that contractually regulated
economic exchange is essential to personal agency and interaction. And so, if economic
self-interest is not the only type of self-interest, it is often assumed in the liberal tradition

to be the most universal human interest.

 

67 “But the more immediate case for the freedom of market transaction lies in the basic importance of that
freedom itself. We have good reasons to buy and sell, to exchange, and to seek lives that can ﬂourish on
the basis of transactions. To deny that freedom in general would be in itself a major failing of society.”
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, 1 12.

75

Economism, then, is the view that action is motivated by economic self-interest,
and that the rationality of action is strategic, a matter of calculating the means necessary
to achieve self-interested ends. Such are the presuppositions and arguments that provide

the economistic account of personal agency and the agency of groups and movements.

Wellman: Racism as Defense of Economic Privilege

Wellman’s theory draws on economistic premises in three ways. While an
elaboration of these connections will have to follow my presentation of Wellman’s
theory, the gist of it is this: Wellman repeatedly afﬁrms that racism consists of whites
protecting their self-interest, where the nature of that interest is assumed to be economic.
Moreover, his view relies on the subj ect-obj ect dualism as well as linking of strategic
reason with action characteristic of economism. To demonstrate these economistic
assumptions, I reconstruct Wellman’s arguments.

Wellman asserts that white racism consists of “culturally acceptable beliefs that
defend social advantages that are based on race” and “today remains essentially what it
has always been: a defense of racial privilege.”68 Proposed ﬁrst in the late seventies,
Wellman reafﬁrms the truth and usefulness of this understanding, or rather, this
alternative model of white racism in the early nineties, on occasion of the re-release of
PWR. In the preface to the second edition, he maintains that because racism still
advantages some at the expense of others, and because current sociology of racism

continues to minimize the “structural impact of race,” his position not only “remains

 

68 David T. Wellman, PWR, 4.

76

”69 More exactly, Wellman’s thesis is that “racist

relevant [but] an update is in order.
beliefs are culturally sanctioned, rational responses to struggles over scarce
resources. . .sentiments which, regardless of intentions, defend the advantages that whites

”70

gain from the presence of blacks in America. White racism should therefore be

“analyzed as a strategy for the maintenance of privilege.”71
A number of things should be noted about this thesis at the outset. The focus of
PWR is anti-black racism among whites, i.e., white racism against blacks. Unanswered is
whether the deﬁnition of racism developed therein can or should also be used to explain
white racism against Native Americans, Hispanics, Arabs, and Asians in the US. And
the scope of the book is racism in the U.S., speciﬁcally. So, although Wellman states that
he arrived at his theory of white racism partly due to his reﬂection on colonial societies,
he never discusses whether or the degree to which his model of racism might be applied
to post-colonial societies or, say, to the nations comprising the European Union. A
further question pertains to the historical nature of the theory. Wellman denies that
attitudinal prejudice typiﬁes contemporary white racism; whites no longer speak in
overtly hostile or demeaning racial terms, indeed it is now regarded as socially and
politically unacceptable to so. This is a key premise in his argument. Yet it is hard to
deny_that overt, often hateful prejudice existed in America for centuries; and so,
modifying the earlier statement, it might be said that attitudinal prejudice no longer

characterizes white racism. But, aside from the empirical dubiousness of the claim, this

presents a problem: namely, whether or not Wellman considers prejudice ever to have

 

“mum
7° Ibid, 29.
7' Ibid, 60.

77

been part of the meaning of racism. While the answer seems clear, since he states that
racism “has always been a defense of racial privilege,” it seems to me that he never
directly confronts the issue of prejudice, historically or conceptually, and therefore fails
to justify the claims that racial prejudice has largely dissipated and that, in any event,
prejudice is incidental to racism, which is after all essentially a defense of privilege.

By denying that prejudice forms part of the meaning of white racism, Wellman
does not mean that whites are generally oblivious to racial inequality in the US. Some
whites deny racial_inequality, but others acknowledge it and admit it to be a social fact.
Rather he means that even when whites acknowledge racial inequality, they no longer try
to explain the inequality in terms of racial superiority and inferiority. To deﬁne racist
beliefs as “culturally sanctioned, rational responses to struggles over scarce resources”
means that racist beliefs are based neither on prejudicial beliefs toward blacks nor on
irrational assessments of social reality. Instead, the beliefs are based on the material self-
interest of whites qua members of the group whites.

Modern racist beliefs receive “cultural sanction,” according to Wellman, insofar
as they attempt to explain racial inequality by reference to the American principles of
individualism, equal treatment, and opportunity.72 Acceptable explanations of inequality
would focus, not on the “nature” of blacks or whites, but rather on vestigial forms of job
and housing discrimination, lack of educational opportunities and resources, and so on.
On this view, aiming at color-blind anti-discrimination policies in social and educational

institutions would ensure that blacks are treated as individuals and as equals, and would

 

72 Consider some of the stock objections to afﬁrmative action: that it fails to respect individual
achievement by giving “special preference” to the unqualiﬁed; that it reverses invidious racial
discrimination by treating whites, not as moral equals, but as members of a racial group; that it distributes
opportunities, not to individuals, but to persons qua members of racial groups: and so on.

78

thereby enable them to Shirk the yoke of social inequality. The belief that inequality is
the result of differences in education and employability serves to justify the fairness of
American institutions, since the implication is that, given equal opportunities, there are
no structural impediments to social advancement. The failure to achieve social equality
can thus be blamed on individuals or on their racial or ethnic communities, rather than on
the basic structure of American society. Racist beliefs are types of rationalization, then,
that at once explain racial inequality and justify the rectitude of American institutions,
while leaving intact the image of America as a just society.

The deﬁnition of modern racist beliefs as “rational responses to struggles over
scarce resources” requires elaboration. Note that Wellman describes racist beliefs as
rational. This follows a long tradition in social theory of evaluating human behavior,
individual and collective, almost exclusively in terms of rationality. By rationality, I
mean the calculation of those actions needed to attain speciﬁed goals, or, put differently,
the determination of means necessary to achieve given ends or interests. Rationality
consists of linking means to ends, where means are actions and ends are goals or
interests. According to Wellman, a longstanding assumption in the sociology of racism is
that racism is essentially irrational, the product of ignorance about social facts or about
the group discriminated against, of overly rigid and authoritarian personality types, or of
hatred of certain social groups. A Marxian variant is that white racism among the
working-class is irrational since it creates division and conﬂict between working-class
whites and blacks and, in this way, contradicts their shared class-interests. Wellman, by
contrast, argues that racist beliefs are rational, or rather are “rational responses.” This

does not mean they are moral or just; instead, it means that the beliefs are of instrumental

79

value in attaining some goal. Racist beliefs, in other words, are “responses” that help
whites to achieve a desired goal or to satisfy an interest.

What these “goals” or “interests” are, is both readily apparent and brings us to the
nub of Wellman’s theory. Racist beliefs are responses “to struggles over scarce
resources”; by “scarce resources,” Wellman means economic resources. The idea is a
familiar one in liberal-capitalist societies: the normative justiﬁcation for private property
and economic competition is predicated on the assumption of scarce resources, i.e., the
assumption that there is not enough stuff to satisfy peoples’ “inﬁnite needs,” nor even
their more basic necessities. And so, when Wellman deﬁnes racism as a defense of
“social advantage” or “privilege,” he has in mind economic advantage, the superior
economic opportunity, access, and security whites enjoy vis-a-vis blacks. In the U.S.,
while there is clearly a class hierarchy in general — a class system of the poor, the
working poor, the working-class, and so on — it is nonetheless true that whites have
historically received social, economic, and political privileges vis-a-vis blacks, in
particular. Although there have been class-based distributive struggles, it is also true that
whites as a group have been the beneﬁciaries of a racial hierarchy. So, on this view,
white opposition to social policies aimed at beneﬁting blacks economically is intelligible,
indeed rational, insofar as whites collectively perceive redistributive efforts (correctly,
Welhnan thinks) as threats to their economic security.

The argument, then, is that whites oppose social changes aimed at beneﬁting
blacks, not because of malice or ignorance, but from a sense of self-preservation: when

scarcity is assumed, extending beneﬁts to blacks cuts into or threatens the share of

resources historically controlled by whites. Given the social structure of the U.S., this is

80

a real conﬂict and white resistance to such change is rational. Yet the fact of racial
inequality still needs explanation. Admitting that inequality results from a racial
hierarchy is out of the question, Wellman claims, both because it would force individual
whites to admit their complicity in a racially oppressive social system and because it
would clearly contradict the core American values of individual freedom and equality.
To avoid such dissonance, whites rationalize racial inequality by fashioning culturally
sanctioned explanations that, in effect, shift the blame onto blacks.

It is these beliefs and explanations that Wellman depicts as “sentiments which,
regardless of intentions, defend the advantages that whites gain from the presence of
blacks in America.” The idea that beliefs defend racial privilege by explaining and
justifying inequality “regardless of intentions” is worth examining more closely. One of
the reasons that Wellman’s thesis is notable is that it attempts to develop a structural
account of racism. By “structural account,” I mean an account that explains some social
phenomenon, in this case racism, in terms of the organization of institutions. The
arrangement of social institutions governs how goods and resources, forms of access and
opportunities, are allocated in that society. To afﬁrm that racism is a structural problem
implies that the way that race advantages some and disadvantages others is independent
of, or only incidentally related to, personal attitudes or prejudices. Wellman therefore
states that “prejudice is not what makes race such a salient category. Rather, race is
important because white Americans continue to experience advantages based on their
position in the American social hierarchy.”73 So, when asked about the causes of social

inequality in America, it should come as no surprise that few whites explain them in

 

73 Ibid, 4.

81

terms of, say, biological differences between whites and blacks, the innate superiority of
whites, or outright denials that there is inequality.

For Wellman, white prejudice against blacks is not the problem. On one hand, he
claims that the Archie Bunker stereotype is just that: a stereotype, an exaggeration of the
extent of white (especially working-class) prejudice. By contrast, several of the whites
interviewed by Wellman voiced universalist attitudes about race, expressing a belief in
abstract equality and a desire for color-blind social policies — because “race shouldn’t
matter.” Even if the sincerity of these self-reports is suspect, it is nonetheless worth
noting that overt prejudice is regarded as, and evidently felt to be, socially unacceptable.
On the other hand, whether or not individual whites have prejudicial attitudes is beside
the point for Wellman, since the actual source of racial inequality in the US. is the
institutional framework. And this point casts light on the novelty of his theory: for the
denial that prejudice is the problem, or that many whites in the contemporary U.S. remain
prejudiced, does not exculpate or exempt whites ﬁom criticism. On the contrary, to
afﬁrm that whites explain and justify inequality in ways that maintain the status quo (i.e.,
that maintain the racial hierarchy in the US.) effectively deepens the complicity of
whites in perpetuating racism, because it is those rationalizations that obscure the extent
to which whites beneﬁt from keeping social relations, practices, and institutions exactly
the same.

Since white peoples’ beliefs about inequality in effect maintain the status quo —
since they are “a disguised way to defend privilege”74 and subtly shift blame for

inequality from the social structure to those subordinated by it — it is, strictly speaking,

 

7" Ibid, 57.

82

irrelevant what individual whites intend. Even if whites sincerely desire a color-blind
society, where people relate to each other as morally equal and unique persons, where
success or failure is determined by ambition, merit, and so on, it is still true that, given
the structure of US. institutions, whites remain systemically privileged vis-a-vis blacks.
Denials of inequality, criticisms of putatively inferior value systems, condemnations of
welfare or similar social programs — all of these “well-intentioned” positions preserve the
status quo and never touch the heart of the matter, which is the racial hierarchy in the
US. The only thing that will genuinely reduce racism in America, according to
Wellman, is social change that aims at structural transformation.

Wellman contrasts his structural model of racism with other structuralist
accounts75 as well as with theories he calls culturalist.76 Among the former are William
J. Wilson’s contention that the main problem currently facing blacks in America is
poverty, not racism. Poverty among blacks is symptomatic of anonymous market forces
whose “impersonal shifts” affect, i.e., isolate and impoverish, blacks as well as whites.
This type of structuralist account does not neglect the pernicious effects of racism, but
Wellman claims that it minimizes the impact of racism insofar as it demands greater
attention be paid to the way market economies systematically disadvantage the poor and
working poor. Although Wellman praises Wilson’s emphasis on structure and social
location, he criticizes the latter’s view for failing to explain why whites and blacks in
similar social positions are treated differently, and why a disproportionate number of
blacks are relegated to low wage work. Unless race is a primary category in a

structuralist theory of society, phenomena such as the racial division of labor and

 

75 Ibid, 5-7.
7" Ibid, 7-11.

83

differential treatment of persons in the same economic position will be ignored. For this
reason, structuralist theories that fail speciﬁcally to address racial inequality are, in
Wellman’s view, inadequate.

While alternative structural accounts of racism minimize the role of racism,
culturalist theories maximize the impact, but do so in a manner that obscures the material
basis underlying and perpetuating the racial hierarchy. Culturalist theories of racism
investigate the role of race in social relations by analyzing “meaning systems, categories,
and beliefs” as well as discursive strategies, social practices, and media representations.
Despite differences among competing culturalist approaches, Wellman concludes that all
such approaches are ultimately beholden to the concept of ideology. While never
explicitly deﬁning “ideology,” Wellman means something fairly traditional: in effect,
“false consciousness,” untrue or distorted understandings of reality stemming from
systems of meaning and representation. On the culturalist view, then, racism is seen as a
social problem, but one that affects social beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. Such
theories are deﬁcient to the degree that they leave unexamined the institutional
arrangements that systematically beneﬁt whites at the expense of blacks. The theoretical
weakness of culturalist theories is that they “provide no serious analysis of the
contemporary structure of racial advantage and how it might be connected to the ways in
which people talk about race.”77

Although these alternative theories inadequately explain racial inequality in

America, together they illuminate what Wellman refers to as the “two sides of racism,”

social structure and culture. Racism is essentially about maintaining material privilege,

 

77 Ibid, 9.

84

which combines control over and access to scarce resources. If the scarcity of resources
is assumed, then it appears that white privilege can only be secured and maintained
through a social structure that subordinates blacks. But the inequality generated by the
defense of white privilege must be justiﬁed such that white complicity in perpetuating
racism is concealed. This problem is felt most acutely when “access to those scarce
resources [is] challenged,”78 as happened vigorously and prominently during the civil
rights struggles of the 19505 and 1960s. Whites must then give reasons and explanations
for racial inequality that simultaneously rationalize the status quo and exempt themselves
from blame. Culturally, racial inequality must be explained in ways that do not
contradict such ideals as personal ﬁ'eedom and social equality. For Wellman, the
theoretical value of deﬁning racism as “culturally acceptable beliefs that defend social

advantage based on race”79

is that it integrates both aspects of society, the structural and
the cultural, into a single model. By contrast, rival sociological theories of racism have
“become bifurcated” so that one must “choose between the frameworks [structuralist or
culturalist], to opt for one or the other.”80 Racism qua defense of racial privilege
purportedly bridges this gap, offering a uniﬁed theoretical account of the “two sides of
racism.”

Wellman’s remarks on contemporary sociological theories of racism are similar to

Nancy Fraser’s assessment of contemporary political theory. In “Recognition without

Ethics?” Fraser says that “forces of progressive politics have been divided into two

 

78 Ibid, 24.
79 Ibid, 25.
8" Ibid, 25.

85

camps,”8' the one focused on distributive justice, the other on recognitive concerns.
Fraser argues that political philosophy is bifurcated between the politics of redistribution
and the politics of identity, with the result that current political thought exhibits a type of
“schizophrenia.” The claim neatly ﬁts Wellman’s criticism of structuralist and culturalist
theories: theories weighted too heavily in favor of the structural risk losing sight of race
(status, in Fraser’s terms) while those weighted in favor or the cultural (i.e., identity) risk
eliding the reality of economic inequality. Clarifying the intersection of class and race, or
redistribution and recognition, requires that theory be complex enough to address both
elements without reducing one to the other, and that it do so in a single conceptual
framework. Like Wellman, Fraser claims to have developed such a “comprehensive
framework” with her status model of recognition, and thus to have avoided theoretical
“schizophrenia.”

I examine aspects of F raser’s theory in a later chapter. For now, it sufﬁces to note
that some of her reasons for rejecting, or at least being suspicious of, an identity-
recognition theory parallel Wellman’s reasons for rejecting the prejudice model of
racism. In “Rethinking Recognition,”82 Fraser claims that identity-based social theories
create two problems, namely the problems of displacement and reification. Identity-
based theories displace economic concerns. “Largely silent on the subject of economic
inequality,” Fraser avers, “the identity model treats misrecognition [e.g., prejudice] as a
free-standing cultural harm: many of its proponents simply ignore distributive injustice

”83

altogether and focus exclusively on efforts to change culture. The position criticized,

 

8‘ Nancy Fraser, “Recognition Without Ethics?” Theory, Culture & Society 18:2-3, 21—42. Hereafter
referred to as “RE.”

82 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3, 107-120. Hereafter referred to as “RR.”
83 Fraser, ibid, 110.

86

like the criticism itself, resembles Wellman’s criticism of culturalist theories. The idea is
that too great an emphasis on identity, systems of representation, and so on, diverts
attention from the economic conditions that produce and maintain social inequality. As
Wellman notes, “Psychologizing it [prejudice] in this way makes racism appear
independent of material structures, or as the cause of social structure.”84 Thus “the
crucial feature of race relations in America becomes the ideas that whites have about
others; not their own superior position, the beneﬁts following from their position, or the
institutions that maintain this relationship.”85 In Wellman’s view, on the contrary, racial
inequality is the result, not of prejudice or a failure to recognize another’s distinctive
identity, but of the institutions that govern social and economic relations, practices, and
opportunities.

The problem with the prejudice model of racism for Wellman, as well as with
identity-recognition theories for Fraser, is that they locate the source of the social wrong
(e.g., racism) “in the heads” of social agents. Hence, the problem with the prejudice
model of racism and with identity-based theories is that each construes social processes
in psychological terms. “If the sources of racism are not located in structural
dimensions. . .then it follows that its origins are in people’s minds.”86 Such
“psychologization” misconceives the nature of white racism as well as the harms
resulting from it. On the one hand, the prejudice model of racism suggests that the main

social harm suffered by blacks is mental, or in Fraser’s words, consists of “[being]

 

84 Wellman, op. cit., 38.
85 Ibid, 43.
so .

Ibrd, 42.

87

 

”87 The problem with

thought ill of, looked down upon or devalued in others’ attitudes.
this view is not only that it ignores institutions, but that it wholly misses the physical
deprivations and denials of opportunity that characterize racial inequality. It implies that
the wrongness of racial injustice boils down to personal insult and hurt feelings.

On the other hand, the prejudice model of racism suggests that racism is “mental.”
According to Wellman, sociological theories of racism have assumed that racism was
deﬁned by prejudicial attitudes and beliefs, which consist of (all or some combination of)
three features.88 Racists were assumed to be a) openly hostile toward the object of
prejudice; b) ignorant of or liable to misconceptions about the object of prejudice (subject
to systematically distorted views of social reality); and c) “attitudinally rigid” with
respect to values, social roles, and authority. “Attitudinal rigidity is usually overt,
explicit, not concealed. Misconceptions, too, are systematic, predictable, and hostile

9 . . . . .
”8 So it is no surprise that racrsm has been vrewed

toward different, or competing views.
as irrational or as a psychological or cognitive defect. Nor is it surprising, if it is assumed
that prejudice involves rigidity or provinciality, that members of the (assumedly) less
educated working-class appear to be more prejudiced than members of the (assumedly)
cosmopolitan middle- and upper-classes. As Wellman notes, “Middle-class whites are
trained to subscribe to American ideals [e.g., color-blindness] and to verbalize
tolerance.”90

Wellman takes umbrage with the prejudice model of racism for several reasons.

First, as already mentioned, Wellman insists that racism is “a pervasive phenomenon

 

87 Fraser, op. cit., 113.

38 Wellman, op. cit., 29-30.
89 Ibid, 30.

90 Ibid, 51; italics in original.

88

which can be found throughout the class structure”91 since whites as whites — i.e.,
irrespective of social class — are advantaged vis-a-vis blacks. “Analyzing racism as a
defense of privilege permits detection of it among all, not just a few, Americans.”92 As
all whites beneﬁt ﬁom the subordination of blacks, it follows that all whites are complicit
in perpetuating racial inequality, regardless of personal beliefs or attitudes. Secondly, the
assumed fact of scarcity not only makes intelligible the opposition of working-class
whites to black demands for social change, it provides a vantage point from which such
resistance appears rational. By “resources,” Wellman means those social goods that are
divisible and therefore usually grouped under the distributive paradi gm. Income,
housing, job and educational opportunities are examples, since there is a limited amount
of each and since each is susceptible of reallocation (or redistribution). From the
viewpoint of working-class (as well as poor and working poor) whites, however, this
means that social change aimed at redistributing more resources to blacks directly
threatens their share of, or access to, an already limited number of resources. It is worth
quoting Wellman at length here:
Given the organization of society, there are only so many resources to go around.
If race is one of the basic divisions around which access to resources is
determined and if institutional changes demanded by blacks are accommodated,
then some groups of whites stand to lose certain advantages. The analogy of a
zero-sum game is appropriate. For blacks to gain may mean whites will lose.
White people thus have an interest in maintaining their position of racial
advantage. The issues that divide black and white people, then, are grounded in
real and material conditions."3

As a result, Wellman avers that the reluctance of working-class whites to embrace social

change is, in fact, rational. If middle-class whites appear to be more tolerant than

 

9' Ibid, 29.
92 Ibid, 61.
93 Ibid, 56.

89

working-class whites, and thus less racist, it is only because “tolerance is not simply an
attribute middle-class people learn; it is also a luxury they can afford”)4

Finally, Wellman simply denies that the prejudice model of racism accurately
represents the beliefs of whites toward blacks. He denies that contemporary white
Americans are generally hostile toward blacks, ignorant of the social reality of racism, or
inclined toward authoritarian belief systems. He offers as support for this claim the
results of his qualitative interviews with whites in the late 19603, and the results of more
systematic data gathered at Berkeley and in Bensonhurst, NY, in the early 19905. I
dispute his conclusions below; for now, I note only that Wellman denies that the
responses of his interviewees, of Berkeley students, and of Bensonhurst residents reveal
anti-black prejudice. Wellman avers that construing the interviewee responses in light of
the prejudice model would yield no useful distinctions and would provide no way of
explaining differences and discrepancies among the responses.95 Instead, he proposes
that the most accurate and fruitful interpretation would follow the lines he has sketched
out, that is, understanding white attitudes toward racial inequality as “a disguised way to
defend privilege.”

For Wellman, the key difference in attitudes toward racial inequality involves
receptivity to social change.96 In this context, “social change” refers to change aimed at
remedying racial inequality. The degree to which subjects embrace or oppose social
change speaks to their awareness both that inequality exists and that it possesses a racial

character. Wellman notes that interviewees differed in their openness to social change

 

9“ Ibid, 59.
95 Ibid, 213.
9" Ibid, 213.

90

and in their opinion about which policies or programs were legitimate means to
accomplish it. None endorsed radical structural change. Some acknowledged that racial
discrimination existed — that blacks had fewer opportunities and more obstacles than do
whites — and that “something must be done to change the situation” (e. g., provide
educational and job training opportunities). But others denied that discrimination was the
cause of racial inequality and concluded that the onus was on blacks to lift themselves up
by their own bootstraps. Still others were tepidly receptive to “group strategies like black
power”;97 while a few urged blacks to see themselves as individuals, not as black
individuals. What accounts for these differing beliefs and degrees of receptivity to
change, according to Wellman, is the class location of the interviewees: those from the
working-class were largely amenable to the idea of social change; those from the middle-
or upper-class were not.

For Wellman this ﬁnding is at ﬁrst paradoxical. Given his thesis, one would
primafacie expect working-class whites to be less receptive to social change than
middle- and upper-class whites. As argued above, in light of the reality of scarcity the
opposition of working-class whites to social change is rational. It is rational, or in the
collective interest of working-class whites, to oppose social change because change from
their perspective results in increased competition for scarce resources, which jeopardizes
their economic well-being. For this reason, receptiveness to social change among
working-class whites appears paradoxical.

But the appearance of paradox can be dispelled by examining how the intersection

of race and class is experienced by social agents, and also by considering the class-

 

” Ibid, 213.

91

 

speciﬁc “stakes” involved in racial issues. In Wellman’s view, whites qua white are
privileged vis-a‘-vis blacks. Whites are “pushed upward” economically and “pulled
together” racially in relation to blacks, so that whites as a social group are constituted in
opposition to blacks. Two things follow from this: race uniﬁes whites as a social group
and, moreover, is experienced by individual whites in group terms. This is why Wellman
believes it is in the rational (collective) self-interest of whites qua white to resist social
change. Class relations, by contrast, separate whites, “pushing” some up and others
down. Although he gives no argument as to why this is the case,98 Welhnan claims that
class, unlike race, is experienced in individual terms. And so, working-class whites are
both advantaged (“pushed up” vis-d-vis blacks) and disadvantaged (“pushed down” vis-a-
vis the middle- and upper-classes). Working-class whites’ interests are threatened by
competition from the middle- and upper-class and also by social change aimed at
beneﬁting blacks. Middle- and upper-class whites, on the contrary, are advantaged
(“pushed up”) with respect to both race and class. And since they are economically
secure enough not to feel the competitive “push” from working-class whites or ﬁom
disadvantaged blacks, Wellman states they experience class and race in individual terms.
It is the “tension” between race and class that “creates [a] receptivity to change’”)9
in working-class whites. To see why requires considering the different “stakes” involved

in such change. The stakes for working-class whites seem self-evident: “Black people

raise issues that often directly affect working-class whites. . .When the situation of blacks

 

98 I do not deny such an argument could be made. Indeed, there is no shortage of arguments that show how
market societies fragment social relations and desiccate personal experience, so that subjects tend to regard
themselves as isolated and impenetrable nodes or atoms. My point is only that Wellman asserts this, rather
than arguing for it.

99 Wellman, op. cit.. 215.

92

is upgraded, these people feel it ﬁrst. The issue. . .is a personal one.”100 Working-class
whites Oppose redistributive schemes because they perceive them as threats to their
economic survival: “they are defending personal interests.””” Wellman concludes that
working-class whites are otherwise amenable to non-economic forms of social change:
“Blacks can do pretty much what they please, as long as it does not involve [working-
class whites] directly.”102 The stakes for middle- and upper-class whites differ
signiﬁcantly. Their economic well-being is not threatened, so the issue is not “personal”
for them in this way. Rather, Wellman argues that they object to the use of “group
solutions” to solve social problems: “They are defending the principle of
individualism.”103 Thus the “basic objection to a strategy like black power is that it
violates the principle of individualism that guides and justiﬁes”104 the lives of middle-
and upper-class whites. They putatively have “more at stake” than working-class whites:
“Their principles are at issue. It is not just a question of immediate personal interest?”05

In this way, Welhnan believes the above-mentioned paradox has been resolved.
If those most affected by social change are nonetheless most receptive to it — and
conversely, those least affected by it least receptive — this is intelligible in light of the
“stakes” generated by different experiences of the intersection of race and class. Whites
qua white resist social change aimed at beneﬁting blacks, since it threatens their

privileged position in the racial hierarchy. Whites qua members of the working-class are

receptive to social change, but only to the extent that proposed changes do not affect their

 

10° Ibid, 216.
'0' Ibid, 217.
'02 Ibid, 217.
'03 Ibid, 217.
‘04 Ibid, 217.
'05 Ibid, 217.

93

economic well-being. Whites qua members of the middle- and upper-class, despite the
fact their economic interests are not threatened, are nonetheless hostile to social change
because it violates the principles by which they order their private and public lives.

In this light, Wellman’s indebtedness to economistic assumptions is easily seen.
First, he repeatedly states that racism consists of whites protecting their self-interest. “In
crucial respects there is a conﬂict of interest involved: gains for black people can mean
losses for whites.”106 The self-interested nature of racism is literally a matter of
deﬁnition: “The essential feature of racism is. . .the defense of a system from which
advantage is derived on the basis of race.”107 Second, the self-interest that ‘whites aim to
defend is economic. Referring to the interviews he conducted and to survey data
collected at Berkeley, CA, and in Bensonhurst, NY, Wellman concludes: “In each
instance, the conﬂict is over scarce resources.”108 The economic self-interest defended
by whites, moreover, holds for whites both individually and collectively.

Third, his view relies on the social-ontological assumptions characteristic of
economism: subj ect-obj ect dualism and the linking of strategic reason with action.
Consider the assertion that a proper deﬁnition of racism must “include sentiments that in
their consequence, if not their intent, support the racial status quo.”'09 These
“sentiments” are “culturally sanctioned beliefs” that rationalize racial inequality,
protecting and justifying white advantage relative to blacks. The assumption is that the
“sentiments” are motivated by white self-interest and, therefore, that such sentiments are

strategically deployed to secure white economic advantage. Put differently, self-interest

 

'06 Ibid, 206.
‘07 Ibid, 210.
'08 Ibid, 242.
“’9 Ibid, 211.

94

motivates whites to give explanations for racial inequality which are, in turn, used
instrurnentally to exempt themselves from criticism, and in this way to legitimate their
position in an unjust social structure. And, given this social structure and the fact of
scarce resources, Wellman considers it rational, though still racist, for working-class
whites to be leery of black demands for structural change. After all, it is their self-
interest at stake, their economic well-being, and: “For blacks to gain may mean whites

will lose.”

Critique of Wellman’s Economistic Theory of Racism

In this section I develop criticisms of Wellman’s theory, showing that, on his own
terms, his account is inadequate. I identify ambiguities, interpretive inconsistencies, and
the conceptual limitations of his reduction of racism to a struggle over scarce resources.

Part of Wellman’s theory consists of the denial that prejudice plays an important
role in American racism. While he does not deny that prejudice was at one time
common, or that some whites still display prejudice, he claims that civil rights has
effected something of a sea-change in the attitudes of whites.1 '0 Referring to his own
interviews, he says: “Each position is formulated in very acceptable, almost liberal,
American terms. With some minor exceptions, there is not a prejudiced—sounding

.111 -
" He continues:

formulation among them.
These are not “prejudiced” people. The distinctive feature of their racial senti-
ments is neither hostility toward nor faulty generalizations about racial groups.
As far as I can tell, their attitudes are not characteristically based on prejudgrnent
or misjudgrnent. ' '2

 

“0
11]

Ibid, 209.
Ibid, 208.
”2 Ibid, 210.

95

 

He concludes the same about the responses of Berkeley students and Bensonhurst
residents. About the latter he states: “Their ideology. . .also maintains. . .the racial status
quo, without sounding ‘racist’ since they justify their actions in culturally respectable
terms.”113 Consequently prejudice, so far as it still exists, plays at best a peripheral role
in contemporary racism.

Perhaps the most evident problem with Wellman’s interpretive strategy is that he
accepts at face value what interviewees tell him. Although he acknowledges that it is
these days socially unacceptable to use racially hostile or demeaning language, he insists
on interpreting the absence of such language as the absence of prejudice.

But a graver problem is that many of his interviewees make prejudicial comments.
One considers black militants “intelligent spades,” but bristles at being “hassled by
spades” in San Francisco. (I take it as given that “spade” is a racial epithet.) Another
claims that racial inequality results from a lack of motivation among blacks; while
another opines that there is no real inequality in America — the opportunities are there, for
black and white alike, if people just took advantage of them. And although not all were
asked about interracial marriage, those who were, opposed it. On one hand, Wellman is
right that these are neither openly hateful views nor biological justiﬁcations for
inequality; but, on the other, they still involve stereotyping, faulty generalizations, and
misconceptions or distorted perceptions of social reality. But that some of those beliefs
had (and still have) cultural currency does not make them correct; simply because they
are “culturally respectable” does not make them any less mistaken, stereotypical, or

“rigid.” Yet these are precisely the features that Wellman had earlier singled out as

 

“3 Ibid, 240.

96

deﬁnitive of racial prejudice. So it is puzzling why he adamantly denies that his
interviewees are prejudiced.l '4

Wellman’s theory also suffers an ambiguity on the term “privilege” (i.e.,
“advantage,” “beneﬁt”). He says, “racism today remains. . .a defense of racial privilege.”
“Privilege” here can be interpreted in two ways:

(a) racism maintains the economic privilege of whites relative to blacks

(b) racism maintains the privilege of whites relative to blacks, all things
considered.

The difference is this. On version (a), “privilege” is speciﬁcally economic. So that when
whites espouse beliefs that maintain the racial status quo, it is to protect their economic
self-interest. Of course, “privilege” in this sense refers to more than jobs and income; it
refers to divisible goods such as affordable housing, educational opportunities,
transportation, and healthcare. On version (b), “privilege” extends beyond economic
interests to include social and cultural considerations, such as social prestige, local
decision-making authority, valorization of cultural heritage, and so on. Put differently,
version (a) subordinates non-economic considerations to economic interests, or rather,
makes the former a function of the latter; whereas version (b) posits economic security as
one of many forms of privilege (e. g., political power, legal authority, cultural status).
The question is whether Wellman intends version (a) or (b). If he means that all
whites are racist insofar as they want to defend their economic privilege relative to
blacks, then it seems to me that he is obviously wrong. Some whites are wealthy enough

not to have to worry about economic competition, from blacks or from less well off

 

114 . . . . . .

