debate honneth fraser freire

CRITICAL ADULT EDUCATION AND THE POLITICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE BETWEEN NANCY FRASER

AND AXEL HONNETH

Rauno Huttunen

Department of Education

University of Joensuu

ABSTRACT. Critical adult education is inspired by Paulo Freires educational writings. For him, the aim ofthe pedagogy of the oppressed is to emancipate people from social and economic repression. Critical adulteducation is intellectual work that aims to make the world more just. One might ask what exactly justiceand injustice mean here, however. Is the work against social injustice mainly concerned with the redis-tribution of material goods or recognition and respect? This is the issue debated by Nancy Fraser and AxelHonneth. Honneth claims that in the context of social justice, recognition is a fundamental, overarchingmoral category and redistribution is derivative. Fraser denies that distribution could be subsumed underrecognition and introduces a perspectival dualist analysis of social justice that considers the two cate-gories (redistribution and recognition) as equally fundamental, mutually irreducible dimensions of jus-tice. In this essay, Rauno Huttunen reflects on the relation between maldistribution and misrecognition,in order to think through critical adult educations task in fighting against social injustice.

INTRODUCTION

The idea of critical adult education is connected to the ideals of social justice

and democracy. Critical adult education is inspired by Paulo Freires educational

writings.1 For Freire, the aim of the pedagogy of the oppressed is to emancipate peo-

ple from social and economic repression. Following the Freirean approach, critical

adult education aims at action intended to alter the world in the direction of

greater solidarity. One might ask what exactly justice and injustice mean in this

context. Is the work against social injustice mainly concerned with the question of

the redistribution of material goods or that of recognition and respect? This is pre-

cisely the issue dealt with in the political-philosophical exchange between philoso-

pher and political scientist Nancy Fraser and critical social theorist Axel Honneth

in their coauthored book Redistribution or Recognition.2

Honneth claims that in the context of social justice, recognition is a fundamen-

tal and overarching moral category and the distribution of material goods is a deriva-

tive category. Fraser counters this claim by denying that distribution can be

subsumed under recognition. She presents a so-called perspectival dualist analysis of

social justice, which considers the two categories redistribution and recognition

as equally fundamental, mutually irreducible dimensions of justice. If the task of

critical adult education is to combat social injustice, then it is necessary to reflect

on the relation between maldistribution and misrecognition as forms of injustice.

1. See especially Paulo Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Educa-tional Review, 1970); Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972); andPedagogy of Hope: Reliving the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1994).

2. See Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition? in Redistributionor Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (New York: Verso, 2004).

EDUCATIONAL THEORY j Volume 57 j Number 4 j 2007 2007 Board of Trustees j University of Illinois

423

AXEL HONNETHS THEORY OF RECOGNITION

The German word Anerkennung means that somebody recognizes somebody

else as being worth something.3 The minimum level of recognition is that an indi-

vidual is merely noticed or seen. On the other hand, the worst kind of humiliation

is not to see or notice another human being. Recognition is an important element

in social interaction. This means more than just a kind word or gesture.4 According

to Charles Taylor, due recognition is not a courtesy we owe people. It is a vital

human need.5 For Carl-Goran Heidegren, recognition matters so much because

our personal identity is dependent upon it.6 Arto Laitinen claims that recogni-

tion is a precondition of actual personhood and personal identity.7 It is for this rea-

son that people strive for recognition or, in other words, struggle to achieve

recognition.

In Honneths theory, the struggle for recognition also occurs in civilized soci-

ety on the levels of family, civil society (community of rights), and state (commun-

ity of values).8 The family is the main institution for love. Honneth considers love

to be the first and most basic form of recognition. Acknowledging the rights of a

mature person is the second level of recognition. This happens in civil society. Get-

ting credit for ones work (dignity) is the third level of recognition, and this happens

at the state level. Honneths tri-level concept of recognition is based on his inter-

pretation of G.W.F. Hegels Jena writings.9 Honneth deliberately avoids using

Hegels mature works like Philosophy of Right, since Honneth dislikes the concept

RAUNO HUTTUNEN is Senior Researcher of Education and Adult Education in the Faculty of Educa-tion at the University of Joensuu, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland; e-mail \[email protected][. His primary areas of scholarship are philosophy of education and theoretical foundations ofeducational research.

