Mikael SpngRecognition, misrecognition and capitalismIntroductionThe recent discussions about recognition in political and social theory can be seen as an attempt to reflect on shifts in political grammar in West European and North American democracies, and to elaborate what a continued politics of inclusion would mean in relation to these shifts of attention (cf. Taylor et al; Willett). In this discussion both liberal and social democratic regimes of inclusion are problematized, for example the implications of the liberal notion of equality, as sameness, as well as the social democratic notion of equality, as this primarily relates to socio-economic inequalities in distribution terms (cf. Young 1990).Nancy Fraser has addressed these problematizations in terms of "distribution" and "recognition" for a notion of transformative inclusion (Fraser 1995; 1996). Although Frasers distinction between distribution and recognition is problematic, in her approach lies an attempt to put an equal stress on a politics of need-satisfaction and a politics of need-interpretation (Fraser 1989). Both forms of politics reveal uneasiness with liberal and social democratic politics of inclusion. In liberal and social democratic welfare states some ways to satisfy needs are often available but these requires a conversion of interpretation that is not always recognized as appropriate by those concerned. This motivates the probing of current interpretations of needs in welfare state policies and how to interpret needs in a more appropriate way. But even as this is accomplished it is not certain that these interpretations become societally effective. They may remain cultural rationalizations (cf. Habermas 1985, lect. 12). This in turn makes a politics of need-satisfaction important in order to realize what are now more appropriate interpretations.This poses a dilemma for radical politics, because it is well known that a simultaneous stress on interpretation and satisfaction of needs is difficult to achieve. In this essay I would like to discuss this dilemma by way of a critique of Axel Honneths elaboration of struggles for recognition (Honneth 1992, trans. 1996). I will suggest that the dilemma be related to the inversion of presuppositions of equal freedom in capitalist society. This inversion has as consequence the displacement of presuppositions for practices and the circumstances of their realization. Such a displacement makes understandable why radical politics often vacillates between the stress on need-interpretation and need-satisfaction.Recognition and MisrecognitionHonneths elaboration of a threefold framework of recognition and misrecognition is one of the more original contributions to this topic. Especially his focus on forms of misrecognition highlights how excluded and oppressed groups have to work out political strategies in different terms than on the basis of equal freedom. The problem with approaching misrecognition in terms of equal freedom was exposed in an early article by Honneth as he argued that excluded groups elaborate "a consciousness of injustice" (Unrechtsbewusstsein) which rarely can be formulated on the level of an alternative conception of social and political justice, or at least before such a formulation, which issues in a change of social solidarity, has to be formulated as political solidarity (Honneth 1981, trans. 1995).This sense of injustice, Honneth suggested, is an evaluation of how societal circumstances rob persons of chances to voice injuries (Entsprachlichung), and how experiences of injustices are individualized in such a way that the communicative infrastructure required for the formation of political solidarity is destroyed (Honneth 1981, 192ff). The sense of injustice builds around those intuitions of injuries that are contained in ethical attitudes, in reasons like "a better life". The claim to a better life is formulated at the background of an account of "damaged life" (beschdigten Leben), that is those distortions to identity-formation which are due to injustices, rather than to an inadequate clarification of a well-spent life (gelungendes Leben). Thus, damaged life is neither the same as a miss-spent life (verfehltes Leben), nor is it a misfortune.The potential of these accounts lie in the way they can disclose and make effective possible suggestions for justice: "[A] potential for expectations of justice, need claims, and ideas of happiness preserved negatively in the consciousness of injustice in these social groups, which for social-structural reasons do not reach the threshhold of proposals for a just society." (Honneth 1995, 212). In order to explicate what justice requires when it is formulated through a sense of injustice, an approach is required that is indirect or phenomenological, in that reasons for justice relate to "standards posed by the moral disapproval of social events and processes." (ibid).In his book The Struggle for Recognition Honneth has continued this discussion about the moral disapproval of social events and circumstances, misrecognition, as a motive for resistance and struggles for recognition, in terms of a set of relations of recognition: "[F]irst, that successful ego-development presupposes a certain sequence of forms of reciprocal recognition and, second, that subjects are informed of the absence of this recognition by experiencing disrespect in such a way that they see themselves obliged to engage in a struggle for recognition." (Honneth 1996, 69). However, I do not think that Honneths discussion of the relations of recognition suffices for a conception of what he referred to as the disapproval of social circumstances in terms of a sense of injustice (compare Foster). Especially problematic is the conception of misrecognition as lack or loss of recognition since this implies that a rather coherent horizon of values has to be presupposed in order for participants to be able to cognize disrespect (compare Dttmann 1997, trans. 