The problem here 1s deeper strll, smce Wellman’s deﬁnmon of rac1sm — “culturally
sanctioned. . .sentiments which, regardless of intention [serve to protect white privilege]” — seems to require
systematic self-deception by whites.

97

4'

 

whites; conversely, not all whites are economically privileged relative to blacks, so they
cannot defend a privilege they do not have; and many blacks are middle-class and may be
viewed as economically privileged with respect to some whites. It is true that whites are
economically better off than blacks proportionately, which supports the claim that,
collectively, whites are privileged vis-Ez-vis blacks. But given Wellman’s thesis, this still
fails to explain why, individually, whites who are not conceivably defending economic
privilege are nonetheless racist.

On the other hand, if he means that all whites are racist inasmuch as they want to
defend their privilege relative to blacks all things considered, then the claim is more
plausible. On this view it may be that whites who are not economically privileged
nonetheless feel a sense of social or cultural entitlement: a sense of privilege, say, that
manifests itself in the expectation of legal protection and fair treatment, social belonging
and political participation, cultural recognition, and so on. An advantage of this
interpretation of “privilege” is that it can acknowledge racial inequality, a system of
privileges maintained by the subordination of blacks, without reducing the variety of
beneﬁts gained to economic interests. It can include the former view — say, as a
background assumption that whites simply will be economically better off than blacks —
.but does not derive the privileges whites gain at the expense of blacks solely from
economic'well-being.

Thus, it seems to me that version (b) is the more plausible of the two.
Unfortunately it is not the version Wellman seems to defend. Although he uses locutions
like “racial privilege” and “advantages based on race,” which could be interpreted either

way, he regularly formulates his theory in terms of scarce resources, as when he says that

98

racist beliefs are “culturally sanctioned, rational response[s] to struggles over scarce
resources?” ‘5 Indeed, he argues that racist beliefs among working-class whites are
rational because “there are only so many resources to go around”; in this context, he
invokes the image of a “zero-sum game”: to the degree that blacks gain access to or
control over scarce resources, whites lose ground. At the end of the day, then, “the
conﬂict is over scarce resources?” '6 If “privilege” were construed as privilege all things
considered, the analogy of a “zero-sum game” would make no sense. Certain forms of
cultural privilege, e. g., esteem, are not the sorts of things that can be distributed; in any
case, ensuring equal legal protection or forms of cultural recognition takes away no
scarce resource from whites. So, despite attendant difﬁculties, I conclude that Wellman’s
position is that white racism consists of the defense and rationalization of economic self-
interest, speciﬁcally.

There is additionally an important and revealing inconsistency in Wellman‘s
theory. Recall the many claims regarding receptivity among whites to social change
aimed at beneﬁting blacks. It was argued that whites qua white oppose such change, but
that working-class whites are more open to change than middle- and upper-class whites.
The reasoning was as follows.

Working-class whites resist forms of social change that threaten their interests,
but are open to changes that do not affect those interests. Since part of the experience of
being working-class includes a “heightened awareness of inequality,” the working-class

is “sensitive to the limits of individual solutions and the advantages of group

 

HS
116

Wellman, op. cit., 54.
Ibid, 242.

99

 

strategies?” '7 Hence working-class whites tend to “recognize inequality and attribute it
in part to differences in power, [such that] under certain conditions they are willing to
accept group solutions that involve rnilitancy and invoke power?” 18 Middle- and upper-
class whites, on the other hand, are defending not their economic interests but, rather,
their principles — e. g., “individualism” and “achievement” — and “[t]here is no way group
strategies can avoid bumping into the principles of individualism to which [they]
subscribe?” '9 Consequently, middle- and upper-class whites oppose change aimed at
beneﬁting blacks, even though such change in no way threatens their economic status. In
this light, Wellman qualiﬁes his judgment of working-class whites’ receptivity to social
change. Although they “ﬁnd group strategies. . .acceptable under some conditions. . .they
[still] are committed to the notion that people should be autonomous and independent?”20
These values constitute the American “creed and culture,” a national identity that shapes
and informs the lives of working-class whites. So when blacks as a social group
demand, say, reparations for past injustices, it not only threatens the economic self-
interest of working-class whites. Such a demand “[says] to people that the cultural
currency they have invested in has been devalued; the rules of the game have been

changed. That is something [working-class whites] will not tolerate; they have too much

of themselves invested”121 in the values of independence and self-sufﬁciency.

 

”7 Ibid, 217-218.

“8 Ibid, 218.
119 .

Ib1d, 217.
'20 Ibid, 219.
‘2' Ibid, 220.

100

The appeal to principles and shared values reveals an inconsistency in Wellman’s

‘22 The claim that whites, of all classes, oppose social change because it threatens

theory.
their value system concedes that there are motivations other than, and in fact stronger
than simple economic self-interest. These motivations, which Welhnan acknowledges,
are rooted in values and principles that govern people’s actions, give meaning to their
everyday lives, and shape their expectations about themselves, others, and the society of
which they are a part. The decisive factor in white resistance to race-conscious social
policies, then, is not fundamentally the threat to or preservation of economic self-interest.
If white opposition to such policies arose primarily ﬁom the desire to protect economic
interests, then middle- and upper-class whites would be untroubled by the idea of
afﬁrmative action or social welfare. Since the implementation of these policies would
affect the economic well-being of working-class whites more than middle- and upper-
class whites, there would be no reason for the latter to oppose the policies. But Wellman
argues that they do oppose them. So, on his own premises, the motivation to support or
resist forms of social change (say, race or gender-speciﬁc legislation) is grounded in
identity. The economistic theory of racism has subtly shifted ground from a conﬂict over
scarce resources to a struggle for the recognition of cultural values, meanings, and
identity. And as a result, Wellman cannot consistently deﬁne racism as essentially a

defense of economic self-interest. Racial conﬂict, on the part of whites as well as blacks,

involves demands for recognition as well.

 

1‘22 I should note that I am not distinguishing between “principles” and “values” in a technical and
disciplined way. For present purposes, I stipulate that principles embody and reﬂect values that a person or
community recognizes, and so are usually reﬂectively articulated in a way that values are not. To defend
an action or policy “on principle,” then, is to offer justiﬁcatory, yet contestable, reasons for so acting. But
to appreciate why the action or policy was undertaken would, in turn, require some account of the values
prompting or underlying the action.

101

If this is right, then a fundamental limitation of economistic theory has been
revealed. Namely, economistic explanations must draw on resources beyond those
allowed by its own concepts, categories, and assumptions. Construing the motivation for
engaging in social conﬂict (in this case, racism) purely in terms of economic self-interest
either fails to grasp the complexity of the conﬂict, or else invokes unacknowledged
identity claims. In Wellman’s case, economism functions surreptitiously as a theory of
identity and agency, which can be seen in the claim that racist beliefs serve both to justify
the racial status quo and also to exculpate whites from their complicity in perpetuating
inequality. Admitting complicity in racial inequality would violently clash with the
image whites have of America and of themselves. And since, according to Wellman,
they cannot accept seeing themselves this way, i.e., as “sons of bitches,” it is crucial they
explain away inequality in terms of widely accepted principles and values, such as
equality, merit, independence, and so on.

In other words, Wellman plausibly argues that forms of social change that
acknowledge and aim to rectify racial inequality undermine the beliefs that American
institutions are (and ought to be) color-blind, that the distribution of social resources is
determined by effort and merit, and that social equality (or the means sufﬁcient to attain
it) already exists. If these beliefs are revealed as false, then the values they express
(equality, merit, etc.) are also endangered. It is not that the values would be “unmasked”
as unworthy, but that they would be seen as unrealized, not yet “lived up to.” To the
extent that social policies and institutions acknowledge inequality, speciﬁcally racial
inequality, whites would be less able to assure themselves that their success, status, and

achievements were due to individual effort in free and equal competition. In order to

102

persuade themselves that their success and status result from and embody a free,
meritocratic and egalitarian society, it would behoove whites to deny the justiﬁcation and
need for race-conscious social change. Yet it is crucial to note that the motivation
underlying such a posture toward social change is not access to and control over scarce
resources. Rather, it is the coherence and maintenance of identity. Put more simply,
Wellman’s account traces white resistance to race-based social change back to the
“horizon of value” against which Americans interact socially, judge the rectitude of
institutions and practices, and ultimately shape their identities.

But the assertion that whites cannot aﬂord to see themselves a particular way is
either unsupported speculation about human psychology, or an assumption about the
preconditions of identity formation. For even if it were granted that racist beliefs were a
“cover story” aimed at defending racial privilege, the necessity of self-deception cannot
be understood in Wellman’s terms. Such a need is merely assumed. Integral to his
theory of racism is an identity claim that, on the economistic premises he accepts, cannot
be theorized. For this reason, it seems to me that economism is not only a theory of
motivation, but is also a theory of identity and agency.

I am making two claims here, and it is worth pausing to distinguish them. On one
hand, in a fairly straightforward way, economism presupposes a theory of identity, which
I have just tried to demonstrate. On the other hand, economism is itself a theory of
identity, even though it ostensibly says nothing about recognition and identity formation,
and even though the thinkers I would describe as economistic would likely reject my
characterization of what their assumptions commit them to. In the social sciences, they

might reply, rational choice theory is used to model and predict human action, not to

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enhance self-understanding, query the structure of the self, or prescribe norms and values.
And yet the conceptual core of economism, i.e., the links between methodological
individualism, economic self-interest, and strategic action, yields a conception of agency,
commits the economistic thinker to a particular conception of how subjects experience
and exercise their freedom. Because people are assumed generally to be motivated by
self-interest and because their interactions with others are assumed generally to be
strategic in nature, it is concluded that the economist or sociologist can explain such
macro-level social phenomena as social conﬂict and change. But these generalizations
about the motivation (self-interest) and the ends (utility maximization) of human
behavior, while not assumed to hold unvaryingly and without exception, are nonetheless
proposed as descriptive statements concerning how and why human beings behave as
they do.

For these reasons, economism is a theory of agency. One of the problems
economism readily faces, as I point out in chapter 5, is that it moves from assumptions
about motivation and action to generalizations about human behavior, and seems to
regard those assumptions as if they picked out actual features of human nature. But in
treating particular motivations as universal or quasi-universal, economism fails to
appreciate the historical speciﬁcity and mutability of norms, relationships, socialization
patterns, economic practices, etc. As a result of this ahistoricism, economism begs the
question concerning its core premises, merely assuming that the self—interest and strategic
relations prevalent in liberal-capitalist societies are generalizable to all peoples and

societies.

104

Moreover, in chapter 2, I argued that identity and agency are co-extensive. The
process of identity formation (or individuation through socialization) is a form of agency,
which is why the concept of identity is internally connected with autonomy and self-
realization. Now, insofar as economism purports to explain motivation and action, it
necessarily makes substantive assumptions about how people conceive of their action, or
rather, makes assumptions about how people experience their behavior, goals, and
relations. Put differently, economistic theory makes assumptions about how concrete
individuals see themselves as social actors, think of themselves as persons. Thus, for
example, the economistic thinker will be unsurprised that so many of the detractors of
afﬁrmative action state their opposition in the distributive terms of scarce resources, a
“zero-sum” social policy, rewarding the less qualiﬁed, and so on. Afﬁrmative action has
been hotly contested, and criticisms of it have a pervasively economic cast — as well,
importantly, as a decidedly aggrieved tone. This nearly reﬂex-like interpretation of
afﬁrmative action as a zero-sum game involving scarce social resources (e. g., degrees,
promotions), together with the often expressed sense of indignation among whites,
suggests that people experience themselves (or think that they experience themselves) as
the self-interested, strategic calculators that economism portrays them as being. Since
people commonly, though not universally, understand and explain their actions and
motivations in economistic terms, and since the economistic theorist will take this as
conﬁrmation of her assumptions, it seems to me that economism is, whether or not this is
acknowledged, a theory of identity as well as agency.

Highlighting the reliance on concepts drawn from an identity-recognition theory

indicates an answer to the question Wellman gestures at in his deﬁnition of racism but is

105

unable to answer, given his theoretical framework: why is it that the beliefs that
rationalize, elide, or explain away racial inequality require cultural sanction at all? If the
truth about social interaction simply is that concrete individuals are self-interested, why is
it necessary that white beliefs about race relations and inequality be consistent with
culturally sanctioned values and norms? Although Wellman’s deﬁnition of racism
incorporates the need for beliefs that rationalize inequality, that necessity cannot be
adequately explained on strictly economistic grounds. The explanation that is offered
gains whatever plausibility it has only by surpassing the economistic framework: that is,
the need for a “cover story” is explained by the necessity of establishing a coherent,
sustainable identity. But economism lacks the concepts needed to link motivation and
action to identity and its correlative recognitive demands.

To sum up my arguments in this section: in explicating his theory, Wellman
abandons the economistic premises with which he begins and shifts ground to concepts
implicating identity claims and recognitive demands. Only thus could he argue that
people whose economic interests were not threatened by race-conscious distributive
policies nonetheless protested them. Next, his deﬁnition of racism incorporated, even
depended on an implicit identity claim, since “culturally sanctioned beliefs” were taken
to be necessary to rationalize the institutionally secured advantage of whites vis-a-vis
blacks. But the need for rationalization would be mysterious, unless what was at stake
was the coherence of the identity of the persons affected, which observation is borne out
by the assertion that the function of racist beliefs is, on the part of whites, self-

exculpatory.

106

Of course, that pe0ple frequently describe their actions in economistic terms does
little to support the purported universality of economistic assumptions. Given the
historical character of social practices, institutions, recognition relations, and identity, it
can plausibly be argued that if people understand their experience or explain their
participation in social struggles in the terms offered by economism, it is not because that
theory is true, but because we have created a social world in which economism has the
veneer of truth and reality. I explore these ideas more closely in chapters 5 and 6. In

chapter 4, I present and examine the identity-recognition alternative.

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Chapter 4

The Recognition Theoretic Alternative

In the previous chapter I deﬁned the concept of economism, presented a
contemporary illustration of an economistic position, then brieﬂy developed internal and
external criticisms of that theory. My goal was to examine an economistic theory of
white racism and to demonstrate how, on its own premises, such an account runs into
difficulties. Wellman’s thesis that white racism is in essence a defense of economic
advantage is a structuralist view that emphasizes the organization of social institutions in
perpetuating racism, and contrasts with culturalist views that focus on systems of beliefs,
representations, and meanings. On such a view the presence or absence of prejudice, or
of anti-black sentiments among whites, is incidental to the phenomenon of racism. To
theorize racism as a defense of racial economic advantage implies that irrespective of
consciously held beliefs, whites will continue to act in ways that maintain their economic
self-interest vis-d-vis blacks.

A particular problem with Wellman’s account is interpretive, since he fails
accurately to represent the interviewee responses on which his theory is based. Deciding
from the start to interpret responses as expressions of economic self-interest forced those
responses into a Procrustean bed, obscuring the ways in which values and racial identity
motivate attitudes toward racial inequality and social change. Another problem involved
an equivocation on the term privilege. While on one hand this is a question of the

consistency of Wellman’s theory, on the other it points to an inadequacy of an

108

economistic theory of racism in general. If privilege is construed only as economic
beneﬁt, then remedies aimed at rectifying racial inequality will be mainly or even solely
distributive; and the social, cultural, and political beneﬁts whites gain at the expense of
blacks will be viewed as derivative or superstructural. If privilege is construedmore
broadly, then non-economic factors for combating racial inequality and explaining white
attitudes to racially oriented social change come into View. Despite the explanatory
advantages of the latter option, it is clear that Wellman intends privilege in the more
narrow economistic sense.

I also argued that the co gency of Wellman’s theory of racism depends on
assumptions about motivation and identity that could not be accounted for on his own
premises. Although he tries to bracket questions of social identity, he nonetheless draws
on resources associated with identity politics and the concept of recognition in
articulating his own theory. In this chapter, therefore, I want to present an alternative
conception of motivation and action that is grounded in identity formation and
recognition. In contrast to economism, the position I develop here is based on a theory of
identity-recognition that conceives of motivation, action, and social conﬂict in terms of
intersubjective recognition relations. The aim of this chapter is expository. My goal is to
explicate how motivation, action, and social conﬂict are conceived from the viewpoint of
identity-recognition theory. In chapter 5, I show how this theoretical alternative provides
a better understanding of the motivation for white resistance to race-conscious social
policies than does economistic theory.

To formulate the identity-recognition theory alternative, I draw on the work of G.

W. F. Hegel and critical social theory. As Hegel was the ﬁrst to identify the centrality of

109

mutual recognition in the development of persons and social groups, I begin by analyzing
the concept of recognition in two of his early works. Despite criticisms of Hegel’s
metaphysical pretensions, I try to show the value for social theory of his criticism of
social contract theory, which criticism throws into relief his innovative social ontology. I
then examine Honneth’s appropriation of the concept of mutual recognition in his attempt
to establish critical theory on the foundation of an identity-recognition theory. I also look
at Honneth’s relation to Jurgen Habermas, whose theory of communicative action is
regarded as a theory of modernity, social interaction, and morality. Although the concept
of recognition ﬁgures less centrally in Habermas’s work, his chief insight consists of
conceptualizing identity formation and social interaction in intersubjective terms. While
Honneth accepts Habermas’s “communicative turn,” be rejects his insistence that critical
theory be a theory of reason, and instead tries to establish social theory on the premises of
identity-recognition. I conclude by elaborating and critically examining Honneth’s
recognition-theoretic alternative.

My aim in this chapter is to trace the formation of the concept of recognition in
the tradition running from Hegel to Honneth. Implicit in the concept of recognition are
claims about conﬂict and motivation. On Honneth’s reconstruction of Hegel’s early
work, it is speciﬁcally the intersubjective demand for recognition, rather than the pursuit
of self-interest, that spurs conﬂict and leads to moral progress. It is on this basis that, in
chapter 5, I argue that white racism is best understood as motivated by experiences of
perceived disrespect or denials of recognition, rather than by the defense of economic

self-interest.

llO

Hegel

If there is one concept for which Hegel is known, it is probably his conception of
the role that mutual recognition plays in the formation of self-consciousness. Although
the concepts of “dialectic” and “spirit” are associated with Hegel’s systematic theory, the
former is often linked more precisely with the famous recognition struggle recounted in
the Phenomenology ’s Master-Slave Dialectic, and the latter with the social formations
that result from relations of mutual recognition. As early as the Jena lectures of 1802-
1804 and as late as the Philosophy ofRight (1821), Hegel argued that individual self-
awareness, as well as social institutions such as family structures and the economic and
legal institutions of liberal-capitalism, were constituted by intersubjective recognition
relations. Although the constitutive character of recognition relations has been
minimized in interpretations of Hegel as a metaphysician committed to a teleological
account of A bsolute Spirit’s apotheosis,123 there are persuasive contemporary
interpretations124 that view his formulation of mutual recognition, not as a stage in the
development of a transhistorical subjectivity, but as a nonmetaphysical, intersubj ective
account of knowledge, identity, and social organization and change. The explication
below follows the latter tack. In the remainder of this section, I examine the constitutive
role that recognition plays in the formation of spirit (that is, a society, community, or

form of life) in two of Hegel’s early works, the essay “First Philosophy of Spirit’”25 and

 

‘23 This is Honneth’s interpretation in SR and Habermas’s in “Labor and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel‘s
Jena ‘Philosophy of Mind?” trans. .l. Viertel Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).

24 The two best in my view are Robert Pippin, Hegel ’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Terry Pinkard, Hegel 's Phenomenologv: The Sociality
of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

125 G. W. F. Hegel “First Philosophy of Spirit,” ed. and trans. by H. S. Harris and T. M. Knox System of
Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1979). Hereafter referred to as “First
Philosophy.”

111

126 While my aim is expository, I will treat

the major work Phenomenology of Spirit.
Hegel as a postcritical, nonmetaphysical thinker, which will inﬂect my presentation of
these works in the following way.
Unlike Habermas and Honneth, who interpret “First Philosophy” as an embryonic
theory of intersubjectivity that was abandoned in Hegel’s later work for methodological
reasons, I take both the “First Philosophy” and the PhG as nonmetaphysical works. My
reasons for taking the PhG as nonmetaphysical are based on the work of Pippin and n1

Pinkard, who deny that Hegel’s conception of “spirit” refers to a transhistorical subject

that overarches all of human history, and whose self-development comprises various

 

historical periods and proceeds in accord with an objective teleological principle.
Instead, they maintain that “spirit” should be construed as social reason, or rather, as a
form of social practice whereby human beings propose, establish, test, and modify the
standards governing what counts as a rational or valid claim within some domain of
activity. In their view, the concept of “Absolute Spirit” does not refer to an end state,
say, the complete and transparent self-knowledge of “Spirit,” but rather to a reﬂective
and ongoing process of rational learning: absolutizing spirit. Viewing Hegel as a
nonmetaphysical thinker is important, since I want to show that the constitutive character
of recognition relations, especially as illustrated in the Master-Slave Dialectic, yields
insights into contemporary social relations, and race relations in particular. Although
mutual recognition plays an epistemological role in the Ph G, I want to show that there is

a sense in which it plays a motivational role as well.

 

'26 G. W. F. Hegel, trans. A. V. Miller Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
Hereafter referred to as Ph G.

112

I ﬁrst examine the Master-Slave Dialectic, then turn to Hegel’s account of
recognition relations in “First Philosophy.” My reasons for proceeding in this way have
to do with the role the concept of recognition plays in each work. In the PhG, the
concept of mutual recognition is introduced to explain how a subject comes to be
convinced of the authority (or the “truth”) of its own contribution to its knowledge of
itself and of the objects of its desire. Hegel argues that if a subject is conceived as a
monad, or as a given consciousness in isolation from other subjects, then it cannot be
assured of the authority of its knowledge claims about itself, about others, or about
external objects. For its claims to count as objective and meaningful, for its beliefs and
desires to acquire provisional validity as claims, those beliefs, desires, and so on must be
ratiﬁed, conﬁrmed, or recognized by another subject. Or, stated more simply, Hegel tries
to demonstrate that the cognitive independence of a subject presupposes recognition by
another subject. At this stage in the PhG, however, there are no developed social
relations, so the recognition relation just described is a pre-social (or proto-social)
relation intended to capture an epistemic necessity. And yet Hegel portrays “self-
consciousness” as a practical being, a being necessarily connected with an external
environment, and whose needs and desires can be satisﬁed only by working on and
transforming external objects, and whose cognitive demands can be satisﬁed only vis-a-

66199

vis engagement in a community — i.e., a “We” in relation to which an gains
independence.
So, while mutual recognition functions to explain how a subject gains conﬁdence

in the authority of its knowledge claims, it preﬁgures the crucial role that recognition

relations occupy in Hegel’s social-political writings also. To show this I turn to “First

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Philosophy,” even though it predates the PhG. My reason for examining the PhG ﬁrst
and the “First Philosophy” second is that, in the earlier work, Hegel uses the concept of
recognition to explicate the formation of social relations generally, as a constitutive
condition of the social. “First Philosophy” thus has a greater social-theoretic generality.
For Honneth, moreover, it is the work that represents Hegel’s most important
contribution to a theory of intersubj ectivity.

The PhG is an epistemological account of Spirit’s self-education. That is, it is an
account of how spirit, or reason as embodied in collective practices and social
institutions, historically achieves the standpoint of “absolute knowledge,” wherein the
distinction between subject and object is overcome and spirit qua human subjectivity
comes to know itself (its intentionality, or activity of relating itself to and distinguishing

itself from objects of knowledge) as the ground of its knowledge claims. Just how this

Bildung, or process of self-education, is to be understood is controversial. Some interpret

Spirit’s progressively comprehensive self-understanding as a type of metaphysical
teleology, contending that Hegel begins with a conception of absolute spirit and, on that
basis, proceeds to recount the different “stages” spirit passes through in recollecting (i.e.,
gaining knowledge of) itself. Since the end is given in the beginning, the dialectical
transitions through which spirit passes have for Hegel a type of logical necessity, so that
the task of the philosopher consists of demonstrating how actual historical societies have
embodied spirit in its “return” to itself. Others interpret the PhG as a post-Kantian,
nonmetaphysical epistemology, arguing that there is no pre- given teleological logic but
only the force of norms emerging from and grounded in the standards, practices, and

institutions of historical communities.

114

 

 

As mentioned above, I subscribe to the latter, nonmetaphysical interpretation of
the PhG. Thus I take the text to be a theory of the self-grounding, norm-constrained
nature of reason and knowledge. Such an interpretive decision becomes signiﬁcant for
the purposes of my project when in Chapter IV of the PhG, “The Truth of Self-
Certainty,” Hegel ﬁrst introduces and shows the need for the concept of mutual
recognition. After analyzing and rejecting both empiricist and rationalist theories of
knowledge in Chapters I-III, Hegel proposes in Chapter IV that the subject gains
awareness of the ways in which its own cognitive activity contributes to the objectivity
and meaning of external objects. More speciﬁcally, the subject is said to become aware
that, while on one hand, qua knowing subject it is independent of the objects of its
experience, on the other hand, qua living and desiring subject it is, nonetheless, to some
degree dependent on objects. At this stage in the development of the subject’s relation to
objects, then, the subject becomes aware not only of itself as taking objects to be a certain
way, but of itself as a desiring, needful creature. As a living thing, the subject has needs
and desires; but while the subject experiences its needs and desires, it cannot reﬂectively
determine them. Rather it is life that constrains the subject. The physical environment
imposes on the subject its needs and desires, as well as the means to satisfy them. The
independence of self-consciousness is therefore incomplete. The subject has gained a
measure of independence from objects; but this independence is limited and threatened
by its dependence on those same objects, inasmuch as they are necessary to the
satisfaction of its need and desire. Self-consciousness, Hegel says, is “sunk in life,”

unable freely to determine and establish its independence from objects.

115

And it is to resolve this impasse that Hegel introduces perhaps the second most
famous motif of the Ph G, namely, the “struggle to the death” between two subjects who
seek to establish the independence of their subjectivity vis-ci-vis the other. But before
turning to this provocative passage, it is worth noting three implications of Hegel‘s
remarks about the subj ect’s relation to the external environment. F irst. describing a
subject’s independence from and dependence on an external world. and insisting on such
a relation as a necessary condition for self-consciousness, helps to clarify Honneth‘s use
of the term “self-relation” when discussing identity and agency. For, so long as a human
being blindly follows impulse or merely reacts to immediate sensations, it is conscious
but it has not achieved what I have called reﬂexive subjectivity, since it has not yet
become able to reﬂect on and interpret its own feelings, needs, and so on. Perception,
need, motility, desire, constitute a necessary substratum to identity, insofar as they
stabilize a subject’s experience of its body and establish a boundary, an outside, to its
subjectivity. But they only become elements of a person’s identity, only become a
desired trait or unwanted emotion, when the subject acquires the reﬂexive capability to
name, interpret, and valorize or modify them. It is in this fundamental sense that
Honneth speaks of “self-relation” as an ineliminable component of identity. Sentience is
not enough; a subject must be able to relate to its somatic experience.

Secondly, the claim that a subject’s relation with an external environment is a
necessary (but insufﬁcient) condition for experiencing oneself as an independent,
subsisting “standpoint in the world,” underscores my remarks in chapter 2 conccmin g the
distinction between the concepts of intersubjectivity and socialization. My argument was

that, while the concept of socialization presupposes a subjectivity already capable of

116

“owning” its own experiences, or of apprehending determinate (albeit malleable) needs
and wants, the concept of intersubj ectivity, by contrast, tries to account for how a human
being becomes the sort of being capable of experiencing itself in that way. Put more
simply, the concept of intersubj ectivity tries to illuminate the various mediations or types
of relations enfolded in and constitutive of self-experience. And by beginning with the
subject’s relation to its environment, Hegel has identiﬁed one such mediation — a
mediation that Honneth, in some places more explicitly than others, regards as
ﬁmdamental to a social agent’s ontological security.

Thirdly, and directly relevant to my thesis: Hegel’s claim that the relation to an
external environment serves as a bedrock for identity formation and personal agency,
though not intended as an empirical claim, has nonetheless gained substantial support in
psychological research. As historian Alfred W. McCoy documents in A Question of
T orture,127 during the 19603 and 1970s, the CIA funded research to determine how the
Soviets and the Chinese so effectively elicited false confessions from political dissidents.
In particular, they concluded that psychological manipulation and coercion broke down
prisoner resistance more effectively than any other technique, including physical
violence. Two forms of psychological manipulation that proved especially successful at
increasing the vulnerability and pliability of prisoners were sensory deprivation and
prolonged solitary conﬁnement. Chillingly, it was also learned that each of these
techniques could cause severe and sometimes permanent psychological damage.
Although the effects of solitary conﬁnement and sensory deprivation are not uniform and

unvarying, victims commonly experienced deindividualization, depression, psychosis,

 

‘27 Alfred W. McCoy, “Mind Control,” A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to
the War on Terror (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2006), 21-59

117

and loss of a sense of reality. Curiously, the research into “coercive interrogation
techniques” lends indirect support to Hegel’s assertion that the experience of an external
environment is a basic condition for the formation of identity, insofar as research has
conﬁrmed that the deprivation of a stable but varied environment can, and typically does,
threaten a person’s experience of himself as a uniﬁed, embodied agent. In this way,
Honneth’s use of the phrase “integrity of identity” as well as my emphasis on conceiving
identity as the integration of somatic, affective, and cognitive functions, gain new force.
Each underscores the complexity and vulnerability of identity, and the sense in which
identity needs to be sustained through normatively governed recognition relations.

In the essay “Torture?”28 Jean Amery remarks that torture is the destruction of the
social and manifests a unique form of sadism. Sadism, in Amery’s sense, is the exercise
of unlimited sovereignty of the Self over the Other, which is achieved through the
annihilation of the Other through torture as well as through the repression of mercy,
dependence, and vulnerability. In this light, it is instructive to return to Hegel’s account
of the “struggle to the dea ,” as it is here that the subject attempts to establish its
independence, not by using (or “negating”) objects, but rather by trying to subordinate
another subjectivity. The encounter that Hegel describes is strikingly Hobbesian, in that
the subjects are said to compete over the resources needed to survive, to fear each other
because of that competition, and, ﬁnally, to stand ready to duel each other, i.e., to risk
their lives in order to protect their honor and demonstrate their freedom from the
contingencies of mere biological existence. And yet, in agreement with Amery and

against Hobbes, Hegel will conclude that the attempt to achieve independence by

 

'28 Jean Amery, op. cit., “Torture,” 21-41.

118

exercising sovereignty over another, or rather, to establish the authority of one’s
standpoint in the world by suppressing or annihilating the subjectivity of another, is
ultimately self-subverting.

Brieﬂy to recap Hegel’s account: two subjects encounter one another while trying
to satisfy their needs and desires. Each apprehends that the other is not an object, but is a
subject with its own ends and projects. But because both are immersed in the immediacy
of survival, are “sunk in life,” their needs, desires, ends and projects remain mutually
inscrutable, so that the one experiences the other as (in Sartre’s felicitous phrase) a “hole
in being.” It is this impenetrability of the other’s subjectivity that, according to Hegel,
generates conﬂict. For, at this stage in the development of self-consciousness, the
ambition of each subject is to conﬁrm itself as a unique, self-sufﬁcient perspective on the
world. To confront a second subject who is striving after the same, therefore, is
destabilizing, a threat to the ﬁrst subject’s self-certainty. Since each subject is in a
symmetrical position vis-d-vis the other, each is motivated to try to subordinate the other,
to subsume the other’s unsettling subjectivity. Put differently, each subject tries to force
the other to afﬁrm, or to recognize as authoritative, the validity of its own projects and
ends. By forcing the other to subordinate its ends, the ﬁrst subject receives an external
conﬁrmation of the worth and objectivity of its own subjectivity, which it was unable to
achieve through the use of objects. Hence, each subject attempts to establish its
independence by compelling the other to forfeit its independence — or, in other words, by
forcing the other to choose dependence.

It is the refusal to acknowledge mutual dependence that has spurred this nascent

conﬂict, and the struggle is only exacerbated by each subject’s refusal to give ground.

119

For the demand to subordinate one’s ends to those of the other would cancel one’s claim
to independence. And so, to demonstrate its independence, even in the face of danger,
Hegel contends the subject must show that it is independent of its own needs and desires,
that it can rise above them by “staking its life” in a duel with the other. But, as
mentioned above, a struggle to the death must fail. On the one hand, death would nullify
the subject’s claim to independence; on the other, the death of the other subject would
deprive the survivor of the recognition necessary to afﬁrm its objectivity and
independence. The conﬂict is quelled only when one subject yields to the other and
accepts subordination rather than death, recognizing as authoritative the needs, purposes,
and projects of the other. Of course, for Hegel the “struggle to the deat ” is a necessary
stage in the formation of self-consciousness, even though the struggle concludes
indecisively and acquires determinate meaning only by virtue of its transition to the
Master-Slave Dialectic.

The Master-Slave Dialectic describes how an asymmetrical recognition relation
fails fully to establish the identity and agency of each subject. The Master has
subordinated the Slave; the Slave thus experiences itself as dependent and orients itself in
accord with the Master’s purposes, beliefs, projects, and judgments. The Master’s
dominance, its putative independence vis-a-vis the Slave, consists both of controlling the
actions of the Slave and of establishing what counts as knowledge, moral rightness, and
so on. The Slave in this way recognizes the Master as a subject. The Master, on the
other hand, despite gaining freedom from material necessity by means of the Slave’s
labor, fails to recognize the Slave as a subject: for the Master, the Slave is a means, not a

person worthy of recognition.