3. According to Heikki Ikaheimo, the words recognition and Anerkennung do not have a clear meaningin terms of their everyday or philosophical usage. This has caused quite a bit of confusion in theoreticaldiscourses. See Ikaheimo, On the Genus and Species of Recognition, Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 447. Seealso Honneths reply to Ikaheimo in Axel Honneth, Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to CriticalQuestions, Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 505.

4. Rauno Huttunen and Hannu Heikkinen, Teaching and the Dialectic of Recognition, Pedagogy, Cul-ture and Society 12, no. 2 (2004): 163174.

5. Charles Taylor, The Politics of Recognition, in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition,ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994).

6. Carl-Goran Heidegren, Anthropology, Social Theory, and Politics: Axel Honneths Theory of Recog-nition, Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 436.

7. Arto Laitinen, Interpersonal Recognition: A Response to Value or a Precondition of Personhood,Inquiry 45, no. 4 (2002): 476.

8. Honneth presents his theory of recognition in his book, Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammarof Social Conflicts (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996). The first time that Honneth used the concept of thestruggle for recognition was in his 1981 article, Moralbewusstsein und soziale Klassenherrschaft[Moral Consciousness and Class Domination], Leviathan 9 (1981): 556570. See Heidegren, Anthro-pology, Social Theory, and Politics, 435.

9. Honneth adopts this interpretation from Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip praktischen Philoso-phie [Recognition as a Principle of Practical Philosophy] (Freiburg and Munchen: Alber, 1979). See alsoG.W.F. Hegel, System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit (Albany, New York: SUNY Press,1979); and Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit(18051806), trans. and commentary by Leo Rauch (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983).

E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y VOLUME 57 j NUMBER 4 j 2007424

of self-consciousness and Hegels philosophy of Spirit.10 Honneth claims that in

Hegels mature philosophy ethical life [Sittlichkeit] has become, in short, a form

of monologically self-developing Spirit and no longer constitutes a particularly

demanding form of intersubjectivity.11

According to Hegel, recognition must be based on some of the persons existing

abilities and skills. By receiving recognition from others, one achieves ones identity;

one learns to know oneself and ones special characteristics. When one receives posi-

tive recognition because of some particular ability, one starts to form a positive self-

image. One becomes aware of ones abilities and qualities. Honneth claims that

humans require the intersubjective recognition of their abilities and achievements

in order to develop a productive relationship with themselves: Should this form of

social approval fail to arise at any level of development, it opens up, as it were, a psy-

chological gap within the personality, which seeks expression through the negative

emotional reactions of shame or anger, offence or contempt.12

Honneth states that the basic claim in Hegels earlier work is that recognition is

given on three hierarchical levels. The person begins at the first level and gradually

moves on to the higher levels. Accordingly, Honneths theory includes three so-called

practical self-relations in the social development of personality: (1) self-confidence

(Selbstvertrauen), (2) self-respect (Selbstachtung), and (3) self-esteem (Selbstschat-

zung).13 These practical self-relations are achieved at the three levels of the struggle for

recognition, which are family (love), civil society (rights), and state (solidarity).14

An individuals self-confidence is established and reproduced in the relations of

friendship and love. This is the first level of recognition. At this level, one seeks rec-

ognition of ones existence that is, recognition that one has the right to exist as

the kind of person one is. This elementary form of recognition takes place in the pri-

mary socialization process within the family and within circles of other persons that

one is close to. Through ones very first contacts with ones parents, one gradually

achieves a basic level of trust. One learns to express ones needs without the fear of

10. Robert Williams claims that this prejudice comes from Alexandre Kojeve and Jurgen Habermas.Williams considers this interpretation to be seriously mistaken, because without Hegels Philosophy ofRight the concept of recognition remains essentially deficient. See Williams, Hegels Ethics of Recog-nition, 15. See also G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1952). In addition, Ikaheimo considers Honneths suspicions toward Hegels account of the recognitionbetween the Jena Realphilosophien and the Philosophy of Right as unnecessary. See Ikaheimo, On theGenus Species of Recognition, 449. Nowadays Honneth is less prejudiced against Hegels mature philos-ophy. See Honneth, Recognition or Redistribution? Changing Perspectives on the Moral Order of Soci-ety, Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 23 (2001): 4355; and Leiden an Unbestimmtheit [Suffer fromUncertainty] (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2001).

11. Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, 61.

12. Axel Honneth, Integrity and Disrespect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on a Theoryof Recognition, in The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy, ed.C.W. Wright (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1995), 257.

13. It is important to note that these translations (self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem) have avery different meaning in this context than in their everyday usage. See Christopher Zurn, Anthro-pology and Normativity: A Critique of Axel Honneths Formal Conception of Ethical Life, Philosophyand Social Criticism 26, no. 1 (2000): 16.

14. Honneth, Struggle for Recognition, 129.

HUTTUNEN Critical Adult Education 425

abandonment. Love and friendship are the forms of recognition by which parents

create basic trust.15 The experience of love and care is a precondition for the for-

mation of an individuals identity and morality (Sittlichkeit). This experience is also

a precondition for the development of more advanced self-relations: self-respect and

self-esteem. Honneth presents the formation of self-confidence as follows:

This relation of recognition thus also depends on the concrete physical existence of other per-sons who acknowledge each other with special feelings of appreciation. The positive attitudewhich the individual is capable of assuming toward himself if he experiences this type of emo-tional recognition is that of self-confidence.16

At the second level of recognition, the individual strives for the practical self-

relation called self-respect (Selbstachtung). Self-respect in this context means that

a person in a community of rights gains recognition as a legally and morally

mature person. Hegel refers to this community of rights as a civil society. At this

level, the individual either receives or does not receive basic legal rights. Recog-

nition at this level also means that you are accepted as an autonomous person who

has the right and the competence to take part in the discourses in which people

reach consensus about political and theoretical issues.17 The issue is not just that

the person has a right to ownership and a right to enter into contracts, but it is also

the Kantian universal respect for the freedom of the will of the person. At this

level, the individual is recognized as a person who ascribes the same moral

accountability as every other human being.18 Put differently, this level of recog-

nition entails regarding this individual as a person who is responsible for his or her

own actions. The opposite of this is a paternalizing attitude, which denies the indi-

viduals freedom of will, autonomy, and ability to work independently. Self-respect

grows out of recognition of responsibility, which the individual gains at the level of

the civil society (community of rights).

At the third level of recognition, the individual strives for self-esteem (Selbstschat-

zung). Self-esteem is built through the respect one receives for ones work. Here, it

is essential that one is recognized for some work through which one expresses

oneself. Only through self-directed and autonomous work can one perform ones

freedom of will. And only when one begins to work out of ones own free will for a

common good can one become respected in a community (or the state, in Hegelian

terminology). Self-esteem means that one sees ones work being acknowledged

and recognized. At this level, the individual is recognized as a person whose

capabilities are of constitutive value to a concrete community.19 In this way, the

individual really becomes recognized as a person who has something to give to the

15. Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: Norton, 1980), 5767.

16. Honneth, Integrity and Disrespect (Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on a Theory of Rec-ognition), 253.

17. Rauno Huttunen and Hannu Heikkinen, Between Facts and Norms: Action Research in the Light ofJurgen Habermass Theory of Communicative Action and Discourse Theory of Justice, CurriculumStudies 6, no. 3 (1998): 307322.

18. Axel Honneth, Recognition and Moral Obligation, Social Research 64, no. 1 (1997): 30.

19. Ibid., 27.


community. The reciprocal recognition of each others work creates a strong feel-

ing of solidarity in the community. In such communities, individuals are strongly

motivated and enjoy their work.20

The table below summarizes Honneths view of the various components of

recognition. The forms of disrespect are also presented in the table, but a brief

explanation of these is warranted as well. The first level of disrespect insults ones

physical integrity. Its most extreme form is physical abuse. The denial of physical

integrity could lead to permanent psychological damage, which would then inter-

fere with the development of practical self-relations.

