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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram
Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This chapter explores what, if any, contributions a Hegelian ethics of recognition makes towards enriching our understanding of the intersubjective foundations of freedom. Against Berlin, I argue that recognition is wrongly construed as a form of solidarity with society that threatens individual freedom. Drawing from recent work by Honneth, I submit that distinct recognition regimes correspond to distinct social action spheres in a way that that facilitates critical reflection and freedom to resist over-reaching action spheres. I conclude that reconciling these action spheres on both individual and social levels by means of a meta-level form of social recognition in the …
Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram
Recognition And Positive Freedom, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
A number of well-known Hegel-inspired theorists have recently defended a distinctive type of social freedom that, while bearing some resemblance to Isaiah Berlin’s famous description of positive freedom, takes its bearings from a theory of social recognition rather than a theory of moral self-determination. Berlin himself argued that recognition-based theories of freedom are really not about freedom at all (negatively or positively construed) but about solidarity, More strongly, he argued that recognition-based theories of freedom, like most accounts of solidarity, oppose what Kant originally understood to be the essence of positive freedom, namely the setting of volitional ends in accordance …
Critical Theory And The Struggle For Recognition, David Ingram
Critical Theory And The Struggle For Recognition, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
I focus on the recent attempt by Habermas to provide a formal criterion for testing the legitimacy of group rights. Habermas argues that group-rights are legitimate only when they protect groups from discrimination by other groups. Group rights that aim to preserve groups against their own members, by contrast, are illegitimate. In my opinion, this way of drawing the distinction overlooks the link between anti-discrimination and preservation. Furthermore, I argue that preservation of a group identity can be legitimate so long as the group in question allows freedom of exit from the group.