Ricoeur's surprising take on recognition

This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Please cite the original version: All material supplied via JYX is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the repository collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone who is not an authorised user. Ricoeur's surprising take on recognition Laitinen, Arto Laitinen, A. (2011). Ricoeur's surprising take on recognition. Etudes Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies Journal, 2 (1), 35-50. doi:10.5195/errs.2011.57 2011 Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies, Vol 2, No 1 (2011), pp. 35-50 ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Paul Ricoeur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Arto Laitinen Arto Laitinen is University Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). Abstract This essay examines Paul Ricœur’s views on recognition in his book The Course of Recognition. It highlights those aspects that are in some sense surprising, in relation to his previous publications and the general debates on Hegelian Anerkennung and the politics of recognition. After an overview of Ricœur’s book, the paper examines the meaning of ‚recognition‛ in Ricœur’s own proposal, in the dictionaries Ricœur uses, and in the contemporary debates. Then it takes a closer look at the ideas of recognition as identification and as ‚taking as true.‛ Then it turns to recognition (attestation) of oneself, in light of the distinction between human constants (and the question ‚What am I?‛), and human variables (and the question ‚Who Am I?‛). The last section concerns the dialectics of struggles for recognition and states of peace, and the internal relationship between the contents of a normative demand and what counts as satisfying the demand. Keywords: Paul Ricœur, Recognition, Attestation, Identity, Human Constants Résumé Cet article examine les thèses de Paul Ricœur sur la reconnaissance dans son livre Parcours de la reconnaissance. Il met en lumière des aspects de cet ouvrage qui peuvent, en plusieurs sens, nous suprendre, au regard des ouvrages antérieurs du philosophe, ou encore au regard des débats généraux sur l’Anerkennung hégélienne et sur les politiques de reconnaissance. Après avoir dressé un aperçu général du livre, la contribution analyse le sens du terme de ‚reconnaissance‚ dans la conceptualisation Ricœurienne, dans les dictionnaires que Ricœur mobilise à l’appui de son argumentation, et dans les débats contemporains. Ensuite, l’article s’attarde sur l’idée de reconnaissance comme identification et comme ‚tenir pour vrai‚. Puis, il se tourne vers la reconnaissance (attestation) de soi-même, à travers la distinction entre les ‚invariants humains‚ (et la question ‚qu’est-ce que je suis?‚), et les ‚variations humaines ‚ (et la question ‚qui suis-je?‚). La dernière section se focalise sur la dialectique entre les luttes pour la reconnaissance et les états de paix, d’une part, et la relation interne entre le contenu d’une demande normative et ce qui importe comme satisfaisant une demande, d’autre part. Mots-clés: Paul Ricœur, Reconnaissance, Attestation, Identité, Invariants humains Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu Paul Ricœur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Arto Laitinen University of Jyväskylä (Finland) In this essay, I examine Paul Ricœur’s views on recognition in his book The Course of Recognition.1 I wish to highlight those aspects of his take on recognition that are in some sense surprising. Something can be a surprise only relative to expectations, so I will first try to explicate the nature of the expectations, or the kinds of contextual background, against which Ricœur’s book on recognition stands out. One of these contexts is provided by the dictionaries that Ricœur consults for the meanings of ‚recognition‛ at the beginning of his book. There are interesting discrepancies and overlappings between the dictionaries and Ricœur’s own discussion of them: for example, ‚recognition of self‛ is central to Ricœur but not mentioned in the dictionaries, and ‚acceptance of validity‛ is present in the dictionaries but not thematized by Ricœur. Another context is provided by Ricœur’s earlier writings on ‚human constants,‛ especially on subjectivity and capable human agency.2 These writings give rise to various expectations concerning what Ricœur might discuss in a book on recognition: these include highlighting the asymmetry of self-relations and other-relations, but avoiding both the Husserlian and Levinasian extremes while doing so, stressing the relevance of human agency, and the attestation of capabilities (but also fallibility and vulnerability) of agents. These expectations are met – indeed, it is surprising how much of these books on human agency (almost their entirety) Ricœur now covers under the titles of identification and recognition of self. It might be thought that ‚recognition‛ equals ‚intersubjectivity,‛ but for Ricœur, only recognition of and by others does so: the semantic field is broader, so all kinds of