The denial of social integrity means that the individual is not considered a

mature personality. One is not treated as a person having freedom of will that

is, one is not considered a subject of ones action, but rather an object that causally

reacts to stimuli. Ones moral responsibility remains in an undeveloped stage. The

teaching method referred to by Freire as the banking concept of education is a

good example of this sort of attitude.21

The disrespect that occurs at the third level of recognition implies that no rec-

ognition is given even though ones work is worthy of such recognition. When one

only receives feedback regarding ones actions on making a mistake, ones self-

esteem does not develop. At worst, this kind of disrespect can even turn into

mud slinging. Individuals who engage in this type of behavior usually suffer

from weak self-esteem. Thus, the struggle for recognition has the potential to turn

into a vicious circle, which in turn might have a severely detrimental impact on

the development of interpersonal relations.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE INTERSUBJECTIVE RELATIONS OF RECOGNITION22

Components of recognition First level Second level Third level

Dimension of personality Needs and emotions Moral responsibility Traits and abilities

Forms of recognition Primary relationships

love, friendship

Legal relations

rights

Community of value

solidarity

Practical relation to self Self-confidence Self-respect Self-esteem

Forms of disrespect Abuse and rape Denial of rights,

exclusion

Denigration, insult

Threatened component of

personality

Physical integrity Social integrity Honor and dignity

20. Huttunen and Heikkinen, Teaching and the Dialectic of Recognition, 164.

21. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 4559.

22. Honneth himself says that he had yet to decide when writing his book The Struggle for Recognitionwhether these three forms of recognition were to be conceived of as constants of human nature or asthe result of an historical process. Arto Laitinen claims that Honneth postulates in this book thatthese are the only three possible forms of recognition. See Laitinen, Interpersonal Recognition, 470.Nevertheless, in his more recent works, Honneth considers these three forms of recognition as the resultof history. See Honneth, Grounding Recognition: A Rejoinder to Critical Questions, Inquiry 45, no. 4(2002): 501.


For Honneth, recognition is a fundamental and overarching moral and social

category. The struggle for recognition is the origin of all major social conflicts. All

other conflicts are derivatives of the struggle for recognition. Honneth claims, for

example, that conflicts over distribution. are always symbolic struggles over thelegitimacy of the sociocultural disposition that determines the value of activities,

attributes and contributions. In this way, struggles over distribution, contrary to

Nancy Frasers assumption, are themselves locked into a struggle for recogni-

tion.23 Furthermore, Honneth contends that the contribution of critical theory to

social justice must rely on the unified framework of the terms of recognition. He

presents his idea of critical theory as follows:

My thesis is that an attempt to renew the comprehensive claims of critical theory underpresent conditions does better to orient itself by the categorical framework of a sufficienttheory of recognition, since this established a link between the social causes of widespreadfeelings of injustice and the normative objectives of emancipatory movements.24

I conclude that the main idea of critical adult education is this kind of emanci-

patory movement, which is the struggle against social injustice. For Honneth, all

forms of social injustice are forms of the maldistribution of recognition. This view is

called the normative monism of recognition. Should critical adult education as a

theoretical discipline and political praxis take this view as such? Is Honneths theory

of recognition sufficient in order to meet the needs of critical adult education?

NANCY FRASERS ALTERNATIVE: THE PERSPECTIVAL DUALISM OF

REDISTRIBUTION AND RECOGNITION

Nancy Fraser proposes a so-called two-dimensional conception of justice in

response to Honneths normative monism of recognition. Fraser speaks of a perspec-

tival dualist analysis in which the claims of redistribution and recognition coexist

as fundamental and mutually irreducible dimensions of justice. Fraser wants to cre-

ate a coherent theory of capitalism that links these two categories together without

reducing either to the other. She argues that only a framework that integrates the

two analytically distinct perspectives of distribution and recognition can grasp the

imbrication of class inequality and status hierarchy in contemporary society.25

Honneths claim is that we should understand the unjust capitalist economic order

as a consequence of the mode of cultural valuation that is based on asymmetrical

forms of recognition. Fraser, on the other hand, does not say that we should understand

misrecognition as a result of the capitalist mode of production. According to her, calls

for social justice can be divided into two distinct types. First is the claim for a more just

distribution of resources and wealth that is the claim of redistribution. Second, there

is a claim concerning the politics of recognition, which she outlines as follows:

Here the goal, in its most plausible form, is a difference-friendly world, where assimilationto majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect. Examplesinclude claims for the recognition of the distinctive perspectives of ethnic, racial, and sexual

23. Honneth, Recognition or Redistribution? 54.

24. Axel Honneth, Redistribution as Recognition: A Response to Nancy Fraser, in Redistribution orRecognition? 113.

25. Fraser and Honneth, Introduction: Redistribution or Recognition? 3.


minorities, as well as of gender differences.The discourse of social justice, once centered ondistribution, is now increasingly divided between claims for redistribution, on the one hand,and claims for recognition, on the other.26

Fraser concludes that the nature of the relation between maldistribution and

misrecognition is such that neither has any direct or indirect effect on the other.