120

Yet by refusing to recognize the Slave as an autonomous subject, by instead
treating it simply as a means of production, the Master undermines its own effort to
achieve autonomy. For an object cannot confer recognition in any meaningful sense,
cannot afﬁrm or correct knowledge claims or normative demands; and so, inasmuch as
the Slave is regarded merely as an object, it is not recognized as being the sort of thing
capable of giving recognition. But even if the Slave were viewed as capable of giving
recognition, any recognition it granted would be merely contingent. Because the Slave is
wholly dependent on the Master, its recognition of the Master’s choices, dictates, and
values is coerced, not freely and voluntarily given. For these reasons, the Master’s bid to
establish itself as an independent, self-sufﬁcient subjectivity fails. For the Slave, on the
contrary, a type of transformation occurs: a new awareness and appreciation of its agency
emerges, as it realizes that the Master is in fact dependent on the labor of another,
namely, the Slave’s own labor. The Slave gains a sense of power as it apprehends that
the satisfaction of need and desire, the achievement of practical goals and purposes,
depend on its agency, efﬁcacy, and productivity. Thus, Hegel maintains that the Slave
objectifies itself in nature and comes to know itself, or to recognize itself in the social
reality that its labor has transformed. Although the Slave has not at this point achieved
full independence as a subject (Chapter IV terminates in the Unhappy Consciousnessm)
the self-knowledge. it has attained via its relation with the Master and with (social) nature
discloses both the embodied and communal character of subjectivity.

Later in the chapter, I examine Honneth’s appropriation of Hegel. For now, I

mention in passing that the Master-Slave Dialectic was inﬂuential in the research of child

 

129 , . , . . . . . . . . . .
And the ‘ Unhappy Conscrousness’ rs. at thrs pornt, still a dualrstrc, 1ntemally d1v1ded conscrousness.

121

psychologist Donald Winnicott,130 and remains inﬂuential in the work of objects-relations
theorist Jessica Benjamin,131 which attests to the fruitfulness of Hegel’s phenomenology.
More relevant to the nexus of recognition, identity, and motivation that I address in this
chapter and the next, is the power and acuity of Hegel’s account as a framework for
interpreting social conﬂict, and the wellsprings of social conﬂict in particular. I noted
above that although the PhG is a theory of knowledge, the Master-Slave Dialectic
suggests something about the motivation of subjects attempting to forge an identity and
sense of agency, as well. More exactly, what it suggests is that people are motivated to
social struggle precisely to realize and afﬁrm their existence as subjects. The motivation
to subordinate another, ill-fated though that endeavor was, was not intended to afﬁrm a
standpoint, whosever’s it be, but to consolidate one’s physical and mental capacities with
a view to establishing the unity-in-difference of this subjectivity, of this concrete
individuality. On my interpretation of Hegel, then, the PhG has salient implications
concerning a theory of social ontology. Paramount among those implications, as
Honneth so often stresses, is that identity not only is fragile, but moreover is invested
with otherness, inextricably bound up with relations to others and to the world, which
means that identity (or reﬂexive subjectivity with self-understanding) requires ongoing
social interaction and communication, the renegotiation of meanings, roles, expectations,

and so forth, if it is to be sustained.

 

'30 See especially Donald Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 2“d ed. (New York: Routledge Publishers, 2005).

13] Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1988) and Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual
Diﬂerence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

122

One might consider in this light Charles Mills’ notion of an epistemology of
ignorance,132 with which he tries to capture the way that whites in a racist society have a
stake in remaining largely unaware of their complicity in sustaining racist practices, and
of the privileges they retain by doing so. Or one might consider the nameless protagonist
in Ralph Ellison’s tellingly titled classic, Invisible Man;I33 or Marilyn Frye’s brilliant
allegory of the “schizophrenic” woman convinced that her loving father was poisoning

13" (presented, interestingly enough, in the

her every time he prepared her a cup of coffee
essay “On Being White”). In each case, members of the subordinate group are banned,
or at least palpably threatened, by the unreﬂective self-assurance of members of the
dominant group, whether such a trait manifests in the arrogation of decision-making
authority, the presumption of intervening in another’s actions or speaking in their name,
or more simply in the pretension of claiming to understand members of subordinated
groups better than they understand themselves. What is jeopardized by disrespect or
denied recognition, in other words, is not merely one’s “emotional state” or self-image,
but one’s conﬁdence in one’s self-efﬁcacy, the sense that one is an agent capable of
autonomously ordering one’s life. It is for that reason that struggles over recognition are
especially susceptible to conﬂict.

I now turn to Hegel’s “First Philosophy,” where he ﬁrst sketches a conception of
a social theory grounded in recognition relations. I concentrate on the “First Philosophy”

because this is the text Honneth identiﬁes as his point of departure, and because it is here

that Hegel conceives of mutual recognition as constitutive of spirit. But it is worth noting

 

'32 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract and From Class to Race; also see Shannon Sullivan and Nancy
Tuana, ed., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance.
'33 Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man, 2“d ed. (New York: Vintage, 1995).

134 Marilyn Frye, “On Being White: Toward A Feminist Understanding Of Race and Race Supremacy,” in
The Politics and Reality: essays in feminist theory (Berkeley: The Crossing Press, 1983), 110-127.

123

that even earlier than “First Philosophy,” Hegel had criticized natural rights and social
contract theories on the grounds that they were unable truly to grasp modern social
institutions and subjectivity. In “Natural Law,”135 he argues that the state of nature
posited in traditional natural law theory begs the question with regard to the genesis of
organized societies, because it assumes that the traits and behaviors of modern subjects
(competitiveness, possessiveness, and so on) are features of human nature as such. In
this way, the a priori is derived ﬁom the a posteriori (i.e., qualities that are the product of
social relations and practices are regarded instead as natural qualities of humanity) and
the institutional structure of liberal-capitalism is at once reiﬁed and seen as “accidental.”
In Hegel’s view, what such theories fail to comprehend is the historical nature and logic
of a given society — or, in Hegelian terms, of an ethical totality. It is in “First
Philosophy,” then, that he formulates an alternative conception of ethical totality.

Hegel’s aim is to understand how spirit — or a form of life — emerges from speciﬁc
types of social action and relationships. He employs three categories, language, labor
and family, each of which follows its own developmental logic, and which is identiﬁed
with a type of relation that mediates both the interaction of subjects and the subject’s use
of objects. Language mediates a subject’s relation to objects through symbolic
representation, labor through the transformation of objects, and the family through
interaction based on reciprocal recognition. Therefore, spirit is not conceived as a pre-
given reality whose actuality needs only to be explained philosophically. Instead it is
viewed as the product of human agency, a totality emerging from the variety of ways that

subjects relate to objects and to other subjects.

 

‘35 G. W. F. Hegel, trans. T. M. Knox Natural Law (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975).
For a useﬁrl discussion see Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of
Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 22-32.

124

As the ﬁrst category of spirit, language at once constitutes and supersedes
individual consciousness, grounding the subject’s relation to objects but also surpassing
the subject-obj ect relation intersubj ectively. Since for Hegel language and. the particular
dialectic it involves do not bear directly on identity and recognition conﬂicts, I will cover
the topic brieﬂy. Hegel argues that subjects ﬁrst use language to name the objects they
encounter in nature. It is by naming, distinguishing, classifying, and remembering that
consciousness separates itself from objects found in the world. Since the linguistic
symbol makes present objects that are absent, language both represents and, insofar as
the subject produces the meanings of linguistic symbols, enables consciousness to
objectijy itself. There is thus a two-fold mediation: of the linguistic symbol that
represents the perceived object; and of the subject that distinguishes itself from the object
it names and to which it assigns meaning. Through language consciousness establishes a
relation to itself as a constitutive as well as a reﬂective agent. Moreover, although
language mediates subj ect-object relations, language is nonetheless a communicative,
essentially intersubj ective form of interaction, which means that the subject is but a
particular in a more inclusive social totality. Language is thus the ﬁrst stage in the
constitution of spirit.

The second category of spirit is the family, and in the love relation is the ﬁrst
recognition relation treated in “First Philosophy.” The relation between loved ones (or
between husband and wife) turns on the recognition of the other’s concrete individuality,
and in this way of one’s own personal particularity. In afﬁrming the particularity of the
beloved, the lover at once afﬁrms her own concrete individuality, since an integral

element of the particularity of the beloved consists in turn of his positive regard (or

125

recognition) of the lover as this unique person. Put differently, in marriage a different
facet of the identity of the lovers develops through a conﬂictual process of mutual
recognition. The love relation is conﬂictual because, as seen in the PhG, the subject ﬁrst
tries to conﬁrm its identity in opposition to another subject, who, in turn, is trying to do
the same. And so, the dependence of identity on recognition is a conceptual as well as a
practical matter: conceptual, since the validity of a person’s subjectivity qua beloved
presupposes recognition by another subject; practical, since the recognitive
presupposition is actualized in a concrete social relation. The family is constitutive of
spirit not only because it allows for the socialization of the lovers and their offspring, but
also because the family has possessions that are necessary to its survival and well-being.
Accordingly, in order to secure the property and possessions on which the family’s
survival and well-being depend, various “heads of family” (by which Hegel means
husbands, male heads-of-household) are prompted to enter into a different type of social
relation, namely, that of property owners.

I would like to pause a moment to take note of Hegel’s argumentative strategy.
Rather than presuppose property rights or familial relations as givens, he begins by
demonstrating that social institutions (language, the family, and private property) arise
from recognition relations, and that certain determinate forms of recognition are integral
to the individualization of social agents. In this way, Hegel can show that social
institutions embody recognitive norms and thus exist for the purpose of supporting the
identity formation of social agents. Moreover, since his argument begins from
determinate recognition relations presupposed in identity formation, it offers an

historically nuanced understanding of the genesis and evolution of social institutions, a

126

comprehension that discloses both the normative and intersubjective nature of society.
Spirit, or the totality of social relations, practices and norms, is thus the materialization of
human agency as well as the scaffolding for protecting and engendering the freedom of
concrete individuals.

The third category of spirit Hegel discusses is labor, which is a means of
satisfying need and desire. Here, rather than subject (i.e., subordinate) nature to linguistic
symbols, the dialectic begins with the person’s subjection to nature. Since the
satisfaction of need and desire depends on the person’s ability to work on and transform a
recalcitrant nature, he must initially postpone gratiﬁcation and expend his energies
working on objects instead. To the extent that the subject is dependent on objects, he is
object-like; but through his labor, he eventually invents tools, which afford him a degree
of independence from the mute extemality of nature. With the development of
technology (tools and techniques) the subject is said to “return to itself,” as he is now
able to instrumentally control natural processes. Tools thus mediate between the subject
and object and, as do symbols, serve to stabilize the ephemera of subjective experience.
They also embody or objectiﬁ» spirit — labor is social — insofar as they preserve in
traditions the skills, knowledge, and techniques of forbears.

Then, clearly anticipating an important claim in the PhG, Hegel asserts that in the
object of labor-subjects ﬁnd their own ingenuity and efﬁcacy, or rather, experience their
subjectivity as objectively conﬁrmed. The laboring subject identifies with the object of
its labor, and so takes up this object in the form of possessions. Above it was noted that
the concrete individuality of lovers required their mutual recognition, that the survival

and well-being of families depended on their possessions, and that this dependence in

127

turn pointed to a further relation between families, namely, that of property owners.
Under the category of labor, then, Hegel proposes that a new aspect of the subject’s
identity develops, as various “family heads” engage in a struggle for the recognition of
rightful possession: the subjects oppose each other in claiming property rights. The
struggle over the recognition of valid property claims demands that each subject sublate
himself, or that he rise above his mere particularity by asserting his individuality against
the community represented in the ﬁgure of the opposing subject. The form such a
sublation takes is of a “life-and-death struggle,” wherein the subject makes himself a
“totality” (e.g., of subjective needs, wants, desires) in opposition to the social “totality”
and, vis-a-vis the other subject, risks his own self-destruction in order to preserve his
subjective “totality,” i.e., his personhood. But for reasons unclear in the text, Hegel
argues that the conﬂict is resolved, not by a reconciliation of the opposed subjects, but by
the apprehension by each that his identity, or integrity qua subject, requires recognition
from another subject. Thus, with the intersubj ective recognition of property rights,
conﬂict has been constrained and spirit has reached a new level of development.

In sum, in “First Philosophy” Hegel argues that the three categories of spirit,
together with the corresponding dialectical relations, constitute the identity of the
concrete individual as well as the shape and ends of social institutions, relations, and
practices. Of particular relevance for my thesis are Hegel’s claims concerning the
constitutive character and motivational force of mutual recognition and conﬂict,
speciﬁcally the insight that social development is motivated and internally governed by
recognitive demands. As I show in the following section, these ideas of the early Hegel

are fertile and suggestive enough as to provide the conceptual foundation of Axel

128

Honneth’s efforts to reformulate critical social theory on the basis of identity recognition.
It is in light of such social-theoretic premises that, in chapter 5, I defend the claim that
racial conﬂict, or rather, the resistance of whites to social policies aimed at remedying
racial inequality, should be understood as the result of perceived disrespect or denied

recognition.

Honneth

The social theory of Axel Honneth is the most recent iteration of the tradition of
critical social theory begun by Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and other German
intellectuals in the 19303.136 The Frankfurt School, as these thinkers came to be known,
were initially inﬂuenced by the renowned Marxist theorist, Georg Lukacs, and took as
their project the reformulation of an essentially Marxian conception of social
organization and change. Interdisciplinary in design, this new conception of a theory of
society combined philosophical reﬂection and social scientiﬁc research, so that social
reality could be analyzed “critically,” or rather, could be evaluated from a normative
standpoint. In 193 7, Horkheimer spelled out this ambition in the essay “Traditional and
Critical Theory,” in which he contrasted the historically prevalent conception of theory as
epistemologically independent of and unsullied by extant social institutions, practices,
relations, and so on, with a conception of theory as grounded and engaged in the social

reality it aims to comprehend. An adequate theory of society, in other words, must at

 

‘36 Excellent background on the Frankfurt School is provided in Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and
Utopia, as well as Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the
Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), David Ingram.
Critical Theory and Philosophy (New York: Paragon House, 1990) and Rolf Wiggerhaus, trans. Michael
Robertson The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge: MIT Press.
1995).

129

once be immanent to and transcendent of the social reality it takes as its object. It is the
self-conscious reﬂection on its own social conditions of possibility that makes a theory
critical, and thereby distinguishes it from traditional conceptions of theory.

The self-conception of critical social theory evolved considerably over
subsequent decades, especially as a result of historical events. In addition to the
unexpectedly widespread nationalism dtuing WWI, the susceptibility of the German
working-class to National Socialism during the I920S and 19305 further diminished
Marxian hopes that the working class was the agent of social emancipation, just as the
barbarism of WWII appeared to make a mockery of notions of historical progress. But
more signiﬁcant from a theoretical standpoint were the changes to critical theory
introduced by the “linguistic (or communicative) turn” of Jurgen Habermas in the late
19603.137 While sharing the Frankfurt School’s emphasis on grounding a theory of
society in social reality, Habermas took the tradition in a new direction by developinga
theory of communicative action, which linked conceptions of social reason and
interaction by means of communication aimed at mutual understanding. To frame this in
the terms mentioned above: Habermas identiﬁed communication as a feature of social
interaction as such, or as a form of action immanent to all forms of reason, human
interaction, and social organization. At the same time, communication is normative, a
rule-govemed form of interaction that implicitly contains criteria for evaluating speech.

acts and the forms of validity proper to them, and in this way transcends the immediacy

 

‘37 The following texts are important for locating Habermas in the tradition of Critical Theory and for
elaborating his theory of communicative reason: Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Communication and the Evolution of Society, trans Thomas McCarthy
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979); The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy
(Boston: Beacon Pres, 1984); and Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory ofLalt'
and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).

130

of particular speech acts. Therefore, Habermas proposed that communication possesses a
universalizability which makes it uniquely suitable as a normative foundation for critical
social theory. Social practices and institutions are thus to be evaluated in light of the
norms presupposed by speech and communication, which constitute the conditions of
possibility for the former.

In the wake of the tremendous inﬂuence of Habermas’s theory of communicative
action, Honneth proposed a new normative foundation for critical social theory: namely, n-li
in recognition relations, which are normatively governed by expectations to be

recognized. As with the early Frankfurt School, Honneth insisted138 that a critical social

 

theory must emerge from, or rather, be immanent to the society it subsequently
transcends and nonnatively evaluates. Put differently, if social theory is to serve a
diagnostic function, it must be normatively grounded; theory can only justiﬁably criticize
a society’s practices, relations, and institutions if it can be shown that its own standpoint,
as well as the norms against which the criticism is to be carried out, are constitutive of
society as such. In this way criticism becomes critique and achieves universalizability, so
that any society can be evaluated on the same normative grounds.

For Honneth the source of immanence is located in recognition relations, which,
as Hegel argued in “First Philosophy” and the Ph G, constitute a necessary condition for
the formation and sustainability of identity and, more generally, of social organization.
Recognition relations thus have philosophical and political implications. The political
implications become visible in those recognitive expectations that structure and govern

everyday interactions, practices, and relations. When these (usually unarticulated)

 

138 Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect,” 322-330 especially.

131

 

expectations are violated, as in cases of oppression, the result is social struggle aimed at
seeming — or at restoring — acceptable forms of recognition. For this reason, Honneth
cites Hegel’s “First Philosophy” as one of the chief inﬂuences on his identity-recognition
reformulation of critical social theory. The other fundamental inﬂuence, of course, is
Habermas’s theory of communicative action.

Habermas’s theory of communicative action marks a signiﬁcant change in critical
theory. Like Horkheimer and Adomo, Habermas purposed to develop a social theory
with emancipatory intent, which would be capable of identifying the standards for
evaluating, as well as the means for overcoming, social domination. But Horkheimer and
Adomo grew disenchanted with the possibilities of reason, arguing in Dialectic of
Enlightenment139 that the instrumental reason that enabled social reproduction through
the control and manipulation of external nature at the same time increasingly came to
control “internal nature,” through, for example, the industrialization of popular culture,
the normalization of consumer identities and strategic action, and so on. By contrast,
Habermas formulated a more complex theory of reason, distinguishing between a form of
reason necessary for material reproduction (i.e., instrumental reason), on one hand, and a
form responsible for interaction and social integration (i.e., communicative reason), on
the other. In this way, the bleak philosophy of history offered in DE could be rejected,
and a new, universal foundation for a politics aimed at ﬁeedom from domination and
superﬂuous suffering could be developed.

Before turning to the speciﬁcs of Habermas’s social theory, it is useful to

examine his criticism of the projects of Horkheimer and Adorno, as well as of Marx and

 

‘39 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. John Cumming Dialectic of Enlightenment (New
York: Continuum, 1999). Hereafter referred to as DE.

132

Hegel. Despite their differences, what they share, according to Habermas, is a one-
dimensional conception of reason as well as a failure to appreciate the intersubj ective
nature of both society and social agents. Put another way, they remain committed to
what Seyla Benhabib has described as the “philosophy of the subject.” The “philosophy
of the subject” presupposes that history is the gradual, directional unfolding of a
transhistorical subject, which constitutes itself through a unitary form of action.140 In
DE, for example, Horkheimer and Adorno sketch a history of Western civilization in
which reason invariably subverts itself in an ongoing dialectic of promise and
disenchantment, with no ultimate redemption apparent. But what led them to view
history as a long sequence of tragedies was, as mentioned above, their conclusion that
there was no longer an emancipatory agent (such as the proletariat) capable of radical
social transformation.

Earlier, Marx conceived of social change as a dialectical process that involved
conﬂicts between the forces and relations of production. But the foundation of such
conﬂict was labor, or control over labor power as well as the product of labor, so that for
Marx labor as a universal form of human activity was the root of social change. On
mechanistic interpretations, the theory of historical materialism presupposes that society
is a uniﬁed totality, which changes historically in accord with a teleological logic
manifested in the dialectic between the forces and relations of production. On this view,
social labor is the form of action by means of which societies achieve greater degrees of
freedom and productive power; norms, values, and traditions, accordingly, are said to be

conditioned by the mode of economic production. By contrast, Habermas maintains that

 

'40 Benhabib, Seyla, Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 54-57.

133

Marx’s theory of revolution presupposes a conception of communicative action, insofar
as any transformation in the relations of production would depend on actual
communication among workers. (For example, before workers participate in a labor
movement, they must share a sense of grievance or discursively agree on certain
demands, e. g., for a shorter workday or end to child labor.) Yet the centrality of
communicative action remained undeveloped in Marx, elided by the theoretical
prominence accorded to labor as a means of social integration and reproduction.

Earlier still, Hegel sketched the outline of a social theory as well as a conception
of intersubjective recognition relations, but did so under the aegis of the concept of spirit.
As the concept is often interpreted,141 spirit denotes a transsubjective entity that ﬁnally
arrives at self-knowledge only after unfolding (or manifesting) through various
teleologically ordered “stages” of history. The consequences for a social theory or
conception of intersubj ectivity are evident: if any society or subjectivity is viewed as a
“necessary moment” in a pre-ﬁgured totality, then the possibility of social criticism as
well as conceptualizing intersubjectivity are lost.

Habermas proposes that each of these theories lacked a sufﬁciently differentiated
concept of reason; more speciﬁcally, each failed to grasp the philosophical and social
importance of communication. Habermas thus distinguishes between instrumental and
communicative reason, and, correlatively, between labor and interaction. Instrumental
reason governs the means-ends relations between subjects and objects, and hence is
appropriate to the labor process that secures a society’s material reproduction.

Communicative reason governs intersubj ective relations, or those relations between

 

141 This is the interpretation of Hegel as a metaphysician that Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard try to
counter.

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subjects that enable a society’s symbolic reproduction. The difference between labor and
interaction is that the former is oriented to the successﬁrl manipulation and
transformation of objects (e. g., into use-values), whereas the latter is oriented to the
achievement of mutual understanding and to the criticism of ideology and power
relations. Marx’s effort to analyze society solely from the perspective of production
proved inadequate, then, because the instrumental reason governing labor could not
account for the communicative character of moral consensus, political action, or even the
formation of class-consciousness. Similarly, to the extent that Hegel’s concept of spirit
was predicated on the model of a monological self-consciousness, it could neither
accommodate the particularity of social formations and identities nor grasp the
communicative processes involved in sustaining them.

For my purposes here, the concept of communicative action is relevant because it
allows Habermas to theorize identity formation in a materialist and relational manner
while at the same time establishing a universal foundation for critical social theory. Like
Hegel, Habermas views identity as a social achievement that results from interaction and
reciprocal recognition. But rather than view the constitution of subjectivity as a
“moment” in spirit’s path to self-knowledge, Habermas insists that individualization is a
contingent and historical process, which is essentially linguistically mediated. How one
understands oneself, who one takes oneself to be, results not only from experience with
other subjects, but also from the reﬂective manner in which one takes up (or rejects) the
values, norms, and traditions available in one’s society. Moreover, the norms, traditions,

and so on that prevail in a society are themselves the result of linguistically mediated

135

interaction aimed at mutual understanding, since they could only attain generality and
legitimacy through processes of commtmication and collective will formation.

From the perspective of critical theory, the theory of communicative action is
intended to provide a normative foundation for social theory. Habermas attempts this by

'42 Implicit in every speech act

reﬂecting on the pragmatic presuppositions of speech acts.
is a validity claim in light of which the particular speech act can be evaluated. Different
forms of reason and action, accordingly, involve distinct types of validity claims.
Empirical propositions (i.e., concerning matters of fact) are evaluated in terms of their
truth or falsity; normative claims (i.e., concerning moral questions) in terms of their
rightness or appropriateness; and expressive propositions (i.e., concerning values,
emotions, interests) in terms of their truthfulness or sincerity. The import of identifying
validity claims implicit in speech acts is that it allows Habermas to afﬁrm that language
is a normative, or necessarily rule-govemed, form of action. To identify norms implicit
in a form of action in which all social agents engage, and validity claims that are
unavoidably presupposed by any speaking subject, provides social theory a grounding in
social practice for social critique. Habermas can therefore maintain that a society is
unjust to the extent that speech is systematically distorted (for example, by powerful
media or the state) or that speech situations are asymmetrical, coercive, nonreciprocal, or
unevenly distributed.

In “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect,” Honneth situates his identity-recognition

theory in the tradition of critical social theory, and tries speciﬁcally to differentiate his

conception of critical theory from Habermas’s. It is unclear in this essay exactly how

 

142 , . . . ,. . . . . .
Jurgen Habermas, ‘ What IS Unlversal Pragmatics? 1n Communicatlon and the Evolution of Socrety.

136

Honneth understands the relation between his theory and Habermas’s. On one hand, after
summarizing his view, Honneth claims to have presented “the ﬁrst outlines of an
alternative to the version of the communication paradigm which is based in a theory of
language.’”43 A few paragraphs earlier, on the other hand, he states that he wants to
develop “the communication paradigm constructed by Habermas more in the direction of
its presuppositions regarding the theory of intersubj ectivity — indeed, in the direction of
its sociological presuppositions?”44 So it is unclear whether Honneth claims to be
augmenting Habermas’s theory, or supplanting it with a new conceptual foundation.

In my view, the question remains indeterminate, primarily because Honneth does
not address this particular question in later essays. But given the speciﬁcity of my thesis
concerning motivation, recognition, and social conﬂict, trying to resolve the question of
whose social theory is most basic, or which theory presupposes which, is not germane to
my argumentative task. To put a stake in the ground nonetheless: I ﬁnd no compelling
reason to conclude that Honneth’s identity-recognition theory should supplant
Habermas’s theory of communicative action. It seems to me that the two positions are
compatible, with Honneth’s conception of recognition and social conﬂict aimed at
disclosing what spurs conﬂict, and Habermas’s discourse ethics aimed at explicating the
discursive justiﬁcatory basis of the moral point of view. That is, Habermas’s discourse
ethics explicates how moral norms can be justiﬁed without coercion or violence, while
Honneth’s phenomenology of moral experience sheds light on what triggers conﬂict in

the ﬁrst place. The two views are not only compatible, but in fact complementary.

 

143 Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect,” 329.
”’4 Axel Honneth, ibid, 328.

137

Nonetheless, Honneth intends to distinguish his project ﬁom Habermas’s, and the
ﬁrst way he attempts to do this is by denying that his identity-recognition theory is a
theory of reason. From Horkheimer’s “Critical and Traditional Theory” through the
mature theory of Habermas, Honneth contends, social theory has been formulated as a
theory of reason. In DE, Horkheimer and Adomo argued that instrumental reason, which
they viewed as the single dominant form of reason in history, dialectically undermined
every effort to liberate social relations and institutions from domination. It is for this
reason that they insisted that the connection between theory and practice was snapped: if
reason itself reinstates domination, then the only form of politics left is mirnesis or a
recourse to art. For Habermas, it is the encroachment of instrumental reason on action
properly governed by communicative reason which, in certain circumstances, produces
social pathologies or “systematically distorted speech.” On this view, reason is not
conceived as a source of domination; rather domination is a consequence of and is
perpetuated by using a form of reason that is proper to subj ect-obj ect relations to regulate
a different form of action and social relation, namely, intersubjective relations. Unlike
the critique of Horkheimer and Adorno in DE, Habermas’s distinction between forms of
reason allows him to reconnect theory to practice, and so to propose a politics: to the
extent that collective will formation is threatened by instrumental reason, social agents
must insist on public discourse aimed at normative consensus.

Now, it is not exactly clear what Honneth’s denial that his theory is a theory of
reason amounts to, or what the force of the denial is with respect to Habermas. Honneth
states that

characteristic of all these models of social critique is the consistent measurement
of social pathologies. . .only in terms of the stage attained by the development of

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human rationality. That is why only distortions which occur in the cognitive
orientation of human beings can be regarded as deviations from an ideal that must
be presupposed categorically as the standard for a ‘healthy’ or intact form of
society. Accordingly, such a perspective is also accompanied by a narrowing of
social critique to a theory of rationality. '45
This passage suggests that for Honneth a social pathology is viewed not as a type of
unreason, but rather as a moral wrong, an injury suffered from disrespect or denials of
recognition. Social pathologies practically disrupt one’s ability to relate to oneself, and
thus damage or threaten to damage a person’s agency and ability to achieve a self-
realized life. Honneth’s objection to formulating critical theory as a theory of reason
therefore seems to consist of the denial that the wrong-making feature of social
domination is that it is inconsistent with reason. Instead, the wrong-making feature of
domination (e.g., violence, exclusion) is that it directly endangers the ontological security
of concrete individuals, who, Honneth observes with Habermas clearly in mind,
“experience an impairment of what we can call their moral expectations. . .not as a
restriction of intuitively mastered rules of language, but as a violation of identity claims
acquired in socialization?”46
Honneth’s line of argument is unconvincing, however. For one thing, in “From

Adomo to Habermas?”47

Honneth acknowledges that Habermas conceives of rationality
as a form of action and not merely as a type of cognitive activity. He says there that

Habermas “moves the concept of ‘rationality’ . . .into the theoretical context of social

action:' ‘rationality,’ in the critical sense of the Frankfurt theoretical tradition as well, can

 

“’5 Axel Honneth, ibid, 331.
”6 Axel Honneth, ibid, 328.

'47 Axel Honneth, “From Adomo to Habermas: On the Transformation of Critical Social Theory," Charles
Wright, ed., The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (Albany: State
University of New York, 1995), 92-120.

139

be interpreted as the objective form of processes of social action?”48 For another,
Habermas does not argue that it is the violation of linguistic rules that is immoral, but that
it is such rules (i.e., the pragmatic presuppositions of speech) that govern the procedure
of discursively justifying such moral norms as are proposed for ad0ption. As Habermas
notes

the content of the universal presuppositions of argumentation is by no means

‘normative’ in the moral sense. For inclusivity only signiﬁes that access to

discourse is unrestricted; it does not imply the universality of binding norms of

action. The equal distribution of communicative freedoms and the requirement of
truthfulness in discourse have the status of argumentative duties and rights, not of
moral duties and rights. So too, the absence of coercion refers to the process of

argumentation itself, not to interpersonal relations outside of this practice. '49
On Habermas’ discourse ethics, then, it is not the violation of linguistic norms that
constitute moral harm, but the violation of norms that achieve consensus through moral
argumentation.

Finally, there is good reason to think that Honneth’s identity-recognition theory
is, or could be rightly characterized as, a theory of reason. After all, the triadic structure
of modern identity is, according to Honneth, the result of historical moral struggles
concerning recognition; indeed, he argues that such struggles are at once the catalyst for
and substance of social progress. But on Honneth’s own premises, struggles over
recognition consist of conﬂicts involving moral norms: persons resist humiliation and
exclusion because such practices violate their legitimate (i.e., normative) expectation to
be recognized. That norms are institutionalized and come to be experienced as

expectations, background assumptions concerning how persons are to be treated, suggests

that reasons can be given for why people resist disrespect as well as for why disrespect is

 

'48 Axel Honneth, “From Adomo to Habermas,” 101.

"9 Jurgen Habermas, Ciaran Cronin and Pablo de Greiff, ed., The Inclusion ofthe Other: Studies in
Political Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 45.

140

judged to be unjust or immoral. I fully agree with Honneth when he stresses, for
example, that the pain or indignation accompanying an insult is experienced pre-
reﬂectively, or experienced as an immediate emotional reaction rather than a reasoned
judgment that a justiﬁed norm has been violated. But, on pain of lapsing into an
empiricist moral psychology, Honneth must grant that some form of judgment is involved
in apprehending that a norm has been violated. In light of such considerations, it seems
to me that Honneth continues critical theory’s conceptualization of reason as a form of
social action.

Another way that Honneth tries to distinguish his theory from Habermas’s
concerns what each regards as the source of immanence. By immanence, I mean that
aspect of everyday social experience that possesses liberatory potential, and which
therefore grounds critical social theory and illuminates the potential to transcend extant
forms of oppression and domination. Honneth notes that for Horkheimer and Adomo
critical theory “called for a diagnosis of society that could bring to light a degree of

”’50 which required the “quasi-sociological

immanent, intramundane transcendence,
speciﬁcation of an emancipatory interest which is anchored in social reality itself”15 I and
which is susceptible of further development. For Honneth, the “emancipatory interest” of
social agents is immanent to the recognition relations presupposed in identity
formation.152 As this type of argument is empirical as well as philosophical, Honneth

attempts to identify the psychological conditions required for a subject to establish an

identity, at the same time that he argues that the universality of recognition endows those

 

150 Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect.” 322.
‘5‘ Axel Honneth, ibid, 323.
‘52 Honneth, ibid, 322-323.

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conditions with a normative quality. The combination of psychological theory and
philosophical reﬂection brings to view historically constituted expectations about how
human beings are to be treated, i.e., recognitive expectations, and thereby links
experiences of disrespect and denied recognition to social conﬂict. As noted, Habermas
identiﬁes the pragmatic presuppositions of speech acts as the normative foundation of
critical social theory. By distinguishing between types of speech acts and the
corresponding validity claims to which a speaker is committed by making an utterance,
he claims to have located in speech an unavoidably normative (or rule-govemed) form of
action. Thus: “Habermas ﬁnds in [communication] a pre-theoretical sphere of
emancipation to which critique can refer in order to conﬁrm its normative standpoint
within social reality?”53 That is, since communication is a social practice necessary for
material and symbolic reproduction, it is a form of action that is integral to social reality
and human freedom (i.e., immanence) but that, at the same time, is able critically to
reﬂect on that reality (i.e., transcendence).