2000).In order to conceive of the moral potential of struggles Honneth has argued for a reconstruction of Hegels notion of a struggle for recognition; this as Hegel conceived of it before the philosophy of consciousness (Honneth 1992, part 1; Hegel 1802). Hegel did not interpret conflicts in terms of self-preservation or survival. Rather, Hegel took struggles and conflicts as disclosures of how humanization occurs (Honneth 1992, chap. 2). Conflicts make possible both an increased knowledge of our mutual vulnerability as we come to understand ourselves as irreplaceable beings, and the awareness that personhood on this background requires both autonomy and individuated realization (ibid). Ethical life denotes how this "completeness" of persons can be conceived of; both emancipation and increased socialization (Vergemeinschaftung) are released by struggles for recognition (Honneth 1992, 24, 42f and 51; Habermas 1985, 40f).These two aspects of conflicts presuppose each other; the increase of my freedom as combined with that of others, rather than at the expense of them or in contrast with them, was to Hegel a cultivation (Bildung) of free beings in ethical life (Hegel 1802, 465f). This explains why Hegel introduced the notion of recognition, as the specificity of political existence, first in the discussion of speech (ibid, 430ff). The spoken word is addressed to somebody else and requires some response from the one spoken to; speech is the "tool of reason" and the "child of intelligent beings" as Hegel said, as cultivation literally begins with teaching the child to speak (ibid, 429ff). As such, recognition is the proper concept for the political constitution. It is the middle where virtue and right can coincide. This when "the individual intuits himself as himself in every other individual." (ibid, 462). To intuit oneself as oneself is intuited in every other is, however, a substantial rather than an intersubjective account of the threefold subsumption of intuition and concept.Honneth follows Habermas reconstruction of ethical life in intersubjective terms, that is as an infrastructure for autonomy (cf. Habermas 1986), although Honneth stresses how self-respect in moral terms too is "one of several protective measures that serve the general purpose of enabling a good life." (Honneth 1996, 172). Further, Honneth puts emphasis on how struggles for recognition must be approached from the perspective of misrecognition (Honneth 1992, 98ff and 276 (chap. 9)). As such, struggles for recognition call attention to an afflicted injury that can be located in the structural violence built into norms. This is at work for example as norms are held below the threshold of problematization. It is this kind of violence Honneth wanted to disclose as a disapproval of social circumstances.Both the infrastructure of ethical life and the more specific disclosure of the moral potential of conflicts means that attention is directed to the precarious processes of individuation and socialization in which freedom can be expanded in terms of mutual recognition. Hegel argued that such an expansion could not be conceptualized as a solution to the problem of the compatibility of (negative) liberties. A constructive resolution does not sublate the empirical and formal (moral) character of persons (Hegel 1802/03). Neither the empirical argument that those that come together in the constitution of society are socially determined prior to this act of constitution in an empirical manner, as motivated by self-interest, orientation to self-preservation etc., nor the moral (formal) determination of them qua free and equal agents suffice for objective freedom (cf. Hegel 1821, para. 7 and 257-260).The primary medium for a constructive resolution to Kant (and partly to Rousseau) was law. It is a medium through which preferential interests are brought in accordance with a concept of political legitimacy (Rousseau), or in which maxims can be described as both morally worthy ways to act, as acts out of duty, and politically effective since morality is bestowed with the force of law (Kant). Law provides for a medium in which claims can be adjudicated in such a way that a proportionality of happiness and virtue, as Kant argued, or liberty and equality, as Rawls has argued, is achieved (Kant 1788, bk. 2; Rawls, para. 40 and 48). This since a concept of justice is constructive both with respect to claims, as the concept of justice are used, and with respect to conceptions of justice as a concept of justice is worked out. Intuitions and concept interpret each other, such as in the reflective equilibrium, but their adequacy in the third of a constructive resolution is only a "relation" to Hegel (Hegel 1802, 416). In this sense it is an equalization that "hovers above" the empirical order as a formal order (like the realm of ends) (ibid).This incomplete adequacy of intuition and concept is a relation that surfaces as impulses or drives, something that is as insufficient for a complete mutual interpretation of intuition and concept as it is essential to a phenomenology. A phenomenology reconstructs the subsumption of concept under intuition as felt needs and desires, and the subsumption of intuition under concept for a speculative rendering of propositions, like the real is rational and the rational is real, in order to expose contradictions without a severance of these aspects as empirical and normative orders (sensibility and intelligibility) (Rose 1981, chap. 2).Transgression and RespectConflicts make clear that persons are "vulnerable to moral injury" and bring to light a "layer of prior relations of recognition." (Honneth 1996, 48). The central question when conflicts are understood in this way is how relations of recognition can be expanded and transfigured in such a way that persons becomes both more autonomous and given a more free range for their individual particularity, an increase in both self-respect and self-esteem (Honneth 1992, 28f and 74-92).The expansion and transfiguration of relations of recognition occur by negations of the existing forms of recognition, in order to show how and why they are restricted or inadequate (Honneth 1992, 33 and 42ff). Struggles for recognition aim at expanded recognition both in substantive content and social scope, i. e. both as greater sensitivity to differences in contexts of interpretation (of rights for example), and increased inclusion of those encompassed by norms mutually agreed upon (ibid, 28ff, 34f, 137f and 191). An initial account of these struggles as negations can be shown with respect to crime or transgression (Hegel 1799, 337-364; Hegel 1802, 446-460).Important to all of Hegels accounts of transgression and crime was the idea that thereby ethical life is disclosed (Honneth 1992, 32f and 36-42). This for