Practical Philosophy II

04-11-2024

What is “social” and “political” philosophy?

- Social and political philosophy are not (only) two different topics, but (rather) different
angles to loot at a phenomenon
Political: justice
Social: good life-together
(but they hang together)

Aristotle:

- Heeft de basis gelegd van de politiek

- He states that ethics is not an individualistic but social project.
“Man by his nature belongs in the political community”
è This is a natural disposition to politics with regard to social philosophy
“Hence it is evident… that man is by nature a political animal”

Others say that the difference between political and social projects are not the same (Hannah
Arendt) Aristotle states that they are plausible and causational.

- If we know the essence, we know the goal

It is the essence of the bird to fly, so it had the goal to fly, it must fly.

“Speech serves to reveal the advantageous and the disadvantages, and hence also the just
and the unjust”

Speech (or logos) are essential for the human being and makes the distinction between
human beings and other animals. (slaves and women don’t have logos)

Essentialism and teleology: being political is for the human like making music is for a piano.
- The same goes for using language. There is an inherent telos in human beings that we
don’t just want to survive but actually live well.
“the polis comes into existence for the sake of living, it exists for the sake of living”

- In order to understand what your function is in the polis (nature) you have to know the
polis.
“The polis is prior by nature to the household and to each of us.”

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Subjective conditions: live your life according to you role and function in the polis
Objective conditions: polis has to be cleared from all matters of mere necessity.
è Strict separation of polis and oikos (household)

How to deal with this from a modern perspective?

è Neo-Aristotelians: reformulate basic premises
è Critics of Aristotelianism: masculinism is inherent in the premises

How to deal with sexism and racism in classical philosophy:

- Apologetic answer: they are children of their time
- External critique: classics are unusable
- Immanent critique: turn classics against themselves. Let them argue against
themselves.

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05-11-2024

Aristotle:
- the polis should be free of violence. We should be interested in the common good.
- The objective conditions need be have such a form that this is possible.
- We as human are able to convince each other with words (logos). Getting someone to
do something without the use of word is in-human.
- There is a separation between the politics (polis) and the household (oikos)

Hannah Arendt:

(Is not a philosopher, but a political theorist. A way to actively act on ideas)

Arendt does not think that there is something like human nature. But there is something that is
called human condition.

- important conditions that are fundamental for human life: labor, work and action.
(action as the most essential human activity)

- Labor is needed to stay alive

- work is an extension of labor.
è Action is wat makes us humans human.

There are two important pre-conditions for action:

è Natality:
“because they are initium, newcomer and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are
prompted into action.”
- What makes us human is not death but birth. (opposed to Heidegger)
- The society of dying is the exact opposite of Arendt. Someone new is born and can
therefore change the world with ones actions.

è Plurality:
- “the fact of plurality” can be set beside Kant’s “Fact of reason”
“all human activity is conditioned by the fact that people live together, but only action is not
even conceivable outside human society.”
“ human plurality is the basic condition of both action and speech”
- An action is something we do with others according to Arendt. Humans can only exist
in a world of plurality. Therefore, human action is a form of plurality.

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 - All action is a communicative act. It is something we do with other. We always have to
communicate with others.
- Action is acting in concert

What is politics?
“ to be political, to live in a polis, meant that all matters were settled by means of wordt that
could persuade, and not by coercion or force.”
- Politics is action in concert
“ to compel others by force, to command rather than to persuade, was regarded by the
Greeks as a pre-political way of dealing with people, as it were, as it was customary in life
outside the polis.”
- According to Arendt, the ancient Greeks was the last time we had real politics,
because it was pure action and plurality. Nowadays politics have become to
complicated with the media, different force and other stakes people have in politics.
- The Greeks had pure politics based on communication and action from plurality

Three wrong assumptions:

1. Equating power and violence: power is collective and communicative; violence is
individualistic and mute. Power is the opposite of violence. Violence is not action.
Power is a pluralist action. Then we create power.
2. Equating politics and the state: “If sovereignty and freedom were really the same thing,
then people could indeed not be free, because sovereignty, namely unconditional
autonomy and rule over oneself, contradicts the human conditionality of plurality.”
Only men, not man, inhabit the earth. Your own freedom depends on other viewpoints
that are not like yourself. Therefore, there is a difference between politics and the
nation state as we know it.
- Arendt argues for the Council Republic. This is still a political institute but more based
on taking action together.
3. Equating the political with the social: The political needs to be free form the coercion
of necessity. We should save the political from the social movements who try to
theorize the social ideas on how to act. The political is everything that is not private.