Nonetheless, Honneth proposes that Haberrnas’s theory of communicative action
does not provide an adequate foundation for critical theory. In Honneth’s view, if a form
of action is to count as foundational — or as an emancipatory interest — it must not only be
“anchored in” social reality but must also be reﬂected in the lived experiences of social
agents. He observes that

The emancipatory process in which Habermas socially anchors the normative

perspective of his Critical Theory is not at all reﬂected as such a process in the

moral experiences of the subjects involved. A process of commlmicatively

rationalizing the lifeworld may unfold historically, but it is not reﬂected in the
experiences of human subjects as a moral state of affairs. For this reason, a

 

‘53 Honneth, ibid, 326.

142

correlate cannot be found within social reality for the pre-theoretical resource to
which the normative perspective of Habermas’s theory refers reﬂexively.154

The thrust of this excerpt is that Habermas’s critical theory offers little analysis of the
experience of moral harm that gives rise to social struggle. The observation that a
morally just resolution of social antagonism would require the discursively achieved
consensus of all affected participants, and that such consensus is only imaginable in a
speech situation free of coercion, does not entail that the moral wrongs which provoke
the need for discursive resolution are linguistic in nature and does not account for why
subjects would be motivated to engage in moral argumentation. By contrast, Honneth
insists that “what must be considered ﬁrst of all is the fact that there is an assumption of
social recognition, which subjects connect with their normative expectations when
entering communicative relationships?”55 Honneth’s objection therefore concerns what
sorts of experiences would compel a person initially to challenge a norm or question the
legitimacy of a practice. What is the wrong—making feature of an experienced harm that
would instigate or trigger social conﬂict, and how is such a wrong linked to the
normative foundation identiﬁed by critical theory? Honneth concludes that because a
critical social theory based on a linguistic foundation cannot speak to these questions, it
fails to capture what motivates the conﬂicts whose resolution engenders social progress
Deciding the question of whose critical social theory offers a more tenable
foundation is a complex issue. And, at the risk of sounding glib, the question has
something of a chicken-egg feel to it: that identity formation integrally involves

communication is hard to deny; but that identity formation includes non- or pre-linguistic

 

"4 Honneth, ibid, 328.
"5 Honneth, ibid, 329.

143

elements is also hard to deny, and is supported by psychological research into, e. g., infant
attachment disorder?56 Yet it seems to me that Honneth’s objection turns on an
ambiguity in the concept of “foundation,” or, perhaps better, an equivocation on the
concept of “correlate in social reality.”

In the passage just cited, for example, he asserts that a properly grounded critical
theory must be “reﬂected in” the ﬁrst-personal experience of social agents. Given such a
criterion, Honneth ﬁnds fault with Habermas’s theory thus: the harm of systematically
distorted speech is felt, not as a violation of argumentative rules, but as a form of
disrespect (an insult, a sign of contempt). Hence, an identity—recognition theory putatively
offers a ﬁrmer foundation for critical theory only if the object as well as the justiﬁcatory
standard of critique involves recognition struggles. But other times Honneth construes
the question of a “foundation” (or a “correlate in social reality”) somewhat differently,
arguing that critical theory must link with a social practice, or rather, must aim “to give
the standards of critique an objective foothold in pre-theoretical praxis.’”57 And if the
criterion of a properly grounded critical theory is that it identify a social practice that is
presupposed by social reproduction, integration and socialization, Habermas’s theory of
communicative action enjoys at least as much prima facie tenability as a normative
foundation as Honneth’s identity—recognition theory.

Moreover, while Habermas does not accord recognition relations and identity

formation the same pride of place as Honneth, his longstanding insistence that solidarity

 

'56 Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), 130-134. Stout notes:
“Attachment disorder is a tragic condition that occurs when attachment in infancy is disrupted, because of
parental incompetence. . .or because the infant is simply left too much alone. . .Children and adults with
severe attachment disorder, for whom attachment was not possible during the ﬁrst seven months of life, are
unable to bond to others emotionally, and are thereby directed to a fate that is arguably worse than death,”
131.

1 7 . . .
5 Honneth, “The Soc1al Dynamlcs of Dlsrespect,” 324.

144

is “the other side” of justice indicates that he is keenly aware that people experience
injustice and moral harms as threats to their identity and forms of life, and not merely as
transgressions of formal and abstract rules. Noting that “theories in the tradition of
Hegel, Humboldt, and G. H. Mead have shown that communicative actions involve
shared presuppositions and that communicative forms of life are interwoven with
relations of reciprocal recognition, and to this extent, both have a normative content?”58
Habermas draws a conclusion which could have been written by Honneth himself:
From the fact that persons can only be individuated through socialization it
follows that moral concern is owed equally to persons both as irreplaceable
individuals and as members of the community, and hence it connects justice with
solidarity. Equal treatment means equal treatment of unequals who are
nonetheless aware of their interdependence. Moral universalism must not take
into account the aspect of equality. . .at the expense of the aspect of
individuality... ‘59
Honneth is correct that Habermas offers little detailed analysis of the question of what
motivates social conﬂict. '60 He is also correct to point out that, with respect to social
conﬂict in particular, the desired end of entering into moral discourse — the point of such
argumentation — is commonly to address conﬂicts stemming from identity claims or
recognitive demands (though, as Honneth grants, it is an empirical question as to just how
commonly). But since the brunt of Habermas’s efforts for the last two decades or more

has been to develop and justify a conception of the moral point of view, he might reply

that irrespective of motivation, it is nonetheless through normative discourse that conﬂict

 

158 Jurgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, 40.
159 - -
Habermas, lbrd.

‘60 In Jurgen Habermas, trans. Ciaran Cronin Justiﬁcation and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993). Habermas reﬂects on the question “Why be moral?” which, as I noted
above, is not exactly the sense of motivation that concerns Honneth. In any case, Habermas concludes that
moral theory cannot speak to the question of motivation: “In their capacity as philosophers, their only
recourse is to reﬂective analysis of the procedure through which ethical questions in general can be
answered” (75).

145

is justly resolved. And it is in this light that we see how the theories of Honneth and
Habermas work in tandem.

Honneth maintains that resistance to perceived injustice is motivated by
experiences of disrespect and denied recognition. Such experiences are affective and
cognitive, so that although the linkage between identity formation and motivation is
importantly cognitive, it is the affective reaction (e.g., shame, fear, anger) against unjust
treatment that pre-reﬂectively “signals” that a person has been disrespected.
Condescension and ridicule, no less than exclusion and isolation, characteristically
diminish a person’s self-respect, her sense of efﬁcacy, as well as her physical autonomy
and conﬁdence.

But that the emotional responses that point to acts of disrespect are reactions, that
is, are typically felt pre-reﬂectively, brings to light two important implications. The ﬁrst
is that “this thesis could easily give the impression that feelings of disrespect are
something morally valuable in themselves, to which theory can refer directly and without
qualiﬁcation in its social self-justiﬁcation?”61 Indeed, one of the main goals of my
project is to demonstrate that feelings of disrespect are neither self-explanatory (i.e., not
to be accepted at face-value) nor “morally valuable in themselves.” Because “the self” is
not transparent, people can be — and often are — mistaken not only about the content of
their own emotions, but also about the external sources (e.g., an interlocutor’s intention)
that occasioned those feelings. The second implication is that people may engage in
conﬂict or join a social movement for reasons they are not yet clearly aware of. In such

cases, Habermas correctly notes that needs and wants require interpretation and

 

'61 Axel Honneth, “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect,” 335.

146

redeﬁnition, norms discursive clariﬁcation, and identity claims collective articulation. It
is through discourses of this sort that subjects are able to crosscheck what they take to be
an insult or exclusionary practice against an intersubjectively constituted social reality.

I now turn to Honneth’s identity-recognition theory, focusing particularly on his

account of the connection between recognition, motivation, and social conﬂict.

Honneth’s Theory of Recognition: Recognition and Social Conﬂict

In this section, I present and examine the thesis that people are motivated to
engage in social conﬂict when justiﬁed recognitive expectations are, or are perceived to
be, violated. I will begin by discussing Honneth’s “negative” or “indirect” method of
explication. Brieﬂy, Honneth avers that conﬂict is motivated, not by the reﬂective
judgment that political or moral norms have been violated, but by the aversive emotional
reactions such violations evoke in social agents. To elaborate this thesis, I turn to the
theoretical basis of identity-recognition theory, which consists of a conceptual link
between identity formation and recognition as well as a “differentiated” (i.e., uniﬁed but
complex) conception of identity. Following Hegel and Habermas, Honneth afﬁrms that
identity presupposes mutual recognition. Clarifying his conception of motivation
therefore requires analyzing that premise and exploring its implications.

As noted above, Honneth regards the concept of mutual recognition as perhaps
the most important philosophical insight of Hegel’s work. The concept of mutual
recognition asserts that intersubj ectivity is the condition of possibility for conceptualizing
a stable, independent, and sustainable subjectivity. Because mutual recognition is the

condition of possibility for reﬂexive subjectivity (or for identity), the concept further

147

gestures toward a theory of the intersubj ectivity of reason and social action, a theoretical
conception most fully presented in Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The
priority of recognition implies that identity formation is a contingent and vulnerable
social process, through which embodied, communicative subjects engage one another in
an effort to reach understanding and agreement concerning the norms, practices, and
institutions orienting their shared existence. In light of Honneth’s concerns about
Habermas’s theory of communicative action, the challenge facing identity-recognition
theory is not solely how to theorize the link between recognition and and identity
formation, but, equally important, how to develop the concept of recognition so that it
provides a normative basis for social criticism. Honneth must argue, ﬁrst, that
recognitive relations are normative, or that people have a justiﬁed claim to be recognized;
and secondly, that recognitive relations are immanent to (an implicit end of) social
interaction, insofar as violations of normative expectations in day-to-day interactions are
experienced as a type of disruption or impairment of a person’s agency.

He attempts to demonstrate the normative character of recognition relations by
what he calls a “negative” or “indirect” method of explication. He proceeds from two
premises:'62 the ﬁrst is that insight into the concept of identity is gained by identifying
everyday forms of disrespect; and the second is that the experience of disrespect is
transformed into a force for social change when those who are disrespected strive to
restore (or to establish in the ﬁrst place) the integrity of their identity. According to the
ﬁrst premise, the social theorist learns something indirectly about a successfully

integrated identity by seeing how a subject's identity formation and exercise of agency

 

'62 Axel Honneth, “Personal Identity and Disrespect.” in SR.

148

can be compromised by disrespect. And according to the second premise, because
disrespect negatively affects a subject’s freedom, the person who suffers disrespect is
prompted to resist. Honneth illustrates these claims by reﬂecting on everyday language
use and forms of disrespect. This “negative” or “indirect” method can further be
illustrated by citing empirical psychological research.

Earlier in this chapter, I proposed that certain torture techniques (e. g., prolonged
solitary conﬁnement, sensory deprivation) offer indirect evidence of Hegel’s claim that a
varied external environment is a precondition for self-consciousness. Of course, Hegel
was providing, not an empirical explanation of human psychology, but rather a
phenomenological description of the transcendental conditions (a priori conditions of
possibility) for a subject’s reﬂexive awareness of itself as an independent center of
experience. Psychological research indirectly supports his claim, however, by
demonstrating that the methodical disruption of a human being’s perceptual and motor
interactions with its environment typically (though not invariably) induces a variety of
harms, including deindividualization, loss of a sense of reality, hallucinations, and so on.
In a similarly “indirect” way, the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempts to
describe the holistic and integrated character of a human’s experience of its body,163 not
by positing functions or attributes taken to be essential to embodiment, but rather by
observingdeviations from normal human functioning and, by working backward, as it
were, ascertaining the pre-reﬂective contours of bodily experience by contrast with such

breakdowns.

 

[63 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, trans. Colin Smith Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge,
1995). See Part 1, Chapters 3 and 4, especially.

149

A ﬁnal illustration, especially pertinent to Honneth’s “negative” method and
concept of identity formation, concerns the psychological condition called attachment
disorder. Described by Martha Stout as “a fate that is arguably worse than death,’”64
attachment disorder occurs when an infant is physically and emotionally neglected,
deprived of the nurture and care necessary to normal human development. If an infant’s
needs are regularly ignored in the ﬁrst months of its existence, then, as a child and
eventually as an adult, the person will typically be unable to form emotional connections
and trusting relationships with other people. Stout explains:

Normal attachment is an innate system in the brain that motivates an infant to

seek the neamess of her parent. . .so that the very ﬁrst interpersonal relationship

can be formed. This ﬁrst relationship is crucial not only for reasons of infant
survival but also because it allows the infant’s immature limbic system to “use”
the mature functions of the adult’s brain to organize itself. When a parent reacts
empathically to an infant, the child’s positive emotions, such as contentment and
elation, are encouraged, and her potentially overwhelming negative emotions,
such as frustration and fear, are moderated. This arrangement promotes a sense of
order and safety that will eventually be encoded in the baby’s own memory,

providing her with. . .a “secure base” in the world. 165

By observing how normal human functions and development either break down
or are never consolidated in the ﬁrst place (as when a person is unable to trust others,
even though she ardently wishes to do so) it is possible to illuminate and foreground the
conditions that are presupposed in normal human development. What this and the
previous examples exemplify is a method of concept formation (e.g., of self-
consciousness, embodiment, or emotional maturation) that begins by identifying needs

and vulnerabilities, rather than by positing a normative conception of the phenomenon to

be understood. Honneth’s conception of modern identity is formulated in like fashion:

 

'64 Martha Stout, op. cit.,, 131.
'65 Ibid, 130.

150

rather than posit an a priori deﬁnition of identity, Honneth derives the structure of
identity by discerning the ways that identity can be undermined or compromised by
disrespect. Characteristic vulnerabilities point to self;relations and relations with others
that are necessary for an integral and cogent identity.

Like Hegel in the PhG and “First Philosophy,” Honneth asserts that the
independence and sustainability of identity presupposes intersubj ective recognition. The
harm of disrespect is that it subverts a person’s expectation that she will be recognized;
that is, afﬁrmed in her personhood, respected and esteemed as the concrete individual she
is. The concept of disrespect presupposes an expectation to be recognized because the
experience of being disrespected is_perceived to be a threat to agency. Acts of disrespect
reveal correlative forms of recognition which are distorted or denied by, e.g., contempt or
derogation, as well as by reﬁlsals to recognize the worth, abilities, and contributions of
others. Yet just as Hegel argued that a bare, isolated consciousness could not secure its
own objectivity as a self—consciousness, so Honneth avers that an unrecognized or
disrespected person cannot form the practical self-relations underlying autonomous
identity.

Before turning to Honneth’s taxonomy of characteristic forms of disrespect, I
want to take a moment to clarify how I am using the concept of disrespect, and in what
. sense systematic disrespect constitutes a social pathology. Honneth characterizes
distorted or denied recognition alternately as a social pathology, a normative violation,
and a moral transgression. But he often fails clearly to differentiate between the varying

types of wrongs. So, to clear away conceptual underbrush, I will try to specify the type

151

of wrong committed by acts of disrespect. Overall, my observations are consistent with,
even implied by Honneth’s work.

Disrespect is a category of action in which an agent refuses to recognize another,
or else recognizes another but in malicious or insulting ways. A person can disrespect
another directly, as when a person insults another. The members of a social group can
disrespect the members of another group, as when blacks are blamed for white
resentment. And institutions can disrespect people, as when, say, welfare regulations are
punitive or demeaning to recipients. Disrespect can be conveyed by false or stigrnatizing
ascriptions, as well as by refusals to acknowledge or afﬁrm the qualities and
contributions of others. Thus, acts of disrespect can be acts of commission or omission,
and can be personal, collective, or institutional in nature.

For example, minorities, women, and the poor are denied recognition when
institutions or the practices of a dominant group render them silent or invisible. People
are disrespected in such cases because they are denied the freedom to project their own
meanings and deﬁnitions onto the world. And when “the cries of the wounded” (as
William James strikingly puts it) are repeatedly and resolutely ignored, people are
disrespected because their suffering fails even to register as being of social importance or
making a moral demand. Members of subordinated groups are also disrespected — or,
more clumsily, “misrecognized” - when institutions or members of a dominant group
ascribe to them traits or behaviors which they, the subordinated, experience as degrading,
marginalizing, threatening, or simply alien to their own self-understanding. When

members of dominant groups impose expectations and roles on members of subordinated

152

groups, the latter are effectively treated as objects, things to be harnessed and positioned,
rather than as autonomous agents.

Sometimes it can be difﬁcult to decide whether persons are being disrespected by
false or malicious ascriptions, or by being denied recognition. For example, when a man
announces to a woman, “You aren’t angry, you’re just being emotional,” the slight could
be interpreted in either way. That is, the remark may reﬂect an assumption that women
are deﬁned by inchoate emotion rather than reasoned judgment, or an assumption that
women are unable accurately to name their own emotions. Since both interpretations are
plausible and additional examples of this sort could be adduced, the concept of disrespect
is polyvalent. In my view, this is not especially troubling. Acts of disrespect can be
deleterious whether they result from denied recognition or from false ascriptions. If I
refuse to acknowledge a woman’s competence (and right) to deﬁne her emotions and
needs, if I refuse to listen and hear her, then I disrespect her as surely as if I had declared
her an emotional dervish. Thus, to deny recognition is to refuse to see the other as she
sees herself, which increases the probability that alien qualities or expectations will be
imposed on or ascribed to her. For this reason, denied recognition and harmful
ascriptions are on a continuum. Both are forms of wrongful recognition, tantamount to a
literal nus-recognizing of the other, and therefore equally forms of disrespect.

Disrespect is also a normative category. To disrespect others is to wrong them. I
argued in chapter 2 that identity and agency are co-extensive, so that a subject’s ability to
contour and deﬁne her identity is a measure of her ﬁeedom as an agent. And yet,
because identity formation presupposes recognition, the formation of agency is not a

solitary or solely individual endeavor. Without external afﬁrmation of the substantiality

153

of its inferiority, a subject could not experience itself reﬂexively, as a differentiated locus
of feeling, thought, and action. Disrespect constitutes a normative violation because it
impedes or, in worse cases, compromises a subject’s ability to establish the practical self-
relations required by identity formation. Said differently, disrespect constitutes a form of
injustice because it deprives the disrespected of an intersubjective support, a type of
“social primary good” necessary for subjects to relate autonomously to their abilities.
needs, goals, etc. Recognition engenders and sustains personal freedom; disrespect
subverts it.

Moreover, social institutions can recognize or disrespect concrete individuals and
groups. In Honneth’s view and in my own, institutions give concrete and objective form
to recognitive norms, or rather, to the recognitive demands and expectations that
propelled historical struggles. Such conﬂicts are resolved, however tentatively, when
institutions are founded or modiﬁed so as to accommodate these recognitive demands and
expectations. Honneth therefore rightly afﬁrms that institutions exist in order to facilitate
and protect the freedom (i.e., the formation of identity and agency) of concrete
individuals. Systematic disrespect (i.e., institutionalized disrespect) thus becomes
pathological: a perversion of recognition that impairs or disrupts the normal functioning
of social processes, reproduction, and interaction.

Freedom is the normative standard by which social relations, practices, and
institutions can be evaluated. Disputes concerning whether practices or institutions
recognize or disrespect persons and groups are to be expected — and indeed, are to be
observed in contemporary societies and throughout history. For identity-recognition

theory, social criticism becomes more complex when the possibility of adaptive

154

preferences is acknowledged. On the one hand, the oppressed may adapt to their
circumstances, expecting little and asking for less, so that social inequality and power
asymmetries in time appear merely natural, as much a “fact” as gravity. On the other
hand, and as my thesis tries to show, the oppressor may adapt to their circumstances,
expecting much and studiously avoiding questions, so that the inequality and power
asymmetries that work to their beneﬁt are assumed as entitlements or conﬁrmation of
their worth and status. In both cases, while the pre-reﬂeetive affective reactions central
to Honneth’s conception of motivation continue to guide inquiry, they are not apodictic
and not to be taken at face-value. The aversive reactions that customarily prompt
resistance, whether stemming from the oppressor or oppressed, must be analyzed and
interpreted, and social freedom provides the baseline for such assessments.

Thus far in my exposition, neither the form nor the content of those recognition
relations presupposed in successful identity formation have been discussed. Rather, in
keeping with his “negative” method, Honneth chooses to examine three characteristic
forms of disrespect in order to show — i.e., to throw into relief — the afﬁrmative forms of
recognition that have been violated. In this way, he intends to indicate the corresponding
forms of recognition that are required for a person to establish and sustain a uniﬁed
identity. The forms of disrespect he cites are violence and humiliation; the denial of
rights and moral agency; and the devaluation of ways of life, social groups, and the like.
After analyzing these forms of disrespect, I explicate the positive patterns of recognition
that Honneth takes to be conditions for healthy identity formation, then conclude the

section by explaining how experiences of disrespect motivate social conﬂict.

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It may initially seem unusual to consider violence a form of disrespect that
threatens or damages identity. Violence is inﬂicted on bodies, and identity is commonly,
almost exclusively regarded as a “mental” or cognitive phenomenon. To understand the
reason Honneth construes violence as a form of disrespect, one must recall that on his
view identity is complex, not simple, and consists of different types of practical self-
relations, different ways that a person relates to her self. The body is integral to identity.
Perception, language, desires, and needs all contribute to a person’s reﬂexive self-
relations, relations to others, and relations to the norms, practices, and institutions
governing social life. A person’s practical self-relations, then, are conditioned by her
needs: by her ability to interpret and satisfy those needs and, more generally, mobilize her
body toward ends of her own choosing.

By jeopardizing physical autonomy, violence and humiliation (e.g., torture, rape,
or war casualties) directly threaten the identity of victims. Because humans are embodied
beings, they must form stable relations to their physical, perceptual, and emotional
capacities if they are to experience themselves as independent standpoints in the world.
The exercise of personal agency presupposes a basic social ontological security, which is
contingently achieved when a person begins to integrate his physical and mental
capacities and competences. Violence and humiliation threaten identity by destabilizing
or unsettling a person’s relation to his body, to other persons, and to the external
environment. The victim of more severe forms of violence or humiliation may lose self-
trust, i.e., may lose her immediate and pre-reﬂective conﬁdence in her feelings,
perceptions, movements, judgments, intentions. Indications that this fundamental level of

identity has been threatened may be revealed by feelings of shame, self-doubt, or

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alienation from one’s needs, desires, or emotions. Importantly, the distress experienced
in such cases is often felt and expressed affectively: not solely or ultimately as a violation
of principles of justice but, rather, as a moral violation. And the reason this form of
disrespect is felt or judged to be immoral is because bodily integrity, which constitutes a
person’s “trust in the world,” serves as the linchpin for more cognitive dimensions of
identity, as well as for one’s social presence.

The second type of disrespect examined by Honneth is exclusion and the denial of
rights. Examples include denying races, ethnicities, or other social groups voting rights
or participation in public institutions, as is currently the casein the U.S., where gays and
lesbians are denied the right to marry in many states. The denial of rights threatens the
identity of the persons affected because it diminishes moral agency. As Hegel intimated
in his dialectic of mutual recognition, the formation of an independent subjective
standpoint involves the ability to view one’s actions, ends, and projects from the
viewpoint of another. Only by apprehending the validity of one’s reasons for action from
the viewpoint of another can a subject become convinced of the objective validity of
those reasons. For this reason, social interaction is normative, and personal autonomy
secured intersubjectively. Moral agency and responsibility thus presuppose a system of
rights, universal and reciprocally binding norms, so that to be denied rights casts into
doubt a person’s normative self-understanding, her conﬁdence in her capacity for moral
autonomy and action. With Kantian overtones, Honneth states: “To this extent, the
experience of being denied rights is typically coupled with a loss of self-respect, of the

ability to relate to oneself as a partner to interaction in possession of equal rights on a par

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with all other individuals.’”66 The denial of rights undermines that dimension of identity
made possible by normatively governed participation in a society’s practices and
institutions.

The third type of disrespect is the degradation of groups and ways of life. What
Honneth has in mind here can (loosely) be grouped under the title of multiculturalism or
identity politics. Unlike violence, which most directly affects bodies, and the denial of
rights, which affects the ability to view one’s actions from a normative perspective, the
degradation of ways of life or social groups pertains to the ridicule or devaluation of
those features of a person’s identity that stem from collectively shared values, traits, or
projects. The threat to identity results from the systematic marginalization and
mistreatment people suffer insofar as they belong to a group. Such denigration can
produce social fragmentation and hostility between groups (e. g., between blacks and
whites, or fundamentalists and atheists) as well as shame, resentment, or a sense of
incompetence or powerlessness in persons who take themselves to be ostracized or
belittled by the dominant group(s). The dimension of identity that is developed with
compeers in various cultural settings, over against a horizon of shared values and
practices, is in this way potentially devalued and can be experienced by those affected as
a loss of worth or self-esteem.

Yet, as pointed out above, forms of disrespect at the same time indicate
corresponding “patterns of recognition,” or recognition relations that are constitutive of a
stable, cogent identity formation. As I have already ﬁlled in much of the content of these

recognition relations in my presentation of common forms of disrespect, I will in the

 

'66 Axel Honneth, “Integrity and Disrespect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on the Theory
of Recognition,” Political Theory 20:2 (May, 1992), 187-201.

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discussion below highlight key features of them, and will subsequently explain Honneth’s
view about recognition, motivation, and social conﬂict. Before proceeding, I want to
pause to consider the historical character of recognition relations on Honneth’s view.

Like Hegel, Honneth maintains that mutual recognition is a condition of
possibility for identity. He supplements this conceptual claim by incorporating empirical
data drawn from the social sciences, which data allow him to discern the forms of
recognition relations necessary for identity formation based on existing social relations,
institutions, and practices. On the one hand, Honneth argues that recognition is a
necessary precondition for identity: irrespective of time and place, identity formation
presupposes mutual recognition. That is a conceptual claim. On the other hand, he
argues that the speciﬁc form of recognition relations, which are institutionalized and
concretely sedimented in a society, cannot be determined by reﬂection alone. This
second proposition is an empirical, or quasi-empirical, claim. Put differently: that
recognition is a condition for the possibility of identity implies little about the form that
historically contingent recognition relations will assume concretely. The way that
recognition is institutionalized (qua recognition relations) is linked to historical changes
in social organization. Hence, Honneth can argue that the structure of identity is
historical, susceptible of further differentiation and thus greater degrees of personal
freedom and self-realization.

For example, viewing oneself as an autonomous and rights-bearing subject
capable of acting on universal norms is an historical achievement, made possible in part
by the emergence of various institutions under capitalism. It is not a “fact” of human

nature or a “metaphysical truth” about rational entities. Similarly, viewing oneself as a

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member of a community of value or a social group, as a person possessing certain
abilities or values and deserving of approval as that concrete individual, only became
possible once essentialist hierarchies of status, sex, and race, which had formerly elided
the concrete individual behind the homogeneity of a collectivity, lost their persuasiveness
and social purchase. Historical changes in social organization give rise to new
possibilities for identity formation, new forms of self-relation. These possibilities, which
are frequently created by struggles over recognition, or rather, by social movements that
demand new or expanded freedoms, only attain social objectivity when transformed
recognition relations are institutionalized. I elucidate this point below. Presently, I want
to turn to the three patterns of recognition which Honneth regards as necessary for
modern identity.

The ﬁrst, and most ﬁrndamental, recognition relation necessary to identity is the

'67 Honneth focuses

love relation characteristic of families, lovers, and ﬁiends. In SR,
chieﬂy on the early development of the child, from infancy forward, and therefore draws
on empirical data from such psychologists as Erik Erikson and the object-relations theory

'68 too, he discusses the institutional

of Donald Winnicott and Jessica Benjamin. In RR,
changes under capitalism that made it possible for family life to be pursued as a “private”
arrangement between a man and a woman, separate from the “public” life of economic

and political activity, during which childhood came to be seen as a period of socialization
and maturation that, ideally, was free of the burdens and responsibilities of adulthood. In

both cases, the earliest stages of a person’s growth and development are taken to be the

foundation for subsequent psychological, moral, and identity formation. For Honneth,

 

‘67 Honneth, SR, 95-107.
”’8 Honneth, RR, 138-139.

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the core purpose, part of the irreducible meaning of intimate relations (say, between
parents and child) is love, the nurturing and care for a person by means of which that
person gains the conﬁdence and ability to relate to her body (needs, desires, emotions), to
other persons, and, more generally, to the social environment. The type of love afforded
by intimate relations engenders in the person a basic trust in herself and in the
surrounding world. The self-relation in this way made possible is self-confidence (which,
in turn, is threatened by violence and humiliation).

It should be noted that although Honneth speciﬁes familial relations as a form of
relation vital to identity formation, the function served by parents (i.e., nurturers) implies
nothing about family structure. The claim that identity requires a basic conﬁdence in
one’s bodily autonomy as well as trust in the expectations and reactions of others, and
that such trust is established through caring and nurturing relations, is compatible with
various family structures, whether heterosexual or same-sex unions, and with a primary
caregiver of any sex. Since what is gained from intimate relations is self-conﬁdence
formed through love, this type of recognition relation extends beyond immediate family
relations to include friendships and love relations. Typical of the love relation as a form
of recognition is its emotional texture, the affective attachment to another person with
whom one feels connected yet distinct, and who conﬁrms the validity of one’s needs and
desires while also establishing an outside, demarcating a boundary to the person’s
subjectivity.

The second recognition relation necessary to identity is legal relations, or rather,
social relations between rights-bearing subjects. In various texts, Honneth explains that

the dimension of identity secured through legal relations is well conceived in terms of

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Kantian “respect”:169 it is the capacity of a person to assume moral responsibility and

view oneself as an autonomous agent acting on universal norms. But, unlike Kant,
Honneth views autonomy as a distinctively modern achievement: 3 new dimension of
individuality opened by transformed social relations, practices, and institutions. As a
result of the altered political and social arrangements established under capitalism,
private property and individual rights gained political legitimacy, so that thereafter
persons were legally considered rights-bearing subjects acting on reciprocally binding
norms. To regard oneself as bound by only the legal norms one helped to author, and to
regard oneself as entitled to forms of treatment one is, in turn, obligated to accord others,
is to view oneself as an autonomous moral agent entitled to equal political and social
participation. Thus, the object of legal relations is respect as an autonomous subject
capable of moral action and responsibility. For it is only by viewing oneself ﬁom the
standpoint of another, in a symmetrical and reciprocal relation, that a subject can
recognize herself as autonomously acting on universal norms. The self-relation in this
way made possible is self-respect (which is threatened by exclusion and the denial of
rights).

In contrast to the conﬁdence fostered by love relations, which is emotionally-
based, the respect resulting from legal relations is cognitive in nature. It presupposes
shared knowledge of both the norms governing interaction and the rights to which
consociates are entitled. Thus, the second dimension of identity incorporates a Kantian
emphasis on rational autonomy as well as a Haberrnasian emphasis on communication

aimed at mutual understanding. And, since the norms constituting moral autonomy are

 

'69 Honneth, SR, 111-112, 172-173; also in “Integrity and Disrespect” and “Recognition and Moral
Obligation,” Social Research 64:1 (Spring, 1997), 16-35.

162

available to any competent speaker, legal relations, by contrast with the moral
particularism of love relations, imply moral universalism.

The third and ﬁnal recognition relation necessary to identity is solidaristic
relations, characteristic of those relations wherein a person is a member of a social group
(blacks, women, gays/lesbians) or a way of life (e. g., a religious group). As noted above,
this form of recognition relation speaks to the concerns animating multicultural and
identity political theories. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, it is the part of Honneth’s
recognition theory that has received the most attention and seemed the most
controversial. Like legal relations, solidaristic relations represent an historically
emergent aspect of identity that originated in and manifested through the political,
economic, and legal institutional changes that founded modernity. With the
transformation from feudal to capitalistic economic relations (e.g., the institutionalization
of private property, formal rights, and contractual exchange) a person’s identity was no
longer anchored in naturalistically conceived ideas of “estate” or “rank?”70 One
consequence of the Hobbesian break with Aristotelian teleology, which preﬁgures the
contemporary distinction between the right and the good, is the conviction that while a
person’s economic and political actions require public normative constraints, her cultural,
religious or intimate pursuits were private matters, contingent on her choice and
preferences as a concrete and self-detennining individual.

Because a person’s status was no longer naturalistically ﬁxed by membership in a
group or a community of value, individuals and collectivities were freer to embrace or, on

the contrary, to redeﬁne or try to transform received values, practices, and social

 

”0 Honneth, SR, 121-127; RR, 140-143.

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meanings (e.g., of class, race, gender). Concrete individuals as well as collectivities
could now demand public recognition for differing forms of behavior, belief, ability, and
so on. Provided this expanded social space for identity development, together with the
enriched communicative participation so elicited, the structure of modern identity
evolved, became further differentiated internally, so that solidaristic relations between
people who share a conception of the good life coalesced as a legitimate social
expectation. The object of this form of recognition relation is esteem, which consists of
subjects afﬁrming each other’s self-understanding and sharing a sense of common
purpose. The self-relation made possible is self-esteem, the feeling and knowledge that
one’s projects, goals, and membership in groups or ways of life are valorized by others:
the assurance, that is, that one is valued as the kind of individual one is. Inasmuch as
solidaristic relations differ from primary love relations and formal legal relations, they
contain emotional as well as cognitive elements. Solidarity implies, moreover, what
Honneth calls a principle of egalitarian diﬁhrence, which can be reformulated as equality
in difference (or as different) rather than equality despite difference.

