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Cosmopolitan recognition: three vignettes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2016

Shannon Brincat
Shannon Brincat*
Affiliation:
School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper examines recognition in the cosmopolitan sphere of recognition – a sphere of ethical life and social freedom formed in the processes of recognition between individuals and groups across, over, and beyond, the state. The paper contends that Axel Honneth’s recognition theory can overcome many of the limitations inherent to established cosmopolitan paradigms, and, through normative reconstruction, provide a unique methodological framework from which existing cosmopolitan social relations can be examined. This will provide the foundations for a relational cosmopolitanism. The paper argues that only a form of mutual recognition that satisfies both local and cosmopolitan ties of political community could adequately secure the intersubjective conditions necessitated in the Hegelian, ontological notion of freedom (freedom as ‘being at home with oneself in one’s other’). This contention is pursued through three interrelated arguments: (i) an engagement with Honneth’s analysis of the intersubjective conditions necessary for leading a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ life through mutual recognition; (ii) deploying the method of normative reconstruction to identify social freedoms in the cosmopolitan sphere, and; (iii) by exploring the existence of cosmopolitan recognition as a unique form of personal relations, an extension of rights in transnational civil society, and, as a unique form of solidarity in an emergent cosmopolitan public sphere.

Keywords

recognition theorycosmopolitanismAxel Honnethcritical theoryhuman rightssocial freedom‘love, rights and solidarity’
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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