Edmund Burke: acting in concert.

- Politics as collective, plural virtuosity that actualizes itself not because of an external
goal but is an end in itself.
- Politics also want to be an end in itself.

There is one activity that is specifically human, namely action. Action is defined by
contingency, freedom and plurality, or to formulate it negatively, action is impossible if
everything is determined, forced or unified. Action is there always already political: as for

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Aristotle, for Arendt, humans are political animals. But politics has to be understood in a
specific way: as a collective virtuosity, an acting in concert. This means we have to overcome
the inflations of power with violence.

Loss of the political: totalitarianism

“total domination does not allow for free initiative in aby field of life, for any activity that is not
entirely predictable.”
- The idea of loneliness is very new and only exist with the emergence of individualist
conventions. Not just the loss of individuals but lost out of touch with the world. In
order to be human, one has to communicate.
- This loneliness makes you vulnerable of a totalitarian point of view.

Loss of the political: encroachment of the social

- Political movements focusing too much on the social (Marxism, feminism)

Loss of the political: statelessness:

- It is essential for the human being to live in a world of references.
- Home as essential condition for the freedom of the political animal
- States fail to accommodate for statelessness as mass phenomenon
- “the rights to have rights”
- There has to be a sense of community

Critiques of Arendt:
- Habermas: Arendt’s ideas are too elitist and too much concerned with talking. It is not
possible to have the kind of politics in today’s society as one had in the time of the
ancient Greeks.

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08-11-2024

Seminar 1

Aristotle has a teleogical idea on nature

- It is in human nature to be a political animal

è Not all men can be a political animal, only free man

- People that are not part of a city cannot develop a final cause -> and therefore become
either a beast or a god.

Aristotle:

Does it make sense to think about anthropology in the context of social and political
philosophy?

--- Yes it makes sense, since the political animal needs other people to be able to exist. If one
is not part of the political nature, one is either a beast or a god. The same goes for culture.
Culture needs other people to be able to be formed.

An advantage of basing the political argument on “nature”: The idea of a political nature gives
people something to hold on to. We all have the same nature (debatable) to be part of the
polis. Therefore, nature gives us an advantage. One doesn’t have to think about it, since it is
part of our nature.

“The city is prior to the household and to each of us”. Earlier Aristotle says that the village and
household comes before the city.

- The city has priority. The household is integrated in the city. There cannot be a
household without the polis at large.
- The households are prior to the city weren’t really households. Before it only
resembled something like households.
- The households are the ligaments of the city. So the city cannot be a city without the
households. And vice versa.
- the concept of the household didn’t exist. Before it was a defined phenomenon.
è The city cannot be without households because the city needs to be free of mere
necessity for men to be able to do politics. Without a domain that looks after necessity
there cannot be politics. The households take care of the people of the politics.

The beast doesn’t need others, while the god is beyond others

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Arendt:

Labor: life and survival, natural environment, labour for oneself

Work: the things we need to survive, worldliness, the unnaturalness of human existence.
Artificial environment. Working for a world that can outlive us that goes beyond the individual
life itself.

Action: (only humans) condition of political life. Plurality (diversity). The capacity of speech.
The relation between action and plurality: plurality conditions action. When people come
together there is a possibility for action (violence is not action).

“plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in
such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else you ever lived, lives, or will live.” (p.
8)

Vita contemplativa: the thoughtful life. The highest form of human life. An inward-looking
practice. The contemplative realm is above what speech can tell.

“The term vita activa receives its meaning form the vita contemplativa.”

- Contemplating over activa.

- The vita contemplatia does not act alone. It needs something to contemplate over.
- These are two visions, and they complement each other. The interpretation is still
open.