For Honneth, these are the three patterns of recognition presupposed by modern
identity formation. Intimate relations confer love and enable persons to relate to
themselves with self-conﬁdence. Legal relations, which are governed by rights and
norms and provide the reciprocal relations through which people come to see themselves
as autonomous and morally responsible agents, confer self-respect. Solidaristic relations
secure self—esteem and enable subjects to experience their abilities, values, and traits as
valuable to their social group or way of life. Each recognition relation was indirectly

indicated by identifying a corresponding form of disrespect: violence threatens a person’s

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trust in her own physicality; the denial of rights impedes a person’s ability to regard
himself as a moral agent able to act on universal norms; and the denigration of social
groups dcmeans or marginalizes persons because of their membership in a particular
group or way of life. I now turn to Honneth’s thesis that social conﬂict is motivated by
struggles for recognition and, on the basis of the above analysis, will try to clarify the
respect in which experiences of disrespect or denials of recognition motivate people to
engage in social conﬂict.

The experience of disrespect or denied recognition damages a person’s self-
relation and manifests in negative emotional reactions, e.g., shame, embarrassment, fear,
anger. What such negative emotions reveal is that a correlative form of recognition, to
which the affected person is morally entitled and on which successful identity formation
depends, has in fact been denied. It is for this reason that Honneth insists that the
presence of negative emotional reactions, insofar as they aim at restoring (or establishing
in the ﬁrst place) justiﬁed forms of recognition, illuminate the conﬂictual nature of social
relations generally, and recognition relations particularly. Identity is historical, and as
institutions and practices change, new possibilities for identity formation are disclosed.
But these new dimensions of identity are only made possible; they cannot be assured a
priori, so that the social conditions required to actualize these possibilities depend on
struggles for recognition.

An important implication follows. Given the intersubjective character of identity
as well as the initially affective nature of experiences of disrespect, demands for the
recognition of new types of identity will not be made or brought to the level of social

conﬂict by subjects acting in isolation from others. Because one articulates a self through

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social interactions that are affective and cognitive, identity formation is internally related
to recognition. In any recognition relation, each subject must at once recognize and be
recognized by the other. While it is true that a person can withhold recognition from
others, this observation misses the forest for the trees, so far as the cogency of the
subjective standpoint ﬁom which such a judgment (that is, to deny recognition) would be
made itself presupposes mutual recognition. It is in this sense that Hegel’s “I that is a
We” is to be understood: it signiﬁes an inner relatedness between individuated,
communicative subjects. So, returning to the link between disrespect and social conﬂict,
it can tenably be argued that violations of recognitive expectations are disclosed by
negative emotions only insofar as subjects are already socialized. Or rather, it is only
because disrespect transgresses shared, taken for granted recognitive norms and
expectations that people feel (and judge) such disrespect to be a moral injury, and
therefore a moral wrong. And they can form these sorts of judgments only to the extent
that they are already concretely individuated.

Hence, disrespect presupposes intersubjectively secured identity formation and
affects the disrespected emotionally, say, by provoking fear, indignation, self-contempt.
And yet, before such experiences can be judged as moral wrongs or injustices, they must
be grasped as violations of normatively justiﬁed recognitive expectations. Before the
feeling that a person has been disrespected effectively motivates her to engage in social
struggle, the experience (comprised of the offending act and the corresponding negative
emotion) must be apprehended both as a moral transgression and as typical of the
experience of members of a group. To clarify this claim, a distinction must be made in

the concept of motivation, which Honneth himself fails to draw.

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On one side, he rightly notes that experiences of disrespect can be personalized:
regarded as episodic, unsystematic, merely private harms, as when an abused spouse asks
“what did I do?” or a worker wonders “why doesn’t the boss like me?” Such feelings do
not become a source of motivation to resist until they are connected with, and understood
as typical of, the experience of others in the same situation — as typical of members of
that social group. To view subordination or marginalization as personal misfortune is to
miss the pervasiveness, the systematic nature of the moral wrong — or, indeed, to miss its
quality as a moral wrong. For this reason, Honneth maintains that a “semantic bridge” is
required to link the experiences of various persons who experience a common form (or
common forms) of disrespect. As a person realizes that her fear of violence, or her anger
at feeling erased by skin color, are experiences shared by other women of color, she can
in this way come to understand that her fearfulness, ﬁ'ustration, etc., are signs, not of her
own inadequacies or failings, but rather of a social pathology: that is, of a social reality
that systematically excludes, deprives, degrades, or fails (refuses?) to protect members of
certain social groups. Acts of disrespect once experienced privately and pre-reﬂectivel y,
disrespect that was felt before it was analyzed and interpreted, become susceptible of
articulation. Through the organizational and discursive efforts of social movements,
experiences of disrespect are made available to collective reﬂection, analysis,
interpretation, and contestation.

And yet, on the other side, more needs to be said about the structure of motivation
in the experience of the subject. Honneth examines only the affective aspect of
motivation, arguing that the experience of disrespect is felt pre-reﬂectiVely, signaled by

negative emotional reactions, and thus becomes a motive for resistance.

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Phenomenologically this seems correct; it is plausible to view disrespect as an
immediately felt threat to a person’s identity and agency. One of the key virtues of this
approach is its emphasis on embodiment, the insight that identity formation is as much
the result of bodily, emotionally charged experience as of reﬂective judgments,
intentions, and evaluations. Conceptually, however, it seems evident that a conception of
motivation, that is, an analysis of the structure of motivation, must contain a cognitive
aspect also — must involve a tacit judgment by the person affected that a normatively
justiﬁed recognitive norm has been violated. In order to prompt a person to resist the
source of disrespect and demand a nonnatively valid form of recognition, the experience
of disrespect must contain not only negative emotional reactions but also an apprehension
that a justiﬁed expectation has been denied. Reﬂection on everyday experience bears this
out, as at times an intended insult may pass unnoticed, or, on the other hand, an offhand
remark may cause embarrassment.

To conceive the structure of motivation as affective as well as (implicitly)
cognitive thus elucidates the teleological character of recognition and identity. Identity
formation presupposes mutual recognition and at the same time aims at self-realization —
the further, fuller development of personal agency. Self-realization, or the freedom to
develop one’s identity, is a fundamental form of freedom, a thick conception of
autonomy that is catalyzed and sustained by recognitive relations. When the recognition
relations on which identity depends are violated, the person affected reacts emotionally;
yet this reaction presupposes a tacit judgment, whether veridical or mistaken, that a valid
recognitive norm has been violated. Such is the structure of motivation to resist personal

experiences of disrespect. As people gain awareness that they belong to various social

168

groups (by virtue of traits, values, circumstances) and that their experiences of disrespect
are typical of members of that group, the immediacy of the affective reaction is

transformed into the motivation for a collective struggle for recognition.

Conclusion

In this chapter I presented Axel Honneth’s recognitive theory of motivation for
engaging in social conﬂict. Before examining his identity-recognition theory, I
explicated the conceptual history of the concept of mutual recognition, ﬁrst by analyzing
its origin in the work of G. W. F. Hegel, and then by reviewing important innovations
introduced in Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. Honneth derives from
Hegel, on the one hand, a transcendental argument concerning the preconditions of
identity. The cogency of identity presupposes the recognition of others who, by virtue of
such recognition, afﬁrm the inviolability of a subject’s bodily integrity; the autonomy and
equality of persons as moral agents; and the worth of a subject’s dispositions, traits,
values, and social contributions. On the other hand, Honneth locates the germ of a social
theory in the early Hegel’s insistence that social relations and practices emerge from
historically constituted and institutionalized recognition relations.

From Habermas’s theory of communicative action, Honneth derives a theory of
social interaction based, not on metaphysical conceptions of subjectivity, but rather on a
conception of communicative agents whose linguistic agency, moral autonomy, and
identity develop intersubj ectively, as a result of communication aimed at mutual
understanding. While Honneth identiﬁes identity formation rather than the universal

presuppositions of speech as the basis of social theory, he remains within the

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communicative framework pioneered by Habermas. The latter has little of a systematic
nature to say about the felt or lived experiences that motivate people to protest injustice,
however. Or rather, Habermas does not analyze the phenomenology of moral injury that
motivates individuals and collectivities to engage in struggles over the meaning of norms,
rationalizations for social domination, and sources of disrespect, violence, and exclusion.
It is here that Honneth’s focus on identity formation is especially valuable.

By theorizing identity formation as well as the recognitive expectations and
relations that necessarily accompany it, Honneth is able to situate critical theory in a
process intrinsic to social reproduction, namely, individuation and socialization. All
communicative subjects individuated, and the condition of possibility for and the
sustainability of individuation presuppose mutual recognition. Self-realization, freedom,
and personal agency are bound up with, can be enhanced or impeded by, the quality of
recognition relations governing social interaction. The liberatory potential of identity-
recognition theory consists of the claims that disrespect and denials of recognition are
normative violations that damage the integrity of a person’s identity, which consequently
diminish her agency and subvert her efforts at self-realization; and that such violations
are felt pre-reﬂectively, i.e., experienced emotionally as moral wrongs before they are
reﬂectively apprehended as, say, a failure to observe a moral rule. Because direspect
threatens a process necessary for social reproduction, identifying characteristic forms of
disrespect supplies a basis for social criticism and illuminates possibilities for
transcending relations of domination and power.

But more germane to my thesis is the way Honneth links identity and recognition

to the question of motivation for entering social conﬂict. Since identity conceptually and

170

empirically presupposes recognition, experiences of disrespect not only are normative
violations but are felt as injuries to one’s self or personhood. For this reason, Honneth
avers that disrespect is initially “signaled negatively” by emotions such as anger, shame,
etc., rather than formulated positively (or reﬂectively) as a transgression of a moral or
political norm. When experiences of disrespect are understood to be typical of members
of a particular social group, as can happen when social movements articulate grievances
and form “semantic bridges” between personal experience and structural phenomena,
then the well has been primed for collective struggles for recognition.

In this light, a problem with Wellman’s deﬁnition of racism becomes evident.
While he afﬁrms that white racism should be construed as a struggle over scarce
resources, he nonetheless explains the resistance to race-sensitive social policies among
middle- and upper-class whites, whose economic interests are not threatened by such
policies, by citing their commitment to the principles of individualism, equality, and
merit. The problem is not with Wellman’s explanation, as such, but with the fact that the
explanation’s persuasiveness derives from assumptions about the motivating force of
identity and recognitive expectations. But Wellman is unable to see this because of the
economistic assumptions on which his theory of racism is based. The ontology of the
person that is presupposed in his theory is monological and subjectivist, in contrast to the
intersubjective conception of identity embraced by identity-recognition theory.
Consequently, he accepts as given the primacy of self-interest, in general, and economic
self-interest, in particular. Moreover, he has no account of the role of historical

transformations in a society’s material conditions or of communicative interaction among

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social members in shaping, abandoning, re-interpreting, and modifying social institutions
and relations.

The upshot, as I show in the following chapter, is that economistic theory is
ﬂawed both as a theory of motivation and as an account of why racially dominant groups
are motivated to resist forms of social change that would — or would seem to — jeopardize
their privilege and hegemony. Speciﬁcally, the forms of recognition Honneth calls legal
and solidaristic relations are threatened, or are perceived by whites to be threatened, by

efforts to reduce racial inequality and oppression.

Chapter 5

A Identity-Recognition Theory of Motivation for Social Conflict

In this chapter I defend the thesis that the motivation for engaging in social
conﬂict, speciﬁcally racial conﬂict, is better conceived as the result of disrespect or
denied recognition than as the result of the defense of economic self-interest. In chapter
3, I deﬁned economism; presented Wellman’s theory of racism, which exempliﬁes
economistic theory; then developed a criticism of that View. In chapter 4, I presented an
alternative theory, the identity-recognition social theory of Honneth, and traced the
conceptual lineage of that tradition from Hegel, through Habermas, to Honneth’s current
position. Now I want to juxtapose economistic and identity-recognition theories to show
that continued white resistance to social policies directed toward ameliorating racial
inequality is more plausibly understood as the result, not of a defense of race-speciﬁc
economic interest, but of the perception among whites that they have been wrongly
recognized or denied recognition.

Elaborating on a criticism mentioned in chapter 3, I begin by arguing that
economism, in addition to being a theory of motivation, is implicitly a theory of identity
and agency. Insofar as economism assumes that economic self-interest is the most
generalizable type of motivation, it emphasizes only that part of subjectivity and action
that invOlves economic interaction, and thereby ignores the motivational force of
experiences originating in race and gender relations, religious values and beliefs, and so

on. Economism insists that people are motivated at bottom by self-interest, which

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implies that social change results ﬁom the pursuit of economic well-being and that
constitutive elements of identity and agency such as race and gender are, in a sense,
epiphenomenal or subsidiary. Because this is a claim about how people experience or
identify with themselves and their social relations, it is actually an identity claim; and
because it reduces the signiﬁcance of various forms of identity to economic agency, it is a
reductionist identity claim. Since economism is this sort of reductionist theory of identity
and agency, it cannot illuminate non-economic forms of conﬂict, or rather, other
motivations for participating in social struggles. Moreover, economism is ahistorical, a
false universalization of self—interested economic agency which is grounded in the
commodity form. Thus, I draw on Marxist theory as well to demonstrate that economism
reiﬁes contingent social relations and forms of agency.

My critique of economism — that it is an ahistorical theory of identity and agency,
and to that extent reductionist and incapable of adequately grasping the motivation for
social conﬂict — is not meant to deny that people are sometimes motivated to enter social
conﬂict to protect economic interests. While in my view Honneth is ambiguous on this
point, I consider the strong thesis that economic self-interest plays no role in social
struggles patently implausible. My critique of economism is rather intended to support
the weaker, yet no less interesting thesis that the more common motivation for social
struggle emerges from the experience that justiﬁed recognitive expectations have been
violated. Formulated this way, the thesis admits of struggles that are ostensibly aimed at
securing economic interests. But even here, it may be the case that purportedly
distributive struggles are motivated by the sense among the members of a social group

that they, in particular, have been unjustly denied social resources or opportunities. It is

174

here that I marshal the recognition-theoretic concepts discussed in chapter 4 to defend my
claim that white opposition to particular social policies can be more fruitfully conceived
as the result of experiences of disrespect.

More precisely, I argue that the disrespect motivating whites to resist efforts to
improve the well-being of blacks arises out of perceived threats to white privilege. Of
course, I mean privilege in a broader sense than Wellman, who uses the term in a
reductive, economistic sense. I distinguish between social, cultural, political and legal
privileges, on one hand, and economic advantage, on the other. The sense that whites
occupy a special place in American society issues from and perpetuates a presumption of
normative rightness and inviolability, so that any demand placed on whites, placed on the
social and cultural authority arrogated by them, is experienced as an afﬁont, an unjust
encroachment on what is experienced as an unquestioned and rightful entitlement. In
keeping with critical theory’s interdisciplinary approach, I develop my claim by drawing
on sociological research concerning what has been called welfare racism. Doing so not
only casts doubt on Wellman’s assertion that the problem of racism today has little or
nothing to do with prejudice, as mentioned in chapter 3. By recalling the prevalence of
racial stereotyping so apparent in criticisms of social welfare and afﬁrmative action in the
19905, it additionally demonstrates how imaginary threats to entitlement and normative
self-understanding produced white anger and indignation, commonly expressed as

resistance to social welfare.

Critique of Economism
In chapter 3, I argued that economism is a version of rational choice theory that,

on one hand, assumes that human action is motivated by (speciﬁcally) economic self-

175

interest and, on the other, presupposes that subjectivity is structured by strategic relations
between subjects as well as between subjects and objects. Such are the premises of a
social ontology underlying not only classical liberalism and rational choice theory, but
Wellman’s theory of racism. For Wellman, white racism in America is — and will remain
— misunderstood so long as it is theorized as a form of irrationality or prejudice, or as a
cultural phenomenon consisting of and sustained by systems of demeaning
representations and beliefs. In his view, although beliefs about race (about the nature of
race and the character of race relations) play a role in racism, they do so only indirectly.
Rather than reveal disdainful attitudes toward blacks, as is characteristic on the prejudice
model, racist beliefs serve as a rationalization for what really concerns whites: preserving
their status and privileged position in the racially-coded economic hierarchy. So, for
Wellman, the true motivation behind white resistance to policies aimed at improving the
well-being of blacks is economic self-interest: given the fact of scarcity, race-conscious
distributive schemes threaten white economic privilege, so that it is self-interest, not
antipathy toward blacks, that motivates white opposition to social change.

In chapter 3 I also argued that Wellman’s theory is economistic, because he
assumes that action should be conceived as a form of strategic reason. In contrast to
communicative reason, which is intersubjective, a form of reason employed by and
between communicative subjects, strategic reason is monological, a form of reason used
by subjects in relation to objects, where the latter exist as mere means to the ends of the
former. Insofar as Wellman asserts that racist beliefs are rational, i.e., serve to attain the
ends of white security, he construes social relations strategically rather than

intersubjectively. The problem with such an assumption is that it uncritically relies on

176

the stark individualism for which classical liberalism has ﬁequently been criticized,
which has the effect of obscuring the constitutive roles of recognition and historical
change in identity formation and social relations.

The assumptions that action is strategic and motivated by economic self-interest
obscure the role of recognition in identity formation and social relations in the following
ways. On such a view the question of identity formation, the development of a subject’s
ability to relate to self as well as to others as a concrete individual, scarcely arises. The
economistic model instead presupposes and generalizes from an abstract individual with
pre-given interests and motivations. The inﬂuence of socialization on the constitution of
a reﬂexive subjectivity — the formation of desires and preferences, the acceptance or
rejection of values, and so on— is met with theoretical silence, or else regarded as
secondary. Economism, in other words, conceptually starts from the already formed
individual without attempting to theorize the process of individualization through which a
human being becomes a concrete individual. Thus, social relations are conceived as
external relations between static, self-enclosed individuals, whose agency is an ahistorical
given and whose social relations are governed by ubiquitous competition instead of
recognition. To conceive of individuality and social relations in this way surreptitiously
requires theorizing intersubj ective relations as, instead, relations between subjects and
objects, since in a given relation one subject is merely a means to the ends of another,
either as an obstacle or an enabling prop. This conception of identity and relationality is
characteristic of the position I am calling economism. There is no a priori necessity to
conceiving of agency and interests in this manner. But insofar as economism conceives

of identity and relationality in this way, the pre-theoretical, cognitive and affective

177

relations between subjects whose identities depend on being recognized are eﬁectively
elided.

The implications of the social ontological assumptions of economism are
signiﬁcant especially in regard to questions of agency, social conﬂict, and the historical
character of both. For, as I have argued above, economism is covertly a conception of
agency and eo ipso of social conﬂict. Inasmuch as economism holds that action,
individual or collective, is motivated by economic self-interest, it reduces the conceptual
ﬁeld not only of possible motivations but also of possible identities, goals, forms of
reason, and types of conﬂict. To argue that the social action undertaken by subjects is
invariably self-interested and motivated by economic well-being implies that persons are,
essentially, economic agents. Thus any agency exercised by, e.g., women, blacks, or
gays, irrespective of their self-conception or understanding of their motives or actions, is
on such a View always to be interpreted as economic. But this interpretation would entail
interpreting social movements like feminism or anti-racism through a distributive lens,
which would either trivialize or drain them of their speciﬁcity.

This criticism is already familiar. Insofar as economism insists on an abstract and
self-interested individualism, it is incapable of conceptually appreciating different forms
of and motivations for interaction, as well as different forms of identity and their
relevance to concerns about justice and morality. As a result, and as has been argued in
regard to orthodox strains of Marxism, theories that reduce the motivation and ends of
action to economic self-interest fail to grasp the heterogeneity of current and past social
conﬂicts, ranging from labor struggles for greater workplace autonomy, to feminist

demands for legal protections against sexual harassment and marital violence, to anti-

178

racist efforts to end stereotyping and discriminatory practices. An economistic theory
would be hard pressed to demonstrate, in each case, that what motivated such conﬂicts
was economic self-interest, or that all or most feminist or anti-racist struggles have been
merely veiled expressions of economic interest.

Although this criticism remains important and probably under-appreciated, the
problem with economism extends beyond it to a commonly less noticed fact: economism
is a conception of identity. I noted above that, in Honneth’s as well as in my view,
identity is a complex concept involving interconnected types of self-relation. I added to
this general formulation of identity a more speciﬁc deﬁnition, namely: identity is
reﬂexive subjectivity with self-understanding, and so is coterminous with agency.
Identity refers to a subject’s ability autonomously to evaluate and interpret her wants and
needs, actions and interactions, beliefs and values. Identity formation is therefore
properly understood as a form of practical freedom. Such a conception of identity,
especially in its emphasis on dimensions of embodied experience, has almost nothing in
common with alternative views that conceive identity as a core or authentic self, or
psychologically tinted views that conceive identity as self-image or personal narrative.
Identity is internally linked with the ability to act socially, so that agency and identity are
mutually implicative. As argued in chapters 2 and 4, a subjectivity capable of
apprehending itself as independent of, yet related to, another subjectivity is a
precondition for the ability to take objects (e.g., situations, events, meanings) as
mattering (i.e., as meaningful, of value). If a person is to deliberate, decide and act
purposefully, it is necessary not only that she experience needs, wants, desires, but that

she experience these needs and wants as hers, as feelings or dispositions with some type

179

of value to her. Insofar as economism theorizes action and motivation, it is to that extent
a theory of identity, since its basic assumption is that what motivates and orients action
and desire is economic self-interest.

Of course, rational choice theorists and liberal theorists alike would probably
reject my claim that economism is a theory of identity. Identity, that squiggly, “highly
contested” concept is, they might say, precisely what is bracketed out of their theory. But
if the link I propose between identity and agency is defensible, that objection is mistaken.
For the assertion that action is motivated by economic self-interest, and is for that reason
rational, is at once a claim about the motives, interests, and ends governing the actions
and social relations of any concrete individual. Put another way, economism is a theory
about how people understand, orient, and valorize their public and private lives. And
these are just the elements with which a person’s self-conception, which always includes
her membership in groups and communities, is articulated. For these reasons, I maintain
that economism is a theory of identity and agency — a theory of how persons practically
and reﬂexively relate to their desires, ends, endeavors, and so on.

In this light, the ahistorical character of economism becomes visible. The two
premises of economism, i.e., that action is motivated by economic self-interest and that
social relations are governed by strategic reason, reﬂect what Marx called the commodity

'71 In non-Marxian language, they present the social relations prevalent under a

form.
contingent historical constellation of social and economic institutions as though those

relations were eternal, natural, and universal. In other words, economistic theory implies

that the form of social relations institutionalized under capitalism is natural to human

 

171 Karl Marx, trans. Ben Fowkes Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, (New York: Vintage
Books, 1977), especially chapters 1 and 3, “The Commodity” and “Money, or the Circulation of
Commodities.”

180

relationships as such. The concepts of commodity fetishism172 and reification173 are
intended to capture precisely this sort of false naturalization and etemalization of
concepts, relations, and forms of agency, which are, in reality, products of social

”4 Reiﬁcation denotes a type of conceptual error that occurs

interaction and history.
when a concept is regarded as a thing or when speciﬁc social relations are treated as
natural kinds or as causally determined. The error in presenting social relations as
strategic, and economic self-interest as a universal motivation, consists of the assumption
that the goals, motivations, and practices of a particular historical formation are qualities
of human nature. Similarly, commodity fetishism (more a practical than a conceptual
error, and deﬁned by Marx175 as treating social relations as relations between things and
relations between things as social relations) refers, for my purposes here, to the
assumption that social relations are properly strategic: that in interaction subjects simply
do relate to other subjects as they would to objects. Rather than acknowledge the
contingent and historical nature of social relations, economism naturalizes them, in this
way universalizing and etemalizing them. Such an absence of historical self-awareness
further supports my claim that economism is a type of identity, insofar as it makes

substantive assumptions about the character of individuality, agency, motivation, and

social conﬂict.

 

172 Marx, Capital, 163-177 especially. Also see Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 34—40.

'73 Probably the most famous analysis of reiﬁcation is in “Reiﬁcation and the Consciousness of the
Proletariat,” in Georg Lukacs, trans. Rodney Livingstone History and Class Consciousness: Studies in
Marxist Dialectics, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971). Also see Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist
Development.

'74 “Something which is only valid for this particular form of production. . .appears to those caught up in
the relations of commodity production. . .to be just as ultimately valid as the fact that the scientific
dissection of the air into its component parts left the atmosphere itself unaltered in its physical
conﬁguration.” Marx, Capital, 167.

‘75 Marx, Capital, 164-165,

181

As noted above, to reify strategic action and economic self-interest as universal
qualities of human nature, as essential to and deﬁnitive of social interaction, takes no
account of different sources of motivation, nor of the historical character of social
relations, complexity of identity, or new dimensions of subjectivity opened by
transformations in social practices and institutions. Given its limited social ontology,
economism lacks the conceptual resources to grasp the nuances and speciﬁcity of social
struggles that involve identity claims, i.e., demands by individuals (qua members of
social groups) to be respected and recognized as particular individuals capable of
contributing to a community’s shared goals and projects. An identity-recognition social
theory, on the contrary, is attuned to the ways that changes in social institutions give rise
to new social relations, which create new personal freedoms and possibilities for self-
realization and, thus, new forms of and demands for recognition.

So, for example, while the contractual character of social relations under
capitalism gave institutional support to the recognition of personal autonomy and legal
rights, the modeling of social relations on a pattern of contractual exchange nonetheless
coexisted with appalling material deprivations of the lower classes, histories of
colonization and slavery, as well as the oppression of women. Although it is true that
many of these injustices were, to some degree, rectiﬁed by social conﬂicts that appealed
to human rights and individual autonomy, this retort misses the forest for the trees.
Properly to understand social change (and, putatively, moral progress) requires
examination of what motivated blacks, women, colonized peoples, and the underclass to

resist and struggle against injustice.

182

An adequate and convincing answer to this question requires a shift ﬁom an
economistic to an identity-recognition conception of motivation. Again, I am not arguing
that economic self-interest never plays a role in social conﬂict, or that social conﬂict is in
every case a struggle for recognition. My position is less ambitious than that, consisting
instead of the thesis that, most commonly, what motivates people to engage in social
conﬂict is the perceived threat to, and thus the need to protect, identity. To say that social
conﬂict is motivated by struggles for recognition means that, given the dependence of
identity on intersubjective recognition, persons perceive that their subjectivity, their sense
of self, is jeopardized by certain traditions, practices, and so on. In instances of social
conﬂict with a more or less economic character, the motivation may be self-interest or
experienced disrespect; determining which constitutes the more decisive motivational
catalyst will often be an empirical question. Not all labor struggles are indisputably
distributive, and not all recognition conﬂicts are primarily about afﬁrming one’s “self-
image.” Nonetheless, an identity-recognition theory is better able speak to and evaluate
ostensibly economic struggles, than an. economistic theory is able to account for
recognition conﬂicts.

In sum: 1 have thus far argued that the theory of economism depends on concepts
and claims derived ﬁ'om an identity—recognition theory. Insofar as economism fails to
acknowledge and explicitly develop these presuppositions, it provides an incomplete and
inadequate social ontology, and thus a ﬂawed account of action and motivation for
participating in social conﬂict. Assuming that the motivation for interaction and conﬂict
is always economic self-interest simply omits the role of intersubj ective recognition in

identity formation. Moreover, the assumption is reductionistic, since it either fails to

183

consider other motivations for action or subordinates these to economic self-interest, as

when points of view grouped under the label “identity politics” are dismissed as

77 178

archaisms,176 distractions,l or matters of self-irnage. Another ﬂaw of economism
consists in its inability to account for its own conditions of possibility, which include the
historically emergent forms of recognition relations and identity made possible by
changes in institutions and social practices under capitalism. It is in part because of the
prevalence of the commodity form that stark individualism and strategic social relations
could come to appear as “natural,” or as a universal quality of human nature. And so, to
the extent that economism fails to theorize its contingent and historical character, it
remains both conceptually impoverished and empirically narrow.

In the next section, I defend the thesis that what motivates whites in America to
oppose social change aimed at remedying racial inequality is the perception that race-

conscious change denies them recognition, or rather, that such change disrespects or

excludes whites in some way.

Social Conflict and Struggles for Recognition
In this section I show that the motivation to engage in social conﬂict is conceived
better as a struggle for recognition than as a conﬂict over economic self-interest. First, I

discuss what has been called welfare racism.l 79 By welfare racism I mean a discourse

 

176 . . . . . . .
As when mdlgenous cultures or organic customs and tradltlons are regarded as qualnt or endearrng, but
ultimately peripheral to economic growth or security.

See Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality:
Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000), 319-320 especially.

Fraser, “Recognition without Ethics?” and “Rethinking Recognition.”
'79 Kenneth J. Ncubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card against America ’3
Poor (New York: Routledge. 2001). “We deﬁne welfare racism as the organization of racialized public
assistance attitudes, policy making, and administrative practices,” 36.

184

and set of stereotypes and preconceptions prominent in the US. throughout the 19905
that portrayed social welfare as a black phenomenon and, more egregiously, as a form of
social policy that threatened traditional American values such as independence, self-
reliance, a sturdy work ethic, and merit. Secondly, I link this sociologically supported
discussion with the premises of identity-recognition theory to show that it is the
perception of disrespect or denied recognition that prompts white opposition to welfare.
My intention is not to justify such a stance, but rather to offer what seems to me a more
tenable interpretation of what has motivated racial disharmony in the US.

Basing my claims on sociological studies, I want to show that many of the
stereotypes and images associated with welfare depict recipients of federal assistance as
lazy, undeserving, and content to rely on “handouts” rather than make an honest effort to
ﬁnd work. Such preconceptions were reﬂected in public opinion conceming welfare,
which fairly consistently expressed outrage at the “welfare fraud” perpetrated by those
who purportedly, “cheated the system.” If the case can be made that the harshest
criticisms of welfare were color-coded, that the media representations, misconceptions,
and stereotypes about welfare speciﬁcally depicted blacks as those “cheating” the system
at the expense of “hardworking” whites, then this will support my claim that white
resistance to social change aimed at beneﬁting blacks is fueled by race — race qua identity
which fuels racial antagonism. My aim is not to restore a prejudice model of racism; I do
not argue, for example, that whites “just don’t like” blacks or can only establish
themselves as (normatively ideal) Subject by reducing blacks (qua Other) to the status of
Object. Nor is my intent to show that blacks are discriminated against or disadvantaged

by the welfare system itself. Similarly, I do not mean to imply that such stereotypes and

185

preconceptions are solely racist; there are also sexist stereotypes and stigmas that have
negatively inﬂuenced public opinion about welfare. Still, I want to show how racial
stereotypes, representations, and misconceptions function to create in whites a feeling of
victimization, injustice, or a sense that their values and normative expectations are
violated by a welfare system that is perceived to beneﬁt mainly blacks; and how this
serves to motivate many whites adamantly to oppose such policies and practices.

In Why Americans Hate Welfarelso, Martin Gilens contends that Americans do not
oppose welfare as such. In fact, most Americans accept that the government has some
responsibility to provide certain forms of welfare for all citizens, such as affordable
housing, health care, public education, job retraining programs, and social security
beneﬁts. Not only did survey respondents support these programs in principle, they
expressed a willingness to support them practically by paying higher taxes. The speciﬁc
form of welfare that aroused public ire and opposition was, by contrast, AFDC (or, post-
1995, TAN F),'8| which administered public assistance through monthly means-tested
payments. For my purposes here, two immediate conclusions drawn by Gilens are worth
noting: ﬁrst, attitudes toward welfare are not meaningfully explained in terms of self-
interest. Survey data indicate that Americans do not oppose welfare simpliciter; they
accept the need for, and express a willingness to support certain types of, programs.

- What they oppose is that form of welfare which consists of cash payments to individuals
and families. (The reason for this opposition will be discussed below.) Secondly,
attitudes toward welfare are not neatly or obviously explained by American

individualism. For conceding that the government has some responsibility to ensure the

 

180 Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics ofAntipoverty Policy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Hereafter referred to as WAH W.

l Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, respectively.

186

well-being of citizens in need at once implies an appreciation of the fact that, at times,
people are rendered dependent or vulnerable through no fault of their own, e. g., when
corporate executives and shareholders decide to outsource labor. Thus, opposition to
public assistance is not explained by a dogmatic, unreﬂective commitment to
individualism.

To discern why Americans oppose welfare administered as cash payments to
individuals and families, Gilens distinguishes between public perceptions of the poor. On
one side are those who are poor due to external factors and circumstances over which
they have no control, e.g., “market ﬂuctuations.” These persons deserve assistance from
the government to help them “get back on their feet,” but only so far as they set their
sights on ﬁnding a new job and reestablishing their economic independence. On the
other side, in contrast to the deserving poor, are those who are poor because of internal
factors and circumstances over which individuals can be expected to exercise control.
According to public perceptions, these persons are undeserving of government help since
their poverty arises ﬁ'om their own lack of initiative, rejection of a proper work ethic, and
willingness to “go on welfare” indeﬁnitely instead of securing work.

