First published in German as Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit and copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2000

This English translation © Polity Press, 2007

The right of Axel Honneth to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-07456-29056

ISBN-13: 978-07456-29063 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-94498 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-93569 (mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Part I: The Tasks of Social Philosophy

Part II: Morality and Recognition

Part III: Problems of Political Philosophy

The publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use the following copyright translations of Axel Honneth's writings:

Blackwell Publishing for “The Possibility of a Dislosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism,” Constellations, 7:1 (2000), pp. 116–27; “The Social Dynamics of Disrespect: On Location of Critical Theory Today,” Constellations, 1:2 (1994), pp. 255–69; and The Handbook of Critical Theory, ed. David M. Rasmussen (1996), pp. 369–96;

Cambridge University Press for “The Other of Justice: Habermas and the Ethical Challenge of Postmodernism,” trs. John M. Farrell, in S. White, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (1995), pp. 289–323;

MIT Press for “Is Universalism a Moral Trap? The Presuppositions and Limits of a Politics of Human Rights” in James Bohmann and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, eds., Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal (1997), pp. 155–78, trs. John M. Farrell;

Sage Publications for “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today,” trs. John M. Farrell, Political Theory, 26:6 (1998), pp. 763–83;

Social Research for “Between Aristotle and Kant: Recognition and Moral Obligation,” Social Research 64:1 (1997), pp. 16–35. This essay was originally published under the title “Recognition and Moral Obligation.” The title has been modified for this book; and “Negative Freedom and Cultural Belonging: An Unhealthy Tension in the Political Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin,” Social Research, 66:4 (1999), pp. 1063–77;

SUNY Press for “Moral Consciousness and Class Domination: Some Problems in the Analysis of Hidden Morality” and “Decentered Autonomy: The Subject after the Fall” from The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (1995), pp. 205–19, 261–71.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

I'm pleased that this volume of essays can finally appear in English after years of preparations that were not always easy. Although most of the essays are more than ten years old, nevertheless they give a clear sense of the direction in which I have sought to develop further the concept I had outlined in Struggle for Recognition. Though I initially conceived of the concept of recognition as a normative groundwork for a critical theory of society, it soon proved solid enough to be applied in the contexts of social philosophy in general, as well as moral philosophy and political philosophy.

It was not merely for reasons of language that we decided not to publish the English edition under the original German title. Though it is certainly true that the Hegelian formulation “Other of Justice” presents difficulties for English-speaking readers, we also had systematic reasons for opting for the current title. After all, what we might conceive of as a striving for social recognition initially appears in a negative form, namely as the experience of humiliation or disrespect. Only after undertaking a closer analysis and laying bare the normative points of reference that remain mostly unarticulated in everyday reality does it become apparent that these negative experiences are based implicitly on a demand for a previously withheld type of recognition. If we express these experiences of disrespect in positive terms and distinguish among them with regard to their moral content, then it becomes generally apparent that they are linked to the typical principles of recognition institutionalized in that respective society. Subjects only experience disrespect in what they can grasp as violations of the normative claims they have come to know in their socialization as justified implications of established principles of recognition. In my view, therefore, “disrespect” constitutes the systematic key to a comprehensive theory of recognition that attempts to clarify the sense in which institutionalized patterns of social recognition generate justified demands on the way subjects treat each other.

The essays collected here represent but a sort of preparation for the solution to these difficult and complex issues. By delving into the three complementary disciplines of practical philosophy, social philosophy, and political philosophy, these essays tentatively explore the possibility of adjusting these disciplines' central normative categories to the concept of recognition. This question does not stand in the foreground of every essay; in some essays I have merely reconstructed the current situation prevailing in the respective discipline in order to make systematic preparations for the corresponding adjustment. Occasionally other authors stand in the center of the discussion; here the aim is to test out the extent to which their lines of argumentation can be reformulated in terms of recognition. But without a doubt the common bond shared by all these essays is the attempt to embark on a recognitional grounding of practical philosophy.

I'd like to express my gratitude to Polity for enabling the publication of this volume in English, and I'd especially like to thank John Thompson for his competent advice and understanding in the choice of a title. Most of all I'm indebted to the translator, Joseph Ganahl, who in a short time succeeded in taking a conglomeration of starkly diverging and partly abridged translations and turning them into a unified whole.