example as an injury is afflicted on somebody through an act of transgression and as the person who reacts against it does so as a "complete" person, not only in so far he or she is described in a specific fashion or in terms of a specific relationship (Hegel 1802, 446 and 455f). In the justice of revenge, what the transgressor has dirempted as common life is cast back on the transgressor (ibid, 449f). As such it shows that what is at stake here is something more than a specific relationship, for example as owner of property or bearer of rights; it involves the reaction of the "complete" person (Honneth 1992, 39ff). In this case transgression implies the diremption of ethical life, which the transgressor feels as it is cast back upon him or her (Hegel 1799, 344ff).But this is not the only role of transgression. It has also the point of pushing the relations of recognition to a higher stage (Honneth 1992, 32 and 42ff). This in the sense that relations of recognition are destroyed by transgression in order to expand and transfigure them (ibid, 46f). An expanded inclusion or transfiguration of the matter through which recognition occurs is required. In this sense the transgressor calls attention to an injury suffered by him or her, as a situational description is not accepted, as a severance in the political order of what he or she is, in a complete sense. What is defined, as relevant situational descriptions, interpretations of needs and standards of morality, are not a fully adequate union of intuitions and concepts (Honneth 1992, 33ff and 89ff).Honneth formulates this stronger claim of transgression with respect to the moral potential of conflicts in the following way: "[A] subject attempts to induce either a single other or the united others to respect the aspect of its own expectations not yet recognized by current forms of interaction." (Honneth 1996, 53). In this stronger sense, transgression shows the work of the negative, as it discloses relations of misrecognition, for a progressive expansion of relations of recognition. It is in this sense that Honneth interprets social struggles as something that shows a moral potential to released conflicts. And it is this connection between the how of ethical life interpreted as an infrastructure of recognition, and the why of its releashment, Honneth wants to account for by recognition and misrecognition. Whereas forms of recognition are conceptualizations of the how of conflicts, misrecognition provides for an account of the why (as motive for resistance). Misrecognition or disrespect is a negative equivalent to the relations of recognition (Honneth 1992, 150 (chap. 8)).That conflicts disclose the broader variety of what is involved in action, and what is implied in how to become autonomous and individuated beings, does not mean that what is deontologically abstracted from is imputed into morality as teleological elements. Rather, in acts of transgression is revealed how relations of recognition are restricted, both as circumscribed universalization and insensitivity to differences (Honneth 1992, 91). This is re-cognized in horizontal achievements of recognition, in terms of an expansion of relations of recognition, both as self-respect and as self-esteem. Respect of persons is formulated both as self-respect on the basis of "the general feature that makes them persons at all", and as self-esteem on the basis of "the particular characteristics that distinguish them from other persons." (Honneth 1996, 113). The more precise moral potential of conflicts lies in the disclosure of both aspects as part of prior recognition and its dialectical achievement in the expansion and transfiguration of recognition.Love, Rights, and SolidarityHonneth discusses three forms of recognition, love, morality and law, and social respect (soziale Wertschtzung). (Honneth 1992, 45ff and chap. 5). The first relation of recognition is love, understood as erotic relationships, parental relations to the child and friendship. Honneth focuses on the relation between parent and child, and discusses it in terms of the precarious balance between attachment and independence (ibid, 153-173). In love subjects mutually confirm that they are needy beings and recognize each other in terms of the concrete nature of needs. The balance between attachment and independence comes about as an individual comes to have confidence in him- or herself, that is as hers or his needs are important and will be met with approval by the other because of his or hers "unique value to the other" (Honneth 1996, 104).Honneth views love as a basic form of recognition because it makes possible individual self-confidence, which is central to the further development of recognition as an autonomous being in morality and law, and as an individuated being in terms of social respect (Honneth 1992, 173ff). It is a presupposition for these other two forms of recognition, not as an expressive articulation that would amount to an ethical rendering of morality, but as there is a connection between self-respect and self-esteem (ibid, 66 and 174).The second form of recognition is that of moral and legal autonomy as it is expressed in terms of rights, which connects together the moral and legal status of an autonomous person (Honneth 1992, 46). With the transition to modernity, morality and law is differentiated from ethical life as a shared ethos and a feudal order (ibid, 179ff). Law is generalized, untied from hierarchical status in a socio-political order and instead related to the legal status of a rights-bearer with civil rights. Further, law is supposed to regulate societal interaction by its general form, that is what is not forbidden is allowed. Morality is universalized, untied from particular communities and from questions of the good life. As law is supposed to allow for a space of negative liberties, morality is supposed to allow for a pluralization of individual life-plans.Almost from its outset these changes has been accompanied by a critique of ideology, something Honneth only addresses within the relations of recognition as disrespect motivates struggles of recognition whereby expansion and transfiguration of recognition is possible. This since morality relates to the general features of all persons (moral personhood) in such a way that what is morally valid must be equally in everyones interest or equally good