When a 1995 survey asked whether ‘most people on welfare are using welfare for

a short period of time and will get off it eventually’ or ‘most people on welfare

are so dependent on welfare that they will never get off it,’ only 15 percent said

most use welfare for a short time; 79 percent said most welfare recipients will
never get off welfare.I82
It is here that American individualism reasserts itself. For what is decisive in public

opposition to welfare are the widespread assumptions that recipients are able but not

willing to work, and that their needs are therefore not genuine needs at all but, rather,

 

‘82 Gilens, WAHW, 37.

187

needs arising ﬁom laziness and a resigned dependency. The difference between
American attitudes toward welfare programs in general and those that provide cash
payments to individuals and families in particular is therefore explained by perceptions
and judgments of the values, traits, and moral character of the persons receiving the latter
type of assistance. As Gilens notes:
Americans’ individualistic ideology, rather than resulting in a principled rejection
of welfare as such, provides a basis for judging the moral worthiness of welfare
recipients. Americans support government aid for those who are trying — but
nevertheless failing to make it on their own. But the “undeserving poor,” who
choose to remain on welfare when they could be supporting themselves, receive
little sympathy. '83
While challenging the assumption that a signiﬁcant number of persons on welfare
are there by choice would be worthwhile, this is not the place to do so. Instead I want to
turn to the main conclusion of Gilens’s research, which is that Americans, and whites
particularly, regularly overestimate the number of blacks who are poor as well as the
number who are on welfare; and, similarly, generalize about welfare recipients based on
preconceptions and stereotypes of blacks. More precisely, Gilens provides evidence that
Americans view blacks as lazy, lacking a proper work ethic, comprising a majority of the
poor, and thus especially susceptible to dependence on — or becoming “trapped by” —
welfare. When such stereotypes of blacks as lazy and unwilling to work are combined
with the mistaken assumption that they constitute the (numeric) majority of welfare
recipients and the poor, it seems to follow that public opposition to welfare is based on
and reﬂects a negative, demeaning judgment of blacks as a social group. Or, put

differently, the reason Americans oppose some but not all forms of welfare stems from

moral judgments about the putative habits and behaviors of welfare recipients. Yet these

 

‘83 Ibid, 63.

188

habits, traits, and so on mirror the stereotypes that (white) Americans have of blacks, so
that, almost syllogistically, Americans consider welfare illegitimate and morally
unacceptable to the extent that it is coded black. Were these attitudes formulated into a
syllogism, the argument would be: blacks are lazy; welfare recipients are lazy; therefore
welfare recipients are black. This argument is clearly both invalid and unsound. But
what I want to call attention to is the way in which racial stereotypes creep into and shape
public discourse and perceptions about public assistance and moral dessert.

In “Race Matters?”84 James M. Avery and Mark Peftley examine how print and
television media have racialized welfare through selective images and representations of
welfare recipients and the poor, and link this to negative public attitudes about welfare.
The media contributes to the racialization of welfare by accompanying stories about
poverty and welfare primarily with images of blacks, thereby suggesting to viewers and
readers that the latter constitute a greater numeric percentageqof the poor than they in fact
do. Moreover, the racial composition of media representations of poverty and welfare
vary according to the tone and content of the story being reported: stories about unwed
mothers, dependency, or “welfare fraud” are more often illustrated with images of blacks,
while stories about job retraining or poverty among the elderly are more likely to be
illustrated by images of whites. Avery and Pefﬂey as well as Gilens show that, prior to
the .19605, portrayals of the poor mainly consisted of images of (rural) whites; from the
19605 through the late 19905, by contrast, depictions of the poor, especially of those
receiving welfare, increasingly consisted of images of blacks, such that from 1950 to

1992 nearly “two-thirds of the poor people pictured in major news magazines and

 

‘84 James M. Avery and Mark Pefﬂey, “Race Matters: The Impact of News Coverage of Welfare Reform
on Public Opinion,” in Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform, ed. Sanford F. Schram, Joe 8055. and
Richard C. Fording (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). Hereafter referred to as RPWR.

189

network news broadcasts were black — about twice the true proportion of blacks among
the nation’s poor?”85

Of course, the change in media representations of welfare recipients and the poor
could be explained as a response to greater public awareness of urban poverty or,
following the civil rights battles of the 19605, of the hardships and obstacles conﬁ'onting
blacks. Whether such explanations are tenable is not at issue, however, since I am not
claiming that news producers deliberately chose to misrepresent the percentage of blacks
among welfare recipients or the poor. Rather, the fact of the disparity itself is important
due to the effect it has produced — or, perhaps better, the impression it has reinforced — in
public perceptions about poverty and welfare.

By repeatedly associating blacks with poverty and welfare, particularly the
negative or unpopular aspects, the media reproduces and propagates the racial stereotypes
mentioned above and, in this way, intensiﬁes opposition to welfare. The way such
representations are taken up and digested by members of the public are shown in surveys
indicating that, other things being equal, respondents are more likely to blame a black
woman for losing her job, i.e., attribute fault to the individual, than a white woman, in
which case “blame is more likely to be directed at the problem of welfare reform?”86
Similarly, “respondents who read a story with an accompanying photograph of a black
(versus a white) woman and her child were decidedly more harsh in their evaluations of

welfare recipients and welfare in general?”87 This suggests that the media fuels negative

attitudes toward — and thus opposition to — welfare by stressing the personal failings of

 

’85 Avery and Pefﬂey, RPWR, 133.
'86 Avery and Pefﬂey, RPWR, 140.
'87 Ibid, 146.

190

recipients, or rather, by framing stories and reportage in terms of racially-loaded
stereotypes and preconceptions about individual responsibility, independence and
initiative, commitment to the work ethic, merit, and so on.

I have argued that Americans do not oppose welfare as such but rather a particular
type of welfare, namely, that consisting of payments to individuals and families. And I
have shown that such resistance arises from the racial coding of welfare combined with
the public perception that welfare rewards the “undeserving poor.” Since the traits,
values, habits, and behaviors of the “undeserving poor” mirror stereotypes of blacks, I
suggested it was plausible to view opposition to welfare as a veiled expression of
derogatory attitudes towards blacks generally, as well as of the presumption among
whites that their own traits and values possess moral authority.

These claims are supported by Dean Baker’s observation in “Numbers Before

”188

Politics that Americans wildly overestimate the amount of federal money spent on

welfare. Fully 40% of Americans believe that welfare is one of the two largest items in
the federal budget; it is no doubt for this reason that allegations of welfare “fraud” and
“wastefulness” arouse su'ch pique as they do. Yet in light of the research discussed
above, and aside from the falsity of the belief about the budget, it seems crucial to
emphasize who the public assumes is receiving the money. If welfare recipients are
assumed to be black and if blacks are perceived to comprise the “undeserving poor,” it
seems reasonable to conclude that what provokes discontent and opposition is not the

mere fact that tax dollars are being used for welfare but, more precisely, that they are

being used to reward the members of a social group viewed as morally undeserving, or

 

'88 Dean Baker, “Numbers Before Politics," In These Times 29:12 (May, 2005)

191

even unworthy of help. If it were only a question of the government extorting taxes from
citizens, the same rancor and resistance would be directed toward welfare in general, and
surely toward corporate welfare in particular. Such is not the case. Instead, the most
strident criticisms of welfare continue to center on AFDC/TANF and to appeal to the

putative personal failings of recipients.

What I hoped to show by reviewing sociological ﬁndings on welfare racism is
that an economistic explanation of white opposition to welfare misunderstands the basic
motivation for such opposition. Pivotal in shaping public perceptions about the
legitimacy of welfare and the worthiness of recipients are the race of the latter as well as
the practices and values respondents consider morally acceptable. Opposition to certain
forms of welfare arises from the perception that cash payments reward the “undeserving
poor,” i.e., the lazy, those who reject the work ethic and are simply unwilling to support
themselves. Further, these judgments concerning personal character mirror racial
stereotypes of blacks, which explains why respondents tended to attribute fault to black
but not white welfare recipients and, on the whole, expressed suspicion about the causes
of black poverty. Misconceptions about the number of blacks who are poor or receiving
welfare are reinforced by the media’s disproportionately picturing blacks in stories on
welfare and by associating blacks with its most unpopular aspects, as well as by the
mistaken belief that welfare constitutes a larger portion of the national budget than it
does. Together, these last two misconceptions underscore the perception that welfare
rewards the unworthy and that welfare “wastefulness” is caused by “freeloaders” and

“cheats.”

192

Nonetheless, given what was said above about the historical nature of identity
formation, social relations, and institutions, it might yet be argued that economism offers
a tenable account of white resistance to welfare and afﬁrmative action. If modern social
organization, norms, and practices engender the strategic individualism found in liberal-
capitalist societies, it may be that for purely historical reasons an economistic account of
motivation aptly describes contemporary conﬂicts in those societies. Although such a
view would entail rejecting economism’s claim to universality, it might salvage the
plausibility of economism by acknowledging its own historical contingency while, at the
same time, maintaining that it is the modern structure of identity that justiﬁes explaining
social conﬂict in terms of economic self-interest. Despite the attractiveness of this
attempt to historicize economism, I will argue in the remainder of the chapter that white
opposition to efforts aimed at bettering the status of blacks in America is motivated not
by the desire to protect economic advantage but, rather, by the perceived threat posed to
white identity.

White identity in the US. is constituted by historical and presumptive authority,
power, and privilege. I do not mean economic advantage, since economic relations are
such that many whites have little or no decision-making authority or power. Rather I
mean whites enjoy more subtle social and cultural privileges vis-ci-vis blacks, as was
illustrated by reﬂection on attitudes toward welfare, which included presumptions of
independence, responsibility and achievement, and greater cultural visibility and
acceptance. These privileges, or the self-assurance they offer white identity, are
underwritten by social and cultural values and practices. Inasmuch as white identity is

informed by such values as independence, personal responsibility and merit, and such

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relations and practices as competition, private property rights, and so on, white identity
crucially depends on defending the validity of those values, relations, and practices.
Social movements or political policies that link the efﬁcacy of individual agency or moral
responsibility to a broader historical context or to membership in social groups (e.g.,
Blacks, Women) therefore challenge the archetypal image whites have of themselves —
not only how they “see” themselves but, more importantly, how they experience their
status, accomplishments, sacriﬁces, and ambitions. For this reason, it can be argued that
the ability coherently to relate to oneself, to one’s actions and goals, as a morally
accountable person equal to others — without privileges or advantages gained through the
domination or oppression of others — requires overlooking the ways in which the identity
and agency of whites qua white are grounded in and sustained by practices, relations, and
normative judgments that subordinate or disadvantage others insofar as they are members
of particular social groups. Social welfare, afﬁrmative action, and reparations, I submit,
present precisely such challenges to white identity.

Thus far, the points I have made remain at the level of sociological observation.
It may be that white Americans retain an ideal image of themselves as committed to (in
principle) and embodying (in practice) universal norms and impartial values. But further
argument is necessary to show what this has to do with the question of motivation, social
conﬂict, and their connection with recognition relations. This link can be established by
recalling Honneth’s claims about the historical character of identity, or rather of the
recognition relations on which identity formation depends and out of which normative

expectations to be recognized emerge.

194

As I argued in chapter 4, the complexity of the structure of identity is not
discernible a priori, but rather is historically mutable and requires conceiving of identity
as grounded in and to a signiﬁcant degree constituted by forms of intersubj ective
recognition, as well as by institutional organization and social practices. Such a
conception implies that as new recognition relations are institutionalized and new
dimensions of subjectivity disclosed, the conditions required for the successful identity
formation of human beings socialized in a particular society will differ from those prior
to such changes. With the recognition of private property rights and legal equality
established with capitalism, for example, feudal relations that had subordinated
individuality to estate — one simply was a serf, peasant, aristocrat — were no longer
adequate to social reality. Changes in institutions and social relations spurred new
demands for recognition, generated new expectations to be recognized, in this case as a
rights-bearing subject. What the example is intended to show is that changes in social
structure change the ontology of the person and the normative expectations underlying
social interaction, as well. For those born and socialized in a given society, the norms
governing social interaction already provide possibilities for identity formation and
agency. The process of individualization, of achieving an identity and becoming a social
agent, therefore requires the internalization of recognitive norms to the extent that they
can properly be described as implicit expectations of social interaction. Since the
structure of individuality is already institutionalized via recognition relations, which has
' thereby gained social objectivity, the violation of recognitive norms and expectations is

experienced by the person, pre-reﬂectively and quite literally, as an attack on one’s

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agency, one’s ability to establish practical self-relations and, on that basis, to act
autonomously.

The link between recognitive expectations and the motivation underlying social
conﬂict should now be easier to make out. Because disrespect and denied recognition
violate norms that govern social interaction and identity formation, when it occurs —
either blatantly, as in the denial of voting rights, or more subtly, as in the assumption that
afﬁrmative action rewards undeserving minorities — it is initially felt by the affected
person emotionally, or pre-reﬂectively. Disrespect is experienced concretely, as a
personal affront, and is signaled by negative emotional reactions such as indignation or
anger. While it is the negative emotions triggered by disrespect that motivate resistance,
the former reveal (often “indirectly”) the cognitive content of recognition relations, which
implies that the structure of motivation is cognitive as well as affective and that
motivation involves a pre-reﬂective judgment that normative expectations have been
violated. Phenomenologically, then, recognition relations possess a cognitive potential
whose suppression evokes feelings of anger or indignation, and these emotions motivate
the affected to demand the recognition they have been denied. When people realize that
the injustices to which they are subject are systematic and experienced by other members
of a social group, previously mute affective reactions become susceptible of
communication, shared reﬂection, and the articulation of demands to establish or restore
those forms of recognition that were distorted or denied. In this way, the cognitive
potential of recognition relations is tapped and raised to the level of social awareness.
The understanding that one is disrespected because one belongs to a social group can

result from the efforts of existing social movements, of course, or can provide the basis

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for their formation. In any case, the consciousness-raising and voicing of recognitive
demands by social movements are themselves instances (and results) of conﬂict,
struggles spurred by disrespect or denied recognition.

Returning to the question of racial conﬂict in the US. (or, more exactly, of white
opposition to forms of social change aimed at beneﬁting blacks), my task is to identify
the form of recognition denied whites, or the type of recognition whites take themselves
to deserve but perceive themselves to be denied, which in turn would provoke their
resistance. Any adequate answer will be complex, consisting of more than generic claims
about universal self-interest or, say, about the need for one (type of) identity to coalesce
around and sustain itself through the subordination of another. The problem can at least
be brought into clearer focus by examining it in light of the types of recognition relations
that Honneth refers to as legal relations and solidaristic relations.

Legal relations acknowledge the moral equality of persons and, as a result of the
institutionalization of human rights, anchor moral accountability and autonomy in
reciprocal, procedurally governed relations. Thus they pertain to that dimension of
identity that is more narrowly individualistic, conceiving the person principally as a
bearer of rights and negative liberties. In the U.S., it seems to me uncontroversial that
this is the conception of selfhood that holds sway: the idea, that is, that a person’s real
opportunities and possibilities depend above all on individual effort, resourcefulness, and
ambition. Solidaristic relations, by contrast, pertain to that dimension of identity that is
more heterogeneous and particularist than the former: namely, those traits, abilities, and
practices that a concrete individual possesses or participates in, and by virtue of which

she deﬁnes herself qua individual and also qua member of speciﬁc social groups or ways

197

 

of life. The type of recognition demanded here is not of universal equality but, rather, of
differences: different aptitudes, values, and so on. The person is conceived not solely as
a bearer of rights but also as a member of a race, gender, class, or religion, so that the
capacity for self-realization — relating to oneself as this individual — requires the
afﬁrmation, or at least the minimal acceptance, of such particularity. This aspect of
identity continues to be politically divisive and inadequately conceptualized in, theories of
social conﬂict, yet remains central to the analysis of racism in the US.

If it is plausible that modern identity is structured and sustained by the three types
of recognition relations analyzed in chapter 4, then the sources of disrespect and denied
recognition that motivate white resistance to certain types of social change stem from the
perceived violation of norms governing legal and solidaristic relations. Regarding the
claim that white opposition to afﬁrmative action arises not from prejudice but ﬁ'om the
belief that it is unfair and contradicts the liberal-capitalist values of independence and
equality, it seems to me that the claim itself implies that what is threatened, in fact, are
the values and conception of individuality by means of which Americans have
traditionally understood and organized their identity, interaction, and agency.
Afﬁrmative action acknowledges the historical character of social institutions and
relations; the affect of that history on opportunities and power relations; and the fact, so
difﬁcult to see on an individualist ontology, that membership in social groups shapes
identity and agency. Hence, afﬁrmative action compels reconsideration of once taken for
granted, uncritically held cultural assumptions, values, and norms, which is in turn

experienced by whites as a form of disrespect: a denial of recognition, or else a wrongful

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form of recognition, such that whites feel accused, put upon, unjustly held responsible for
the past.

If afﬁrmative action strains the norms underlying legal relations, social welfare
pressures solidaristic relations. Since a dimension of modern identity consists of
socialization processes guided by the values and practices of social groups, that is, by a
person’s ability reﬂexively to accept or reject social meanings, the way in which a person
relates to herself is shaped by both historical and contemporary forms of social
interaction and recognitive expectations. White identity qua white will be informed not
only by the universal norms underlying legal relations, then, but by the contingent values
and expectations embedded in American culture as a result of its legacy of racial
domination. The historical reality of white privilege and power constitutes a social
background or horizon against which whites qua white presume privilege, authority, or
social status. It therefore seems plausible to assert that white identity is so saturated with
expectations of social and cultural privilege that welfare, curiously enough, constitutes at
once a conﬁrmation as well as a condemnation of American institutions and race
relations.

To see how welfare might provoke the feeling among whites that they are
disrespected or denied recognition, one need only recall what was said about the
racialization of welfare. To the extent that welfare is perceived as a “black problem,”
federal support of welfare demonstrates, on the one hand, that American institutions,
practices, and values function well for the majority of Americans, who after all do not
need welfare. In this way, welfare can be taken to conﬁrm or validate the status quo. But

I since the status quo rests on a history of racial domination, in effect what would be

199

conﬁrmed is white self—assurance that “whiteness” constitutes the social and moral norm,
so that those who draw welfare are simply those who deviate from the norm. On the
other hand, to the extent that welfare is presented by the media and perceived by the
public as rewarding the “undeserving,” accommodating socially devalued ways of life or
family structures, and tacitly admitting race-speciﬁc inequalities, federal support of
welfare signiﬁes a betrayal and subtle condemnation of “traditional” American values.
Aside ﬁ'om more invidious stereotypes (e.g., that welfare recipients are content to remain
“on the dole,” have children to increase the size of their allotment, etc.), the
misconception that welfare recipients are overwhelmingly black is a constant reminder of
racial inequality, which must then be squared with the belief that US. institutions are just
in principle as well as in practice.

The public perception that welfare mainly beneﬁts blacks, then, suggests either
that the latter are disadvantaged as a social group, which in turn would imply the
persistence of racial domination and co ipso the injustice of contemporary social
institutions and relations. Or else that blacks as individuals are in some way to blame,
say, by failing to embrace a “proper” work ethic or assume “personal responsibility” — in
short, that blacks “bring on themselves” existing inequalities by acting in normatively
unacceptable ways. It seems to me that the latter view best captures public attitudes
about welfare. If so, then federal support for welfare would amount to political
recognition of value orientations and practices alien or even hostile to those accepted as
“traditional.” Indeed, I submit that proposing race-conscious policies for what are
commonly assumed to be personal failings is viewed, by whites particularly though not

uniquely, as “giving in” to a “politically correct” ideology; that is, as a violation of

200

historically seated expectations to be assured of strictly negative freedoms, rewarded
solely on the basis of effort and merit, and regarded by the state as an abstract (i.e.,
colorless and genderless) individual. Social welfare in this way jeopardizes white self-
assurance. Thus, the motivation driving whites to Oppose forms of social change
assumed to beneﬁt blacks is plausibly conceived in terms of the perception of social
disrespect or denied recognition — a conﬂict rooted in recognition relations and demands.

1 should stress that although my argument incorporates claims about the role of
beliefs, values, and representations in identity formation and social conﬂict, my concept
of motivation is not “merely psychological” or idealist. On the contrary, the theory of
recognition on which I rely is materialist, conceiving identity formation as a process
involving embodied agents situated in practical relations. The dependence of identity
formation on recognition relations produces, via socialization and internalization,
expectations to be recognized, which in turn are signaled by the experience of negative
emotions when those expectations are violated through disrespect.

Recalling what was said about the history of racial dominance in the US and
how this generated in whites an unreﬂective, presumed sense of entitlement and
privilege, I now propose that programs like social welfare and afﬁrmative action
challenge white identity directly at the level of practical agency. Such programs and
practices are not, after all, uniquely distributive in nature. They include demands for
local authority over community organization and decision-making, the recognition of
contributions by marginalized minorities, the preservation of customs and traditions, and
constraints on speech and behavior intended to curb harassment. At stake are not just

ideas, images, and discourse, then, but previously unquestioned, taken-for-granted power

201

relations; and it is this that whites may experience as an afﬁont, as “power-grabbing” by

'89 F onnerly unnoticed assrunptions

blacks, or as a violation of the “rights” of whites.
about acceptable types of interaction would be raised to public, awareness and contested,
such as the invisibility of whiteness in the experience of whites and the seemingly
inescapable visibility of blackness in the experience of blacks. If this argument is
tenable, it underlines the presumed sense of entitlement and privilege of whites qua
white, and suggests that their resistance to certain forms of change is motivated by the
perception that their (assumedly) rightful claims to recognition are violated.

Often that resistance is, as Welhnan states, articulated in terms of purportedly
neutral and self-evident values: equality, merit, freedom. But on the View developed
here, it is crucial to note that although the meanings of the values (as well as the
institutional structures and types of social practices they require) are contested rather than
self-evident, they nonetheless have been historically institutionalized in ways that have
reproduced and rationalized a structure of white privilege vis-ti-vis blacks, thus
normalizing inequality and oppression. So when whites allude to universal values when
objecting to race-conscious social change, they may appear to be color-blind but, in
reality, I contend they are resisting alterations to a way of life that has historically
guaranteed their privilege qua white. The struggle to preserve inherited privilege and a
sense of social esteem is apparent in certain reactions to welfare and afﬁrmative action

that are so typical as to have become slogans: recipients are “undeserving”; the state is

“encouraging dependency” while “imposing” a “tax burden” on others; afﬁrmative action

 

'89 Such is the position of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which opposes using race as a
consideration for college admissions.

202

perpetuates racism, is “reverse discrimination,” and, much worse, actually demeans those
who beneﬁt from it.‘90

Moreover, while disrespect is ﬁrst felt emotionally and personally, it commonly
breaks into social awareness and becomes a force for social change when, as a result of
the forms of communication and reﬂection provided by social movements, personal
experiences are seen to be typical of the experience of members of a particular social
group. For this reason, and in light of the structure of modern identity, it is no surprise
that social movements and their proposals for change often allude to and dispute the
meaning of the same values. So, whereas the demands of the civil rights movement
included demands for equality and respect, some whites (e.g., those supportive of the
MCRI) currently oppose affirmative action on the grounds that it would entail treating
them unequally, unjustly holding them accountable for past wrongs and making them
“feel guilty for being white.” Similarly, and especially after the 2004 presidential
election, a public debate stirred concerning whether same-sex rights are analogous to
civil rights; whether Christians constitute a marginalized, culturally ridiculed community;
and so on. Each of these conﬂicts involves identity claims and recognitive demands,
individually and collectively, which have been articulated publicly and made the locus of

legislative struggles by social movements.

Conclusion
In this chapter I developed a critique of economistic theory, then proposed a

recognition theoretic conception of motivation for engaging in social struggle. My goal

 

190 . . . . , .
Srnce, the reasonmg goes, 1t 15 proof they couldn I make It any other way.

203

was to connect the requirements for forming and sustaining identity and agency to
experiences of disrespect or denied recognition, and to link this motivational affective
reaction to social conﬂict. I criticized an economistic account of motivation and agency
as ahistorical and, consequently, as incapable of grasping its own conditions of
possibility. These conditions consist of historically contingent social relations and
institutions that make possible and structure new dimensions of identity and forms of
agency, which are embedded socially and internalized by a society’s members, and which
ultimately achieve the status of normative expectations. Economism, in contrast, focuses
only on the individualistic, self-interested form of identity and agency characteristic of
capitalist societies, and thus universalizes and reiﬁes a single form of identity and agency
to the exclusion of others. For this reason, economism implies a conception of identity.
By reducing motivation and agency to economic self-interest, economism obscures the
heterogeneity of social struggles as well as the variety of non-economic forms of identity.
So not only is economism conceptually ﬂawed, it is of little value for analyzing,
understanding, and evaluating actual social struggles.

A recognition theoretic approach to conceiving the motivation for social conﬂict
is not ﬂawed or limited in these ways. On the contrary, the View defended here,
following Honneth’s identity-recognition social theory, possesses many advantages.
Insofar as the goal of individual self-realization requires autonomous identity formation,
its normative basis is clearer and more tenable than that of economism. Moreover, an
identity-recognition approach is intersubjective, construing individualization as an
outcome of communicative and recognitive interaction, and thus offers a more nuanced

and philosophically compelling social ontology. Finally, it avoids reifying a single type

204

of identity and agency. It is instead sensitive to the historical preconditions of identity, or
rather, to the inﬂuence of social relations and institutions on the ways individuals relate
to themselves and to others. As a result, recognition theory is better able to evaluate the
expectations underlying social interaction, and to link them in a systematic way to the
sources of motivation that trigger social conﬂict.

Furthermore, identity-recognition theory provides a framework in which
heterogeneous social conﬂicts can be analyzed without dissolving or sacriﬁcing their
speciﬁcity. For while the types of injustice and oppression experienced by women,
blacks, the poor, and so on, are similar in many respects, they nonetheless differ in
important ways. Although recognition theory identiﬁes disrespect and denied recognition
as the motivation for social struggle, it does not collapse all forms of identity, agency,
and conﬂict into a single category. Rather it is ﬂexible and complex enough to grasp the
, open, variable, changing character of normative expectations, forms of recognition and
disrespect, and correspondingly heterogeneous social struggles.

In the next chapter, I consider and reply to objections to my thesis, then point to
areas of further research that can proﬁtably be addressed with the resources of an

identity-recognition social theory, and conclude by examining political implications.

205

Chapter 6

Objections and Areas for Further Research

My aim has been to develop a conception that understands motivation for social
conﬂict in terms of identity formation and mutual recognition, in contrast to a conception
that conceives motivation in terms of economic self-interest. Having contrasted this
identity-recognition theory with a more traditional economistic account, I now want to
consider and reply to objections and indicate areas of further research.

Before doing so, I brieﬂy want to clarify the relation of my project to Honneth’s
social theory. My intent is not uncritically to endorse his identity-recognition theory.
There are aspects of his theory that I ﬁnd underdeveloped, vague, and sometimes
unconvincing. Yet I regard his elaboration of the role of recognition in social
reproduction as a valuable philosophical insight, and as well suited to serve as a basis for
social theory. I consider my thesis 3 critical reﬂection on Honneth’s social theory, and
accept his recognition theory as a working background. Thus, while the objections I
consider also apply to Honneth, I will reply with the resources developed in this paper,

defending Honneth’s position only so far as doing so is relevant to my thesis.

Objections

a. Recognition of another cannot be obligatory
The ﬁrst objection concerns Honneth’s assertion that subjects are mutually

obligated to recognize each other’s identities and identity demands. The objection turns

206

on an analogy with emotion, and denies that people can justiﬁably be held accountable
for feeling speciﬁc emotions toward others. Esteem for another’s identity, according to
this objection, can be a matter of obligation as little as can be love, and so it is unrealistic,
if not impossible, to demand that people esteem one another. ’91 If esteem is demanded
rather than given freely, then, like the demand to be loved by another, the result is not
genuine or authentic.

The ﬁrst thing to note in reply to this objection is that, for Honneth, recognition is
not an emotion but a form of social relation and interaction. The end or aim of a

recognition relation is to enable the person recognized to develop practical self-relations,

 

speciﬁcally self-conﬁdence, self-respect, and self-esteem. Self-esteem, for example, is 1-
the aim of solidaristic relations. But that esteem is the aim of a recognition relation does
not imply that the person giving recognition is obligated to experience positive emotions
for the person being recognized; that is, it is not necessary that the recognizer feel for the
recognized warmth, admiration, or whatever sensations or positive emotions are
associated with esteem. Because the goal of solidaristic relations is to enable the person
recognized to relate to her traits and abilities as having worth, esteem is better understood
as the outcome of, rather than as a condition for, recognition. Hence, people are not
obligated to feel a speciﬁc, concrete emotion when recognizing others. Just as Kant
argued that “respect” and “beneﬁcence” required not “pathological love” but a
commitment to acknowledge and support another’s autonomy, so a charitable

interpretation of Honneth’s identity-recognition theory suggests that we act toward

 

19‘ For Charles Taylor’s treatment of the problem, see “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism:

Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994),
66-73.

207

others, not necessarily lovingly, but in ways that support their autonomous identity
formation.

The analogy with emotion therefore fails. But even if Honneth argued that people
were obligated recognitively to esteem others (i.e., to feel the emotions associated with
esteem), the objection runs into a different difﬁculty. Namely, the objection assumes that
emotions are by nature involuntary, and then concludes that subjects are not obligated by
or responsible for states that are not under their voluntary control. And yet, while
emotions and feelings often exhibit an involuntary character, they are nonetheless
susceptible to interpretation, revision, and alteration. Emotions possess both
physiological and cognitive elements, and so are wrongly construed as spontaneous
impulses over which a person has no control. If emotions are rationally revisable, and if
recognition is akin to emotion, it follows that whatever emotions inhere in recognition are
rationally revisable as well. On this analogy, recognition would be voluntary and
revisable.

Despite the objection’s weaknesses, there is another way in which it forcefully
highlights an ambiguity in Honneth’s work, an ambiguity he has never convincingly
addressed. As I note in passing above, the link between recognition and identity
formation can be understood in two related though importantly distinct ways.
Recognition can be conceived as a transcendental condition of identity formation, that is,
as a condition of the possibility of identity formation. On the other hand, recognition can
be treated as an empirical condition of identity formation, which afﬁrms the necessity and
temporal priority of concrete and contingent social relations in the psychological

development and socialization of concrete individuals. Although the two senses are not

208

 

incompatible, they should not be casually conﬂated. While I have tried consistently to
stress the former sense (or recognition as condition of possibility), Honneth invites the
objection to his work insofar as he vacillates between the two senses of the term, or else
fails to elucidate the relation between them. But that ambiguity is a feature of Honneth’s

and not my argument.

b. Not all identity claims seem to merit recognition

The second objection also addresses the claim that recognition is something to
which people are morally entitled. This objection asserts that it is perverse, at worst, and
undesirable, at best, to insist that every identity claim, even those of racists or sexists, has
a legitimate claim to recognition. If such claims were legitimate, the ability of
recognition theory to criticize forms of injustice and oppression would vanish, since any
conﬂict motivated by identity claims would be irresolvable — every claim would seem to
be equally justiﬁed! The objection questions whether identity-recognition theory can
distinguish between valid and invalid recognitive demands and identity claims. What
standard or criterion is available for making such a distinction?

Before proceeding, it should be observed that this objection applies only to the
third form of recognition Honneth discusses, namely, the social esteem that is achieved
through solidaristic relations. As forceful as it appears, the objection leaves untouched
the claim that people have a right to be recognized as bodily and morally autonomous
subjects. As I have noted, this seems characteristic of criticisms of Honneth’s identity-
recognition theory, which tend to bracket the ﬁrst two forms of recognition in order to

focus only on the third. In this way, the criticisms create the impression that a moral

209

demand to be recognized amounts to no more than afﬁrming another’s self-conception or
self-image. In a moment, I explain why this is mistaken, although, here again, I feel that
Honneth himself has never developed a rigorous response to this objection.
Perhaps more than any other, Nancy Fraser has criticized Honneth’s identity-recognition
theory for its putative inability to discriminate, in a principled way, between valid and
invalid, justiﬁed and unjustiﬁed recognitive claims. The gist of her concern is captured
in the following passages:
According to Axel Honneth. . .everyone needs their distinctiveness recognized in
order to develop self-esteem. . .an essential ingredient of an undistorted identity
It seems to follow that claims for recognition that enhance the claimant’s self-
esteem are justiﬁed, while those that diminish it are not. On this hypothesis,
however, racist identities would seem to merit some recognition. . .Antiracist
claims would conﬁont an obstacle, in contrast, as they threaten the self-esteem of
poor whites. '92

And so:

We must ask: what justiﬁes a claim for the recognition of difference? How can
one distinguish justiﬁed from unjustiﬁed claims of this sort?

She concludes that
not every claim for recognition is warranted, just as not every claim for redistri-
bution is. In both cases, one needs an account of criteria and/or procedures for
distinguishing warranted from unwarranted claims. . .Theorists of
recognition. . .have been [slow] to confront this question. They have yet to
provide any principled basis for distinguishing justiﬁed from unjustiﬁed claims.

93
The stakes are high. If this objection is sound, then a conception of motivation for social

conﬂict based in recognition relations loses its normative traction, remains solely

descriptive, and to that extent proves philosophically uninteresting. Nonetheless, I

 

'92 Nancy Fraser, “Recognition Without Ethics?” 32.
I9 . .
3 Nancy Fraser, 1bld.