cognition and selfattestation are now included as kinds of ‚recognition,‛ whether or not they are constitutively intersubjective (which they of course do turn out to be in some sense). A further background consists of the debates on ‚human variables‛ in terms of cultural identities, multiculturalism, politics of recognition, politics of identity and difference, including Ricœur’s own writings on thick selfhood and narrative identity (especially in Oneself as Another, Time and Narrative, and a number of his essays).3 Here, one would have expected a rich analysis of how narrative self-definitions and thick identities are dialogically constituted in relations of recognition to others, and how cultural, practical, social, ethical and narrative aspects of thick identities relate to each other. The surprise here is how little, almost nothing, Ricœur says of all this, given that ‚Ricœurian‛ views on layers of self-relations could be anticipated on the basis of his earlier writings, as I hope to sketch below. Ricœur is right to oppose the narrow focus of these debates on cultural variables and differences, but it is nothing short of surprising that he does not develop his rich account further in this context. Recognition is also about dialogical constitution of thick narrative, evaluative, practical identities. Yet another background consists of the Hegelian and Honnethian developments of the notion of Anerkennung, covering both human constants and variables, but also issues of social and Arto Laitinen Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 37 37 institutional reality and normativity.4 In these debates two senses of ‚recognition‛ often are intertwined, that of (mutual) recognition of agents (self and others) who are recognized by one another, and that of normative acknowledgement of values, reasons, principles, institutions as valid. It is a bit surprising, then, that Ricœur’s threefold distinction of senses of recognition (identification of anything, self-attestation and mutual recognition with others) excludes a central sense of recognition of values or normative entities as valid.5 Finally, as often happens, some expectations arise while reading the book, and later passages in the same book may be surprising in light of them. This is perhaps the case with Ricœur’s discussion of struggles for recognition and states of peace, as I hope to show below. From Identification and Self-Attestation to Mutual Recognition Ricœur’s usage of the term ‚recognition‛ is much broader than is customary in debates about the politics of identity and difference, which have ‚most contributed to popularizing the theme of recognition, at the risk of turning it into something banal.‛6 He thinks that the kind of social standing related to cultural differences is only one of many species of mutual recognition, and furthermore, that mutual recognition in all of its forms differs from two other kinds of recognition discussed in the book. The other two are discussed in the first two chapters of the book: first, identification of anything as the thing that it is; second, recognition of oneself as a capable agent. In Ricœur’s own description, the master threads of i) identity, ii) alterity and iii) dialectic of recognition and misrecognition structure the book, and each develops along the way. i) Idemidentity excludes alterity, but alterity is constitutive of existential Ipse-identity; ii) Self-recognition or self-assertion of one’s capacities ‚anticipates‛ mutuality or reciprocity, but does not yet accomplish it; iii) There is a development from ‚misidentifications‛ or mere mistakes via selfdeception and failures of self-understanding to refusals of recognition of others, struggles for recognition, distorted forms of gift-giving and finally to the satisfactory experiences of getting recognition and states of peace.7 Ricœur starts from an observation that although there are libraries full of books on theories of knowledge, there are no corresponding theories of ‚recognition.‛ Recognition has surfaced only in a couple of ‚thought events‛ in the history of philosophy: Kant uses the term Rekognition in the Critique of Pure Reason, Bergson discusses recognition of oneself in memory, and the young Hegel discusses Anerkennung in a social context. These seem to be about very different things. Ricœur wants to show that the topic of recognition has some unity, at least some ‚rulegoverned polysemy,‛ which links these and other ‚thought events‛ together, regardless of whether or not the term was explicitly used in them. As it happens, Kant’s Rekognition turns out to be a disappointment for Ricœur, and Bergson is discussed only for a couple of pages. But, many other minor occurrences of ‚recognition‛ are reported along the way. Perhaps surprisingly, neither Fichte nor Hegel’s Phenomenology are hardly mentioned. Moreover, Ricœur does not really engage with analytical philosophy at all, which would have been relevant for the topic of the first chapter, at the very least. Ricœur introduces his topic by asking what dictionaries might tell us about the unity of the