Pilapil Psychologization of Injustice

ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES 18, no. 1(2011): 79-106. 2011 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: 10.2143/EP.18.1.2066214

Renante PilapilKatholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Psychologization of Injustice?On Axel Honneths Theory of

Recognitive Justice

ABSTRACT. The present paper critically reconstructs Honneths recognition-the-oretical conception of justice modelled on the formation of intact personal iden-tity or self-realization. It looks into the status of using psychological evidence as a basis for a theory of justice, and whether or not such an approach of justice fails the publicity criterion. The claim is that although Honneths thesis is poten-tially susceptible to the charge of psychologization of injustice as Fraser alleges, the idea that recognition impacts on the formation or malformation of personal identity should not be denied a critical role in a theory of justice. Doing so prevents a faceless or subject-less discourse of injustice. The paper also argues that recognitive justice founded on very specific moral-psychological assump-tions passes the test of publicity. The challenge is how to establish the necessary conditions that enable victims of misrecognition to have a language and name their experience of suffering publicly.

KEYWORDS. Recognition, Honneth, publicity, Fraser, narrativity

I. INTRODUCTION

Axel Honneth has systematically rehabilitated the Hegelian and Fichtean notion of recognition by incorporating it within his social theory and theory of justice. He develops a tripartite account of recognition grounded in a theory of intersubjective relations between persons, an idea that he draws upon the early Jena Hegel and George Herbert Mead. He argues that the three forms of recognition, namely love, respect, and esteem, constitute the social preconditions for the formation of personal identity. Without the experience of social recognition, it would be very difficult if not impossible for persons to have personal integrity (Honneth 1995b, 165). Using the same forms of

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recognition as criteria of social justice, Honneth pins down the task of social justice to how social institutions establish and maintain the social precondi-tions that enable individuals to attain autonomy and hence self-realization.

Our contribution will attempt to accomplish two things: (i) an internal reconstruction of Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice; and (ii) an external reconstruction of Nancy Frasers critique of psychologi-zation in Honneth. Essentially, the paper makes three claims. First, Hon-neths recognitive justice modelled on the formation of intact personal identity and self-realization is founded on very specific moral-psychological assump-tions. This is demonstrated in his concern for practical self-relations such as self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem that are necessary conditions for self-realization. Second, although this notion of justice is potentially suscep-tible to the charge of psychologization as Fraser alleges, it is not incorrect to derive political conclusions about justice from moral-psychological premises. Since social criticism has to rely on empirical studies in order to be grounded in reality, psychological evidence should not be denied a critical role in a theory of justice. And third, recognitive justice anchored in moral subjectivity is not bereft of the resources that will enable it to pass the objectivity and publicity criterion of justice. What needs to be done is to design a fairer and more inclusive political communication not merely reducible to an exercise of argumentation. The paper proceeds in six parts. Parts II and III critically reconstruct Honneths notion of recognition-theoretical conception of justice. Part IV briefly exposes Frasers critique of psychologization. Part V re-asserts the importance of moral subjectivity in a theory of justice. Part VI attempts to re-define the publicity criterion of justice in relation to Honneths recogni-tive justice. The last part (VII) presents a short conclusion.

II. MORAL SUFFERING AS POINT OF DEPARTURE

It is only in his recent writings that Honneth more explicitly develops his recognition-theoretical conception of justice, the originality and boldness



PILAPIL PSYCHOLOGIZATION OF INJUSTICE?

of which is immediately evident in its methodology. The definition of jus-tice is not derived from a reconstruction of the intuitive notions of justice that we would develop under the veil of ignorance as in Rawls. Nor is it taken from a clarification of the norms of justification as in Habermas. Drawing upon Hegel, Honneth links his theory of justice with Zeitdiagnose (time diagnoses) more particularly with a diagnosis of social pathologies (2010, 25-47; 2000). The latter refers to how persons are prevented from enjoying their autonomy in the experience of injustice or moral suffering which is an inescapable feature of our world. That is to say, a world which is a paradise here and now, but which can become hell itself tomorrow (Bernstein 2005, 303).

The reason why Honneth takes the negative path as his point of depar-ture for a theory of justice is not so much for epistemological reasons as it is for critical considerations (Deranty and Renault 2007, 93-94; Deranty 2004, 302-5). To undertake an effective critique of society, one must start by taking into account instances of injustice or violations of standards of justice. In contrast to its positive counterpart, the experience of injustice possesses greater normative bite. As such, for Honneth, no experience of injustice must be ignored even if its public expression is fraught with dan-ger and difficulty. This approach to social justice and normativity is typical of the Frankfurt School, which grounds the motivation for social resistance and liberation movements not on grand theories of intellectuals but on peoples everyday experience.