The human being is a political animal.

A social animal is an insufficient characterization of human nature because it does not apply
action, and action is the thing that separates humans from other animals.

- Freedom is located within the polis (not the household)

What are the major problems with the rise of the social in Arendt’s view?

- There is a blurring between the old borderline between private and political (p.33)
- The government sees itself as a big household. This creates a hierarchy in the state.
Politics should be separate from the household. (household being a hierarchy)
- When the mother or father run the household (and today’s society is created a
household) one is putting oneself in the position of a child. We want care, and to be
looked after -> where Arendt says that we should be acting ourself.

Wake-up-call to take action instead of only following (like a child)

The rule of nobody (p.40): we have to behave a certain way because we have the feeling of
being watched. We are being ruled by nobody.

“the invisible hand” (Adam smith) (supply and demand)

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11-11-2024
Social Contract Theory I: Hobbes & Rousseau
A life that is not political it is desufficient
Two developments:
- The emergence of capitalism
- The emergence of the national state.
The consolidation of the nation state:
- The church at some point had more power than the king. Who has the last word. This
only went away with the consolidation of the nation state.
How can we justify the authority of the state and the freedom of the individual?
è The central task of modern political philosophy is how to reconcile the new
individualism and atomism (necessitated by the rise of capitalism) with the claim to
absolute worldly authority by the state?
The state has a moral legitimacy to ask taxes that we are obligated to actually pay them
and respect it.
There is a version of consent between the individual and the government. That is why they are
able to ask for taxes, and one is obliged to cooperate.
Machiavelli (predecessor of modern political thought) created the reason of the state (raison
d’etat): there is a continuity of the perspective of the state that has it owns normativity. What
helps the state to grow is good.
Jean Bodin founded the concept of sovereignty.

Thomas Hobbes (1599-1679)

- Really concerned with the problem of war in Europe
- In leviathan he develops a theory on legitimacy within the creation of a nation state.
- Question: why should the state have the highest authority -> agreement, consent
è Social contract theory: have a description of state of nature (before contract), what is
the contract, and how does the nation look like after the contract
State of nature: what we are left with if we take away all political elements (threat, this is what
is left over). If this does not exist people can do whatever they want. The state of nature
creates conflict, war of all against all. It is rational to be violent in order to protect yourself.
The strongest will survive. So, this is not a good situation
Social contract: “the commonwealth is instituted when all agree in the following manner: I
authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or this assembly of man, on this
condition; that thou give up, thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.”
We give all our rights to one person. The reason we do this: as soon the sovereign is also
bound to us, he can never end the war. One cannot break the contract. Agreement towards a

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third party that is not bound by the contract. There cannot be any question on who the
sovereign is.
2 underlying principles: contracts must be kept - to the willing, no injury can be done
The state: must be absolute and undivided, no one can be above it. All sovereignty
prerogatives: legislation, enforcements, jurisdiction, taxation, punishment, etc. Only
actionable possibility retained by subjects: not to risk their own life in war.

Sovereignty by institution: established through the social contract

Sovereignty by acquisition: established through force
(consent is still valid, even if coerced)

Locke is seen as the father of liberalism. He bases his arguments on individual freedom.
State of nature: “that is a state of perfect freedom of action fand disposing of their own
possession and persons as they think fir within the bounds of the law of nature.”
Social contract: “the only way by which ant one divests himself of this natural liberty and puts
on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community
of their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one among another, in a secure enjoyment of
their properties, and a greater security against any that are not of it.”
- He believes we have the right of revolution.
State: “limited role; right to revolution”

Jean-Jaques Rousseau (1712-1778)

- Believed that nature makes people more noble, critic of civilization
The fundamental problem is: it is possible to have both (safety and protection but also remain
free). We will only obey ourselves -> that is the goal (solution takes the form of a contract)
Social contract: “each of us puts his person and his full power in common under the supreme
direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of
the whole.”
- We are governed to ourselves. Because we give oneself to all we give ourself to no
one. By giving rights, you receive rights -> this is how he solves the fundamental
problem. One cannot decide on his own but has a part in what the decision will end up
to be.
General will: generalized will that has the common good in mind (we as a body should act on
the general will)
Will of all: sum of individual wills