210

iii

 

Ia

 

believe this sort of objection can be answered, although not in the manner pursued by
Honneth.

”'94 Honneth confronts this question

In “Recognition and Moral Obligation,
indirectly, by reﬂecting on moral obligation and conﬂict in light of his recognition
theory. I agree with other commentators195 that his argumentation here is strained and
unconvincing, if not downright self-contradictory. The argument is that the three patterns
of recognition that serve as preconditions for successful identity formation (love/self-
conﬁdence, rights/self—respect, solidarity/self-esteem) “constitute the moral point of
view.” Since the integrity and texture of individuation depend on being recognized by
others, recognition relations are normative and entail moral obligations. Honneth claims
that the particular content of these obligations arises from the moral injuries discussed in
chapter 4: love entails recognizing people’s bodily integrity; rights, their moral
autonomy; solidarity, their traits and abilities. The harder question, which leads back to
Fraser’s objection, is what to do when recognitive obligations conﬂict. If recognizing a
sexist entails denying recognition to women, how can recognition theory resolve the
conﬂicting claims?

It is here that Honneth’s argument is least convincing. On one hand, he avers that
in cases of moral conﬂict, the resolution “cannot. . .in any way be decided in advance: the
moral point of view comprises three moral attitudes that cannot in turn be ranked ﬁ'om
some superior vantage point.” Instead, “the entire domain of the moral is pervaded by a

tension that can be resolved only in individual responsibility.” And yet, on the other

hand, he asserts without any supporting argument that “there is a normative restriction

 

194 Axel Honneth, op. cit.

‘95 See Jon Mahoney, “Axel Honneth’s Ethical Theory of Recognition, International Studies in Philosophy
31:1, 97-110; and Jordy Rocheleau, personal correspondence.

211

 

 

placed on such decisions, following from the universal character that the recognition
mode of respect possesses; because we have to recognize all human beings as persons
who enjoy equal rights to autonomy. . .we may not choose social relationships whose
realization would require a violation of those rights?”96 Hence, after denying the
possibility of an ordering of moral obligations in one breath, in the next, Honneth adverts
to the traditional liberal view that “respect,” or universal human rights, is indeed a type of
master “normative restriction” on other obligations. But aside from this inconsistency,
and aside from the lack of any elucidation of the term “responsibility,” there is the ﬁrrther
problem that Honneth has seemingly forgotten his own assertion, earlier in the same
essay, that “moral injuries that rob a person of [bodily security] have to be considered
elementary. ”197 While not explicitly stated, the clear implication is that moral injuries
that threaten a person’s bodily autonomy are “considered elementary” relative to other
moral injuries, e.g., those that demean a person’s values or personal qualities. Such an
observation suggests a means of ordering or of hierarchically ranking obligations in a
way that is consistent with Honneth’s identity-recognition theory, and that additionally
provides a principled approach to resolving moral conﬂicts.

Consider the most severe types of moral injury that Honneth associates with the
denial of love — abuse, rape, and torture. These constitute disrespect inasmuch as they
fail to acknowledge a person’s bodily autonomy: her physical integrity as an emotional,
needful, and desiring subject. Or, perhaps more frighteningly, they do acknowledge this
aspect of identity — but make that the target of attack and abuse. The 2004 “prisoner

abuse scanda ” in Abu Ghraib prison is apropos. What emerged in investigations, and

 

‘96 This, and the two previous quotes, are in Honneth, “Recognition and Moral Obligation.”

'97 Ibid, emphasis added.

212

 

what made the scandal especially galling, was the deliberate and systematic attempt to
destroy the fundamental physical integrity of detainees, e. g., through the use of “stress
positions,” extremely loud music and bright lights, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme
temperature variations. Interestingly, even if one were to accept US. ofﬁcials’ claims
that such activities were not really torture, and thus not violations of the Geneva
Convention, the intentional effort to undermine a person’s trust in his or her own needs,
feelings, and emotions is no less repugnant. Similarly, in the case of rape it seems
uncontroversial to afﬁrm that the true harm of sexual assault is not only, nor even
primarily, that it is a form of nonconsensual sex. Rather, it is a form of violence that
threatens the assaulted on the level of her relation to her own body, creating doubt about
her needs and movements, alienation ﬁ'om her wants and desires, not to mention a
(possibly enduring) distrust of others and associated difﬁculty forming intimate
relationships. This form of moral injury can‘be considered fundamental or elementary
because it strikes at the core of a person’s embodiment.

Although Honneth seems not to draw such an implication, I suggest that the
signiﬁcance of the above reﬂection is that bodily integrity and conﬁdence constitute a
precondition for moral autonomy. My reasoning is similar to arguments that stress the
need for material rather than strictly formal equality: it is disingenuous to promote only a
policy of noninterference in the autonomous decision-making of others when a society’s
material conditions (practices, relations, institutions) undermine or fail to establish a
person’s ability to act autonomously. As illustrated by the Abu Ghraib scandal, there is
at best a partial transitivity between instances of physical abuse and denied rights, so that

at times a person’s legal rights can be honored while his bodily conﬁdence and trust are

213

nonetheless assailed. But the reverse seems not to be the case. It is difﬁcult to imagine
how physical violence would not negatively affect a person’s experience of himself as a
rights-bearing moral subject, or rather, would not adversely impact his exercise of
agency. Fear, insecurity, and physical degradation can diminish a person’s self-
conﬁdence to the extent that, in her own eyes, she does not feel worthy to press rights
claims. The same reasoning would hold for the relation between rights and self-respect,
on one side, and solidarity and self-esteem, on the other. If esteem requires the
recognition of a particular person’s abilities, values, and so on — recognition of another
as a concrete individual — it follows that her moral autonomy must already be recognized,
since it is only in this way that persons are free to express, develop, and individuate
themselves as they choose.

These arguments imply an evaluative standard, a ranking of forms of recognition
of the following sort: most basic is physical security (from which follows self-
conﬁdence), then legal rights (ﬁ'om which follows self-respect), and ﬁnally solidarity
(from which follows self-esteem). From a moral standpoint, then, principled reasons
could be given for afﬁrming that rape is not merely a violation of rights or failure to gain
consent but, rather, is a fundamental act of violence. The wrongness of rape includes but
goes beyond the failure to gain consent or the violation of another’s right to dispose of
her body as she chooses. It is an attack on another person’s bodily integrity that, in the
worst of cases, can disrupt a person’s ability autonomously to form desires, deﬁne needs
and wants, and establish intimate boundaries. For this reason, acts of violence such as
rape potentially undermine not only a person’s self-respect or eSteem but, more gravely,

her self-conﬁdence, her ontological security as a social agent. Similarly, returning to

214

 

Fraser’s example, principled reasons could be given for repudiating the identity demands
of the racist, since, while putatively aimed at securing one’s own self-esteem, such
demands constitutively require the denial of more elementary recognitive claims of others
(e.g., self-conﬁdence or respect). Put more formally the principle would be: a
recognitive claim is valid or binding only if honoring that claim would not entail violence
against, or the subordination or degradation of other persons. As formulated, the
principle offers a way of resolving moral conﬂicts generally; and, since it applies equally
well to potential conﬂicts between conceptions of the good, it speaks to Fraser’s worry as
well. It seems to me that an identity-recognition theory therefore yields a principled way
of deciding which identity claims are morally defensible and obligating.198

I have examined this objection in detail because it highlights a speciﬁc advantage
of an identity-recognition theory. Concerning the question of motivation for entering
social conﬂict, recognition theory is able to distinguish between progressive and
regressive conﬂicts, or to separate social movements and conﬂicts that aim at greater
personal and collective ﬁ'eedom from those that aim at greater unfreedom, say, by
limiting the rights of members of groups. But giving an account of what motivates social
conﬂict differs from the moral evaluation of those conﬂicts. So it was important to
demonstrate that recognition theory also possesses a criterion with which to differentiate

liberatory from oppressive identity demands and forms of social conﬂict.

 

'98 Although I developed this argument independently of and before reading Mahoney, “Honneth’s Ethical

Theory of Recognition,” he homes in on the same point and resolves it with nearly an identical formulation.

His reads, “only those conceptions of the good are morally permissible which do not disable others’
capacity for self-realization” (107). There is this difference, though. While my formulation is intended as
a general principle for resolving moral conﬂicts, his is an attempt to justify Honneth’s insistence in
“Recognition and Moral Obligation” that moral respect and autonomy must always be recognized, or,
conversely, must in no case be violated.

215

. ‘-|__—

 

 

c. Ambiguity in Honneth’s conception of solidarity

The third objection concerns the claim that self-esteern arises from solidaristic
relations that are formed by socialization within a common value system. A person
acquires self—esteem when people who share traditions, practices, and circumstances
afﬁrm his particularity and difference. Yet there is an ambiguity in this formulation. As
Jeffery Alexander and Maria Pia Lara observe,199 it is unclear, though important in cases
of conﬂicting values and convictions, where to distinguish between local, immediate _,
communities, on one hand, and the more general society to which one belongs (e. g., the

nation-state), on the other. Consider the identity demands of racist whites: it is unclear

 

which value horizon is deﬁnitive in their social experience. Should the focus be on their L
socialization qua white? On regional practices and traditions? Or on their socialization
qua American? In other words, which solidaristic relations are primary or most basic?
From the 18th century on, Americans have professed a commitment to individual
rights, social and political liberties, independence, and equality. In this way a national
identity was forged and bonds of solidarity woven. At the same time, women, blacks,
Native Americans, and the poor were oppressed and denied civil and political liberties,
which suggests either that ideas of freedom and equality were at best partial, or that there
were other, implicitly racist and sexist practices that governed political relations and
social interaction. On the one hand, the evident discrepancy between the values endorsed
reﬂectively and those effective practically speaks to the need in Honneth’s work for a
conception of ideology, which need I address below. On the other hand, it raises the

question as to whether self-esteem, as Honneth conceives it, requires solidarity with

 

199 Jeffrey Alexander and Maria Pia Lara, “Honneth’s New Critical Theory of Recognition.”

216

everyone in a nation, or only with members of local social groups? Does self-realization
require identiﬁcation with a nation’s norms, values, and practices? Or does identiﬁcation
with local ways of life suffice?

Since Honneth’s concern is with social inclusion and integration into society in
general, the former seems to be the case. This follows from Honneth’s proposal that the
master principle governing the generation of self-esteem and social solidarity in modern
capitalist societies is achievement. 200 On this view, only those abilities, skills, traits, and 1
forms of labor that contribute to a society’s material success and productivity are

valorized. Achievement constitutes the value horizon against which the traits and abilities

“J...-

 

of both persons and groups are esteemed. In this way, Honneth believes identity- 7'

l

recognition theory can address anti-racist and feminist concerns about the devaluation of
work coded as feminine or black, as well as the centrality of labor in both distributive
disputes and processes of socialization and identity formation.

But the claim that an “achievement principle” governs the formation of self-
esteem and solidarity in modern societies seems overly strained. For one thing, it reduces

the multiplicity of normative orientations in modern societies to a single value, which is

 

construed economically so that modern subjects are assumed to esteem others (and expect
themselves to be esteemed) only so far as they are “productive.” Such reasoning
forecloses from the start the possibility that non-economic social categories and
normative orientations are primary in a person’s interaction and experience, and therefore
ignores the possibility that there may be more than one value horizon governing the

conferral or denial of esteem. While it may capture some manifestations of racism and

 

20" Honneth, RR, 140-141, 147—150.

217

sexism, for example, it is implausible to insist that the denial of achievement captures the
variety of group-speciﬁc moral and political injuries (e.g., economic dependence, racial
insult).

For another thing, identifying a single substantive principle as the source of
esteem and solidarity in modern societies is suspect. Modern societies may be too
complex to permit the identiﬁcation of a single recognitive principle that, even
hypothetically, would secure the esteem and solidarity of every social member. Not only
is the singling out of a substantive recognitive principle dubious empirically; the
assumption that some such principle is necessary to secure the recognitive unity of
heterogeneous social groups is questionable conceptually. As noted above, it is
conceivable that esteem and solidarity can be secured via local and immediate
recognition relations, without the necessity of a higher-level, more global substantive
principle that would reconcile multiple and varying normative orientations. For example,
conservative Christian and Jewish groups subscribe to well-deﬁned value and behavior
systems, which establish communal membership, roles, and patterns of esteem, but which
do so largely independently of economic considerations such as productivity or ﬁnancial
reward. And as bell hooks points out in Ain’t IA Woman?,201 an ostensibly economic
imperative (e.g., that a man should “protectand provide for” his spouse) means
something different for blacks and whites, and the speciﬁc difference is rooted in skin
color rather than any particular characteristic of work. According to books, the allegedly
deﬁcient “work ethic” among black males is explained, not by indolence, but by blacks’

distrust of white demands, expectations, and deﬁnitions of “proper” behavior. But the

 

201 bell hooks, especially “The Imperialism of Patriarchy,” in Ain ’t I a woman? black women andfeminism
(Cambridge: South End Press, 1981), 87-119.

218

more signiﬁcant point is that blacks and women in the US. have always had to negotiate
oppressive racist and sexist norms and practices, on one hand, while, on the other,
seeking alternative communities and practices in which they could discover or create
afﬁrmative senses of self and of communal belonging. Given the centrality of skin color
and biological sex in the experience of blacks and women, it would be suspect, at best, to
insist that achievement constituted the principal grounds for according or denying social
esteem to all social members.

Rather than attempt to isolate a single recognitive principle in light of which

202 together

esteem is granted, I submit that Honneth’s formal conception of ethical life,
with my claims about an evaluative standard for adjudicating recognitive claims,
indicates how esteem and solidarity could be established through more immediate and
local groups. What is needed is not the identiﬁcation or constitution of a substantive
recognitive principle to which all social agents would subscribe but, instead, the
institutionalization of the preconditions for self-realization. By protecting institutionally
the bodily integrity, legal equality, and solidaristic relations of social participants, intra-
group solidarity would be formed concretely and inter-group solidarity would be secured
(or constrained) formally.

These reﬂections are intended to show that although experiences of disrespect
motivate people to resist what they perceive as injustice, little is implied about whether
the content of ensuing demands will prove harmonious or consistent with the normative

horizon of the wider culture, or with society in general. Racial supremacy may be the

basis of self-esteem. for some; gender or ethnic separatism (aimed at autonomy rather

 

202 Honneth, “Intersubjective Conditions for Personal Integrity: A Formal Conception of Ethical Life,” in
SR.

219

 

 

than at the subordination of other groups) for others. Thus, contra Honneth’s ambition to
develop a notion of progress grounded in the teleological structure of identity and
recognition, I submit that not all social conﬂict must be liberatory, or must enrich and
advance the moral quality of social relations. But since my thesis concerns only the
motivation for entering social conﬂict, it is free of the ambiguity identiﬁed in the third

objection.

(1. Not all who are disrespected are motivated to resist

This objection concerns the claim that people experience adverse emotional
reactions when disrespected or denied recognition. I have argued that recognition forms
a precondition for personal autonomy and self-realization because of the nexus formed
between recognition and identity formation, and identity formation and agency.
Disrespect jeopardizes the ends of autonomy and self-realization by impairing a person’s
ability to form an integrated identity, and to interact and participate socially in a self-
determining manner. Disrespect prompts resistance, or negative emotional reactions
aimed at establishing or restoring justiﬁed recognition relations, because it imperils a
subject’s agency and ontological security.

Despite the primafacie plausibility of this claim, it seems evident, in fact as well
as in principle, that people do not always react negatively when disrespected or denied
recognition.203 People internalize stereotypes; identify with norms and traditions that

ignore or subvert their interests; endorse beliefs that legitimize inequality; and accept

 

203 Versions of this objection have been raised against Honneth in Jeffrey Alexander and Maria Pia Lara,
“Honneth’s New Critical Theory of Recognition,” New Left Review 220, 126-136; Roger Foster, “Axel
Honneth’s Critical Social Theory,” Radical Philosophy 94 (March/April 1999) 6-18; and Jordy Rocheleau,
personal correspondence.

220

externally imposed identities. The persistence of such concepts as “false consciousness,”
"consciousness-raising,” and “constituted identity” attests to the fact that people do not
always and automatically protest disrespect, much less the harms and diminished ﬁeedom
that follow from it. This objection questions whether recognition theory can account for
why people at times internalize, seemingly without doubt or dissonance, oppressive
identities that constrain freedom. If disrespect is a form of unfreedom, how can
recognition theory explain why some are motivated to resist while others accept
unfreedom without resistance? If disrespect is supposed to prompt aversive reactions that
motivate social struggle, how is it that some persons or groups appear to accept
marginalization, oppression, or subordination?

Perhaps the ﬁrst thing to note is that neither the lack of organized opposition to,
nor of articulated personal grievances against, acts of disrespect implies the absence of
feelings of anger or indignation. As noted above, the assertion that disrespect is
experienced emotionally and pre-reﬂectively means that such harms are not immediately
apprehended cognitively; or are not first articulated to oneself as a violation of a norm
and then, in a second step, “felt to be” an insult or affront. Even when people identify
with imposed identities, say, when they accept as their own values and roles that are
externally imposed, they may nonetheless feel consternation, confusion, or doubt, and
may resist stereotypes and expectations in subtle, imperceptible ways. There are
examples in labor, anti-racist, and feminist histories of small acts of subversion, whether
done consciously or unconsciously; as well as examples of “passing,” or publicly

honoring socially accepted valuesand expectations while privately violating them.204

 

204 One example would be worker slowdowns, not all of which are organized or done for bargaining

leverage. Another would be the deliberate though individual attempt to subvert or confuse conventional

221

 

 

Although these observations do not constitute a refutation of the objection, they offer a
reminder that some forms of resistance may go unseen, passing under the radar of public
(or even personal) awareness for lack of social organization and articulation. The thesis
that disrespect or denied recognition motivates social conﬂict thus remains plausible.
More importantly, I believe that the objection relies on an uncharitable, if not
erroneous interpretation of the recognition theory developed by Honneth and defended in
this paper. The objection presupposes that negative reactions to disrespect, as well as the
increases in ﬁ'eedom made possible by such reactions, follow nomologically (i.e., in a
causal way) or teleologically (i.e., with metaphysical necessity) such that any act of
disrespect must invariably be followed by, or rather must automatically motivate,
resistance and conﬂict. The observation that some people do not react aversely to
disrespect would not constitute an objection to recognition theory unless it were assumed:
ﬁrst, that such reactions followed with necessity; second, that there were no other
conditions that inﬂuenced action; or third, that recognition relations formed an
irrepressible telos,205 unfailingly steering social interaction toward greater freedom. But

these assumptions are unwarranted. To afﬁrm that people experience indignation when

 

understandings of gender or sex. Then there is the nanator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man who
recognizes and then appropriates his invisibility; Ellison, op. cit, Marilyn Frye reﬂects on how to
practically “disafﬁliate” from a social category, White, that perpetuates racial domination; Frye, “White
Woman Feminist,” in Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism, (Freedom: The Crossing Press, 1992). Finally,
Honneth points out that regular confrontations with the law or, very differently, aiding a suddenly
unemployed neighbor can be instances or signs of larger social conﬂicts (RR, 118-119).

05 I have argued that identity has a teleological structure, which can be understood as the project of
reﬂexively and autonomously developing one’s skills, capacities, talents, etc. The end of identity
formation is self-realization, or the ﬁ'eedom and ability to develop one’s (embodied) self as one will. Since
disrespect palpably threatens or vitiates that ﬁ'eedom, I maintain that in such cases there will be an
accompanying emotional reaction. If a ﬁiend ignores my greeting, I will — perhaps only ﬂeetingly —- be
hurt, angry, worried. But the perception of disrespect can be mistaken - I can fail to realize that another
intends insult — and also controlled, as when one reﬂexively decides “not to take insult.” So, the assertion
that identity has a teleological structure does not entail that experiences of disrespect will necessarily and
inevitably trigger an indignant reaction which culminates in protest.

222

disrespected assumes neither a mechanical causality nor a logic of universal law and
particular instantiation.

A more charitable interpretation would note that the expectations structuring
identity formation and social interaction are historical and contingent. There is no
necessity determining which forms of recognition gain legitimacy and ultimately achieve
social objectivity; thus, there is no necessity that violated recognitive expectations will
always, automatically trigger negative emotional reactions and conﬂict. Since identity is
complex, on the one hand, and a contingent social accomplishment, on the other, identity
formation should be understood as an agonistic process, susceptible to dispute and
uncertainty about the validity of norms and expectations. If the assumption that
disrespect necessarily triggers conﬂict is dropped, the observation that some do not
openly resist disrespect ceases to embarrass Honneth’s theory.

Nonetheless, I agree that an identity-recognition theory, especially regarding the
question of motivation, would be enriched by an account of why some resist disrespect
while others, not only do not, but seem even to endorse restraints on their freedom. Why
do some subscribe to belief systems, the substance of which in practice exclude or
marginalize them? Why do some identify with political or economic positions that are
committed to, that sometimes structurally require inequalities of power or resources? To
begin to answer such questions requires theories of ideology and power. Accordingly,
Honneth has recently sketched a theory of ideology.206 But as I show below, it is too
schematic to give insight into the most troubling phenomena a theory of ideology seeks to

grasp, which include understanding why some members of oppressed groups endorse

 

206 Axel Honneth, see “Recognition as Ideology,” ed. Bert van den Brink and David Owen Recognition
and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 323-348.

223

 

ideologies that diminish their freedom, and why many members of oppressor groups
succumb so readily to ideological falsiﬁcations and “epistemologies of ignorance.”

The meaning of the concept of ideology is famously difﬁcult to isolate and
clarify. But I believe it is fair to say that the following features form much of the
meaning of the concept of ideology, at least in the tradition running ﬁ'om Marx through
critical social theory. An ideology is irreducibly conceptual and practical (or material).

It consists of theories, values, principles, and so on, on one hand; and practices, relations,
and institutional norms and procedures, on the other. What “irreducible” underscores
here is the sense in which the conceptual content and the practical structures of an
ideology are reciprocal, which means that the conceptual content of an ideology is not
“contained in” and “transmitted by” practices, but rather is engendered by and
coterrninous with those practices. The practice is the ideology. What adds the frequently
pejorative connotation to the term “ideology,” and what differentiates it from other belief
systems, is that it elicits the endorsement and support of social agents by heralding
values, virtues, opportunities, ﬁeedoms, which are prized reﬂectively but unattainable in
practice. For Marx, the labor contract is ideological because it appears to institutionalize
freedom and legal equality, and also because it induces the belief (in social agents) that
contractual agreements exemplify their freedom and equality as subjects. Yet for Marx
the labor contract is a mystiﬁed form of a power relation, a relation of domination: the
norms people believe to be actualized by (in this example) an economic institution are, in
reality, undermined by that very institution.

Honneth preserves the sense that ideologies form a conceptual-practical mobius

strip, as well as the sense that ideologies gain legitimacy by promising a freedom and

224

fulﬁllment that are either unredeernable or indeﬁnitely deferred. And his explication of
the concept of ideology from a ﬁrst-personal perspective is a strength of his conception,
since it allows him to examine the concept within the frame of his identity-recognition
theory and thus to probe the motivational efficacy of ideologies in the formation and
maintenance of a person’s identity. At the same time, there is much to object to in his
theory. After summarizing his view, 1 indicate two shortcomings that are especially
relevant to my thesis.

Honneth’s goal is to ﬁnd a criterion that would allow the critical theorist to
distinguish between justiﬁed forms of recognition and ideological forms of recognition
(or IFRs, for short). Echoing a standard formulation, Honneth states that the irrationality
of IFRs is “to be found. . .in the discrepancy between evaluative promises [say, of

”207 A form of recognition is ideological when a

autonomy] and material fulﬁllment.
“gap” (a gap necessary to maintain social domination) exists between the “evaluative
qualities” that some policy or institution promises to confer on subjects, and the material
conditions required effectively to realize such qualities. A form of recognition is
ideological, then, not only because it cannot deliver on what it promises, but also because
the allure of its evaluative promise elicits spurious support from its addressees, which in
turn prompts them voluntarily to adopt conventional meanings, deﬁnitions, roles, and so
on.

For Honneth, three conditions must be satisﬁed if a form of recognition is to

function as an IFR. First, recognition relations and norms must confer (or promise to

confer) on subjects or groups a desirable quality or trait not previously recognized. The

 

207 Honneth, op cit., 328.

225

 

 

 

quality must be afﬁrmative, judged to be valuable or estimable, since otherwise it would
not motivate people to take up the prescribed behaviors, projects, and so on. Because an
IFR, if it is to be efficacious, must be seen to recognize people in a positive way, Honneth
says that “classiﬁcations that are of an obviously discriminatory character. . .as is the case
with racism, misogyny, or xenophobia. . .cannot take up the role of being [IFRs], as they
normally cause an injury in the self-image of their addressees.”208
Secondly, recognition relations and norms must be “credible,” by which Honneth
means both “realistic” and “progressive.” That is, the value an IFR ascribes to persons or
groups must be relevantly connected with the traits, practices, or circumstances of the
IFR’s addressees. Commending a military ofﬁcer for his nurturing style of command, for
example, would probably fail to be a source of public esteem. Because the personal trait
valorized is so disparate from the social function, the act of recognition in this case would
not provide credible acknowledgement of the ofﬁcer’s skills and abilities. Moreover, the
value an IFR ascribes to people must surpass, or be perceived to surpass, the traits and
expectations that are already embedded in a society’s norms and practices. Urging
women to seek self-fulﬁllment through marriage and motherhood, Honneth suggests, is
too anachronistic for such counsel to function successfully as an ideology.
Finally, recognition relations and norms need to be “contrastive,” i.e., must differently
inﬂect or accentuate an existing social meaning so as to distinguish, to add a novel
distinction to, subjects or groups.

In sum, an IFR “can evoke an individual self-conception that motivates a subject

to accept tasks and obligations freely and willingly only if the value-statements employed

 

20" Ibid, 338.

226

 

 

are simultaneously positive, credible, and contrastive to a certain degree.”209 But the
twist in the ideological knife, so to speak, is that these new meanings and possibilities for
self-development are more appearance that reality, insofar as they lack material support.
Subjects are encouraged to think of themselves as ﬁ'eer, but material conditions have not
been altered so as to actualize that freedom. “Thus, between the evaluative promise and
its material fulﬁllment, an abyss opens up that is characteristic in the sense that the
provision of the institutional prerequisites would no longer be reconcilable with the
dominant order”210
Whatever the merits of Honneth’s theory of ideology, it seems to me that there are
two grave defects. When considering what may or may not count as an IFR from the
perspective of members of subordinated groups, he either begs the question or else
evades the more tenacious problem associated with ideology, which involves discerning
how ideologies induce allegiance to norms and practices that diminish one’s own
freedom. In questioning what is or is not an IFR, he says that exclusionary forms of
recognition cannot function as ideologies because they openly threaten freedom and
would for that reason be resisted. Yet he later states that identifying an ideology “is
simple only in cases where the concerned parties actually resist new forms of evaluative
distinction. Here we have at least an initial reason. . .to suspect that a mere ideology

could be at work.”2” In a stroke, then, Honneth has contradicted himself. If

exclusionary norms evoke resistance and resistance leads us to suspect an ideology, then,

 

20’ Ibid, 340.
2'0 Ibid, 346.
2” Ibid, 341.

227

 

on Honneth’s own logic, exclusionary forms of recognition are properly seen as
ideologies.

But the weakness of Honneth’s formulation, in my view, is more fundamental.
Namely, the presence of protest and resistance is evidence that a putative IFR has not, in
fact, aroused loyalty and consent. Dissent demonstrates that an ideology has not taken
hold. Those who resist demeaning or discriminatory norms experience a dissonance, a
pinch in the social fabric, instead of the pacifying white noise of an ideology whose
ﬁmction is to naturalize unequal freedom and social power. In this way, Honneth evades,
or at least postpones reckoning with the more central “ideological problem,” which is to
shed light on why people would (counter-intuitively) accept and endorse recognitive
norms that exclude or demean them. Honneth begs this crucial question by merely
asserting that such norms would be renounced. Yet the tenacity of the ideological
problem demands critical analysis of why people sometimes accept, rather than reject,
oppressive restrictions on their freedom. It is this phenomenon that requires examination.

The second weakness of Honneth’s conception of ideology concerns its silence
about the effects of ideology on the members of dominant groups. While he says that
IFRs elicit loyalty, prompt agents voluntarily to adopt conventional roles and projects,
and hence function to sustain the “dominant order,” it is unclear in what the “dominant
order” consists: that is, whether, and in what way, group-speciﬁc economic advantages,
social privileges, power relations and political interests are implicated in the formation of
IFRs. It is important to know whether IF Rs affect the members of dominant and
subordinated groups in the same way and with similar consequences; or whether,

perhaps, IFRs are more transparent to and thus susceptible to critique by members of

228

 

subordinated groups. Yet without an understanding of the forces and agents that
constitute IF R5, and of the grip IFRs have on the identity formation and agency of
members of dominant groups, the question cannot be adequately addressed.

I doubt that a single, comprehensive theory of ideology could be adequate. The
variety of forms and experiences of oppression suggests that while recognition theory
may offer a useful conceptual ﬁame, investigation into the constitution of (as well as the
conditions for) recognition relations and identity formation would have to be local -
oriented to speciﬁc groups, categories, ways of life — and carried out in a resolutely
interdisciplinary manner. But given the historical and differentiated character of identity,

such additional complexity should not be surprising.

Further Research

a. Working-Class Racism

In Marxist theory, an important unresolved political problem concerns racism
among economically disadvantaged whites, be they working-class, working poor, or
poor. Although it may be more stereotype than truth that racism is characteristic of the
lower classes, and decreases in proportion as income or educational level increase, the
absence of solidarity across the color line seems to remain a social fact. For Marxist
theory, given its emphasis on the class structure of society and its affirmation of the
liberatory potential of labor, the problem was (and arguably remains) that racial
resentment and distrust blocks solidarity among workers. On this view, the transition to a
socialist society is delayed, at least in part, by racial divisions that turn worker against

worker instead of worker against capitalist. Racism undermines class-consciousness,

229

 

 

obscuring the understanding of working-class whites that it is capitalists, not blacks or
immigrant laborers, who threaten their material interests and well-being. Although aware
of this problem, Marx never investigated the relation of class and race in detail.

Wellman’s Portraits of White Racism is a valuable contemporary analysis of the
link between race and class, insofar as it conceives racism as an outgrowth of capitalist
society. For Wellman, racism is a structural phenomenon that is created and perpetuated
by struggles over scarce resources. If working-class whites prove more racist than
middle- or upper-class whites, it is not because the former are less civilized or more
hateful than the latter, but because their access to and control over social resources is less
secure, and blacks are competitors for those resources. Racism, then, is rooted in a
society’s economic organization and relations. Yet, as I argued in chapters 3 and 5,
Wellman’s use of economistic concepts and assumptions hinders his ability to develop a
compelling account of white working-class racism. His theory is ahistorical, and
employs impoverished conceptions of subjectivity and social interaction.

One of the promising avenues pursued by Honneth consists of his reﬂections on
labor and class relations from the perspective of recognition theory, and inter alia his
effort to illuminate the moral quality of social conﬂict, particularly labor struggles. Since
The Critique of Power,212 Honneth has attempted to rethink Marxian concepts within a
Hegelian conceptual framework, and his work in this regard has been inﬂuenced by and
sensitive to the innovations, insights, and criticisms provided by Habermas’s theory of
communicative action. Like Habermas, Honneth rejects Marx’s philosophy of history

(i.e., historical materialism) and his conviction that labor forms the basis of integation

 

212 Axel Honneth, trans. Kenneth Baynes The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social
Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997).

230

 

 

and socialization. Instead, recognition struggles drive historical change and mediate
integration and socialization. But whereas Habermas conceives of labor as an
instrumental relation between subjects and objects, Honneth conceives of the labor
process and the division of labor as thoroughly intersubj ective, permeated by social
meanings and values. As Habermas acknowledged in passing in Knowledge and Human

2‘3 it is just these sorts of meanings and norms contained in and circulating

Interests,
through the division of labor (how types of work are valued or devalued, how resources
are distributed, etc.) that can spur social conﬂict, can yield a “dialectic” wherein
economic goals, rules, and expectations are politically contested.

Economic relations, class identity, and the division of labor thus form part of a
society’s recognitive infrastructure. Through the reformulation of the category of labor
in intersubjective terms, recognition theory can link class and race in order to analyze and
evaluate white working-class racism. Honneth has addressed this question only
sparingly. Given his assumption that Western societies are governed by an
(economically-tinged) achievement principle,214 it seems doubtful that he could say more,
since the assumption seems to entail that race relations are less primary or fundamental
than economic relations. If his argument is that the primary means for being granted or

denied esteem turns on achievement, i.e., on one’s economic productivity, then racism

would lose its speciﬁcity and appear to be secondary to economic relations. The danger

 

213 Jurgen Habermas, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press,
1971).

214 Of course, neither Honneth nor I mean to imply any necessity here. Since Honneth views the
“recognition order” of any given society as historically contingent, the result of “past directed
development,” he can espy developmental tendencies without claiming to possess a blueprint of firture
societies. But my point is that if he sees capitalism and the “achievement principle” as a normative
accomplishment of historical development, the possibility of criticizing capitalist societies seems to be
reduced. To be sure, class conﬂict would continue; but the goal of overcoming class inequality seems
foreclosed.