The experience of injustice that Honneth particularly refers to is the moral experience of disrespect or misrecognition. Drawing upon his tripar-tite scheme of recognition, he identifies three forms of disrespect: physical abuse, denial of equal rights, and denigration of individual and cultural practices. These acts inflict wounds upon the self and cause humiliation the feeling of being unwanted or unworthy in society, as if ones life possesses no significance or integrity of its own (1995a, 247-60; 1995b, 160-70; Beitz 2001, 104). Physical maltreatment prevents people by force from taking control of their body, bringing forth not only physical pain




but also a loss of reality (1995b, 132). Losing basic self-confidence the ability to express oneself publicly without fear of rejection persons will lose trust in the world and will consequently suffer psychological death. Meanwhile, excluding persons from the enjoyment of equal rights tram-ples upon their moral autonomy and reduces them to second-class citi-zens (1995b, 133). This leads to a loss of self-respect, or social death, in the sense that persons will no longer be able to see themselves as responsible agents capable of making moral judgments. Finally, denigra-tion of individual and cultural practices denies individuals and groups the social value they deserve (1995b, 134). As a result, they will lose self-esteem and will be unable to relate positively to their ways of life, produc-ing moral scars and injuries. Without self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem, the chance of persons fully functioning as autonomous sub-jects and attaining self-realization is completely lost. The question Who am I? will never be answered.

How does the experience of personal disrespect generate feelings of social injustice? Honneth goes back to his social theory in this regard. In a given society, he claims, social order requires the existence of institu-tional rules and public practices that individual members understand to be justified. These rules and practices are considered legitimate when they pass generally accepted reasons, meaning, they must reflect the moral expectations and claims of individuals upon the social order. The social recognition of their personal integrity holds a central position here (2003, 133). These expectations, Honneth writes, are internally linked to conditions for the formation of personal identity because they indicate the social patterns of recognition that allow subjects to know themselves to be both autonomous and individuated beings within their socio-cul-tural environment (2003, 163). If institutional rules do not reflect the normative expectations of individuals, that is, they deny and violate their claims to respect, or fair treatment of their distinct ways of life and achievement, then feelings of social injustice can arise (2003, 133; 2007, 134).




It is in these respects that Honneth puts forward his notion of the moral grammar of social conflicts, most particularly the struggle for rec-ognition. The moral experience of disrespect can become the motiva-tional impetus for political resistance. In his analysis of the struggle for recognition, he links the distorted processes of recognition of individual identities with the processes of collective oppression or marginalization of groups (Benhabib 2002, 51). There are not only individual injuries but also collective injuries to self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. To make the individual experience of injustice typical for the entire group, Honneth deems it necessary to propose a semantic bridge founded on the individuals articulated stories of experiences of humiliation (1995b, 163). The shared semantics serve as the intersubjective framework through which personal experiences of suffering are interpreted as some-thing that affects both the individual and others.

It is disappointing to note that Honneth fails to show more pre-cisely the nature and the process of how this shared semantics is shaped. He assumes that it is always readily available through the common experience of moral suffering. An idealized picture is painted here. Vic-tims of abuse, discrimination and humiliation are thought to reach con-sensus easily on the meaning and interpretation of the experience that binds them together to actively engage in political resistance. Contrary to Honneths assumption, this may not always be the case. Part of the politics of individual responses to injustice is that victims have varied ways of interpreting and responding to their experience of injustice even if they share the same gender, race, or socio-economic status (Swanson 2005, 105). For example, while some may actively engage in political resistance against oppression, others may deny their oppressive condition, and others still may legitimize their oppression as natural or socially beneficial.

With Honneths emphasis on the experience of moral suffering and injustice, he effectively deviates from Habermass systemic theory centred on the paradigm of communicative action as the basis for social critique




(Habermas 1984). Although both thinkers operate within the tradition of Frankfurt School, they differ as to where to locate this experience. Hon-neth thinks that Habermass fascination with linguistic conditions for reaching understanding free from domination is insufficient as a norma-tive basis for social critique. It loses sight of the fundamental moral expe-riences of subjects. Consequently, talk of genuine emancipation of sub-jects is unnecessarily thrown into oblivion. Contrary to Habermas, Honneth claims that it is not the restriction of linguistic rules, but the violation of persons identity claims acquired through socialization that constitutes injury of moral experience. In the end, he believes that in Habermas a pre-theoretical resource that can be called an expression of social injustice is more or less absent. Let me construct Honneths theory of justice more positively.

III. SELF-REALIZATION AS GOAL OF JUSTICE

Based on an empirical account of what he calls social pathologies or the experience of moral suffering, Honneth derives the normative account of what a just society might look like. Methodologically, he argues that the relation between the descriptive and the normative should not be construed as a linear process, but rather as a kind of hermeneutical circle. One cannot have a normative idea of what a just society is with-out already having some empirical observations about what is wrong with society. Conversely, the capacity to make descriptive observations about what is wrong with society presupposes already having an idea of what justice is (Honneth 2004a, 390).

To recall, in The Struggle for Recognition Honneth speaks of three principles of recognition: (i) love, which is characterized by boundary dissolution and independence, and is based on the singularity of the other (this singled out person); (ii) respect, which means being able to see oneself as morally autonomous, and is based on the universal features of persons;




and (iii) esteem, which means having a high regard for oneself in com-parison to others, and is based on the persons particular and unique fea-tures. On the basis of these three principles of recognition, which impact the formation of intact personal identity, Honneth extracts what he calls three equal-ranking principles of social justice namely love, equality, and merit (2003, 143; 2004, 358). In terms of intimate relationships, what is required is the principle of love; in legal relationships the principle of equal-ity; and in cooperative relationships the principle of merit. Since each par-ticular sphere of social interaction is governed by a principle of justice, Honneth calls his recognitive justice a plural theory of justice. However, because the principles refer to distinct moral perspectives that generate different obligations, inevitably the relationship between them is gripped by a constant tension. Unfortunately, Honneth offers no formula as to how to negotiate this tension, except for his reminder that the resolution lies within individual responsibility (2007, 141).

