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Honneth, Kojeve and Levinas on intersubjectivity and history

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Abstract

I explore some of the challenges involved in establishing the intersubjective dynamic as the foundation for a normatively charged philosophy of history. I seek in addition to highlight the value of Levinas’ work for the field of recognition studies. Levinas in effect offers a transitional model of recognition between Kojeve and Honneth, and as such his work harbors the potential for addressing some of the difficulties which beset the work of both when it comes to formulating an understanding of recognition which is capable of explaining historical transformation and of serving as a standard for the critique of historical practices.

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Notes

  1. See principally Hegel (1975).

  2. Levinas (1979, p. 21).

  3. Levinas (1979, p. 25).

  4. Levinas (1979, p. 86).

  5. Levinas (1979, p. 101).

  6. Levinas (1990, p. 125).

  7. Levinas (1990, p. 110).

  8. Levinas (1979, p. 28).

  9. Rose (1992, p. 250).

  10. Vanni (2004, p. 128).

  11. Horowitz (2008, p. 34).

  12. Kojève (1980, p. 4).

  13. Kojève (1980, p. 6).

  14. Kojève (1980, p. 5).

  15. Kojève (1980, p. 13).

  16. Kojève (1980, p. 94).

  17. Kojève (1980, p. 192).

  18. Levinas (1991, p. 39).

  19. Levinas (1991, p. 38).

  20. Levinas (1991, p. 38).

  21. Levinas (1991, p. 39).

  22. Levinas (1991, p. 41).

  23. Levinas (1991, p. 41).

  24. Levinas (1991, p. 41).

  25. Levinas (1991, p. 34).

  26. Butler (1987, p. 48).

  27. Butler (1987, p. 43).

  28. Williams (1997, p. 389).

  29. Honneth (1995, p. 15).

  30. Levinas (1991, p. 36).

  31. Levinas (1991, p. 46).

  32. Levinas (1979, p. 101).

  33. Fraser and Honneth (2003, p. 177).

  34. Honneth (1995, p. 22).

  35. Honneth (2008, p. 49).

  36. Honneth (2008, p. 84).

  37. Honneth (2007, p. 42).

  38. Honneth (2007, p. 37).

  39. Honneth (1995, pp. 97–107).

  40. Honneth (1995, p. 143).

  41. Honneth (2012b, p. 94).

  42. Honneth (2014, p. 59).

  43. Honneth (1995, p. 44).

  44. Honneth (1995, p. 14).

  45. Honneth (2007, p. 42).

  46. Honneth (2007, p. 70).

  47. Honneth (2007, p. 87).

  48. Honneth (2007, p. 93).

  49. McNay (2008, p. 161).

  50. McNay (2008, p. 138).

  51. I am here extending Patchell’s critique, for whom the fixation on recognition decisively limits in advance the unpredictability of intersubjective communication: the attempt to envisage “a world in which people could all find their own identities accurately and respectfully reflected in the mirror of their shared social and political life” requires us to hold, she argues, to a “paralyzing” and “excessively firm grip” on each other’s identity (see Markel 2003, pp. 20–42).

  52. Fraser and Honneth (2003, p. 174).

  53. Fraser and Honneth (2003, p. 184). Recognition diversifies into the spheres of love, esteem and respect, the first emerging with the idea of the bourgeois family and the latter two as separate offshoots from the aristocratic idea of honor.

  54. Fraser and Honneth (2003, p. 152).

  55. Honneth (1995, p. 24).

  56. Althusser (1970, p. 71).

  57. Althusser (1970, p. 64).

  58. Althusser (1970, p. 67).

  59. Honneth (2012b, p. 95).

  60. Whitebook (2001, p. 281).

  61. Honneth (2012a, p. 199).

  62. Adorno (1970, p. 92).

  63. Honneth (2002, p. 503).

  64. Honneth (2002, p. 509).

  65. We might further add that in Freedom’s Right Honneth no longer appears to invest “anthropological force” in the struggle for recognition, and focuses on how, from institutionalized regimes of recognition, we can extrapolate the mere potential for further growth. The historically transformative struggles which constitute direct forms of reaction to “misrecognition” have indeed fallen out of view and his focus is now on critiquing “misdevelopments” in institutions of recognition which the diverse, unarticulated responses of individuals register symptomatically (Honneth 2014, p. 87).

  66. I explore in greater depth the challenge for recognition theory of Althusser’s critique of interpellation, and the subsequent generation of thinkers such as Butler, Dolar, Laclau, Mouffe and Zizek in Recognition between Philosophical Anthropology and Social Ontology: Honneth and the Critique of Interpellation (forthcoming).

  67. A wider debate on psychoanalytical sources for recognition is possible here which would contrast the Lacanian background which informs the Althusserian reading of recognition, and which is itself informed by the Kojevean reading of Hegel, and the background of object relations theory which informs Honneth’s own reading of recognition. Abid, who follows the concept of recognition which emerges from Lacan’s reading of Kojeve, frames this debate concisely: “While Winnicott conceives human development as a progressive, ameliorative process of the transformation—sublimation—of human drives, Lacan conceives this human development as a process of the progressive deconstruction of, and extraction from, essentially restrictive social relations” (Abid 2012, p. 340).

  68. Kojève (1980, p. 124).

  69. Kojève (1980, p. 155).

  70. Sobel (2004, p. 200).

  71. Honneth (2002, p. 504).

  72. Honneth (2002, p. 504).

  73. Kojève (1980, p. 21).

  74. Kojève (1980, p. 225).

  75. Honneth remarks that, whereas Anerkennung signifies more exclusively the bestowing of an honour, esteem or respect perceived as merited, in French and English reconnaissance and recognition can, among other nuances, take on the sense of identification of what was hitherto misrecognized or concealed from view (Honneth 2012b, p. 138). While Honneth focuses almost exclusively on the former sense, Kojeve brings both into play. An additional difficulty in articulating the perspectives would thus be rendering this aspect of identification compatible with the perspective of Honneth.

  76. Kojève (1980, p. 191).

  77. Levinas (1979, p. 233).

  78. Levinas (1979, p. 225).

  79. Butler (1987, p. 16).

  80. Levinas (1979, p. 275).

  81. Levinas (1979, p. 279).

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    Terence Holden

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Holden, T. Honneth, Kojeve and Levinas on intersubjectivity and history. Cont Philos Rev 49, 349–369 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-015-9345-1

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