term ‚recognition,‛ or reconnaissance. This section of the book works surprisingly well in English translation. The meanings of the French word are mostly covered by the English one, the Paul Ricœur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 38 main difference being that ‚gratitude‛ is much more central in the French term. By contrast, there is no neat translation to German. For example, neither anerkennen, wiedererkennen nor Recognition covers the whole scope of this term. Here’s one way of summing up the various (more than twenty) meanings of the word mentioned in the dictionaries.8 There is, first, a family of meanings related to identification of things. We can identify familiar people and objects directly by their holistic style or bearing, or we can identify things for the first time by some mark. Second, there is a family of meanings related to accepting some claim or document as true or valid. Thirdly, there is a family of senses in which recognition concerns people. To recognize can be for example ‚to bear witness through gratitude that one is indebted to someone for (something, an act)‛ or ‚to accept (a person) as a leader, master‛ and the recognized person can be ‚someone who is declared to possess a certain quality.‛ One may note in passing that Ricœur’s ‚recognition of oneself‛ does not figure in the dictionaries discussed.9 Furthermore, recognition as accepting as true or valid seems to be more prominent than Ricœur notes. Thus, an alternative ‚course‛ of recognition might as well move from recognition-identification to recognition-acceptance as true or valid (‚recognition-adhesion‛ (211) and then to what Ricœur calls ‚recognition-attestation‛ of oneself and others. Chapter One, ‚Recognition as Identification,‛ discusses Descartes, Kant, and phenomenologists from Husserl to Merleau–Ponty. It emerges that identification is threatened not only by mistaking some individual thing for some other individual thing, but also by a failure to construe something as an individual thing at all. Although it is not explicitly stressed by Ricœur, one can say that these two kinds of failures of identification may be relevant in political contexts. People sometimes see ‚groups‛ where there really are – or should be – none (and there may be struggles aiming at dissolving the very idea that the xs form a unified group), or people may fail to perceive groups which do demand positive recognition as a group, and sometimes of course people mistake some groups or individuals for others (so that they may buy the idea that Saddam Hussein might have been responsible for Al-Qaeda’s deeds). Overall, there seem to be five themes discussed under the topic of recognition as identification: i) identification as a synthesis (say, perceiving a shape and not just dots; perceiving a material body and not just profiles and silhouettes; a forest and not just trees), which may be quite automatic in the case of human persons, but not so in the case of recognizing groups; ii) identification as distinguishing something from other things, for example, identifying a person as the individual that she is; iii) identification on the basis of marks versus on the basis of more holistic ‚style‛; iv) the relevance of presence, disappearing and reappearing, and change10; v) (with Descartes) the topic of accepting ‚an idea‛ as true. Chapter Two introduces an important presupposition to the debates about mutual recognition: the fact that we are able to act, that we are capable agents, and therefore capable of taking responsibility. The chapter links up with Ricœur’s earlier analysis (in Oneself as Another) of the kind of certitude with which we recognize that we have various capacities as agents. It differs from descriptive ‚identification‛ as discussed in the first chapter. The type of recognition in question is ‚attestation,‛ expressed by self-assertions such as ‚I believe that I can,‛ and implicit in anything that we do.11 There is really no discussion of the sense of recognizing one’s identity, of who one is in particular (and not merely the fact that, like others, one is a capable, responsible agent). This is surprising, given Ricœur’s famous earlier analyses of ipse-identity and narrative identity, which no doubt are related to recognition of oneself. Arto Laitinen Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 39 39 In Chapter Two Ricœur first discusses Greek texts and agrees with Bernard Williams’ thesis that a cultural constant about humans as ‚centers of agency‛ and as responsible actors can be found in the Greek texts. The next section, entitled ‚A Phenomenology of the Capable Human Being,‛ introduces the topic of recognizing oneself as an agent, as having various capacities to speak, to act, to narrate, and to take responsibility. This section covers the main themes of Ricœur’s Oneself as Another in a rather dense manner. The third section is entitled ‚Memory and Promises,‛ which also covers themes from his book Memory, History, Forgetting.12 Ricœur points out, following Bergson, that there is an implicit recognition of self in recognizing