for everyone. And law becomes increasingly possible both to expand in scope and deformalize, as the question of equal treatment or equal liberties in law requires settlements on equal and unequal treatment in political and legal processes (Honneth, 1992, 189; Habermas 1992, chap. 9:2).The relation between moral and legal status is hence not a simple translation of status (as for example the translation of impartiality into neutrality). This since ethical life, as shared ways of life and as individualized conceptions of the good, exists together with the generality of law and universality of morality. The relations between morality, law and ethical life are, further, indeterminate, which means that modern law is "structurally open" for expansion, both as inclusion and as deformalization by sensitivity to differences (Honneth 1992, 175ff, 178f and 182ff). Honneth interprets legal recognition as in what regard persons recognize each other as accountable; it is expanded and expandable as the procedural conceptions of accountability are altered: "The cumulative expansion of individual rights-claims...can be understood as a process in which the scope of the general features of a morally responsible person has gradually increased, because, under pressure from struggles for recognition, ever new prerequisites for participation in rational will-formation have to be taken into consideration." (Honneth 1996, 114f).Now, this does not differ from for example Habermas notion of legal equality, and how the reflexivity of ethical considerations is included in democratic will-formation (Habermas 1992, chap. 4:2 and 9:2). One has to look at Honneths conceptualization of the third form of recognition, solidarity, in order to assess whether his account of social respect makes a contribution to the initial question of how to disclose the disapproval of social circumstances, and how to combine a politics of need-interpretation and need-satisfaction (Honneth 1992, 196-210).Social respect relates to those particularities that have been differentiated out of the modern conceptions of morality and law. Hegel described this differentiation as the dissolution of ethical life, which is repeated in the modern world, in terms of "infinite" and "finite" subjectivity (Hegel 1821, para. 5 and 6). The former is the modern notion of morality and moral autonomy as an abstraction from desires, needs and inclinations, which sets persons free from various inner and outer determinations of their action (ibid, part 2). This is one of the modern forms of freedom. The other is finite subjectivity, which are both increasingly individualized and pluralized conceptions of the good as well as the pursuit of interests by individuals in civil society (ibid, part 1 and para. 182ff). The major problem for Hegel in The Philosophy of Right was to conceive of how these two modern notions of freedom, as subjectivity, could be brought together with the ancient notion of political freedom, substantiality. This is the problem of individuality, that is, how a person is recognized as a subject (ibid, para. 7).Hegel argued that the mutual interpretation of infinite and finite subjectivity makes individuality possible; this as a sublation of these two forms of modern freedom (Hegel 1821, para. 257-260). Individuality is the appropriate reflection of particularity back into universality by which particularity is equalized. It is this form of recognition Honneth wants to outline by solidarity. Social respect aims at the realization of individuality in intersubjective terms. In post-conventional ethical life horizons of value have become pluralized in such a way that individualized conceptions of the good may be equalized, Honneth contends (Honneth 1992, 196-211, 274-279 and 283ff). The relation to self in social respect is the recognition of persons as subjects, (ibid, 46) the possibility to "relate positively to their concrete traits and abilities." (Honneth 1996, 121).However, there are two problems with this account. First, it is doubtful whether social respect can guarantee that persons do not become means to the evaluation of traits and abilities in society (compare Honneth 1992, 181). Second, it is doubtful whether the account of synthesis in solidarity is sufficient for the formulation of political as opposed to social solidarity. This since political solidarity cannot rely on what are forms of social solidarity in society. Both problems must be discussed in relation to Honneths discussion about the two ways the forms of recognition is said to be complementary.The Complementary Forms of RecognitionThe relations of recognition are complementary, first, as an account of the infrastructure of self-respect and self-esteem. This means that the different relations of recognition are interpreted as conditions for the possibility of recognition; unless they are fulfilled recognition cannot become unrestricted (Honneth 1992, 207-211, 271 and 275ff). These conditions outline an infrastructure that does not actualize values in a substantial fashion (ibid, 197f and 274f). As such, it is a post-conventional ethical life that in its reflexiveness has broken with a particularistic ethical life, as the latter connotes ethnocentric closure.Second, the relations of recognition are complementary in the sense that solidarity is a synthesis of love and morality/law. Solidarity "represents a synthesis of both preceding types of recognition, since it shares with law [Recht] the cognitive point of view associated with universally equal treatment, but shares with love the aspect of emotional attachment and care." (Honneth 1996, 91). This synthetic achievement allows for the recognition of a person as a subject, that is, in relation to particular traits and abilities (differences). It is similar to Hegels argument about the proper reflection of particularity into universality whereby particularity is equalized. It is more than a concept of tolerance since it requires the "felt concern for what is individual and particular about the other person." (ibid, 129). The difference is that to Honneth this synthesis is based on a formal rather than substantial conception of ethical life. The formal account of ethical life serves as a kind of synthetic apriori for the synthetic achievements in solidarity. This means that the formal concept of ethical life is a measure for progressive and