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Hobbs -> absolutist
Locke -> Liberal
Rousseau -> Republican (put towards the people)

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12-11-2024
Social contract theory II: Rawls
è Social contract theory is just a thought experiment
Problem of all social contract theories: How can a hypothetical consent create actual
obligations?
- We never signed a contract.
- But by being on the land of the Netherlands we gave “tacit consent”
- Can we say that there is a “tacit consent” when there is really no alternative? -> this is
why people do not agree anymore with contract theory.
Answer of 20th century social contract theory: state of nature as a “thought experiment”

A theory of Justice (book):

- Concerned with the “basic structure” of a society
The basic structure concerns all. Primary social goods (goods that everybody will want more
of). What should be the basic structure and that are the primary social goods?
- It provided “primary social goods”
- Specific idea of justice: justice as fairness
Fairness means about what is just is what is a fair way to divide goods and rights.

The original position: “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status,
nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his
intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their
conceptions of the good or their special phycological propensities. The principles of justice
are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.”
- But how are people able to make a “smart” decision on ruling based on the vail of
ignorance? People make all sort of stupid choices
= Reflective equilibrium: a place where all your decisions are made to align with each other.
Humans are rational animals.

2 principles of justice:
è “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal
basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all” (freedom of speech,
press, religion, etc)
è “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
- To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (inequality has to be set up in a way
that everyone is privileged at some point, but there will always be inequality)

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 - Attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity” (there should be equal opportunity)

Rawls would choose society B.

Person X is always the most inequal.
But in society B the least advantaged
has the highest advantage (being 12).
Here the inequality, which is
inevitable, is the least unfair. (“the
greatest benefit of the least
advantaged.”

There is a priority of principles:

- Greatest Equal Liberty principle (1)
- Equal opportunity principle (3)
- Difference principle (undeniable inequality) (2)

The overlapping consensus: there are 5 features that cannot be set aside:
“a consensus in which a diversity of conflicting comprehensive doctrines endorses the same
political conceptions, in this case, justice as fairness.” (you can have your own beliefs, but
still be part of the political institutions) (-> this takes the place of consent in the social
contract)
- Diversity of comprehensive doctrines as permanent feature of modern societies
- Only oppressive force could maintain continuing affirmation of one single doctrine
- Democratic institutions require support by at least a substantial majority
- A stable democratic regime contains fundamental intuitive idea
- Even after free discussion, free and reasonable persons won’t arrive at the same
conclusion.
What kind of society follows from the theory of justice?
- Liberal commitments
- Most social formations violate one of the principles of justice
- Only liberal socialism or “property owning democracy” satisfy all principles
- Of the two, property-owning democracy is more realistic

Critiques of Rawls
General critiques of social contract models (McPherson, Pateman, Mills): individualism
Hegelian critique (Honneth): if you imagine the original position as individualistic, the result
will also be individualistic.

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Why is Rawls still interesting today?
è The constitution is something we can all agree on. When there are fundamental
conflicts they are conflicts that take place in this center of the constitution. Rawls
says that this is the form we should choose.
è When talking about political conflicts, Rawls gives a good framework.
è The gender division of labor seems unjust. Everyone is autonomous (like Rawls
mentions). We are all equally free.
è Rawls thinks we should distribute the tasks at home in a fair way.
è Rawls is very open to inclusive critique
è Rawls is ideal, why not be non-ideal, because you can’t start talking about injustice
before you have a concept of justice.
è so you need a concept of justice -> Rawls

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15-11-2024
Seminar

Hobbes
The function of the state of nature is the reason why we all should agree to the social contract.
Everyone’s life would be enhanced.
Hobbes grew up in the time of the civil war and the threat of the chaos of state of nature
returning.
He also says that there are people still in the state of nature. (p. 89) -> indigenous people in
America lived in the state of nature through his mind. This is a very racist thought. In the state
of nature there are no accounts of time, art, civilization or knowledge. He is denying that even
the people that (supposedly) live in a state of nature have lived the same history as the people
in England way before. (‘waiting room of histoty’ – D. ChaKrabarty)
- Rawls says it is a thought experiment

What kind of contract is the social contract?