images or memories. And there is a peculiar kind of persistence of self that takes place in promises: even if my inclinations would change in the future, I now commit myself to doing something then. This is crucial for Ricœur’s idea that idem-identity (identity as sameness) and ipse-identity (identity as selfhood) are in a dialectical relationship. The last section in the second chapter is entitled ‚Capacities and Social Practices‛. It first discusses social practices and collective representations, and then discusses how Ricœur’s capacities relate to Sen’s capability approach. Ricœur’s point, in preceding the discussion of mutual recognition by a discussion of the capacities and capabilities of each can be seen as a criticism of a certain kind of ‚constructivism‛ about agency. One’s agency does not emerge in being recognized by others or oneself, but there are grounds in one’s factual capacities and potentials. Self-recognition or self-assertion of one’s capacities merely ‚anticipates‛ mutuality or reciprocity, but does not yet accomplish it.13 ‚If it is possible to abstract from every bond of intersubjectivity in analysing capacities on the level of potential actions, the passage from a capacity to its exercise does not allow for such an elision.‛14 ‚In these different ways self-recognition refers to others without this reference’s assuming the position of a ground, like that of the power to act, nor does the ‘before others’ imply reciprocity or mutuality. The mutuality of recognition is anticipated in this ‘before others’ but is not accomplished in it.‛15 Chapter Three turns to interpersonal recognition and creates the sense of philosophical aporia that characterizes Ricœur’s best work. Ricœur starts by discussing the asymmetry of the self and the other, by referring to the directly opposed versions of this asymmetry given by Husserl and Levinas, respectively. Ricœur’s point is to warn against forgetting the real dissymmetries in the search for mutuality between the self and the other. After this initial warning, Ricœur discusses Hobbes’s challenge to political philosophy, and interprets Hegel’s notion of Anerkennung as a response to Hobbes. For Hegel ‚the desire for recognition occupies the place held in the Hobbesian conception of the state of nature by the fear of a violent death.‛16 Ricœur does not discuss the most famous passages on recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, but focuses solely on Hegel’s earlier texts. In this, Ricœur follows Axel Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition, the main text in contemporary debates on this topic. This leads to a lengthy and interesting commentary on Honneth’s work. In Ricœur’s view ‚the correlation between the three models of recognition inherited from Hegel and the negative forms of disregard‛ is ‚the most important contribution by Honneth’s book to the theory of recognition in its post-Hegelian phase.‛17 ‚The three models of recognition provide the speculative structure, while the negative sentiments give flesh and blood to the struggle for recognition.‛18 The first form of recognition, love, is ‚constituted by strong emotional attachments among a small number of people.‛19 This is a pre-juridical form of reciprocal recognition where ‚subjects mutually confirm each other with regard to their concrete needs and thereby recognize each other as needy creatures.‛20 Such attachments are inconsistent with direct violations of Paul Ricœur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 40 physical integrity (as Honneth stresses), or negations of approbation (as Ricœur stresses) that systematically affect a person’s basic self-confidence. ‚Humiliation, experienced as the withdrawal or refusal of such approbation, touches everyone at the prejuridical level of his or her ‚being-with‛ others. The individual feels looked down on from above, even taken as insignificant. Deprived of approbation, the person is as if nonexistent.‛21 The second form of recognition, universal respect, is institutionalized in the legal recognition of rights. Corresponding to different kinds of rights, there are various specific forms of disrespect. The humiliation that relates to a denial of civil rights is different from a denial of political rights, or welfare rights. The third form of recognition concerns the social dimension of politics, Sittlichkeit in its broadest sense, which is irreducible to juridical ties. The concept of social esteem differs from self-respect and self-confidence and ‚functions to sum up all the modes of mutual recognition that exceed the mere recognition of the equality of rights among free subjects.‛22 It is a matter of ‚the notions that go with the idea of social esteem, such as prestige or consideration.‛23 People need recognition of ‚the importance of their individual qualities for the life of others.‛24 Ricœur then turns to a very fruitful addition to Honneth’s analysis of struggles for esteem. Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot25 speak of justification as ‚the strategy by which competitors give credence to their respective places in < economies of standing.