regressive synthetic achievements (Honneth 1992, 270-274).The synthesis of love and morality/law in solidarity is social respect; a respect Honneth calls a "symmetrical recognition" (Honneth 1992, 208ff and 285 (chap. 9); Honneth 1993). As said, in love a person develops trust in him- or herself with regard to needs and desires, as well as the capacity to interpret them, and in legal and moral recognition a person is respected as an autonomous person. The latter is most often discussed in terms of symmetry, since everybody is recognized as equal in a strict sense, like in the conditions of reciprocity and equality of the ideal speech situation, or in terms of the two moral powers of persons in the original position. Social respect, however, is not symmetric in this sense. Instead, it is a respect that comes out of the fact that everyone recognizes each other reciprocally "in light of values that allow the abilities and traits of the other to appear significant for shared praxis." (Honneth 1996, 129). Symmetry hence means that everyone has the chance to regard his or her own achievements as valued contributions in society (Honneth 1992, 210).For Honneth this sense of solidarity implies that a horizon of values is opened through which social respect takes shape, in ways that are free from pain, from experiences of misrecognition (Honneth 1992, 210 and 283f). For this to happen, the horizon of value has to be pluralist enough to allow for a variety of self-realizations (ibid, 196-211, 274-279 and 283ff). The problem here is not that Honneth does not account for this sense of pluralization, since he considers the horizons of value through which social respect occurs as outcomes of struggles for recognition themselves (ibid, 202ff). Conflicts around social respect are permanent features in modern societies. The horizon of values is pluralized in these struggles, and as such it makes up a post-traditional ethical life (ibid, 196f and 208ff). But does a pluralized horizon of value meet the requirement that recognition is without pain? Or to formulate it in terms of Kants categorical imperative, does it make sure that subjects do not become means to what are valued contributions in society?I think it does not, because the notion of significance for shared practices relates to how the horizon of value must be coherent enough in order for persons to be able to cognize disrespect (Honneth 1992, 204ff). There must be something that orients participants to formulate a felt injury as misrecognition (ibid, 222ff). As Honneth makes clear by his distinction between corporate and post-conventional social respect, some measure is needed for social respect not to regress into evaluations in which persons becomes means (ibid, 270f). The synthetic apriori of the relations of recognition as a formal account of ethical life serves as such a measure. It specifies the conditions for the possibility of unrestricted recognition.However, unrestricted is ambiguous since the relation between complementarity as infrastructure (conditions for the possibility) and synthesis is mediated by the horizon of values, a cultural self-understanding of society (Honneth 1992, 197f). It is not obvious that these two aspects to the medium of social respect, its pluralization and coherence, fits together. It is doubtful that recognition in the former sense of respect for contributions in society is equivalent to processes in which social respect is recognized, as these are free from pain. Alexander Garcia Dttmann has argued that this difference between respect for contributions and the process of recognition is the difference between "recognition as", that is recognition of something specific and presupposed, and recognition itself as a political process (Dttmann 1997, 123f). The former amounts to a reification of recognition as a process, not recognition (Anerkennung) but a "repeated re-cognition" (Wiederkennen) of something that is already articulated within the frame of recognition (ibid, 10f, 52ff and 144ff).Struggles for recognition stems less from the cognized disrespect within the horizon of values than from this tension between re-cognition and recognition. This because recognition is both an act of establishment (Sifting) and confirmation (Besttigung) (Dttmann 1997, 52f). This tension can not be resolved as recognition because that will always be a re-cognition: "Because of this double trait, recognizing relates to itself, presupposes itself and projects itself into the future without ever being able to catch up with itself or to assemble itself in a unified act. Recognizing is not the solid ground of a recognition which allows the one who recognizes and the one who is recognized to lead a stable and continued existence." (Dttmann 2000, 46).Recognition is split in a presupposing confirmation and projected establishment, which accounts for the tension within recognition. With regard to Honneths argument this tension lies in how the horizon of values is necessary for the ability to cognize disrespect and the projected end-state of unrestricted recognition (Honneth 1992, 270-277; Dttmann 1997, 144-151). When a coherent horizon of values is presupposed this is closer to "recognition as"; it implies a re-cognition, which in an inadequate way accounts for the process of recognition (Dttmann 1997, 160ff). Thus, there is a risk that the coherent horizon of values implies that persons may become means to evaluations of what are significant for shared practices (ibid, 159ff). Or, at least, the formal account of the ethical life does not guarantee that persons does not become such means because the synthetic apriori in synthetic achievements is closer to a recognition as than an account of the tension of recognition.This has consequences for the formulation of political solidarity as well. To the degree struggles for recognition is released by the tension between recognition as process and re-cognition, disrespect may motivate resistance and struggles for recognition, but these are not completed as re-cognition. Thus, disrespect may not match relations of recognition. Misrecognition is not the loss or lack of recognition. Another way to formulate this is to say that political solidarity is not possible to formulate on the background of social solidarity, or at least that such a formulation is ambivalent in the sense exposed by Dttmann, as recognition