129

While the data may come from areas that are predominantly African-
American there is a danger of committing the ecological fallacy.
In conclusion, Miller’s assertion that there are gross inequities in
how Blacks are treated by the criminal justice system will likely be
accepted by many readers. However his description of the process
remains vague. In addition to the systemic racism, which I have
already mentioned, Miller also cities historical discrimination, class
inequality, higher crime rates, and moral panics as causes of Black
over representation within the criminal justice system. What is lacking
is any clear discussion of how these factors interact. This would
provide a clearer theoretical framework that, in turn, would make it
easier to place this book in the field.
There is no question as to the importance of addressing the dispar-
ities between how Blacks and Whites are treated by the criminal
justice system. Miller remains sceptical as to whether this will occur in
the near future: &dquo;I thought that all these figures on race and the local
criminal justice system would shock the local authorities. However,
few seemed concerned. Far from being an embarrassment, the
depressing data was seen as a kind of badge of honour, demonstrating
the fortitude of local law-enforcement authorities in getting tough on
crime&dquo; (p. 49). The fact that the war on drugs and the criminal justice
system are racist is not new information. Despite the methodological
problems in this book, it would be a useful introductory text to high-
light many of the issues criminologists and sociologists are trying to
address in the race-crime-drugs debate.

The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, by

Axel Honneth. Translated by Joel Anderson. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1995.

Reviewed by Simon Kow, University of Toronto

Axel Honneth’s new book belongs in the current trends of discus-
sion in political theory, particularly with regard to the liberal-commu-
nitarian debate and the demands for recognition by the so-called &dquo;new
social movements.&dquo; Honneth attempts to provide an adequate theo-
retical framework for settling these discussions from the perspective
of a scholar trained in critical theory and traditional political philoso-
phy. While the result is a clearly written and impressively structured
amalgamation of political thought, social psychology, and current
social philosophy, the work suffers from all-too-ambitious claims to
provide a postmetaphysical account of social change, revealing only
its failure to confront deeper questions.

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The aim of the book is twofold: to offer a conception of &dquo;the good

life,&dquo; i.e., of the norms by which we should be judging politics; and

concomitantly, to provide an historical theory of social change.

Honneth begins with a survey of the Machiavellian/Hobbesian tradi-
tion in political thought, wherein the central problem of human exis-
tence is conceived of as a struggle for self-preservation, the fatal
consequences of which are only thwarted by humankind’s instru-
mentally rational foundation of society on a contractual basis. The
writings of the young Hegel mark an important departure from this
tradition by conceiving of the struggle of all against all as the motive
force for ascending levels of recognition. Specifically, Honneth argues
that the life-and-death struggle between individuals is seen by the
young Hegel as grounded not on bare survival but on one’s need to be
recognized as a fellow subject. Human relations are in this way funda-
mentally &dquo;intersubjective,&dquo; and the claims for recognition from -

physical being laborer, property

to owner, contractual partner, legal
person, and, finally, to citizen reach increasingly sophisticated
-

levels. Importantly, the transitions to the higher levels do not lose

entirely the conflictual nature found in the basic life-and-death strug-
gle, for it is only crime and the corresponding need for punishment
which raises subjects from contractual relations to a recognition of
state-sanctioned laws. Honneth thus offers the early Hegel’s concep-
tion of ethical life as a major foundation for a theory of social change
based on the struggle for recognition.
However, Honneth acknowledges the theoretical difficulties of this
conception in particular, Hegel’s failure to provide sound psycho-
-

logical motivations for crime as well as the technical superiority of

-

mature Hegelian thought. Specifically, the latter situates the struggle

for recognition within an expansive philosophy of consciousness and
thereby lifts the struggle out of its intersubjective context, basing it on
untenable metaphysical assumptions about the realization of the self-
consciousness of Spirit at the end of history. Therefore, Honneth turns
to the thought of social psychologist George Herbert Mead for a
&dquo;naturalization of Hegel’s original idea.&dquo; Mead distinguishes between
the &dquo;I&dquo; (my invisible self) and the &dquo;Me&dquo; (my social identity), and
explains that while the &dquo;Me&dquo; adjusts itself according to the patterns of
social conduct, the &dquo;I&dquo; reacts spontaneously for new forms of social
recognition more in alignment with individual differences. This, of
course, takes place in a context of interaction, so that Mead thereby
provides a psychological account of social struggle for individual
autonomy and self-realization. But, says Honneth, while Mead is able
to offer an unmetaphysical explanation of the struggle for recognition,
he does not clearly distinguish self-realization from autonomy beyond
one’s part in the division of labor.