‛26 People’s standing can be evaluated to be great or small in the light of qualifying tests specific to different contexts, which Boltanski and Thevenot call ‚cities‛ or ‚worlds.‛ ‚In each case, the evaluation of performances is based on a battery of tests that the protagonists must pass in competitive situation, if they are to be said to be ‘justified.’‛27 They name six different contexts. ‚For example, there is the question of ‘inspired greatness’ as applied to artists and other creative individuals.‛28 There is a ‚city of inspiration‛ illustrated by Saint Augustine’s City of God. What matters is grace as distinguished from vainglory. ‚In this city, no credit is accorded to recognition by others, at least in terms of renown.‛29 ‚But renown is precisely what the city of opinion refers to, in which standing depends only on the opinions of others. Ties of personal dependence are what decide one’s importance in the eyes of others. Here honor depends on the credit conferred by other people.‛30 In addition, they enumerate the domestic, civic, commercial and industrial cities, each with rival standards of social standing.31 There are feelings of injustice, for example, when such tests are corrupted, and differences of opinion arise, and the ‚worlds‛ may also challenge and even invalidate each others. There is a typology of types of criticism directed by one world to another: ‚What is the standing of a great industrialist in the eyes of a great orchestra director? The capacity to become great in another world may even be eclipsed by success in some order of standing.‛32 But one may note that perhaps this is balanced by the tendency of elites to form clubs. As ways of responding to such disagreements between and within worlds, Boltanski and Thevenot favor figures of compromise over those of consensus in dealing with the idea of agreement.33 Ricœur stresses the capacity of persons to understand a world other than one’s own. Ricœur suggests that the model of compromise is superior, for example, to Charles Taylor’s insistence that mutual recognition must deal with genuine value judgments. Ricœur stresses, however, that the vertical role of the state, political power, and authority must be added to the claims put forward by Honneth, Thevenot and Boltanski. Arto Laitinen Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 41 41 Ultimately, Ricœur wants to question the importance of the idea of ‚struggle‛ that Hobbes, Hegel, Honneth, Thevenot and Boltanski all give central place. Ricœur asks: ‚when, we may ask, does a subject deem him- or herself to be truly recognized?‛34 Ricœur sees that this might be an insatiable quest. ‚Does not the claim for affective, juridical and social recognition, through its militant, conflictual style, end up as an indefinite demand, a kind of ‘bad infinity’?‛35 To answer this worry, Ricœur looks for circumstances, which would reveal the possibility of genuine recognition in a particularly convincing manner. Ricœur looks for actual experiences of ‚states of peace‛ to get confirmation that the moral motivation for struggles for recognition is not illusory.36 Ricœur takes practices of giving and receiving gifts to be such an exemplary context. Ricœur’s main point in discussing gift-giving is to stress the role of gratitude as a response to a gift. Giving a gift in return is not the first response, nor is there a mechanic need to reciprocate: gratitude is as such an adequate way of establishing mutuality. A central meaning of the French word ‚reconnaissance‛ is gratitude, and Ricœur’s observations about giftgiving and gratitude are among the highlights of this book. The exchange of gifts illuminates two central aspects of mutual recognition. The first is ‚the irreplaceable character of each of the partners in the exchange. The one is not the other. We exchange gifts, but not places.‛37 The second is the difference of mutual recognition from any form of fusional union, whether in love or friendship: ‚A just distance is maintained at the heart of mutuality, a just distance that integrates respect into intimacy.‛38 Below, I will suggest a different way of understanding the nature of struggles and states of peace, in terms of the normative demands and their conditions of satisfaction. Nonetheless, the main claims of Ricœur’s last chapter are hard to resist. We should not exaggerate possibilities of mutuality or forget the original asymmetry of the self and the other. We should not forget the role of vertical power relations in discussing the struggles for recognition, but at the same time, we should not deny that at least fleeting experiences of genuine mutual recognition are possible (even in an imperfect world). What is Recognition? Dictionaries, Ricœur and Contemporary Debates As mentioned above, Ricœur introduces the word ‚recognition‛ by going through various French dictionaries. Grand Robert de la langue francaise (2nd ed 1985, edited by Alain Rey), includes ‚recognition‛ in three major senses - identify; take as true; be grateful or acknowledge a debt - which