is the tension between confirmation and establishment. Misrecognition would hence not be conceived of as the lack or loss of recognition because the mediation of disrespect differs between social and political solidarity.Instead of Honneths conception of misrecognition at the backdrop of the twofold complementarity of forms of recognition it could be argued that the forms of misrecognition are complementary. This would be a complementarity of misrecognitions which is internal to the second formulation of the categorical imperative, that is a rift between respect in terms of persons as ends in themselves, and respect of persons in the expectation of not being treated as means only (Kant 1795, AA 429 and 436; ONeill). Neither form of respect can ensure that this rift does not occur. Respect of everyone in the capacity of being an autonomous person is not strong enough to disclose respect of everyone as an end in itself. This since these ends, human beings, not only set ends for themselves, but also are ends for which desires and needs are integral to being such ends in themselves. It is a respect for everyone, as all are autonomous persons, but not of everyone as a concrete being (cf. Cooke).As Honneth has argued, a conception of self-esteem or self-realization (for social respect) would be complementary to self-respect since it would relate to individual particularity, that is as it connotes relating to desires and needs in ways that are not accompanied by pain. But when this is conceptualized as symmetric recognition it runs the risk of not assuring that persons are not taken as means only in those social circumstances where persons make contributions to society and interpretations of these contributions are invoked as evaluations. A third way to discuss the complementarity of recognition would be to take the forms of misrecognition as a disclosure of (social) unfreedom, rather than as a lack or loss of recognition.Misrecognition and UnfreedomIn the following I will try to outline how misrecognition can be conceived of in relation to social unfreedom rather than as a loss of recognition (Spng, chap. 7). I will do so by an interpretation of Hegels account of the process of recognition in the Phenomenology (Hegel 1807, trans. 1977). The basic premise for this interpretation is that Hegel by the dialectic between lord and bondsman shows the antinomy between the two modern forms of freedom, infinite and finite subjectivity. For this interpretation I will use Marx analysis of what can be called the structure of labor, i. e. as labor both is and is not a precondition for practices. This structure Marx used in order to show how practices are inverted in capitalist society. Misrecognition is due to an inversion that can be shown within the relations of recognition.Misrecognition was to Hegel the halted process of recognition; a process that stops halfway and is not carried out (Hegel 1807, chap. 4). On the background of a substantial conception of practices, misrecognition can be seen as a diremption (Entzweiung) of a whole or of life (the positivity of life). But it can also be seen as an outcome that is due to the process of recognition itself. This makes up the difference, I think, between a phenomenology of contradictions with a reconciliatory aim (Hegel) and one that aims at following up contradictions (Marx). I will argue for the latter of these interpretations.Mutual recognition of each as free in a process of equality, of each as free and equal, is the point of the process of recognition. However, this process of mutual recognition falls into extremes. This means that there is both a mutual reinforcement and exclusion of the extremes. Their character as dependent on each other and what this involves in terms of exclusion of each other are part of the same process. This can be interpreted as a diremption due to the fact that the process of recognition is not carried out. The (potential) middle is broken as the process of recognition stops short of mutual recognition. The halted, halfway recognition between the one and the other leads to a situation of misrecognition, a situation of unfreedom or bondage (Hegel 1807, 133). The process of recognition becomes an unequal, one-sided recognition, misrecognition, where one of the parties is recognized but not the other (ibid, 132f). The one does not do to him- or herself what s/he does to the other.The process of recognition starts out from what is immediate to the parties, what they are here and now, as life (Hegel 1807, 130). However, recognition of the parties as what they are or do here and now, as they live, is not recognition in terms of infinite subjectivity. It would not be recognition in terms of freedom because the parties cannot be certain about this life as a free life. Thus, the parties start out from their empirical determination and attempt to abstract from this in order to be free from it, from both inner and outer determinations (ibid, 130f). This abstraction from what may limit freedom Hegel discusses as risking ones life, that is, risking ones life as it is lived here and now (ibid).However, in this abstraction from life the one and the other come to expose each other to the threat of death (Hegel 1807, 130f). They both risk their life and yet cannot risk their life. This since they both desire to live, or better, have desires in life. Furthermore, the process of recognition has as its point a life in freedom, not death. Without life freedom would of course be empty, maybe a nothing but perhaps more like a lifeless something (social death) (ibid, 131). What both seek as a form of freedom in abstraction from life, in order to achieve self-consciousness, they cannot achieve alive. And yet, the parties cannot stay around in immediate life because this life is not certain to be a free life among equals.Their desire to live in freedom means that they instead try to abstract from the life of the other (Hegel 1807, 125ff). Both seek the death of the other. The death of the other, that is the abstraction from how the other live, seems to give the one back the life s/he has risked in the struggle. If the other dies, that is cease to live as it lives, the life of the one would prevail. And in the unequal, one-sided recognition the halted process of recognition results in that the life of the lord prevails (ibid, 133ff).It is this non-recognized