They are both primary and original. It follows from this conclusion that neither a

politics of redistribution nor a politics of recognition alone will suffice. The two-

dimensional subordination (through maldistribution and misrecognition) of a per-

son or group requires the simultaneous presence of both forms of politics.27 Fraser

claims that we should not allow the politics of recognition to displace the politics

of redistribution or vice versa. On her view, when it comes to facilitating an under-

standing of modern society, vulgar culturalism (primarily of the politics of recog-

nition) is no better than vulgar economism (primarily of the politics of

redistribution).28

For example, in order to understand the gender issue, it is imperative to consider

both the aspects of maldistribution and misrecognition. If we understand the gender

issue solely as a gender-specific form of maldistribution, then the only requirement

is to abolish the gender-based division of labor. According to Fraser, however, this is

only half the story, because gender is not only a class-like division but also a status

differentiation. Clearly, gender-specific maldistribution is something that must be

eliminated, although doing so would not solve the whole problem, as gender-based

injustice is not limited solely to maldistribution. Fraser claims that gender-based

injustices of recognition are relatively independent of the political economy. Simi-

larly, the elimination of gender-specific misrecognition is also a clear necessity, but

it cannot alone solve the gender issue because disrespect for the female sex is not

the primary and only reason for the unjust relation between men and women. Fraser

draws the following conclusion about the gender issue:

Gender, in sum, is two-dimensional social differentiation. It combines a class-like dimension,which brings it within the ambit of redistribution, with a status dimension, which brings itsimultaneously within the ambit of recognition.Here difference is constructed from both eco-nomic differentials and institutionalized patterns of cultural value. Here both maldistributionand misrecognition are fundamental. Gender injustice can only be remedied, therefore, by anapproach that encompasses both a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition.29

Fraser poses the question of whether this two-dimensionality is the exception

or the norm. Is this gender issue a rare case of two-dimensionality in an otherwise

one-dimensional world? Frasers answer is that two-dimensionality is more the

norm. Even the category of class includes dimensions of distribution and recogni-

tion. In the case of class, these two dimensions are interconnected, although they

remain sufficiently autonomous.30 The fact that in some cases maldistribution and

26. Nancy Fraser, Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics Redistribution, Recognition, and Par-ticipation, in Redistribution or Recognition? 7.

27. Ibid., 19.

28. Nancy Fraser, Rethinking Recognition,New Left Review 2, no. 3 (2000): 111.

29. Fraser, Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics, 22.

30. Ibid., 2324.


misrecognition form a vicious circle of subordination (maldistribution causes mis-

recognition and vice versa) does not change this two-dimensionality.31 Maldis-

tribution and misrecognition are often practically entwined with each other, yet

they remain mutually irreducible.32

In her dualistic model, Fraser also understands the concept of recognition in a

slightly different manner. She claims that for Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth,

recognition mainly concerns self-realization that is, the subjects practical

relation-to-self. Fraser refers to Taylor and Honneths model of recognition as the

identity model of recognition and considers it very problematic because it presents

misrecognition as a damaged identity and thus emphasizes psychic structures over

social institutions and relations. The identity model tends both to posit group

identity as the object of recognition and to place moral pressure on individuals to

conform to group culture. The worst-case scenario could be a simplified group

identity, which denies the polyphony of voices and the multiplicity of individual

identifications. This could in turn hinder transcultural flows and treat cultures

as neatly separated and noninteracting units. Fraser claims that in the worst case,

the identity model promotes separatism, enclaves cultural groups, denies internal

heterogeneity of groups, reinforces intragroup domination, and in general lends

itself all too easily to repressive forms of communitarianism.33

In contrast, she conceives recognition primarily as a matter of justice. The

injustice of misrecognition lies not in the fact that it distorts the subjects self-

realization. Rather, the issue in misrecognition is that it is simply unjust that

some individuals and groups are denied the status of full partnership in social

interaction:

To view recognition as a matter of justice is to treat it as an issue of social status. This meansexamining institutionalized patterns of cultural value for their effects on the relative standingof social actors. If and when such patterns constitute actors as peers, capable for participatingon a par with one another in social life, then we can speak of reciprocal recognition and statusequality. When, in contrast, institutionalized patterns of cultural value constitute some actorsas inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible, hence as less than full partners in socialinteraction, then we should speak of misrecognition and status subordination. I shall call thisthe status model of recognition.34

The status model does not attach recognition to group-specific identity, and

thus misrecognition does not imply the deformation of group identity. In this

model, misrecognition means social subordination in the sense that an individual

is being prevented from participating as a peer in social life. The struggle against

this kind of injustice demands a politics of recognition, not a politics of identity.

The aim of a politics of recognition is to overcome subordination by establishing

the misrecognized group as a full member of society that can participate in the

community on a par with other members.

31. Fraser, Rethinking Recognition, 118.


33. Nancy Fraser, Recognition Without Ethics? Theory, Culture and Society 18, no. 23 (2001): 24.



Fraser claims that her status model has yet another advantage compared to the

identity model. Namely, it is related to the debate concerning justice and the good

life. According to Fraser, Taylor and Honneth understand recognition in the Aristo-

telian sense of its being an issue of the good life. From this perspective, to deny

someones recognition means to deprive him or her of the basic conditions neces-

sary for human flourishing.35 Thus, both Taylor and Honneth understand mis-

recognition in terms of damaged self-identity. On this view, misrecognition means

harming an individuals capacity for achieving a good life. Frasers counterclaim is

to conceive recognition as an issue of justice. Misrecognition is wrong not because

it impedes human flourishing, but because it is unjust. It is unjust that some

individuals are denied the status of full partners in social life because of certain

institutionalized patterns of cultural values. In other words, misrecognition is

wrong because it constitutes unjust social structures.36

Fraser claims that her approach, given its reliance on the notion of justice, has

several advantages over Honneths approach, given its reliance on the notion of the

good life. First, her approach permits one to justify the claim that recognition is

morally binding in the postmodern age of value pluralism. Furthermore, according

to Fraser, any attempt to justify claims of recognition as being based on a single

concept of the good life is necessarily sectarian. The second point is that because

Frasers model conceives misrecognition as status subordination, it locates its

inherent injustice as lying in social relations as opposed to individual psychology.

Fraser claims that, as a result, her approach escapes psychologization. Since in the

Honnethian view misrecognition is equated with prejudice in the minds of the

oppressors, its solution requires the policing of the oppressors beliefs, which in

Frasers view is illiberal and authoritarian. The third point is that because Frasers

model aligns recognition with justice instead of the good life, it avoids the opinion

that everyone has an equal right to social esteem. This opinion is untenable

because it would render the concept of social esteem meaningless:

The account of recognition proposed here, in contrast, entails no such reductio ad absurdum.What it does entail is that everyone has equal right to pursue social esteem under fair conditionsof equal opportunity. And such conditions do not obtain when, for example, institutionalized pat-terns of cultural value pervasively downgrade femininity, nonwhiteness, homosexuality andeverything culturally associated with them.For all these reasons, recognition is better treated asa matter of justice, and thus of morality, than as a matter of the good life, and thus of ethics.37

Frasers model denies that any one dimension of injustice could be superior to

or more essential than any other. Her slogans are no redistribution without recog-

nition and no recognition without redistribution.38 If we want to apply Fraser to

critical adult education, it would mean the equal coexistence of the struggle for

recognition and the struggle for redistribution. In addition, since her theory of

35. Freire might have supported this line of argumentation because he spoke about the ontologicalvocation to be more fully human. See Freire, Pedagogy of Hope, 48.