branch to several further meanings, while Littre’s Dictionaire de la langue francaise (1859-1872) enumerates no less than twenty-three meanings for recognition and five senses of reconnu, (‚that which is recognized‛). Even at the most general level, there are some salient contrasts between what the dictionaries (‚D‛) list (D1 identify; D2 take as true; D3 be grateful or acknowledge a debt), the three senses that Ricœur (‚R‛) uses to structure the book (R1 to identify anything, R2 to recognize one’s self, R3 to recognize and be recognized by others), and the usage of ‚recognition‛ in the debates on politics (‚P‛) of recognition (P1 to identify anything; P2 to acknowledge norms and institutions as valid; P3 to stand in relations of recognition to other recognizers).39 Still, what is common to all these is that the the first sense (D1, R1, P1) is related to identification of an object of any kind, something that persists changes and remains the same until ultimately ceases to exist; what are called ‚individuals,‛ ‚particulars,‛ or ‚continuants‛ in analytical ontology. Paul Ricœur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 42 To identify in this sense is to join together impressions, to take as an entity, as ‚a something‛ in the first place (to see the forest from the trees; to see the shape and not just dots; to see a solid material entity and not just profiles or patches of colour; to conceptualize a set of individuals as a group, and so forth). The Kantian approach to identification stresses this identification as a thing, as a ‚something.‛ Note that it is possible here to identify something as one thing without taking a stand on what it is. A more informative sense, though, is to identify (for the first time perhaps) on the basis of distinguishing marks as this individual, or to categorize something as having these particular features, or as belonging to this generic kind. This also includes to re-identify something, either on the basis of distinguishing marks again, or typically with familiar objects or individuals, more holistically on the basis of the individual’s style or Gestalt. What is also common to the definitions is that the third sense seems to concern relations between persons (or recognizers) (D3, R3, P3). In the French dictionaries, especially gratitude or acknowledgement of debt: ‚To bear witness through gratitude that one is indebted to someone for (something, an act),‛ but also ‚to accept (a person) as leader, master‛ or ‚To submit to the authority of some person.‛ What is recognized can be ‚someone who is declared to possess a certain quality‛ or ‚he who receives signs of gratitude‛ and thus is rewarded. The third part of Ricœur’s book connects to contemporary debates on politics of recognition (via discussion of Honneth), so it is no wonder that there is an overlap in that meaning between R3 and P3. Yet, what lies between the first and third senses diverges greatly between dictionaries, Ricœur’s book and mainstream contemporary debates. The topic of Ricœur’s second chapter, recognition of oneself, is totally missing from the dictionaries (R2).40 And in the contemporary debates on philosophy of recognition, recognition of oneself is not typically distinguished as a separate sense of recognition, it is just stressed heavily that recognizing oneself and recognizing and being recognized by others are dialectically dependent (disrespect from others breeds lack of self-respect, lack of self-respect breeds failure to respect others, and so on).41 So it is a kind of surprise, both in relation to the French word, and debates on recognition, to find ‚recognition of self‛ as a separate topic.42 The sense of ‚recognition‛ or ‚acknowledgement‛ of norms, reasons, principles, institutions, values as valid, while prevalent in contemporary debates on recognition (P2), is missing from the dictionaries43 as well as Ricœur’s book. Such issues are not thematized, although they are briefly touched upon, as in the following passage: ‚recognition intends two things: the other person and the norm. As regards the norm, it signifies, in the lexical sense of the word, to take as valid, to assert validity; as regards the person, recognition means identifying each person as free and equal to every other person.‛44 By contrast, the dictionaries’ second family of meanings is that of ‚taking as true‛ (D2). These can be said to include the following: a) To take as true, to recognize that so-and-so is the case; b) To admit that so-and-so is the case (after hesitation or denial etc); c) To notice a relevant feature (To recognize the danger, to recognize someone’s innocence etc), or d) To avow an error, a mistake. This certainly is a central usage of the term, and both Ricœur’s book and contemporary analyses of senses of ‚recognition‛ might be strengthened by clarifying how their interests differ from this. Apparently, Ricœur’s first sense is meant to cover this as well, as he focuses on the phenomenon of identification as judging (and indeed says that Descartes’s views on identification cover that sense as well). To sum up, a more complete ‚course‛ of recognition might include the following: i) identifying a thing; ii) taking a claim as true; iii) accepting norms Arto Laitinen Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 49 49 21 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 191. 