but recognizing life of the bondsman which holds him or her in chains and establishes the lord as such: "The lord relates himself mediately to the bondsman through a being [a thing] that is independent, for it is just this which holds the bondsman in bondage; it is his chain from which he could not beak free {nicht abstrahieren konnte} in the struggle, thus proving himself to be dependent, to possess his independence in thinghood." (Hegel 1977, 115). Thus, this process of recognition ends in misrecognition because it has not been carried out fully (Hegel 1807, 133). Misrecognition is one-sided action, not a mutual recognition, something which requires the action of both in order to happen.This process of recognition that establishes a relation of misrecognition, the domination of the one over the other (Herrschaft), does not turn out to be the short cut to the recognition of life it at first seems to be for the lord. It is not a stable form of (mis) recognition. As the lord establishes this life as the mediation between him or her and the bondsman, it becomes obvious that the lord has not achieved the form of recognition that would ensure him or her of independence. The bondsman is not independent and hence cannot recognize the lord as independent. Thus, the lord cannot be sure of his or hers self-consciousness in spite of the recognizing life the bondsman lives for him or her (Hegel 1807, 134f).Rather, as the bondsman labors and provides for the life of the lord, the bondsman will achieve an independence from the lord. The bondsman will achieve a second form of freedom, the determination of content (finite subjectivity) rather than the abstraction from content (infinite subjectivity). This is what occurs in spite of the established political order of bondage. It is not stable. The process of recognition is halted, but goes on. It is a misrecognition that unwinds and undermines itself.From the viewpoint of the conceptions of freedom at play here, the halted process of recognition show the inversion of freedom into its opposite. From the viewpoint of this process as a form of misrecognition, however, it shows how this inversion is not stable, how it as an inversion of the preconditions will yet another time be inverted. But now it is misrecognition which is inverted: "But just as lordship showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed {umkehren} into a truly independent consciousness." (Hegel 1977, 117).However, this inversion of the inversion does not mean that instead of the life of the lord now the life of the bondsman is established as life in general. Recognition is not re-cognition. Rather, what Hegel does is to expose how the inversion of freedom and equality is a form of misrecognition. But this situation is not stable and thus misrecognition unwinds. To the degree that this is followed up it implies an inversion of the inversion. But the dissolution of misrecognition neither means that what has been repressed now will prevail, nor that the unwinding of misrecognition itself will be a mutual recognition between the parties (cf. the discussion about "the unhappy consciousness"; Hegel 1807, 136-56; Butler 1997, chap. 1). Rather, the dissolution of reification, misrecognition as a halted process, is the transparency of injustices, which in turn gives an impetus for a formulation of what justice requires. Looked upon in this way, Hegels account of the process of recognition is similar to the process of inversion outlined in the structural interpretation of labor.Inversion and the Structure of LaborThe structure of labor shows how labor is both the precondition of production and conditioned by capital in capitalist production (Marx 1857/58, 10-21, 183, 202-217, 408ff, 415ff, 566ff, 706ff, 715f and 919-947). It both is and is not such a precondition. It can be said that it is a precondition only in so far that this is necessary in order to show how it is not. This is and is not is the structure of labor according to Marx (ibid, 177f, 185f, 211ff and 409ff). It does not imply a substantial interpretation of labor. Rather, it shows the substrate of practices in order to be able to show how inversions occur in capitalist societies.This inversion, no doubt, has a determinate character of life, but it is not this determinate character as life that should be recognized, neither as it is now nor according to its potential. The latter, however, would be the implication of the substantial interpretation of labor, because it would imply the recognition of labor as that which is to be realized. But labor is not the substance of practices in this sense. The inversion of the inversion does not mean that what labor is, is recovered. It is neither the return to what labor was prior to capital, more or less modelled after the crafts-man, nor does it point out the source of practices as it was discussed in the Gotha-program, i. e. as all wealth stems from labor. Rather, the point is the dissolution of what labor is in capitalist society (Postone). The possibility of its dissolution does not correspond to the designation of labor as the general possibility of wealth (Marx 1857/58, 202ff, 213f, 365ff and 506f). This form of labor as non-capital can provide for a political economy of labor, but not the dissolution of labor, as it exists in capitalist society.This is why the substantial interpretation of labor amounts to a distorted unity between interpretation (along an expressivist account) and satisfaction (along the instrumental interpretation) of needs. In neither case does the inversion of the inversion imply the realization of labor as substance, neither as the set free forces of production for a rational appropriation of outer nature (instrumental interpretation), nor as the free unfolding of inner subjectivity (expressivist interpretation).Marx argument about the dialectic of labor can be viewed in this light. As capital comes to condition labor in the production process it is an inversion of labor as precondition. But this is not a stable relation because by the appropriation of labor in production, labor is included within capital. Hence, labor as precondition comes about again within capital: "With that, the labour process posited prior to value, as point of departure - which, owing to its abstractness, its pure materiality, is common to all forms of production - here reappears again within