231

 

here is of a nascent reductionism. A more promising approach, which follows from the
premises of recognition theory, is to conceive race (and racism) as a distinct social
category, just as class is. By “distinct,” I do not mean that racism exists, develops, or can
be understood in isolation from other social phenomena, but that it possesses its own
logic, and so should not be dissolved into the logic of other social categories. The
historical constitution of racial categories could be analyzed internally, by reﬂecting on
the social forces and agents operative in the formation of a racial identity; or externally,
with a view to establishing and clarifying how race intersects with class, gender, sexual
orientation, and so on.

A project of this sort would require an interdisciplinary approach that combines
different methods of analysis and research. Literature from whiteness studies, feminist
and critical race theory indicate the direction such inquiry would take. Recognition
theory would offer a uniﬁed but complex conceptual framework within which moral
injury and injustice could be evaluated.

Identity-recognition theory would prove especially apt for theorizing the
formation of racial and class identities, as well as for examining the particular
phenomenon of white working-class racism. Honneth’s work is too programmatic to
offer concrete direction here. But David R Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness is an
excellent example of the sort of study I have in mind.215 An important work in Whiteness
Studies, WWis an historical study of how the category of the “white worker” emerges in
the 19th century. Roediger’s project is not to account for the origin of whiteness or

racism in the US. Rather, he examines how, from roughly 1810 through 1860, members

 

2‘5 David R. Roediger, op. cit.

232

 

of the labor movement came to experience themselves not only as wage-laborers but,
more speciﬁcally, as white laborers.216 I will summarize and then comment on
Roediger’s account.

A new form of identity emerged in the US. as the republican ideals carried over
ﬁom the Revolution were interpreted and adapted in light of the material transformations
caused by the sudden grth of capitalism. Before and during the Revolution, colonists
worried that British oppression would lead to “slavery.” Although used metaphorically,
the term “slavery” conveyed the colonists’ conviction that economic servitude and
political subordination would be degrading and intolerable, a life of servile dependency
akin to the existence of black slaves in the Americas. The ideals of ﬁeedom and
independence decisively shaped the self-understanding of both the white colonists and
the post-Revolution citizenry, and survived with vigor into the 19th century. But the
meaning of the ideals changed as wage labor metastasized, converting independent white
producers into dependent wage laborers. Increasingly, the ideals of freedom and
independence were conﬂated, such that economic dependence came to be viewed as a
form of unfreedom — or rather, as a form of “wage slavery.” As the number of wage
laborers swelled in the ﬁrst quarter of the 19th century, a powerful labor movement
formed and condemned wage labor as a violation of, and an ongoing threat to, the
republican ideals of ﬁeedom and independence.

Such is Roediger’s account of the formation of the working-class in the US. To
see how the working-class “became white,” or how workers came to experience

themselves speciﬁcally as white workers, Roediger examines the ideals of freedom and

 

2'6 Roediger, ibid, see “Part 11: Race and the Languages of Class from the Revolution to the Civil War,”
43-95.

233

 

independence in light of the fact of black enslavement. Before, during, and after the
Revolution, whites used black slavery as a reference point for their understanding of the
deleterious effects of oppression. The political and economic servitude of blacks served
as a counterpoint to the freedom and independence fought for by the colonists. Yet if
whites alluded to slavery to justify rebellion, it was not to empathize with black slaves,
but to make vivid the consequences of unfreedom and dependence. Put more simply,

blacks embodied what whites feared they might become, whether under British rule or,

signiﬁcantly, under capitalist rule. Indeed, as capitalism converted independent laborers I
into wage earners, leaders in the labor movement continued the practice of referring
contrastively to the situation of blacks to indicate the hardship and indignity that might [J

 

befall whites if they did not resist wage labor.

The dependence and unfreedom of black slaves signiﬁed something else to many
whites, according to Roediger: namely, that blacks (free or enslaved) were not genuine
members of the newly formed political community. Many whites opined that because

blacks were enslaved, they were unﬁt for the rigors and demands of ﬁeedom; because

 

blacks were dependent, they were unsuited to independence and self-determination.
Moreover, their enslavement would foster resentment among blacks, just as their
dependence would render them easily manipulated, a combination that threatened the
stability of the republic. By denying that black slaves were capable of freedom and
independence, whites effectively excluded blacks from citizenship in the political
community — thereby ﬁxing whiteness as the norm, and blackness its normative shadow.
Roediger notes: “That Blacks were largely noncitizens will surprise few, but it is

important to emphasize the extent to which they were seen as anticitizens, as ‘enemies

234

. rather than the members of the social compact.’ As such they were driven from the
Independence Day parades as ‘deﬁlers’ of the body politic. . .The more powerless they
became, the greater their supposed potential to be used by the rich to make freemen
unfree.”2'7

White wage laborers shared this sense of normative superiority to blacks, who,
free or enslaved, were seen as unworthy of membership in the body politic. While the
labor movement invoked the republican ideals of ﬁeedom and independence to criticize
capitalism, these ideals at the same time functioned by contrasting the virtues of white
workers with the debased condition of blacks, which only further entrenched whiteness as
the nation’s normative baseline. Resentﬁll of capitalism, wage earners commonly
likened the dependence and vulnerability of wage work to slavery. But more often than
not, allusions to “wage slavery” were intended to express the anxieties of workers and to
enliven their awareness of the dangers posed by capitalism, not to establish solidarity
with the suffering of blacks. Even amidst the insecurities and upheavals caused by
capitalism, white workers were at least putatively free and independent; they regarded
themselves as freemen and insisted that others not regard or treat them as subordinates,
servants, or, worst of all, slaves. The unfreedom, dependence, and turpitude of black
lives, cultivated and perpetuated by institutionalized white supremacy, exempliﬁed what
white workers feared might be their lot as wage-earners, yet reassured them of their
normative worth and status as whites.

Roediger’s account of white working-class racism is compelling. It also nicely

illustrates the strengths of a recognition theoretic approach. It shows how norms,

 

217Ibid,57.

235

 

 

practices, and institutions reciprocally produce identities, social relations and categories,
and conﬂict. White privilege is linked to working-class economic disadvantage in a way
that probes, rather than reduces, the interplay of material conditions, identity formation,
and social interaction. Moreover, it shows that conﬂict is motivated by recognitive
expectations as well as economic interests. Indeed, I believe it supports my contention
that, set against the historical horizon of presumed status and privilege, whites often

perceive black social demands as a form of disrespect or effrontery.

b. Conservative Religious Movements

I believe that recognition theory can shed light on the upsurge in political activity
and prominence among conservative Christians in the US. over the past two decades.
Following the 2004 election, there was a concentrated but brief discussion in the media
concerning the political inﬂuence of conservative evangelical Christians. Editorialists
and print journalists framed the debate as one over “moral values”: George Bush won the
election because his moral stance on hot-button “moral issues” such as same-sex
marriage, abortion, and stem cell research mobilized many conservative voters who
otherwise might have stayed home. As in the 19905, when the Republican-controlled
Congress framed political discussion in terms of “family values,” so had the Bush
campaign appealed to voters in terms of “moral values.” As professor of politics Mark
Rozell observed, “The turnout of the religious right was key to Bush’s victory. The new

slogan should be: ‘It’s the culture, stupid?”218

 

2'8 Quoted in Paul Harris, “How Bush tapped into a well of faith,” The Observer, November 07, 2004.

236

 

In other words, many political commentators agreed that the strategy succeeded
because Bush projected moral certitude and conviction while his opponent, John Kerry,
appeared slightly ill at ease speaking publicly about “his faith.” But what surprised some
was the number of voters in economically hard-hit states who voted Republican,
seemingly against their own economic interests. Pepe Escobar summarizes this sentiment
well:

As the much-documented negative campaigning worked its marvels, it also

managed to convince millions of farmers, factory workers, carpenters, shop

clerks and waitresses all over the dreary wasteland of rural red states to vote for

Bush — against their own economic interests. It’s a remarkable feat, to persuade

the poor working class and the struggling lower middle class to vote for tax

breaks for billionaires. How to fool them? Simple: by promoting “moral

values.”219
Especially interesting is the claim that voters in “red states” were, indeed had to be
“fooled” into voting for “values” instead of “interests.” The implication is that there is
something paradoxical, if not irrational, about an individual’s subordinating or sacriﬁcing
economic interests to cultural or moral values. This judgment echoes the orthodox
Marxist view that the “true” or “rational” interests of the working-class are economic,
and that all else is ideology or “superstructural”; as well as Thomas Frank’s thesis in
What’s the Matter with Kansas?220 that the Republican Party has for decades molliﬁed its
constituents with promises of moral reform when, in reality, its concern has been to
beneﬁt the wealthy. The role “moral values” played in the election and the political clout
apparently wielded by the religious right are thus viewed by some as a diversion, a tactic

to distract attention from the struggle that should command people’s attention — namely,

redistribution.

 

219 Pepe Escobar, “Value-added victory,” Asia Times, November 05, 2004.
220 Thomas Frank, What ’s the Matter with Kansas? (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004).

237

 

Given my thesis, I of course ﬁnd such a view reductionist, tendentious, and
mistaken. I am certainly not saying that concerns about economic justice are marginal or
unimportant; I deny only that they uniquely constitute a person or group’s rational
interests. To dismiss outright the reasons people themselves offer for voting as they did
is a mistake, not only because it conjures images of a vanguard party that exhibits a
certain disdain for the beliefs and self-understanding of the subjects in whose name they
speak, but because it misconstrues their reasons for entering political struggle.

As argued above, this question touches on social meanings and categories, the
nature of social conﬂict and change, and, ﬁnally, the possibility of effective social
critique. The countless expressions by conservative Christians of, on one hand, cultural
and political anger, alienation, and exclusion (captured well by the plaint, “An
atmosphere of atheism is being forced upon us by the courts’ml) and, on the other hand,
identiﬁcation and solidarity with excessively religious politicians and policy proposals,
cannot merely be waved off as irrational phantasms. To do so would be to misdiagnose,
and to fail effectively to criticize, a prominent source of modern social conﬂict.
Conservative religious groups are active, increasingly inﬂuential political agents, so
much so that talk of a “culture war” seems to be neither an exaggeration nor a media-
conjured bogeyman. At stake is the public recognition of values, social relations,
traditions and practices, or rather, the basis for self-esteem and cultural solidarity. For
this reason, recognition theory is especially well suited to analyze and evaluate modern
religious identity, or, more precisely, those recognitive norms that adherents, justiﬁably

or not, experience as violated. In this way, social criticism could grasp, from the

 

22' Quote in Jane Lampman, “Bringing the Case against Judges,” The Christian Science Monitor, April 13,
2005.

238

perspective of social agents themselves, the feelings and reasons motivating their
disaffection and resistance.

The question of how such an analysis would proceed is another matter, and
unfortunately I can only gesture at a possible approach. Perhaps surprisingly, I believe
that a promising tack was ﬁrst sketched by Nietzsche with his conception of ressentiment.

222 to a vengeful motive underlying the formation of early Christian

Ressentiment refers
beliefs and values. Nietzsche argues that since early Christians experienced social
persecution and powerlessness, they developed a system of values according to which
their own social condition and behaviors (obedience and humility, poverty and
powerlessness) were valorized as morally good, while the social position and behaviors
of their oppressors (wealth, power, self-afﬁnnation) were devalued, judged as the
opposite: morally bad or “sinful.” Lacking freedom and authority in this life, then,
Christians consoled themselves with the belief that, in the next, they would be free —
indeed, God’s favored. And their thirst for vengeance, stemming from the humiliation
and anger suffered at the hands of their oppressors, was sated by the belief that those who
enjoyed wealth, power, and prestige in this world would, in the next, suffer torrnents and
shame. Christian beliefs and values literally made virtues of necessities, and reﬂected, at
bottom, a desire for revenge, i.e., by ressentiment.

For my present purposes, it is irrelevant whether these claims are tenable. What is
more noteworthy is that the concept of ressentiment is, at least in part, a materialist

account of identity formation. Nietzsche describes the social relations and conditions

amidst which a distinct value system emerged, a new constellation of beliefs, values, and

 

222 l largely follow Walter Kaufrnann’s interpretation in Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).

239

traits against which self-esteem was secured and solidarity established; and which,
moreover, was motivated by experiences of moral injury or disrespect. Such an account
could be applied to contemporary fundamentalist religious groups as well. It seems
plausible that the moral relativism of markets, the secularism of modern state institutions,
and the seepage of multiculturalism into public consciousness are experienced by
religious fundamentalists, be they Jewish or Muslim or Christian, as affronts, direct
threats to their worldview. Given the absolutism of some fundamentalist groups (“Our
goal is a Christian Nation. . ..We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer

99223

this country ) it is not hard to imagine how these social tendencies could lead
adherents to feel marginalized and embattled. Identity-recognition theory would be well

suited for analyzing, evaluating and understanding this prominent source of

contemporary social conﬂict.

c. Political Implications

To ascertain what type of political guidance or contribution an identity-
recognition theory offers, I will reﬂect on Honneth’s remarks on the classical distinction
between the right and the good. One of the concerns raised about Honneth’s identity-
recognition theory is that it relies too heavily on an ethical conception of the good, which
becomes apparent in his contention that the formation of esteem requires that subjects
share values, actively afﬁrm each other’s abilities and traits, and establish solidarity
through shared projects. Yet to demand such emotional investment in the activities of

other people would not only prove personally burdensome; it would invite an undesirable

 

223 Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue, as quoted in The News-Sentinel, April 16, 1993.

240

 

(and illiberal) degree of state intervention in people’s lives. Honneth replies to this
concern by stressing that recognition theory accepts liberalism’s normative commitment
to both personal autonomy and moral equality. I now examine and defend that line of
argument.

The distinction between the right and the good turns on the seldom disputed
assertion that given the moral and cultural pluralism evident in modern societies, justice
can best be achieved by protecting individual freedoms and equality. Justice requires
guaranteeing personal autonomy and human rights while abstaining from efforts to
impose particular conceptions of the good, that is, substantive conceptions of what
behaviors, beliefs, roles, and projects constitute a worthwhile life. Insofar as Honneth
insists that self-realization is a normative end for every person, he seems to be promoting
the good over the right. Concerning the question of how to foster acceptance of different
ways of life, for example, it might be countered that any attempt to “legislate morality”
violates individual freedom: indeed, hate speech is still sometimes defended by appeals to
the right of free speech or expression. Not only does the demand to esteem others seem
to encroach on individual freedom; but the claim that self-realization is (and ought to be)

24 an instance of promoting a

an end pursued by every concrete individual is, for some,2
particular conception of the good. After all, are there not societies in which a
commitment to individuality is less important than social obligations and a commitment
to the collective good? To the extent that Honneth’s identity-recognition theory

privileges the good over the right, it seems to cut against the grain of traditional liberal

theory.

 

224 Christopher Zurn makes this argument in “Anthropology and normativity: a critique of Axel Honneth’s
‘formal conception of ethical life?” Philosophy & Social Criticism 26:1, 115-124.

241

 

Honneth addresses this worry in Redistribution or Recognition?; and while his
remarks there are rudimentary, they at least point in the direction of a principled and
convincing response. His strategy is to argue that liberalism’s basic commitment to the
right (individual liberties, legal equality, state neutrality) itself presupposes a conception
of the good. Although liberal theorists typically abstain from evaluating and ranking
what types of life are better or worse for people to lead, Honneth argues that liberalism as
a tradition assumes the necessity of “socially inﬂuenced preconditions that must be
available for individual subjects to realize their autonomy.”225 However implicitly,
liberal theory reﬂects an understanding of human well-being, which is why Rawls argues
that justice requires an indexical ordering of social goods and Fraser proposes that
institutions should be so organized as to ensure “participatory parity.” So, rather than
deny that identity-recognition theory constitutes a conception of the good, Honneth
attempts to show that liberalism possesses more substantive ethical commitments than it
is usually wont to admit.

If tenable, this argumentative strategy strengthens the normative justiﬁcation for
identity-recognition theory. More clearly than some versions of liberalism, recognition
theory tries “to spell out and justify what for the most part only ashamedly forms the
hidden basis of procedural versions of liberalism: a normative idea of the goals for whose
sake the establishment and realization of social justice represent a political task that we
consider ethically well-grounded.”226 The “normative idea” is self-realization, which
refers to autonomy and fulﬁllment as well as to the social conditions for mutual

recognition and identity formation. Put differently, Honneth insists that liberalism and

 

225 Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition, 178.
22" Ibid, 178.

242

 

recognition theory have the same normative grounding, but that the latter is conceptually
more self-aware of its foundation. He underlines the commonality by stating: “for
modern societies 1 proceed from the premise that the purpose of social equality is to
enable the personal identity-fonnation of all members of society. For me this formulation
is equivalent to saying that enabling individual self-realization constitutes the real aim of
the equal treatment of all subjects in our societies.”227 The ends of recognition theory are
consistent with those of liberalism: autonomy, moral equality, and self-realization.

I believe that Honneth’s argument has merit. And yet, by modifying his
reasoning, it seems to me that one could just as easily — and perhaps more persuasively —
rebut the charge that recognition theory privileges the good over the right. The moral
purpose of protecting individual rights is to ensure respect for personal autonomy as well
as equal (or fair) treatment by the state, so that a concrete individual is free to develop,
revise, and pursue her independently determined life plan. But if in the previous sentence
“pursuit of a life plan” is replaced with “pursuit of self-realization and maximal personal
freedom,” it becomes clear that recognition theory is oriented toward the same norms as
liberalism. Now, Honneth argued that because recognition theory and liberalism
presuppose a conception of human well-being, say, a thin conception of the good, they
are in principle consistent. Both recognition and liberal theory are concerned with the
social preconditions for autonomy. But the former implies a thicker conception of the
right (or a richer understanding of what rights are) than the latter. The normative

touchstone of recognition theory remains the concrete individual, together with such

 

”7 Ibid, 177.

243

 

material conditions as are required by identity formation and self-realization — or, in less
“ethical” terms, the autonomous formation and exercise of agency.

Honneth appears to go beyond liberal theory’s prioritization of the right with his
notion of self-realization as an anthropological and normative end, which has been
construed as an “ethical value” or form of the good. But the notion of self-realization
should not mislead. As I have stressed, self-realization for Honneth refers to the ﬁ'eedom
to develop one’s identity, i.e., to autonomously exercise agency, which is a capacity both
galvanized and sustained by recognition relations. This conception does not privilege
certain forms of identity, or proclaim in the abstract what a “proper” or “healthy” identity
must be. In other words, recognition theory does not entail an a priori normative ranking
of forms of identity and recognition relations, as though it could be determined by
reﬂection alone that gender or racial identities were more basic than class identity, or that
p a secular identity were preferable to a religious identity. Honneth’s recognition theory
maintains only that, given the structure of identity that has emerged ﬁom historical
changes in social norms and institutions, subjects can justiﬁably demand recognition for
those aspects of their identity that have been sedimented, i.e., objectiﬁed in the lifeworld.
Since being recognized through determinate relations is a condition for the possibility of
forming a coherent and stable identity, it seems plausible to regard self-realization as a
richer, more complete version of what classical liberalism has long termed autonomy.

Put more simply, Honneth’s notion of self-realization does not presuppose an a
priori hierarchy of values, traits, or practices. Like liberalism, identity-recognition theory
strives only to identify the social and institutional conditions required for enhanced

personal freedom. Thus, Honneth’s conception of ethical life should be understood as

244

 

formal, as he himself emphasizes. The intent of the conception is neither to naturalize
existing institutions, nor to prejudge which identities and institutions are ahistorically best
or ideal. As he notes:

While it is true that we devise such a theory in light of all the knowledge we

have at our disposal, we cannot hope to ever see it exhausted by empirical

ﬁndings or theoretical assumptions. To this extent, even recognition theory...

only has the status of a hypothetically generalized outline of the good life:

informed by converging funds of knowledge, such an outline determines the

forms of mutual recognition subjects now need in order to develop the most

intact possible identities.228
This passage implies that general social structures can be identiﬁed and judged to be
materially necessary to the identity. formation of the members of a given society. Just as
liberalism asserts that human rights are a prerequisite for autonomy, so recognition theory
afﬁrms that recognitive norms and relations are a prerequisite for the free development of
identity and agency. While the speciﬁc form of a recognition relation or identity cannot
be deduced or decided in advance, once it has been institutionalized and thus gained
social objectivity, it acquires validity as a normative demand. In this way, the
constellation of recognitive norms and relations structuring a society can be discerned
empirically at the same time that its normative character achieves binding force
practically. Insofar as Honneth argues for a thick conception of personal freedom and
agency, his identity-recognition theory is not so removed from liberalism’s prioritization
of the right over the good.

The same conclusion is reached whether one follows Honneth’s argumentative

strategy or my own, which is that recognition theory is consistent with, rather than a

dangerous departure from, liberalism. Therefore the claim that because some societies

 

228 Ibid, 180; emphasis added.

245

 

subordinate individuality to the social good, recognition theory’s emphasis on self-
realization amounts to a View of the good life, can be dismissed. If such reasoning
justiﬁed rejecting recognition theory, it would justify rejecting liberal theory as well,
since liberalism’s defense of rights aims at protecting personal freedom. Interestingly
enough, though I can only mention the point here, to take the above claim seriously
would underscore Honneth’s contention that liberalism presupposes a conception of the
good. But if that were the case, the distinction underlying the objection would be erased
and the objection would negate itself.

Returning to one of the objections I considered above, which asked how the
conferral of esteem and formation of solidarity could be instituted politically, I want to
elaborate on the reply I gave there. While it is at least questionable whether a person can
be forced or can will himself positively to esteem another in her particularity and
difference, it nonetheless seems true that the relevant form of esteem can be secured
negatively. Recall the formal character of Honneth’s conception of ethical life. By
linking recognition relations to identity formation, indeed to the full development of
personal agency, the formal conception of ethical life calls attention to the normative
importance of those material conditions that underlie and structure the more speciﬁc,
historical forms that recognition relations assume socially. Rather than naturalize or reify
social identities (Black, Woman) or relationships (heterosexism, classism), identity-
recognition theory conceives of such identities and relations as manifestations of new
dimensions of identity that were made possible by historical conﬂict and change. From a
political viewpoint, what matters is the structure of identity, or rather, the material

conditions underlying that structure and making it a constitutive element of social reality

246

 

(rather than, say, the episodic and variable “choices of self” or “lifestyle experiments”
carried out by congeries of individuals).

So far as it ﬁrnctions as an imperative, esteem demands that people recognize the
moral right of subjects to develop their public selves as they choose. Mutual esteem
would be secured negatively in the sense that concrete individuals, insofar as they are
members of groups or ways of life, would be protected against disrespect (e.g., legal
equality) and, in this way, would be recognized as persons with individual value
rankings, traits and abilities, and so on. Since group belongingness is typically important
in people’s lives, they should not suffer degradation, denial of rights, or violence because
of that belongingness. As tentative as it is, this line of reasoning is promising since it is
amenable to formalization. Unlike Honneth’s attempt to identify a concrete recognitive
principle that grounds solidarity, a variant of the evaluative standard discussed above
(recognitive claims are valid only if they do not violate the more basic-recognitive claims
of others) could orient political practice. I thereby avoid the seemingly unrealistic
demand that people indifferent to each other become emotionally invested in one
another’s well-being. What would be required is the recognition of egalitarian

difference: recognition of the other as other, different yet morally equal.

Conclusion

I have examined and replied to four objections to recognition theory, then
identiﬁed three areas for further research. Rather than reprise the arguments here, in the
following chapter I will select and elaborate on such observations ﬁom this chapter as are

relevant to my thesis.

247

Chapter 7

Conclusion

My thesis is that social conﬂict is commonly motivated by struggles over
recognition, that is, motivated by indignation against systematic disrespect or denials of
recognition. I also contend that conceiving of social conﬂict as a struggle over
recognition, a struggle motivated by demands to be recognized, provides a ﬁner, deeper
understanding of social change than does an economistic explanation, a traditional and
widely held view that explains conﬂict in terms of economic self-interest. Although my
thesis has roots two to three centuries old, formulated ﬁrst in the work of Rousseau and
Hegel, it remains a neglected and under-appreciated perspective on what motivates
people to engage in social struggle. By linking the concepts of recognition and identity
formation, and identity and motivation, I have argue that identity presupposes recognition
and constitutes a basic form of agency, so that what is at stake in even economic
struggles is the intersubjectively generated and sustained autonomy of concrete
individuals.

I developed my thesis through an interpretation of why many white Americans,
despite the relative economic advantage and social privileges they receive by virtue of
being white, have opposed in sometimes vehement ways the implementation of race-
sensitive social policies aimed at reducing racial inequality. Part of the answer is that
many whites judged (and perhaps still do) programs like social welfare and afﬁrmative

action as simply unjust, a violation of the values and norms (e.g., merit, responsibility,

248

etc.) that purportedly deﬁne “us” as a political community. If whites resist such
programs, therefore, it is because they feel them to be unjustiﬁed affronts, even insults, to
people who regard themselves as model citizens and workers.

If this interpretation is tenable, it casts light on two important implications of my
work. First, considering how often debate about race-sensitive social policies in the US.
is cast in predominately economic terms, observing the ways that identity and recognition
inﬂect social struggles reveals how impoverished and distorted public discourse becomes
when economism is the default position. While welfare and afﬁrmative action
indisputably involve questions about class inequality, focusing so narrowly on economic
relations obscures the fact that criticisms of those programs rely on dehumanizing racial
stereotypes nearly two hundred years old. Racism has always bubbled just beneath the
surface of white resistance to programs designed to beneﬁt black Americans. Secondly,
my interpretation shows that perceptions of disrespect and injustice as well as the
correlative emotions (e.g., indignation, anger) are not incorrigible, self-evident, or beyond
reproof. People can take offense when none is intended. And they can imagine injury at
the hands of another when, in reality, the “other” is a member of an oppressed group
whose only misdeed was to resist her own oppression.

Such is the case with regard to the hostility of some whites toward race-sensitive
policies. The indignation of those whites who most ardently oppose such policies is
evoked, not by the violation of universally held principles of justice, but by the perceived
threat to their power and privilege as whites. But, as I mentioned above, race relations
and practices serve as an example with which to develop my thesis about motivation and

conﬂict. 1 could just as easily have drawn an example from the backlash against

249

feminism, or, in light of the passage of Proposition 8 in the 2008 elections and the
ensuing protests, an example from religious opposition to sarne-sex marriage. Both
examples could be developed in an analogous way with my interpretation of race
relations, since in both cases members of the dominant group claim to be the aggrieved
defenders of justice and moral rectitude, when, in truth, they are denying members of
subordinated groups the same rights, opportunities, and privileges which they, the
dominant, take for granted (and jealously guard).

Whether it is refusing civil rights to gays and lesbians, sexist stereotyping in
politics and the media, or carping about how immigrants are “taking our jobs,” the
alleged injustices spurring public outrage should not be accepted uncritically. For, as I
noted when replying to the objection that not all who are disrespected actually resist,
people can be mistaken about their emotions as well as about the source or object of those
emotions. Since the recognitive norms structuring identity are historically constituted,
and since the emotional reactions accompanying violated expectations involve judgment,
error is both possible and unsurprising. Love, fear, ignorance, arrogance: any of these
states can account for why people do not protest disrespect, or why they sometimes
endorse beliefs and practices that effectively compromise their freedom.

Thus, the more vexing phenomenon involves those who assume to be entitled to
forms of recognition to which they are not entitled, or whose identity claims are
demonstrably unjustiﬁed, as when the dominant demand recognition from the
subordinated in ways that threaten, demean, or deprive the latter of their rights. If the
oppressed protest, they are apt to be labeled ingrates, immoral, etc.; if they do not protest,

they seem to acquiesce to their own oppression. Regardless of how the oppressed act in

250

 

such a double bind, we can conﬁdently affirm that the oppressors act wrongly, even
unjustly, insofar as they coerce recognition ﬁom the oppressed, or condemn them for
having the temerity to speak and be seen.

To appreciate and properly diagnose the nature of the injustice, however, requires
more than nostrums about how people with power don’t like to share. That may be true.
But to shrug and stop there would be to excise moral insight, growth, and motivation
from social interaction, and to reduce social progress to an almost accidental by-product
of power struggles. Recognitive demands and the struggles they engender, even when
unjust, can still be conceived as moral in nature, i.e., as subject to analysis and
evaluation, inasmuch as they bear upon people’s freedom and ontological security as
agents.

To elucidate the role of emotion in recognition, identity formation, and motivation
for social struggle, I want to reconsider two of the objections discussed above. One of
the objections states that recognition theory lacks a criterion for distinguishing between
justiﬁed and unjustiﬁed identity claims. If recognizing the identity of another is
obligatory, then it follows that a racist’s demand to be respected and esteemed must be
honored also. This is a perverse implication for a theory with liberatory intent, so there
must be a ﬂaw in the argument. The other objection states that esteeming a person
cannot be obligatory because people cannot esteem others at will. Emotions are
involuntary. To be obligating, an action must be voluntary. So, to esteem another cannot
be obligatory.

But the attempted reductio of the ﬁrst objection fails. Focusing only on esteem

and solidarity, it ignores those patterns of recognition that establish more fundamental

251

constituents of identity, namely, the practical relations to self that ground bodily integrity
and moral autonomy. If esteeming a racist required turning a blind eye to racial
discrimination or violence, then there are principled reasons why such a demand would
be unjust and rightly repudiated. The second objection, in turn, trades on the false
premise that emotions are involuntary givens, which makes the argument unsound.

Both objections founder on the same rock, which is to see in recognition theory a
type of ernotivism that is not there. Emotivism is the View that emotions and feelings
arise involuntarily and spontaneously, and that the texture of emotions and feelings
determines the moral quality of actions, situations, and so on. But identity-recognition
theory does not presuppose emotivism. By contrast, it afﬁrms that emotions are always
interpreted, and that their meaning is contingent historically, culturally, and individually.
Here, as elsewhere, Honneth invites misunderstanding by not sufﬁciently clarifying the
cognitive element of, say, an angry or indignant reaction to disrespect. If aversive
reactions to disrespect were merely causal, it would be senseless to speak of norms,
meanings, and expectations, as well as judgments or perceptions that one has, in fact,
been wronged.

There is no triggering mechanism ensuring that disrespect will motivate
resistance. But it is equally vital to note the converse: the fact of resistance is not fail-
safe evidence that there has been disrespect. Conservative evangelical Americans, for
example, miss no opportunity to state how embattled and marginalized they feel; and,
aside from reproductive rights, the windmill at which they most love to tilt is the demand
of gays and lesbians for the right to be legally wed. That evangelicals feel disrespected is

certain, as is evidenced by their preferred hybrid fallacy to condemn same-sex marriage:

252

only heterosexual marriage is just, because it has historically been the norm (appeal to
tradition); same-sex marriage would therefore be ab-normal and, if legalized, would open
the door to polygamy, incest, even pedophilia (slippery slope). But the perception of
insult is ill founded; the outrage unjustiﬁed. Exernpliﬁed here is a clash between one
group’s beliefs and values and another group’s claim to civil rights and legal inclusion:
yet to deny rights to a group is a more basic, a more tangible harm than to offend the
sense of propriety of a group.

Of course, the same point can be made by reﬂecting on white anger against
afﬁrmative action, social welfare, and so on. Many whites seem genuinely to believe that
affirmative action is unneeded, rewards the unqualiﬁed, and unjustly disadvantages and

229 a book cataloguing the attitudes to

discriminates against them. In Being White,
afﬁrmative action of white students at two US. universities, the author’s surveys reveal
that students felt anger, defensiveness, fear, and also a sense of hurt in connection with
afﬁrmative action. These feelings are real, so it avails little to wave them away as merely
uninformed opinion. The opinions may be uninformed and false. Indeed, the not
uncommon claims that whites are “victims” of reverse racism, are being “excluded” from
educational and professional institutions, are being “made to feel guilty” for ancient
wrongs — such laments are as ﬂimsy as they are ﬁ'ustrating. But to achieve greater
understanding, with a view to making social progress, it is necessary to understand the
roots of the feelings as well as the misconceptions. In the present case, investigating how

historical privileges, advantages, and normative expectations conﬁgure, contour, and

infuse the agency of white people would advance this ambition.

 

229 Karyn D. McKinney Being White: Stories of Race and Racism (New York: Routledge, 2005).

253

In the Introduction I mentioned Bernard Boxill’s conviction that to garner the
support of whites for social policies that would reduce black poverty and racial
inequality, appeal should be made not to their economic interests but, rather, to their
sense of social justice and responsibility. The hair-trigger defensiveness and denial of
any responsibility for current social conditions must be loosened, challenged, transformed
by moral education. Not only would such an appeal focus attention more precisely on the
nub of the problem; eschewing the ﬁxation on economic interests would also be more
respectful, in the Kantian sense, because it would engage whites as morally responsible
agents.

Economism’s kernel of truth, so to speak, is that modern subjects experience
themselves principally as economic agents. But this truth is historical — people
experience themselves in this way because they are conﬁgured to be economic agents.
And, in the U.S., they are configured to be “white” as well. Thus, by linking social
categories such as whiteness to recognitive relations, identity formation, and motivation
for social conﬂict, identity-recognition theory would offer a richer sense of social

responsibility and facilitate the sort of moral education urged by Boxill.

254

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