The goal of social justice, he argues, is the creation of social rela-tions in which subjects are included as full members of the society in the sense that they can publicly uphold and practice their lifestyle without shame or humiliation (2003, 259). What comprises a good and just soci-ety is its ability to guarantee the social conditions through which autono-mous individuals are given the chance to realize their personality. Justice requires establishing and maintaining enabling social conditions for the formation of intact personal identity for all members of society. In this sense, social equality is tied to being given an equal chance for an ade-quate self-realization. To work for justice involves eliminating the obsta-cles in attaining what Honneth calls practical self-relations such as self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.

Being institutionalized within the society, the principles of justice, namely love, equality, and merit, constitute the normative perspectives through which individuals can judge the adequacy of existing forms of social recognition. Following Rawlss institutional approach to justice, Honneth is convinced that the principles of recognitive justice apply to




how social institutions secure the social conditions for mutual recogni-tion. Let me briefly discuss the institutional application of these princi-ples. I will give special attention to the institutions of the family and the organization of labour.

According to Honneth, other than the formal marking off of child-hood, the institution of marriage and the family marks the attitude of love and care as a separate sphere of recognition. Taking his cue from Kant and Hegel, he states that marriage is not simply a social contract between two consenting and equal legal subjects, but also a union between two persons who are mutually in love and in need of each other (2003, 139; 2007, 151-52). The family relationship between husband and wife, or between children and parents, is nurtured by the principle of love and care, which represents the core of the relationship. The lack of love and care in the family can lead to its disintegration, which will create a serious ethical-psychological impact on its members. Such is what happens in rape, maltreatment of children, and other instances of domestic violence.

I think this point is crucial because it highlights the fact that the issue of domestic violence or of unfair division of household labour cannot be simply understood in terms of (legal) equality. In order to gain insight into these phenomena, it is necessary to look more closely into the nor-mative structure of the family, grounded in the principle of love. Justice embedded in family relationships is not simply about the duty of mem-bers to respect each other as equal legal subjects but also the need of each member to be loved and cared for.

Meanwhile, Honneth refers to the organization of labour as the insti-tutionalization of the recognition principle of achievement, on which basis we attain social esteem as productive citizens (2003, 141). He points to the double-edged source of legitimacy of the principle of achievement. On the one hand, the principle of achievement represents a biased evalu-ation of achievement. Its normative reference point for judging productive or valuable work is mainly the economic activity of the independent, middle-class, male bourgeois (2003, 141). In other words, the value of




work is largely if not exclusively based on a particular privileged group. This unduly disregards the value of other types of work that do not fit the standard, for example household work. On the other hand, the bourgeois can use the principle of achievement as a justification to maintain the unjust distribution of resources and opportunities. Since a meritocratic society only champions competition and ignores the moral arbitrariness of the natural lottery that impacts on peoples life opportunities, the principle of achievement further cements unjust inequality (2003, 149).

By linking social justice with a concept of the good life, Honneths theory of justice can be said to employ a teleological rather than deonto-logical justification. A just society is measured according to its ability to guarantee the social conditions of mutual recognition necessary for the formation of intact personal identity, and hence, the achievement of self-realization. The problem here, however, is whether or not a teleological justification is compatible with the fact of reasonable pluralism and of deep disagreement about what constitutes the good life. Honneth allays this worry by arguing that what he proposes is a formal conception of ethical life in the Hegelian sense. In stark contrast to Kant, he is not concerned solely with moral autonomy, but the conditions for self-real-ization. Yet, to avoid falling into communitarianism, he leaves the content of self-realization as formal as possible by not tying it to a substantive ethos of a particular community (1995b, 172; 2004a, 357-58).

However, I doubt whether Honneth is completely convincing here. Despite his claim that he does not endorse a particular conception of the good, it can hardly be denied that his notion of self-realization is closely associated not only with Aristotles notion of human flourishing (the fulfilment of a persons capacities and desires) but more importantly to psychological well-being or health. He explicitly confirms this when he writes that self-realization is the process of realizing [] ones self-chosen goals without coercion, free from external and internal force or barriers including psychological inhibitions and fears (1995b, 174). Its necessary conditions are the positive self-relations of self-confidence,




self-respect, and self-esteem. It is no wonder that Honneths notion of personal identity is also deeply psychological. Personal identity is not tied to identifiable features, as in the case of identity politics, but to what underlies such features. This Honneth calls moral-practical identity, which emphasizes the socio-psychological conditions necessary for a robust identity, paving the way for a meaningful and responsible exercise of freedom. An individual who continues to suffer psychologically cannot act meaningfully and responsibly even if he or she is granted the same rights as others. The goal of social recognition self-realization cannot be genuinely attained if in the first place the person has no inner freedom, the confidence to demonstrate ones capacities and qualities.

