Abstract

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk intelligibly—while staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition.

Highlights

  • The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an potent resource for critique

  • In Axel Honneth’s (1996) influential and philosophically rich treatment of the notion we find recognition operating in three dimensions: it names what we need from others in our ongoing struggle to psychologically differentiate ourselves and maintain a secure and confident sense of self; it names what we need from others in order to be able to respect ourselves as moral subjects, essentially as a reflection of the moral respect we receive from others; and it names the esteem we need from others in order to sustain our self-esteem in respect of some aspect of our specific mode of self-realization

  • Might we talk intelligibly— while staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels so that it may indicate, first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others

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Summary

Introduction

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an potent resource for critique. With these ideas of psychological and ethical recognition in place regarding basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem, we can raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood.

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