22 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 202. 23 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 202. 24 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 202. 25 Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006 [1991]). 26 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 205. 27 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 205. 28 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 205. 29 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 207. 30 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 207. 31 One may note that all such standings compete with private pleasures, and the pattern of justification that hedonists may have in the eyes of one another. Some people may just not care about inspirational greatness and so on, but want a private life with private pleasures. 32 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 209. 33 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 206. 34 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 217. 35 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 218. 36 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 218. 37 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 263. 38 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 263. 39 See Ikäheimo & Laitinen, “Analyzing Recognition.” 40 As noted above, the English Merriam-Webster dictionary does have an entry for “self-recognition,” see note 8. 41 See Siep, Anerkennung, Honneth, Struggle. 42 This is connected to an interesting and substantial point. Ricoeur puts emphasis on the fact that there is a dissymmetry in mutuality and it can be asked whether in his model of recognition we first recognize individual capabilities, and only afterwards engage in interaction or intersubjective recognition. (I thank Gonçalo Marcelo for posing the question). Ricoeur clearly does stress the ontological irreducibility of individual capacities to intersubjectivity: the capacities are not created in intersubjective recognition, although intersubjective mediation is often needed in their exercise and actualization. However, such an ontological priority (in “ordo essendi”) need not entail an epistemic priority (in “ordo cognoscendi”), so recognition of one’s own capacities need not be prior to recognition of others, even though the capacities have to be there for either kind of recognizing to start to take place. Paul Ricœur’s Surprising Take on Recognition Études Ricœuriennes / Ricœur Studies Vol 2, No 1 (2011) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/errs.2011.57 http://ricoeur.pitt.edu 50 43 Compare the fourth entry in Littré: “To recognize with negation sometimes indicates not having any regard for, not listening to. He recognizes no law but his own will.” “Having regard for” is close to the idea of accepting normative considerations. 44 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 197; italics mine. 45 On this sense of recognition, see John Searle, The Making of the Social World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); for connections between contemporary social ontology such as Searle on the one hand, and the traditions of theories of Anerkennung on the other hand, see Ikäheimo & Laitinen, Recognition and Social Ontology. 46 In contemporary debates, the voluntariness or involuntariness of cognitive judgements is sometimes discussed in terms of “beliefs” and “acceptances.” See L. Jonathan Cohen, An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (New York: Clarendon, 1992). 47 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 28. 48 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 25. 49 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 35. 50 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 35-36. 51 See the discussion about promoting states of affairs vs. respecting persons in Parfit, On What Matters (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011), 233-257. 52 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 35. 53 On recognizing oneself in one’s deeds and its relation to self-esteem, see Oneself as Another, study 7. Thanks to Goncalo Marcelo for pointing this out. 54 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 92. 55 See my “Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur on Self-Interpretations and Narrative Identity” in Narrative Research: Voices of Teachers and Philosophers, eds. Rauno Huttunen, Hannu Heikkinen and Leena Syrjälä (Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 2002), 57-71. 56 Ricœur, Time and Narrative I, 4, 21, 31, 42-49. 57 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 217. 58 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 218. 59 Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 223. 60 I thank the editors and anonymous referees for valuable comments and help.