In these respects, it is not difficult to see the difference between Honneths theory of justice and that of Rawls, who is considered to be the pillar of liberal theory of justice (Rawls 1999; 2001). Two of these differences deserve to be mentioned here. First, contrary to Rawls (as well as Kant and liberalism), who does not leave much room for the social, Honneth grounds what persons can become in their dependence on social relations with others. Persons are not understood as isolated and solitary creatures but are always already related to each other prior to any specified social relation. The same intersubjective character of per-sons forms the basis of Honneths conception of individual autonomy (2010, 1-6). In contrast to the highly atomistic conception of autonomy, the latters relational or social character is stressed, i.e. the vulnerability of the individuals autonomy to the disruptions in his or her relations with others. Nevertheless, it must be noted that although he endorses the com-municative presuppositions of all processes of self-realization, this does not mean that Honneth embraces the communitarianism of Taylor or MacIntyre (Taylor 1979, 157; MacIntyre 1981, 204-5). What is given major attention is still the individual, particularly his or her vulnerability as a result of his or her dependence on others.

Second, contrary to Rawls, Honneth thinks that injustice is not about the unfair distribution of goods to which everyone is entitled, but about




the obliteration of the moral basis of self-realization. To talk of distribut-ing basic rights and liberties does not make sense unless the subjective identities of individuals threatened by the social structure are taken into account. The question of justice is not about the resources individuals should possess in view of their rational life plans or what they can do with such resources in terms of their functionings and basic freedoms (Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2008). For Honneth, the main task of justice is to look at the moral injury or harm to the individual (or impaired subjectiv-ity, as Fraser puts it) caused by the unequal distribution of resources. In other words, the point of injustice is not quantity but quality (Deranty 2009, 403). This significantly transforms the idea of injustice from a strictly political issue into an ethical issue.

Based on the above discussion, the features of Honneths recogni-tion-theoretical concept of justice can now be summarized. First, it is rooted in a philosophical anthropology, particularly the intersubjective character of human persons. It repudiates the liberal atomistic reading of the nature of persons by conceiving them as dependent on the recogni-tion of others. Second, faithful to the strategy of the Frankfurt School, it takes as a point of departure the experience of injustice and moral suf-fering of individuals brought about by misrecognition. And third, it is intimately intertwined with a concept of the good life as the ideal of self-realization, the necessary conditions of which include the practical self-relations of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem.

It is conceivable that these features demonstrate one thing: Hon-neths idea of recognitive justice is founded on very specific moral-psy-chological assumptions. Psychological prerequisites, i.e. the experience of moral subjectivity itself, are conferred paramount importance. His theory of justice aims to protect subjective identities from the threats of the social structure in order to attain and maintain intact personal identity. As pointed out, Honneth thinks it would be misleading to talk of granting equal rights to individuals if in the first place they do not have healthy or stable self-relations that would enable them to act responsibly and




meaningfully. Bearing this somewhat psychologizing strategy in mind, many critics of Honneth accuse him of reducing the demands of recogni-tion and therefore of justice to the merely psychological. That is to say, the demands of justice and recognition are nothing but demands for the sat-isfaction of psychological needs. Nancy Fraser raises an objection along the same line.

IV. THE CRITIQUE OF PSYCHOLOGIZATION

In her debate with Honneth in Redistribution or Recognition?, Fraser alleges that Honneths ambitious project to fashion a theory of justice built on the experience of prepolitical suffering and the notion of self-realiza-tion is fundamentally erroneous. She argues that by treating all political discontent and injustice as a matter of impaired subjectivity, Honneth does not only mess up the sharp distinction between questions of justice and ethics, between the right and the good. More importantly, he shifts the focus away from society towards the self (Fraser 2003, 204). Such an account of injustice, she maintains, is guilty of psychologization. It locates the wrong not in social relations but in individual or interper-sonal psychology (2003, 31). What is unjust is identified with internal distortions in the structure of the self-consciousness of the victim. This is demonstrated in the experience of being scarred and injured due to disrespect and humiliation. What could be wrong with psychologization?

According to Fraser, it is but a short step to blaming the victim (2003, 31). The internal distortions brought about by misrecognition are not blamed on others actions (persons or institutions) but on the per-sons inability to maintain positive attitudes of self-relation. Psychic dam-age is attributed to the victims failure to muster the negative psycho-logical effects of the injustice of misrecognition. This condition, Fraser argues, would only add insult to injury. Furthermore, she insists that psychologization reduces misrecognition to a case of the prejudiced mind




of the oppressors, such that remedying the injustice of misrecognition requires policing their minds. This is questionable not only on practical grounds, but also in terms of its political implications. It is illiberal and authoritarian (Fraser 2003, 31).

Beyond this, Fraser unleashes her most lethal attack on Honneths psychologizing strategy by exposing its implications for what justice means. She contends that psychologization mixes up the distinction between what really merits the title of injustice, as opposed to what is merely experienced as injustice (2003, 205). If the basis of injustice were only the pre-political experience of suffering or the failure to attain self-realization, how can it be publicly contested and verified when the expe-rience of psychological suffering is very personal? How can the loss of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem be objectively measured? How can it be publicly known that intact personal identity as the goal of recognitive justice has been attained? Thus, a model of justice centred on the experience of psychological suffering can hardly meet the objectivity and publicity conditions of justice.

In the end, Fraser eschews interpreting the injustice of misrecogni-tion in terms of the damage it has done to the individual psyche. If this were the only basis of injustice, what emerges is a foundationalist con-struction of justice grounded in and constrained by moral psychology (2003, 206). Frasers thesis is that political conclusions about justice can-not be directly deduced from moral-psychological premises. Contra Honneth, she proposes an alternative approach of understanding recog-nitive justice based on the model of status. Let me briefly discuss what this is.

