Recognition for Good Europeans: On Axel Honneth's Recognition

Axel Honneth's Recognition tells a history of the concept of recognition along national lines. This response argues that a focus on transnational cross-pollination would be preferable on the grounds of historical accuracy, philosophical fecundity, and political cosmopolitanism. It would recognize its existent protagonists as the good Europeans they actually were and bring in others now relegated to the margins. It would lay the groundwork for a creative integration of national traditions, beyond the subsumption of French and British under German models. It would facilitate a theoretical dialogue with traditions beyond the Old Continent. I suggest that Hobbes could be a starting point for such a historical narrative, pointing to the importance of social recognition for his political theory (via Oakeshott), but also to traces of an incipient notion of moral-political recognition closer to the post-Kantian paradigm that Honneth champions.