Authenticity and Autonomy: Taylor, Habermas, and the Politics of Recognition

Political Theory

Volumn 25, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 258-288

  Cooke, Maeve ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84992845436     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591797025002005     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition”, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)
2. henceforth PR. Jürgen Habermas, “Straggles for Recognition in Constitutional States,” European Journal of Philosophy 1, no. 2 (1993): 128–55; henceforth SRCS, p. 129.
3. Both points are given more explicit treatment by Taylor in C. Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
4. To be sure, Taylor himself insists that what is at issue in the demand for cultural survival is not recognition of equal value, for it is not a demand to acknowledge the worth of Québécois culture (63–4). But it is difficult to make sense of the demand for “survivance”—which calls for policies that actively seek to create members of the community—without some sort of evaluative stance with regard to Québécois culture. Could the survival of Nazi culture be regarded as something to be promoted, for instance, irrespective of one's stance on Nazism? (cf. Habermas's argument in SRCS, pp. 142–3).
5. For a fuller discussion of this, see Maeve Cooke, “Realizing the Post-Conventional Self,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 20, nos. 1/2 (1994): 87–101.
6. This position, arguably, is open to the kinds of objections that can be raised against attempts to ground the principle of toleration in moral or religious skepticism: that the latter cannot provide a moral defense of toleration but at most a pragmatic one, and that, historically, it has led to repression as often as toleration (cf. the essays in S. Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For this reason, the argument often seeks further support through appeal to the value of individual autonomy—although this value is not, of course, incontestable.
7. W. Kymlicka makes this point particularly forcefully in W. Kymlicka, “Liberalism and Commumtarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 2 (1988): 181–204.
8. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 384.
9. A. Ferrara, “Authenticity and the Project of Modernity,” European Journal of Philosophy 2, no. 3 (1994): 252, pp. 250–1.
10. See especially SRCS, pp. 132 ff.
11. SRCS, p. 133.
12. See G. Simmel, Das Individuum und die Freiheit (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1984)
13. G. H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1934).
14. Mead, Mind, Self and Society, p. 318.
15. What I refer to as ethical pluralism can thus conceivably embrace both cultural and ethnic pluralism (although it need not do so). Cultural and ethnic demands for public recognition of group identity may be demands for recognition in any of the senses I have outlined above. Accordingly, they may on occasion be construed as a quest for recognition of the value of a given conception of the good life. In her discussion of the so-called chador case, Elizabeth Galeotti suggests that to construe demands for public recognition of collective identity in this way represents a misreading of what is at stake. Whatever about the specificity of the case in question, Galeotti's argument seems to rest on an overly individualistic interpretation of what it is to have a conception of the good life (E. Galeotti, “Citizenship and Equality. The Place for Toleration,” Political Theory 21, no. 4 (1983): 585–605).
16. For an account of the collective dimensions of ideas of the good life, see Maeve Cooke, “Selfhood and Solidarity,” Constellations 1, no. 3 (1995): 337–57.
17. D. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1984)
18. J. S. Mill, “On Liberty,” in J. S. Mill “On Liberty” in Focus, ed. J. Gray and G. W. Smith (London: Routledge, 1991).
19. This has, of course, been strongly disputed, in particular by proponents of liberalism. But even within liberal thought, there seems to be a recent tendency toward acknowledgment that its view of justice and the good is not neutral. See my discussion of Habermas's position with regard to the issue of “neutrality” in section 3. See also D. Moon, Constructing Community (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993) for a convincing demonstration of the nonneutrality of even those versions of liberalism that expressly desire to achieve it
20. See Moon, Constructing Community, p. 63 ff., on the nonneutrality of social institutions and practices. Some of my examples are drawn from his excellent discussion, 10.
21. Despite my criticism of Taylor's, Ferrara's, Simmel's, and Mead's respective attempts to respond to this demand, I agree that it does seem to express a genuine moral intuition—perhaps even one that has an important political dimension. However, the crucial question, in my view, concerns the level at which, or sphere in which, this demand can be accommodated. Although recognition of unique identity may conceivably be possible, not merely among family and friends but also among strangers, it is far from clear that it can be achieved unproblematically at the level of law and politics, at least in modern pluralist societies (cf. Cooke, “Selfhood and Solidarity”).
22. Joseph Raz, for instance, emphasizes political recognition of autonomy while advocating a perfectionist conception of the state that is accordingly not neutral with regard to ethical values. J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986).
23. J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992)
24. Between Facts and Norms, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). Page numbers in the following refer to the German original.
25. See Maeve Cooke, “Habermas, Autonomy and the Identity of the Self,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 18, no. 3 (1992): 269–91.
26. See especially chaps. 3 and 4 of Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Between Facts and Norms
27. J. Habermas, “Postscript to Faktizität und Geltung,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 20, no. 4 (1994): 138–9.
28. See J. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 187–241
29. Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. W. Hohengarten (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 149–204.
30. See Cooke, “Habermas, Autonomy, and the Identity of the Self.”
31. See, for example, J. Habermas, Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp. 70, 149, 172–3
32. (or the English version, Justification and Application. Remarks on Discourse Ethics, trans. C. Cronin [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993]). Page numbers in the following refer to the German original.
33. See Cooke, “Selfhood and Solidarity,” p. 343.
34. J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Bd. 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), p. 71
35. The Theory of Communicative Action, 1, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), p. 42.
36. Habermas, Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, pp. 100–18, 123.
37. SRCS, p. 139
38. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, p. 126, 100–18.
39. See Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Between Facts and Norms, especially chaps. 3 and 4.
40. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, p. 369 ff, 376, 380–1.
41. SRCS, pp. 137 ff, 138, 139 and 144, 144–5, 140 and 146.
42. SRCS, p. 146, 139.
43. In his response to Taylor, Habermas—drawing on the recent work of Axel Honneth—makes extensive use of this Hegelian term (often abbreviated as “struggle”). See, for example, SRCS, pp. 128, 133, 134, 138, 139, 143–4.
44. As already indicated, Habermas himself does not state this explicitly. Indeed, his account of struggles for recognition suffers from a failure to distinguish clearly between demands for recognition that ultimately appeal to the norm of individual autonomy and those that do not do so. W. Kymlicka's distinction between two kinds of demand for collective rights: those that demand internal restrictions on the liberty of group members and those that demand external protections for the group vis-à-vis the larger society, might have been helpful to Habermas here. See W. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship. A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995), especially chap. 3.
45. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
46. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, p. 163 ff.
47. Cf. Faktizität und Geltung, pp. 536–7.
48. This, admittedly, is disputed by Joseph Raz who argues that the ideal of personal autonomy demands respect only for those who choose conceptions of the good life that are (morally) valuable (see Raz, The Morality of Freedom). Raz's assertion of an intrinsic connection between autonomy and the good seems prima facie convincing; nonetheless, in the absence of generally acceptable standards for determining ethical value (an absence that Raz himself does little to alleviate), it is hard to see how it might usefully be applied in contemporary debates on recognition and tolerance of difference.
49. I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969).
50. J. Mansbridge, “Using Power/Fighting Power,” Constellations 1, no. 1 (1994): 53.
51. Mansbridge's discussion in this regard is hampered by a lack of illustrative examples. She does seem to presume, however, that some forms of political coercion are just—but without explaining the normative basis for her position (see her reference to the Ku Klux Klan as a form of opposition that ought not to be facilitated within a democracy, “Using Power/Fighting Power,” p. 64), 64–5.
52. SRCS, pp. 141–2, 143–4.