In her status model of recognition, Fraser moves away from an iden-tity-based notion of justice towards a more depersonalized one. She extri-cates recognitive justice from its ontological or teleological roots, and defines it exclusively in terms of equal participation as a member of the polity. What has to be recognized is not the specific group identity but rather the status of individual group members as full partners in social




interaction (2000, 113). Status here is particularly construed as political status, that is, ones membership in a body polity, and not the ontological status of full personhood. Hence, for Fraser, the point of recognitive justice is how to develop and maintain a social order in which individuals are treated as peers or equal partners in the affairs of the political community (2003, 29). Given the status model of recognition, injustice is no longer understood in terms of deformation of personal identity or impairment of subjectivity. Instead, it is exclusively attached to status or social subordina-tion, or the way one is being prevented from participating as a peer or equal in social life. That is to say, injustice occurs when the individual is denied equal status, and treated as inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invis-ible, hence as less than full partners of social interaction (2003, 29).

Following Rawls, Fraser believes that recognition as justice is not about the relation of political subjects with one another. It is about the relation between social institutions and political subjects. She particularly defines this relation in terms of the ways social institutions regulate social interaction on the basis of cultural norms that affect parity of participation (2000, 114). These institutionalized patterns can take the form of formal laws, govern-ment policies, administrative codes, professional practices, and informal measures. Hence, according to the status model, misrecognition or injustice does not simply occur when a person receives cultural and symbolic insults from others (stereotypes). It does occur when members of disadvantaged groups are systematically denied equal opportunities to participate as peers in social life by prevailing social structures. To remedy injustice, Fraser sug-gests a radical deinstitutionalization of norms that subordinate the status of individuals and reinstate their status as peers in social life (2003, 30).

Given Frasers critique, I want to salvage Honneths psychologizing strategy, but in order to do so I will not reiterate and develop further on his defence that Fraser misunderstands him. In his response to her allega-tion, he argues that she got it all wrong. Recognitive justice modelled on personal identity formation and self-realization is not only a moral-psycho-logical assumption, but also a social-theoretical thesis (2003, 184-85). It is




both a process of individualization in which individuals are given the oppor-tunities to legitimately articulate parts of their personality, and a process of social integration in which individuals are given the chance to be included as full members of society. In contrast to Honneths defense, what I want to do instead is twofold: (i) to re-assert the crucial role of moral subjectivity or moral suffering in the theory of justice; and (ii) to recover the potential of such an approach of justice for passing the publicity criterion.

V. RE-ASSERTING THE ROLE OF MORAL SUBJECTIVITY

Let me start by debunking Frasers use of psychologization. To refer back to the issue of reducing misrecognition to individual attitude, in which she makes two arguments blaming the victim and policing the mind of the oppressor Frasers worries may be products of misuse of a psychological account (Thompson 2006, 35). She may have misunder-stood the significance of psychological theory and the origin and impact of misrecognition. On the one hand, the idea that victims are to be blamed for internalizing the effects of disrespect and humiliation may have been inferred from the idea that the arduous task of overcoming their debilitating effects solely lies upon the victims. But such inference is erroneous primarily because the fact that one can or should change ones situation does not necessarily mean that one is responsible for it (Thompson 2006, 34-35). On the other hand, what could Fraser have meant by policing the mind of the oppressor? If it means forcing the mind of oppressors to recognize their victims, then this is most likely untenable. At the level of individual attitude, to force a person to recog-nize another is as difficult as telling someone to forgive and forget the past. There is no necessary link between the end of oppression and polic-ing the oppressors mind.

The psychological account of misrecognition does not mean that it is prevented from employing institutional mechanisms in order to address




the paralyzing effects of misrecognition. The greater burden is not how to avoid deriving political conclusions about justice from psychological premises, instead it is about determining whether or not such psycho-logical premises are accurate. Fraser should not have worried too much about Honneths reliance on psychological premises per se. What should have concerned her is whether or not self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem are indeed necessary conditions for the flourishing of the self; or, conversely, whether or not physical abuse, denial of equal rights, and denigration of cultural practices can actually lead to psychological death, social death, and moral injuries respectively.

Beyond her misuse of a psychological account, there is a more fun-damental problem in Frasers approach, particularly the way she eschews talk of the suffering subject by incorporating the standard of justice typ-ical of liberalism: objectivity and publicity. She considers the question of a suffering subject to be a scandal in a theory of justice mainly because it is hardly accessible to the public and therefore cannot be objectively ver-ified. As she bluntly puts it: [A] society whose institutionalized norms impede parity of participation is morally indefensible whether or not they distort the subjectivity of the oppressed (2003, 32). While this might be con-ceived as Frasers strongest argument, I believe that it could also be her Achilles heel. A notion of justice that denies the role of subjective expe-rience may be nothing but an empty shell. Her view of justice suffers from a faceless subject, unknown until precisely such time as they unite in social movements whose political goals publicly disclose their norma-tive orientation (Honneth 2003, 128). If Fraser rejects the notion of suffering in favour of parity of participation, would she endorse an insti-tutional norm that promotes parity of participation even if it makes peo-ple suffer psychologically?

