Volume 4, 2015
Ethics and Politics / Éthique et politique
Michael Sohn
Pages 217-225
The Ethics and Politics of Recognition
Reflections on Taylor, Honneth, and Ricœur
This article seeks to show that multiple modalities uncovered in the phenomenology of recognition is the basis for understanding how social and political phenomena can manifest itself variously in amoral social conflict, moral struggles for recognition as well as peaceful experiences of mutual recognition. Conceived in this light, the moral task for individuals is to move beyond the recognition of others as things and instead towards the recognition of the others as persons worthy of respect and sympathy. And the political task of institutions is to teach and cultivate moral forms of mutual recognition even as they regulate and constrain the amoral Hobbesian tendencies for social conflict.