capital, as a process which proceeds within its substance and forms its content." (Marx 1973, 304).Production is conditioned by capital in two ways. It determines the production process both as a valorization of capital and as a labor process. Capital is a unity of the process of production and its reproduction (or valorization) as capital, but since it includes labor it is an unstable or "contradictory unity" (Marx 1857/58, 415). Marx presents this from the outset as the commodity is analyzed in terms of use- and exchange-value (Marx 1867, chap. 1). Sometimes Marx discusses this dual relation as diremption, the reason for which now becomes obvious since capital and wage-labor makes up the two extremes of capital as a contradictory unity. It is a contradictory unity in a similar way that misrecognition is a contradictory political order.The extremes both exclude each other and mutually reinforce each other. There is neither only a mutual reinforcement nor exclusion, but both at the same time. This means that limits are not outer limits to practices and their presuppositions. Rather, as a contradictory unity both the possibility of labor and the limit of capital are part of it as a unity. It implies that it can be dissolved only as participants pursue what these contradictions consist of. The dissolution of limits is possible only as contradictions are followed up.From a presupposed freedom and equality, the inversion into situations of unfreedom and inequality appears paradoxical. Within a phenomenology of contradictions this both is and is not a paradox. It is a paradox when it is conceived of from the premises, but it is not a paradox since it brings out the displacement of presuppositions and the circumstances of their realization (Marx 1857/58, 211 and 214; Marx 1867, 85-98). This is similar to the way the process of recognition ends in misrecognition. This, too, is paradoxical and yet not, since the inversion of freedom and equality into inequality and unfreedom shows how a mutual recognition cannot come about, because presuppositions and circumstances are displaced.According to the complementarity of a political theory of the ought and a social theory of the is, presuppositions for practices connotes possibilities which are limited by social circumstances in such a way that political principles or normative presuppositions cannot be realized to a full extent. In the case of inversions, however, the displacement of premises and circumstances requires another form of analysis. It requires the acknowledgement that practices of freedom cannot be fully comprehended by a concept of freedom, either as equal liberties or relations of recognition, as presuppositions for practices. This acknowledgement forms a central part to a phenomenology of contradictions or a negative dialectics (Adorno 1966; Rose 1978, 44ff).The actuality of an inversion of freedom into unfreedom has to be analyzed as both possibility and limit within a phenomenology of contradictions. In such a phenomenology presuppositions and circumstances can no longer be conceived of and analyzed according to the conditions for their possibility. The latter complementarity of political and social theory implies that limits are outer limits. This is how reification is conceptualized by Habermas (as an external force on discourses) in his account of a "dialectics of rationalization" (Habermas 1981, vol. 1, chap. 4 and vol. 2, chap. 6 and 8). However, when reification is conceptualized as inversion, limits must be discerned as something like a causality of fate at work in interaction (Hegel 1799, 305ff and 341ff; Rose 1981, 154ff).This difference in the conceptualizations of reification lies, I think, in Marx discussion of freedom from necessity and freedom on the basis of necessity (Marx 1894, 828). The latter connotes that to overcome contradictions of capitalist society means to overcome a specific sort of unfreedom. This unfreedom is due to an inversion of freedom, not to a specific form of freedom. Unfreedom is not (only) the unintended consequence of how individuals pursue their own interests in civil society (Hegels account of generality in civil society (Hegel 1821, para 189-208)). The inversion of freedom is a specific form unfreedom, which, however, is not due to a specific form of freedom, but related to the antinomy of modern freedom.Conclusion.The inversion of freedom and equality has as consequence that presuppositions for practices and their circumstances are displaced. This implies that presuppositions of freedom and equality and the societal circumstances of their realization will not be an outer limit to the realization of freedom and equality. The limit to the realization of freedom is given by the presuppositions of freedom themselves, however not as concept but as actuality, as unfreedom (Adorno 1966, part 3:1). The limit of freedom is the inversion of freedom. It is a rift between the interpretation and satisfaction of needs, a rift similar to that between the two conceptions of respect. The interpretation of needs in line with the formulation of beings as ends in themselves does not fit together with the description of the satisfaction of needs that is not one of taking persons as means. The how and what of satisfaction does not correspond with the interpretation of needs along with the conception of persons as ends in themselves.In a certain way this implies that the infrastructure of ethical life for autonomy relates to the infrastructures of heteronomy in capitalist society that limit freedom and equality. Misrecognition is such a limit internal to practices. It shows itself on the level of political strategies as the dilemma of a simultaneous stress on a politics of need-interpretation and need-satisfaction. It appears as a contrary politics. This dilemma can be understood in relation to the displacement of presuppositions and circumstances by inversion. Inversion makes limits into internal limits because of this displacement; when relations of recognition-misrecognition are conceived of in this way, as relating to situations of social unfreedom, it means that society is a contradictory unity (cf. Adorno 1965). As such it is not possible to combine need-satisfaction and need-interpretation outside of the ability to follow up contradictions, at least not as long radical politics operates on the terrain of capitalism.