Institutskolloquium

J. B. Erhard on Recognition

Abstract

Histories of the philosophy of recognition usually credit J. G. Fichte with developing the first account of recognition within the German philosophical tradition. However, this honour actually falls to the little-known post-Kantian philosopher J. B. Erhard. Erhard develops a revolutionary theory of natural law, which aims to criticize unjust laws and to justify the right to revolution. The concept of recognition plays a central role in this theory, furnishing both a standard with which to criticize laws and a conceptual framework for understanding the nature of oppression. Surprisingly, Erhard’s account of recognition has received scant attention in the secondary literature. The aim of this paper is to remedy this neglect by providing a reconstruction of Erhard’s account of recognition that emphasizes its contemporary relevance. My reconstruction focuses on a central, yet initially perplexing, aspect of Erhard’s position—namely, his distinction between two kinds of cases of injustice. Erhard distinguishes between (a) cases of injustice in which the individual alone suffers, and (b) cases of injustice in which the individual suffers and the “humanity” or “reason” in her suffers. According to Erhard, revolution is justified only in the latter kind of case. I argue that this distinction is most plausibly interpreted as a distinction between two kinds of failure of recognition. I further argue that Erhard’s distinction, so construed, constitutes an important innovation that is of relevance to contemporary critical social philosophy.

How to explain Internionality
AS-Saal 18-20 Uhr

Abstract

Philosophical theories of intentionality typically assume that explaining intentionality or mental representation must answer what I call the ‘question of aboutness’: what makes it the case that one thing is about or represents another? Moreover, this is supposed to be a general requirement on theories of intentionality, regardless of one’s metaphysical position (materialism, dualism etc). In this talk I argue that there is no such general requirement, and that explaining intentionality does not require answering the question of aboutness.

It is not an empirical question, for me, how long I will love my children or my spouse. Indeed, this is not a question for me at all: The question of how long I will love them is not separate from the question of whether I love them. Love, in its self-consciousness, is endless.
Yet how are we to square this with the empirical observation that often love does appear to end? How are we to make sense of broken hearts, betrayal, or just plain falling out of love? And can we reconcile the self-consciousness of love as endless with empirical reflection on its possible end?

Moral equality is often grounded in the possession of some value-conferring intrinsic property of individuals, typically identified in psychological capacities related to the ability to be autonomous agents (Rawls 1971; Carter 2011). While these theories have already been the object of criticism (McMahan 2007), in this paper I argue that the concept of vulnerability can be used to formulate a further objection to them. Like many other parts of moral and political philosophy, such as social contract theory, this debate is also vitiated by a conception of the person centred around self-sufficiency and independence as these theories disregard the fact that the possession of moral autonomy, far from being a natural datum, depends on the existence of certain social arrangements and relationships.

I argue that a better approach to the basis of moral equality is to look at human vulnerability. Unlike other recent proposals, I do not opt for a negative conception of equality, which starts from the wrongness of inequality and conceive of vulnerability exclusively in connection with potential attacks to one’s sense of self (Sangiovanni 2017). Instead, I focus on the fact that vulnerability is also constitutive of very many valuable moral and political relationships, such as those of love, care, mutual recognition and respect. I argue that our commitment to moral equality is justified by the value of these relationships, together with the wrongness and harms of inequality, because only when and if and we treat each other as moral equals we can be part of relationships of love, care, mutual recognition and respect. My aim is to develop a relational account of the basis of moral equality, which fully captures the significance of vulnerability and is immune to the objections moved against traditional accounts (McMahan 2007) and the criticisms of Sangiovanni’s relational proposal (Floris 2019).