= A contract that leads to the society giving their rights to one single person. It is a voluntary
contract. The contract applies to all but the authority. The leviathan is above the law.
“I authorize and give up my right of condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorize
all his Action in like manner.”
The political obligation is an obligation to yourself. You had the power to not sign the contract,
so you set the rules for yourself. When the leviathan acts, you act, because you chose to sign
the contract.
-> to what manner does one have the freedom to sign the contract or not? Hobbes says that
when someone is acting out of fear it was still a choice out of freedom. “Covenants entered
into by fear, in the condition of meer Nature, are obligatory” (p.97)

Rousseau:
- There is freedom in the chains
Rousseau says that freedom comes in collectivity. One is united with all and therefore free.
Freedom is not an individual sense. Everyone is part of the sovereign = the general world
The general world leads to the general will which is the collective interest of all, the common
good.
You can be forced to obey the general will -> this means one is forced to be free. (it is a
different kind of freedom) because freedom is found within the collective.

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Differences between Hobbes and Rousseau:
Rousseau says that freedom lies in the social contract (forced to be free), you will only
experience true freedom in the general will.
Rousseau is against representation, where that is the core of Hobbes his arguments.
Hobbes Rousseau
Leviathan General will
State of nature is very bad State of nature is okay
We don’t have property We do have property
You give your freedom to the sovereign You obtain freedom in the system

è Hobbes says that the state of nature should always be avoided and therefore
persuades you to sign the contract, while Rousseau is trying to persuade you to see
the good side of the contract.

Rawls
è Thought experiment -> veil of ignorance
What is a well-ordered society? -> bovenaan p. 5
Justice: criminal law, what is the just punishment for the crime? Procedural justice = we must
follow the rules
è Rawls wants a different kind of justice. On how we act. He wants a justice that is
based on fairness. A fair distribution of goods, this does not confirm equality. We don’t
start from the same position. It conveys the idea that the principles of justice are
agreed to in an initial situation that is fair. (p.12)

Vail of ignorance: wanneer alle eigenschappen een voor- en nadelen van je personage
wegwist. Hierdoor ontstaan er geen vooroordelen. Als je niet weet bij welke categorie jij hoort
ben je ook niet geneigd om iemand een voordeel te geven die het niet verdient.

2 principles:
1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive
basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they
both (a) reasonable expected to be to everyone’s advantage,
and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all
(opportunity)
- The opportunity is the first principle that is needed to create a society of fairness.

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The reflective equilibrium is a phenomenon where due to reflection a society can always
come to an equilibrium. Rawls does state that this no necessarily stable because it is bound
on a personal level and is very sensitive to change. Therefore, it can be a good medium
guiding, but cannot be set in stone.
Rawls is a social contract theorist because he starts of from the concept of the state of nature
and he still beliefs that the contract is still the best for everyone. The contract in itself is only
more abstract. With Rawls one chooses principles instead of a leviathan. The rules and not
the person.
This is different from the general will, because the general will is more prone to change in
comparison with the rules set by Rawls.

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18-11-2024
Recognition and ethical life I: Hegel
Hegel created German idealism -> also political world view.
Hegel’s philosophy is the philosophy of reconstruction, more conservative. -> the left
Hegelianism (still more prominent)

Intellectual constellation
Hegel’s question: How to rehabilitate the sociality of human subjectivity under conditions of
modernity?
Prime normative goal: not happiness but freedom
- Most of the time there is a really individualistic view. “humans grow like mushrooms” –
Hobbes. An individualistic understanding of legitimacy and freedom. = Primacy-of-
right-theories
Hegel want to look at this through a social view. He holds on to the idea that we are social
and political beings but under the condition of modernity. The most important normative
goal is freedom!

