Suchergebnisse

Christian List and Philip Pettit have recently argued for a performative theory of personhood in which all agents who manage to perform in the space of obligations are taken as persons. Based on this account they claim that group agents are also persons. This theory has been challenged on the grounds of its historical accuracy, lack of political relevance, and contestability of the concept of personhood. This paper aims to take a new perspective on the debate by approaching it through the Hegelian idea of recognition. The claim is that recognition theory provides a multi-dimensional view of personhood that gives a clearer account of what is at stake with collective personhood.

Large-scale immigration and the refugee crisis have caused many states to adapt ever stricter civic selection processes. This paper discusses the challenges arising from civic selection from the perspective of recognition theories. The argument is that recognition theories provide good conceptual tools with which to critically analyze civic selection and immigration. However, the paper also aims to highlight that many current institutional practices are problematic from the perspective of recognition. In the context of civic selection, it is helpful to understand recognition as something that comes in two analytically distinct modes: horizontal (or interpersonal) and vertical (or institutional). Many rights depend on institutionally given statuses (skilled worker, refugee, permanent resident, etc.). For a person to have a relevant social standing, she needs to be recognized by a relevant governmental institution. However, in vertical relationships, immigrants are faced with a lack of reciprocity. They need to one-sidedly recognize the institutions, which, in turn, have full power to withhold recognition. Migrants also face challenges in the interpersonal horizontal spheres of recognition. Institutional status being granted does not guarantee interpersonal solidarity or care. As recognition is tied to a particular institutional setting and a particular lifeworld, large-scale immigration sets two challenges. The first is the challenge of multiculturalism and recognition of diverging cultural practices of esteem. The second is the challenge of integration and obtaining recognition from the pre-existing cultural context. It is argued here that from the perspective of esteem-recognition, this is very much a question of working rights and providing opportunities for contributing in the new context. From the perspective of care-recognition, in turn, rights to healthcare and family unifications are central. Thus, achieving meaningful personal relationships is not guaranteed by giving rights, but it is nevertheless ...

Abstract
Attributing moral responsibility to an agent requires that the agent is a capable member of a moral community. Capable members of a moral community are often thought of as moral reasoners (or moral persons) and, thus, to attribute moral responsibility to collective agents would require showing that they are capable of moral reasoning. It is argued here that those theories that understand collective reasoning and collective moral agency in terms of collective decision-making and commitment – as is arguably the case with Christian List and Philip Pettit's theory of group agency – face the so-called "problem of the first belief" that threatens to make moral reasoning impossible for group agents. This paper introduces three possible solutions to the problem and discusses the effects that these solutions have in regard to the possibility of attributing moral responsibility to groups.

The recent years have seen a rehabilitation of the concept of social pathology in the critical social theory. However, several pertinent questions about how to understand social pathologies remain. One of the big issues is, who is actually ill when a society is ill? Is it certain individuals, a large proportion of the population, groups, institutions, or the society as a whole? And what does it mean for these entities to be in a pathological state?This short presentation introduces four conceptions of social pathology that can be divided into roughly two camps. The "thin sense" of social pathology is more metaphorical and focuses on the socially caused and pervasive suffering of individuals while the "thick sense" of social pathology takes seriously the medical connotations of the word pathology and aims to apply them on the social or collective level. The aim in here is to highlight how the social-ontological commitments of the theories of social pathologies vary greatly. While it becomes clear that critical social theory can be achieved almost any combination of social ontological positions, the short analysis finishes with tentative desiderata for critical social ontology.

AbstractChristian List and Philip Pettit have recently argued for a performative theory of personhood in which all agents who manage to perform in the space of obligations are taken as persons. Based on this account they claim that group agents are also persons. This theory has been challenged on the grounds of its historical accuracy, lack of political relevance, and contestability of the concept of personhood. This paper aims to take a new perspective on the debate by approaching it through the Hegelian idea of recognition. The claim is that recognition theory provides a multi-dimensional view of personhood that gives a clearer account of what is at stake with collective personhood.

Christian List and Philip Pettit have recently argued for a performative theory of personhood in which all agents who manage to perform in the space of obligations are taken as persons. Based on this account they claim that group agents are also persons. This theory has been challenged on the grounds of its historical accuracy, lack of political relevance, and contestability of the concept of personhood. This paper aims to take a new perspective on the debate by approaching it through the Hegelian idea of recognition. The claim is that recognition theory provides a multi-dimensional view of personhood that gives a clearer account of what is at stake with collective personhood. ; peerReviewed

This paper draws from two central intuitions that characterize modern western societies. The first is the normative claim that our identities should be recognized in an authentic way. The second intuition is that our common matters are best organized through democratic decision-making and democratic institutions. It is argued here that while deliberative democracy is a promising candidate for just organization of recognition relationships, it cannot fulfil its promise if recognition is understood either as recognition of 'authentic' collective identities or as recognition of too atomistic or individualized subjects. If deliberative democracy is to be understood as successfully providing authentic recognition of individual identities, it requires a specific understanding of how individuals' recognition needs and desires are collectively and institutionally constituted. Furthermore, it is argued that even if deliberative democracy can provide the necessary circumstances for individual self-realization, it comes with homogenizing tendencies and cannot fully avoid the problems of multiculturalism.

This paper maps the theoretical possibilities of what pathologies of collective recognition might be. It argues that collectives have a twofold role in recognition: they can function either as normative frameworks that enable recognition, or as agents of recognition. From this it follows that pathologies of collective recognition can be either systemic or agential. Furthermore, accepting the agential role of collectives opens possibilities for specific forms of pathologies. The paper concludes with remarks on the ontological commitments that need to be made if one wants to understand pathologies of recognition as including collective agents.

In this chapter, Keith Breen and Onni Hirvonen examine the case for democratic worker voice based on the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination. While not unconvincing, this case is primarily consequentialist in character and therefore open to significant empirical disagreement. Indeed, together with republican arguments for democratic worker voice, there are republican arguments for worker voice that reject workplace democracy, republican arguments that see state regulation plus a universal basic income (UBI) as sufficient for minimizing workplace domination, and republican arguments that focus exclusively on exit rights and are hostile to augmenting workers' voice. Breen and Hirvonen claim this policy indeterminacy stems from a restriction by republicans of the ideal of freedom to the dimension of non-domination alone. If we expand our understanding of freedom to include worker autonomy—a dimension of freedom underpinning the 'expressive egalitarianism' definitive of republican citizenship, properly understood—we can arrive at a more robust freedom-based case for workplace democracy. ; peerReviewed

This entry discusses three forms of politics of recognition: politics of universalism, affirmative identity politics, and deconstructive politics of difference. It examines the constitutive, causally formative, and normative role that recognition has for the relevant senses of universal standing, particular identity, and difference in these approaches. ; peerReviewed

In this paper we have a twofold aim. First, we wish to show that commitments within recognition theory lend themselves readily for arguments for workplace democratization. This is done through arguing that authoritarian forms of labour organization go against fundamental recognitive needs, generating injustice and unnecessary social suffering that could be ameliorated through giving workers a proper voice. In conjunction with this aim, we offer a defence of the idea of workplace democracy from the perspective of recognition. Our goal is not to override other arguments for workplace democracy, but rather to provide additional reasons to democratize working life.