Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- PART I PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO RECOGNITION
- PART II RECOGNITION AND POWER IN SOCIAL THEORY
- 6 Work, Recognition, Emancipation
- 7 “… That All Members Should be Loved in the Same Way …”
- 8 Recognition of Love's Labor: Considering Axel Honneth's Feminism
- PART III RECOGNITION AND POWER IN POLITICAL THEORY
- PART IV AXEL HONNETH ON RECOGNITION AND POWER
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Recognition of Love's Labor: Considering Axel Honneth's Feminism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- PART I PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO RECOGNITION
- PART II RECOGNITION AND POWER IN SOCIAL THEORY
- 6 Work, Recognition, Emancipation
- 7 “… That All Members Should be Loved in the Same Way …”
- 8 Recognition of Love's Labor: Considering Axel Honneth's Feminism
- PART III RECOGNITION AND POWER IN POLITICAL THEORY
- PART IV AXEL HONNETH ON RECOGNITION AND POWER
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
PROLOGUE
Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that the need for recognition was a big problem. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality tells a story of human decline from a state of simplicity and self-sufficiency to the state of competition, war, domination, enslavement, and vice that is modern society. The desire for recognition from others, or what Rousseau calls amour propre, is the primary cause of this degradation. As soon as people ceased living independently and became sociable, they sought one another's praise.
Everyone began to look at everyone else and wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price. The one who sang or danced the best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step at once toward inequality and vice; from these first preferences arose vanity and contempt on the one hand, shame and envy on the other; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.
Living with others in society generates a struggle for recognition without limit. The self is never in possession of itself, but rather depends on the esteem of others. We compare ourselves with others, and believe ourselves better, and demand acknowledgment of our superiority from them. This insults and dishonors them, however; they become angry, or demand a contest.
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- Information
- Recognition and PowerAxel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, pp. 189 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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