36. Nancy Fraser, Recognition without Ethics? 26.

37. Ibid., 28.



recognition and redistribution relies on the idea of justice and not on the idea of

the good life, one might argue that Frasers model is better suited to critical adult

education, because it rests on solid ground for social criticism: the universal idea of

justice that is not dependent on the current sociohistorical context. However, do

critical adult education and social criticism need the universal notion of justice

especially when Freire himself does not rely on the concept of justice, but rather on

the notions of love and humanity and how can we be sure that such a notion

exists?

HOW SHOULD CRITICAL ADULT EDUCATION REACT TO THE

DEBATE BETWEEN FRASER AND HONNETH?

Juha Suoranta and I have argued elsewhere that in the field of critical adult

education it is possible to identify two orientations: the cultural and the critical.

This division partly dovetails the Fraser-Honneth debate. Culturally oriented

researchers study various aspects of everyday life and its life-politics. Research-

ers representing the critical orientation are interested in a societys economic and

structural themes. In the cultural orientation, the self and ones cultural identity,

as well as particular acts, are seen as necessary and emancipatory. In the critical

orientation, on the other hand, social circumstances and their transformation are

emphasized at both the local and global levels. Researchers from the school of cul-

tural orientation study peoples daily lives and their agency, whereas researchers

representing the school of critical orientation analyze the social, economic, and

political structures and conditions of peoples actions. In the cultural orientation,

researchers emphasize the importance of understanding peoples actions within

context, including the pressures of capitalism and the forms of cultural industry.

In the critical orientation, they stress the need to change the present repressive

conditions. The two orientations also differ in their definition of mutual recogni-

tion. In the cultural orientation, recognition refers primarily to peoples respect,

love, and caring for each other in education and other practices. This can be

referred to as social recognition. In the critical orientation, recognition refers to

universal political and economic justice. This can be called critical recognition.39

In terms of politics, the difference between the two orientations can be

described by using the concepts of micro- and macropolitics. Researchers with a

cultural orientation represent a micropolitical approach in which they study vari-

ous aspects of everyday life and its life-politics. Researchers representing the

critical orientation are for their part interested in macropolitics, such as societys

economic and structural themes. Their aim is to study not only social, economic,

and political questions, but also to change these systems and raise peoples critical

awareness. These orientations, and their politics, can be seen as contradictory but

also in a dialectical relation to each other. Therefore, it is possible to think that

the positive results achieved in the area of micropolitics can affect critical

39. Rauno Huttunen and Juha Suoranta, Critical and Cultural Orientation in Radical Adult Education,in In from the Margins: Adult Education, Work and Civil Society, eds. Ari Antikainen, Paivi Harinen,and Carlos Torres (Rotterdam: Sense Publisher, 2006).


consciousness, that is, the ways in which people are activated in macropolitical

action.40

When one accepts that critical adult education requires both cultural and crit-

ical orientations, it seems clear that both Fraser and Honneth make important

contributions to critical adult education, although at the theoretical level Frasers

and Honneths approaches stand in contradiction. Some of Frasers commitments

are more plausible for critical adult education than are Honneths ideas. For exam-

ple, a crucial contribution of Frasers model from the standpoint of critical adult

education is its denial that one dimension recognition or redistribution can

be more essential than the other. The application of Frasers conceptual model, the

perspectival dualist model, to critical adult education would mean a coexistence

of cultural and critical orientations. But there are elements of Frasers model that

are very strange to the critical adult education movement. For instance, it not only

relies on the notion of justice, but it also denies any role for the notion of the good

life and the idea of human flourishing. It is hard to see why these ideas are necessa-

rily dangerous or totalitarian, as Fraser suggests. In Freires pedagogy, love, care,

and human flourishing are crucial elements. Critical adult education surely needs

the notion of social justice and the Kantian ethics of imperatives, but it also needs

Aristotelian ideas of the good life and human flourishing. The task of critical adult

education is not only to work toward a formally just society but also a decent soci-

ety where each member can construct his or her own good life in a caring com-

munity and strive for self-realization of ones practical relation-to-self in a

reciprocal relation of recognition.41 For this purpose, critical adult education needs

the Honnethian identity model of recognition without accepting Honneths nor-

mative monism of recognition.

40. Ibid.

41. Avishai Margalit, Decent Society (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996).


debate honneth fraser freire

Documents