The phenomenology of spirit

- He believed he could provide a comprehensive outline of the world and how it is
connected to each other – holistic.
What is spirit: a metaphor of the collective reason of humanity (primitive form of
consciousness and how it develops into, eventually, absolute knowing)
“a self-consciousness is for a self-consciousness”
“it is only as a recognized being”
(arm chair philosophy is boring and cannot be checked outside one self)
- Only because children are addressed as a subject makes them a subject. They have to
be recognized and addressed by another.
è In order to become something, we need somebody else.

Struggle for life and death:

1… Both don’t recognize each other
2… One subject gives up -> emergence of domination and servitude
Unreciprocal recognition -> failed for both
è The servant recognized the master but not the other way around

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You only feel loved because someone doesn’t need to love you. If they need to love you it is
not authentic. The relationship has to come out of mutual freedom for it to be true.
3… Mutual recognition: “they recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other”

è Political: Hegel says that only under condition of mutual respect is it possible to
become a subject.

o Development understanding of self

o Subjectivity dependent on intersubjectivity
o Subjectivity result of social struggles
o Successful subjectivity is only possible under conditions of free and equal recognition.

Elements of the philosophy of right (1821)

From the early to the late Hegel: From an intersubjectivist to a substantialist concept of social
freedom

Liberal understanding of freedom: my freedom is in danger when you come in contact with me
-> very anti-social
“When we hear it said that freedom in general consists in being able to do as one pleases,
such an idea can only be taken to indicate a complete lack of intellectual culture.”
Three problems with freedom as arbitrariness:
- We are still subjected to the heteronomy of our drives
- We have to deal with finding our true will alone
- We might not have the material conditions to fulfill our will.

Freedom according to Hegel: being with oneself in another (only possible in limitation)
- You limit yourself, but in this limitation you do not feel limited. You understand that
this is what makes you as a human being and as a friend. This is a limitation of your
initial will. -> you find yourself in the will with the other.
- If the self is inherently social, self-determination must also be social
Negative freedom: freedom from individual freedom
Positive freedom: freedom to social freedom

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Hegel believes that the sociality of our freedom has political implication.
Zedelijkheid (Sittlichkeit or Ethical life): to act correctly, ethically right. To act customary and
rightly at the same time.
- “the individual, however, has in duty rather his liberation.”
If you want to be a free human being you have to limit yourself. You belief you can be free
against tradition. This is not the case.
“He must simply do what is prescribed, expressly stated, and known to hum within this
situation”

Objective conditions:
“the right of individuals to their subjective determination to freedom is fulfilled in so far as they
belong to ethical actuality; for their certainty of their own freedom has its truth in such
objectivity.”
- You don’t always have to limit your will, other have to to.

If the question is what should I do? Hegel says: “Make (your child) a citizen of a state of good
laws”.

Ethical life (zedelijkheid) liberates the individual:

- Form its merely natural drives
- From the loneliness of reflecting on what it wants
- Form the irreality of its wills
(The will is reflected, mediated and fulfilled)

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19-11-2024
Recogniton and Ethical Life II: Honneth

Hegel -> Freedom has to be understood in a positive, social, sense. The other is not the limit,
but the condition of my freedom

There are positive and negative recognition:

• Negative; he fact that we are dependent on another’s recognition puts us in a prison
• Positive: Recognition is something we should strive for (f.e. social movements as
politics of recognition)
Charles Taylor (positive recognition): we should also grant them appreciation of their cultural
expressions. A society appreciate and affirm cultural expressions -> this creates freedom and
the sense of the good life.

Axel Honneth
è Intersubjectivity-centers concept of the person
- Constitutive significance of recognition by others
- Progress as the result of a gradual expansion of valid norms of recognition achieved
through struggle
- Necessity of guaranteeing several specific dimensions of recognition.
Historical progress can be understood as a gradual expansion. And that these expansions
have to be achieved through struggle. They have to be fought for. (This is a similarity with
Hegel)
General strategy: explication of the necessary condition for recognitions through a typology of
experiences of injustice
- People are vulnerable to disregard because as beings they are dependent on
recognition.
Honneth want to find out the good by researching what others think is bad. When one is not
recognized as a human being this is the biggest insult. We are dependent on the recognition of
others. What we regard as injustice can be turned around to find a world of recognition.