I am not saying that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with acts of social subordination, exclusion, or marginalization. Otherwise, my claim would have been guilty of the happy slave objection the idea that as long as victims of exclusion and subordination do not feel morally




violated, then one can say that there is nothing wrong with their situation. Although it is possible that for some people the experience of being excluded or subordinated may not be particularly threatening or humiliat-ing, it does not mean that an outsider, much less a social critic, will only tolerate what is happening. The point, rather, is that we have to be able to answer the question: What exactly is unjust about subordination, mar-ginalization, and exclusion? I believe that a sufficient answer can be found by looking at the debilitating effects they cause upon the individual. Issues of subordination and exclusion count as normatively meaningful in the context of justice only when they do not appear external to the individ-uals experience. In other words, only when the notion of equal social status for equal participation is interpreted as a potential source of moral harm or injury that it can have normative bite. As J.M. Bernstein lucidly frames the issue: Unless the violation of a norm is simultaneously and thereby a violation of me, a way of actually harming me, it is not a moral norm (2005, 311). There is no sense of talking about rights and liberties if the existing condition of subjective identities is unjustifiably ignored. Hence, Frasers dismissal of a suffering subject can potentially make her account of misrecognition and injustice nothing but a theoretical cul-de-sac.

My sense is that Fraser tends to limit the issue of recognitive justice to a matter of legal-political status of individuals and groups. She confines it within the issue of what full-fledged citizenship means, and so she read-ily assigns recognitive justice with the singular task of guaranteeing equal democratic participation. However, to limit justice solely to the status of being legal subjects is rather short-sighted. The issue of justice (and hence recognitive justice) does not only possess a legal alimension, it also has a moral dimension.

Rainer Forst clearly states that there is a necessary distinction between the legal status and the moral status of persons that both com-mand respect. The former is based on law and actionable rights, while the latter is based on the status of personhood (Forst 2002, 280). What




is at stake in recognitive justice is not merely the agents status as citi-zens but more importantly their moral status as persons. This is where Honneths notion of moral grammar of recognition becomes highly relevant. By virtue of persons moral autonomy and inviolable dignity, they deserve due recognition for what or who they are, and whose violation, as in the experience of humiliation, shame or other moral injuries, can ignite struggles for recognition. The black political move-ments are an example of this. That blacks were reduced to second-class citizens is not the primary reason that motivated them to engage in social resistance and fight for justice; rather it was because they were treated like sub-humans or nonhumans by the society in which they were living.

Honneth may have used a psychological strategy for his theory of recognitive justice, but such a strategy is not necessarily flawed. It is only by taking social and moral psychology as the normative basis for a theory of social justice and social criticism that an adequate criticism of contem-porary injustice is possible. Normative theories cannot avoid a certain degree of dependence on empirical psychologies if they are to be regarded as valid. Indeed, it is true that subjective experience maybe an unreliable source of justification, but it cannot be denied that it plays a crucial role in better situating what justice is all about and why it is being fought. Subjective experience of the misrecognized can serve as a corrective against subjectless discourses of justice by insuring that the content of such discourses does not become empty. Such discourses of justice ensure that they do not constitute another source of alienation for the individual (Kompridis 2007, 280-81). It is the individual him or herself who is the end of all talk and walk of justice. However, this does not mean rejecting subjectless discourses in favour of an exclusively subjective experience-based account of justice. The former can also act as a corrective against the latter in the sense that it helps the misrecognized make sense of their suffering by referring to normative principles as status and parity of par-ticipation. This leads me to my next point.




VI. RE-DEFINING THE PUBLICITY CRITERION

To a certain extent, I agree with Frasers view that publicity is an impor-tant criterion of justice, particularly on the issue of misrecognition. But her swift judgment that the notion of recognitive justice, anchored in the formation of intact personal identity, fails the publicity criterion of justice unreasonably nips it in the bud. To me, such an approach of recognitive justice is not bereft of the resources that would enable it to be publicly and objectively verified.

Generally, the publicity criterion states that a claim is considered justified when it is publicly articulated, verified, and defended through the process of discourse. As such, it is an important instrument for measuring whether or not a particular claim meets the standard of objectivity. Some political theorists are sceptical about the publicity criterion because it assumes that individuals possess the voice to be able to participate in the justificatory exercise. It fails to take into account the possibility that some individuals are unable to equally participate in public discourse because they do not have a voice ontologically and politically. What if a person has been rendered voiceless both literally and figuratively? Sceptics also argue that underlying the justificatory discourse are power relations that put the voiceless and the powerless in a disadvantageous position. Their more powerful, articulate interlocutors can easily and unjustly manipulate and monopolize the discourse, relegating them further to the sidelines. In other words, the major concern is that despite the attractiveness of the publicity criterion, it cannot guarantee that in the process of justificatory exercise it is the voice of the participant him or herself that is really speak-ing. Nor can it guarantee that the legitimate concerns of the less articulate participant are actually heard.

However, while these concerns are to some extent valid, I do not think that they are sufficient to completely dismiss the strategy of justifi-catory exercise, and ultimately the publicity criterion of justice. The chal-lenge that needs to be faced is how to make such exercise fairer and more




inclusive, so that the voiceless and the powerless are empowered to have a voice. Applied to the issue of recognitive justice, this suggests that there is a need to find a way through which the victims of injustice, those who suffer from the debilitating impact of misrecognition, can confidently articulate their suffering and concerns publicly. How?