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 131

Based on Hegel’s and Mead’s work, Honneth distinguishes three

kinds of recognition and their corresponding forms of disrespect, and
from this outlines a clearer account of social struggle than that
provided by the two thinkers. At the primary level, there are relations
of love -
whether they be erotic, familial, or based on friendship -

which, for both partners to be recognized, must be a balance between

symbiosis and self-assertion. Second, Honneth describes legal rela-
tions, universal rights based on the recognition of subjects as moral
actors (pace Kant) which have expanded over the centuries to include
not only negative freedoms but also positive legal freedoms and
distributive rights dealing with social equality. Finally, he describes
&dquo;social worth&dquo; as the individual differences and qualities which
contribute to a society’s goals, thereby in accordance with the &dquo;value
horizon&dquo; of a given community. Over time, such worth has changed
from being based on status groups of nobility to individual identity in
terms of prestige (whether it be one’s economic status, race, gender
differences, and so on), thus moving from group pride to a more
general societal solidarity. The latter thereby creates a feeling of self-
esteem, in contrast to the self-respect of autonomous legal persons or
the self-confidence stemming from love.
Corresponding to the three are physical maltreatment, denigration
or denial of rights, and degradation of certain modes of life as inferior
or deficient. While physical abuse leads to the loss of faith in the social

world, the other two forms of disrespect have the potential for moti-
vating social struggle. That is to say, the unfulfilled expectations of
individuals to be autonomous and socially worthy reveals the lack of
recognition accorded to them, provoking emotional reactions and
thereby social resistance. Honneth does not, however, deny the possi-
ble motivation for social struggle in the competition over interests, but
merely asserts the possible moral basis for such conflict. This, he says,
contrasts sharply with post-Hegelian thinkers such as Marx, Sorel,
and Sartre, who understood the importance of the concept of the
struggle for recognition but without perceiving its moral basis.
Finally, Honneth states that his standard of intersubjective recogni-
tion cannot exist without a hypothetical, provisional end-state: in
other words, a conception of the good life. What emerges, then, is a
more formal conception of what Hegel called ethical life (sittlichkeit) -

i.e., an abstract community consisting in the three forms of recognition

and which acts as an evaluative standard. Unlike Kant’s conception, it
incorporates a kind of self realization beyond autonomy. And unlike
the communitarian model, its universalism abstracts it from existing,
concrete communities. At the same time, Honneth says that it is
bound &dquo;by the inescapable present,&dquo; since its conditions for self-real-
ization are tied to the historically variable. That is to say, it is a
conception that avoids the pitfalls to be found in Hegel’s and Mead’s

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132

thought, since they &dquo;fall equally short of their goal of defining an

abstract horizon of ethical values that would be open to the widest
variety of life-goals without losing the solidarity-generating force of
collective identity-formation&dquo; (p. 179).
Such a claim should, however, leave one entirely suspicious of
Honneth’s supposed success in theoretically resolving the liberal-
communitarian debate by having the Enlightenment meet Disney-
land’s &dquo;It’s a small world.&dquo; For, basing a theory of social change and
its normative end-point on an intersubjective conception of the strug-
gle for recognition is plausible only when the most important ques-
tions are left unanswered. Under the veil of supposedly providing a
postmetaphysical account, Honneth avoids any confrontation with the
question of truth or of what it means to be a human being. In other
words, he fails to tell the reader just why human beings should be
deserving of recognition, a question which is grounded on what the
intrinsic value of a human being and of a political order is in a world
which includes, but is not restricted to, what is human. This failure
would explain why Hegel would have run into theoretical difficulties
in his early works, and therefore why he later turned to a philosophy
of consciousness in works like the Phenomenology of Spirit, wherein
Spirit encompasses not only ethical life but also the higher activities of
religion, art, and philosophical science the latter marking the real-
-

ization of a self-conscious account of the whole, something which is

noticeably absent in Honneth’s work.
Moreover, unlike the mature Hegel, Honneth resists grappling with
metaphysical questions -
rather than refutation or rejection, he
merely puts them off to the side as somehow &dquo;untenable&dquo; and ends -

up forcing unspoken metaphysical assumptions upon the reader. The

complete absence of any serious confrontation with Nietzsche, for
example, serves only to make apparent his avoidance of the issue
concerning whether science itself is a &dquo;value.&dquo; That is to say,
Honneth’s own faith in empirical research based as it is on subject-
-

object distinctions which he fails to justify as &dquo;proof&dquo; for the young

-

Hegel’s idea may be just as &dquo;untenable&dquo; as the idealism he so rails

against, if it is not itself a form of idealism. The fact that Honneth’s
&dquo;abstract horizon of values&dquo; makes allowance for the value horizons
of particular societies does not in itself sufficiently prove the truth of
his conception. Unfortunately, he falls short of providing an external
standard by which he could assert its epistemic validity, apart from
some vague notion that the member of his ideal community would
live in a kind of recognition-prozac paradise. Thus, despite the fact
that it appears at first glance to be an appealing theoretical project for
changing the way we look at social struggle, The Struggle for Recogni-
tion remains hollow at the center.

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