One possibility may be to fashion a democratic or political commu-nication that is not simply reducible to an exercise of argumentation. In this instance, I want to introduce Iris Marion Youngs notion of the nar-rative or storytelling (2000, 70-77; 1996, 130-25). Young notes how in contemporary times legal theorists and resistance movements have increasingly used narrative as a means to achieve particular objectives political or otherwise. For example, legal theorists have realized that nar-rative can be used to dispute the impartiality of the law (universality) and to rehabilitate the significance of the particularity of experience (context) to which the law should respond but often does not (Young 2000, 71). Similarly, revolutionary leaders in South America have used their life sto-ries to expose to the outside world the oppression of their own people and the repression that they went through under their governments. In Youngs view, implicit in these instances is the fact that political narrative, not narrative for entertainment purposes, can actually serve as a means to give voice to the voiceless, to publicly articulate their suffering. That is to say, it can function as a bridge between the condition of being in total silence with respect to their suffering and its public expression.

What is interesting to note here is that the meaning of narrative has been recast as a source of truth claims. Contrary to the view aligned with the rational-critical discourse camp, narrative or storytelling is not simply made up of incoherent emotional outbursts that contain no relevance to democratic communication. Rather, it serves as an important vehicle to make a particular point, to convey a political message to the public. This is particularly important to those who have been victims of injustice, as in the case of the disrespected and humiliated, who might have no other way of expressing their claims. There might be no available terms in normative




discourse that can precisely capture their harrowing experience. Neverthe-less, the question is: How far is the narrative sufficient to let others or the public understand the predicament and claim of the narrator?

Young argues that the downside of the language of narrative is that, by itself, it is insufficient to make the claims of individuals legitimate. Claims expressed through narrative are not automatically legitimate just because they have a narrative form. Narrativity by itself does not solve the problem of adjudicating legitimate and illegitimate claims. Since it continues to be particularistic, it still requires to be universalized so to speak. It has to be transformed into something that others are able to accept (Gutmann and Thompson 1997, 137). How can claims expressed through narrative become political arguments about justice? How do we move from narrativity to normativity?

There are two ways of going about this problem the easier and the harder route respectively. Determining the legitimacy of claims made through narrative may not be particularly complicated when there are already established normative principles that guide moral judgment. All that needs to be done is to identify which normative principle is supported or violated by the claim in question. The difficulty arises when narrative exposes a new situation, a new claim to which existing rules do not apply, or which challenges the rules themselves. A case in point is how in the 1970s, at the least in the United States, sexual harassment of women did not have a public and normative face, even when women constantly suf-fered in silence in their workplaces. The situation calls for the creation of a different normative language. How can this be possibly achieved?

Contrary to the exercise of argumentation, the power of narrative does not lie in reason and analysis, but in its ability to elicit sympathy and compassion by appealing to peoples moral intuitions and imagination (Smith 1998, 373-74). By doing so, narrative hopes to set into motion personal moral reformation accomplished through a hermeneutic process. The audience are moved to compare their own situation with that of the narrators and eventually identify with the latters moral sentiments. In




this case, the legitimacy of the claim somehow depends on how far it evokes the moral instincts of the audience. Narrative influences moral reasoning through an appeal to the emotive, non-cognitive bases of moral judgment. Despite the attractiveness of this idea, this is not the path I am inclined to take. One of its problems is that adjudication of the legitimacy of claims has been reduced to a strictly personal matter, thereby com-pletely displacing the central role of public verification in the democratic process. Fortunately, Young provides an alternative way.

She admits the fact that those who have been wronged may not possess the necessary language to express their suffering as injustice. Contrary to the exercise of rational argumentation, those who suffer tell stories in nar-rative about their sense of being wronged. However, Young hopes that as these stories are told by people publicly and repeatedly within groups and between groups, the process of discursive reflection upon them can pave the way for the development of normative language. This becomes the basis for victims to name their injustice and to discover why they constitute an injustice (Young 2000, 72-73). It is through dialogical deliberation on the stories of suffering that normative language is developed. Hence, adjudicat-ing whether stories of suffering constitute an injustice still lies in the domain of deliberative democracy. The legitimacy of claims expressed through nar-rative is still determined through the process of public deliberation.

However, unlike the strictly rational interpretation of democratic communication, whose major concern is to find the unforced force of the better argument, discursive reflection informed by narrative is aimed at bringing into the open different perspectives and to discover a way not to shut them off just because they are different and irrational. As Lynn Sanders puts it, narrative encourages the democratic consideration of the worthiness of perspectives [which] may not be rooted in common ground and not necessarily voiced in a calmly rational way (1997, 372). The goal then of such public discussion is to make sure that those who are often excluded are enabled to speak and those who mostly dominate learn to hear others perspectives.




Clearly, narrative per se will not legitimize claims of individuals. It is only a means for them to publicly express their experience and claims. As such, it does not replace deliberation. Narrative in its general form, never-theless, serves an important function in normative political communication. It facilitates a better understanding of the claims and experiences of others who are situated differently, but who must be listened to in the name of justice (Young 2000, 75). It reveals the normative starting points of indi-viduals and groups the sources of their values, aspirations, and cultural meanings, which can hopefully correct the prejudices of participants (2000, 76). As such, narrative enlarges thought, transforming the narrow thinking of participants about a particular issue by taking into account the perspec-tives of others different from them. It is in this sense that narrative facili-tates and motivates a fairer and more inclusive public deliberation.

Nevertheless, I find Youngs description of the relation between nar-rative language and normative language inadequate. She says that the for-mer is not sufficient in itself to make the claims of individuals legitimate, and as such, it requires to be transformed into a normative argument. This seems to suggest the superiority of normativity, and that narrativity is something that one has to get over in matters of justice. But I think Young misses a crucial point here and paints a one-sided view of what actually goes on when we talk about justice. Achieving normative prin-ciples about justice is not the end of the game, but only one of its moments. Since normative language is abstract and formal, it continues to require new stories of the moral suffering of individuals that will give it some content and context. For example, the rule that sexual harassment of women is downright immoral and illegal would have become meaning-less and ossified if there were no actual cases or stories of sexual harass-ment. The latter provide the context to which the said rule can be applied and through which its reinterpretation can effectively take place. Norma-tive language continues to be informed by narrative language, and vice-versa. Their relation is much more dynamic than Young intends to depict it.




The important question here, however, is whether or not Honneth can and should endorse the inclusion of the publicity criterion in his account of recognitive justice. The worry is that doing so could lead him back to Habermass fascination with linguistic conditions for reaching understanding free from domination. Honneth has painstakingly demon-strated that Habermass project is problematic because, as pointed out, it loses sight of the core moral experience of subjects central to any dis-course of emancipation. It ignores the lethal effects of the violation of identity claims on persons. Yet, I think the publicity criterion is a bitter pill that Honneth is compelled to swallow.

One of the dangers of recognitive justice modelled on the formation of intact personal identity is that it is susceptible to the subjective assess-ment of harms based on individual beliefs and desires. As such, it may lack the necessary resources to deal with malevolent claimants and false consciousness (Zurn 2003, 532). This point is crucial because, being attached to psychic injury, Honneths model may unwittingly justify strug-gles for recognition waged by ultranationalist or fundamentalist groups who are only inspired by hate, racism, or fanaticism. Just as new social movements, these groups could be thought to have engaged in recogni-tion struggles on the basis of their desire for positive expression of their personality, or for greater inclusion in society. Moreover, if the basis of political resistance is the ontological, ethical, and psychological effects of disrespect, it could open the door to legitimating violence as a political instrument. The experience of social disrespect could be used by milita-ristic groups who, in Paul Ricoeurs words, are only motivated by the lust for power and the fascination of violence (2005, 218 and 246). On a short note, it might be worth mentioning that Honneth leaves entirely open whether social groups employ material, symbolic, or passive force to publicly articulate and demand restitution for the disrespect and violation that they experience (1995b, 163; italics mine). Because of these worries, Honneths notion of recognitive justice might find itself in a hornets nest of how to adjudicate legitimate and illegitimate claims (and




means) of recognition. For him to escape from this potential difficulty, what he must do is adopt the publicity criterion of justice.

Does the inclusion of narrativity as publicity criterion not mar the coherence of Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice? I do not think it does. Instead, it heightens the normative dimension of his theory of justice. By integrating narrativity, the normative categories of love, equality, and merit as principles of justice are given a human face, i.e. they do not remain abstract concepts. Interestingly, there is a second dimension of this relationship. The categories of love, equality, and merit can potentially provide the narrative with a normative dimension. If Youngs concern is that narrative language is insufficient by itself and needs to be transformed into normative language, Honneths recognitive principles of justice can readily and effectively fill this gap. Again, what has to be noted here is that the narrative and the normative mutually enhance each other. The story of suffering, pain, and injustice of the victim is accommodated in the public arena that recognizes love, equality, and merit. Social institutions are thus arranged according to these catego-ries that recognize individuals who have a name and a story, as well as an individual personality to claim it and a voice to narrate it.

VII. CONCLUSION

Honneths recognition-theoretical conception of justice states that social justice is concerned with how social institutions establish and maintain the social preconditions for the formation of intact personal identity. The aim of a theory of justice is to enable individuals to attain self-realization with-out necessarily specifying what the content is of such an ideal; hence, the phrase formal conception of ethical life. Calling his account a plural theory, he proposes three principles of justice, namely love, equality, and merit on the basis of the three forms of inter-subjective recognition. The attempt to ground justice in the experience of impaired subjectivity (or




positively: the ideal of self-realization) catapults Honneth into a highly contentious position. Fraser alleges that Honneths theory is guilty of the psychologization of injustice. It has been shown, nevertheless, that Fras-ers dismissal of moral suffering as the basis of a theory of justice is ques-tionable. Deriving political conclusions about justice from moral-psycho-logical premises is not necessarily erroneous. Doing so affords the notion of social justice greater normative bite. Finally, it has been shown that such a notion of justice fails the publicity criterion. What has to be done is to find a way through which the public articulation of the experience of injustice and suffering is made fairer and more inclusive by introducing the language of narrative. The publicity criterion is something that Hon-neth must accommodate. Doing otherwise precludes the kind of discrim-inating recognition that struggles for recognition desperately require.

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