Typology of experiences of injustice: (which create outrage)

• Disregard for elementary physical integrity: murder, rape, torture
• Disregard of moral responsibility: fraud, discrimination
• Disregard for specific abilities and contributions: social invisibility, stigmatization
We want the opposite of these ⇡

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Dimensions of Positive recognition
• Recognition as a being in need (love)
• Recognition as an accountable subject (respect)
• Recognition of individual abilities (solidarity / achievement)
These are not simply dimension of recognition, but part of specific social institutions. We
don’t expect all forms of recognition from anyone.

Spheres of recognition
• Family and intimate relationships (love)
• Law (respect)
• Community of values / state / market (solidarity / achievement)
Within Hegel his system of ethical like also takes place in the family, civil society and state

Consequences:
• Moral consequence: the character of a moral obligation depends on the existing
relationship of recognition
• Social-theoretical consequence: inclusion of the ethical fabric
• Political consequence: no focus on the state, consideration of cultural struggles for
recognition.
If we want to struggle for a better or free society we should not just focus on the state but we
should also think about the fact that politics is not just a point of legislation, but also
recognition.
è Honneth follows the same premises as Hegel put puts it is a modern jacket.

Negative recognition:
- Discomfort that is created through recognition -> recognition is therefore not always
wanted or pleasurable.
Negative recognition thinkers: Sartre, Fanon, Althusser, Butler

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Scenes of recognition:
- Existentialist interpretation: when one is lurking through a key hole and is busted. He
feels a existentialist shame. He does not want to be seen. He does not want to be
recognized in this situation (Sartre)
- Political interpretations: invocation of the black subject through the white gaze, insult
and injury as identity creation. You don’t want be discriminated. This is still recognition
and not only a disregard of. (Fanon)
- OR subjectification through pre-established ideological power relations -> also a form
of subjection (Althusser)
- OR Performativity of gender identity, gendering though heterosexist matrix. (Butler)
Scenes of recognition are preformed through historical social structures that are marked
by power.

Consequences:
• Moral consequences: uncertainty about the possibility of responsibility and
accountability
• Social-theoretical consequence: importance of cultural-symbolic power relations
• Political consequence: fighting against the conditions of one’s own existence.

But, who is right (positive vs negative)

- Strength of the positive: Genuine concept of intersubjectivity
- Strength of the negative: Greater sensitivity to power-relations inherent to recognition

The subject has power of the object. I drink out of the bottle, the bottle does not drink out of
me.
The person is the subject. We should recognize each other therefore as subjects.

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Hegel:

§149 “The individual find its liberation in duty”

Indeterminate subjectivity: there is an endless list of possibilities. You can’t do anything with
you opinion. Because you don’t have asset opinion. There is too much freedom, there is no
room to choose.
Abstract freedom: doing whatever you want, it has no limitation. Not yet realized. The
individual can’t yet find the freedom
Arbitrariness = willekeurig
è Abstract freedom has to be mediated by arbitrary to become substantial freedom.
Dialectics: returning to the same place in freedom but from a different view. Abstract freedom
becomes substantial freedom

§151
Natural drive = first nature
Habit = second nature, trained by society, needs a strong grip (f.e. riding a bike)]
è Duty has to become second nature.

§153 “make him a citizen of a state with good laws”

- The bad laws don’t lead to good freedom, one would fine oppression in duty.
- The good laws bring freedom in duty. Following them should be second nature.

§155 “Duty and Right coincide in this identity of the universal and particular will”
- Duties and rights are inseparable. They balance each other out.
- I only have duties when I have rights and vice versa
- These rights and laws are emerged in laws. (legislative and social laws)
- First you have to know the rules of chess before you are able to play chess. The rules
give you more possibilities.

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§156
The actual spirit refers to that which is already there.
Note: Hegel loves Germany and all other societies are less. -> conservative

- Having a gun is an abstract freedom, in order to have real freedom we should realize
that other people enable me to be free instead of limit the freedom.

Honneth:

By using a negativistic approach, it is more convincing. By seeing the negative first, the positive
is even more interesting. By first looking at what is not ideal, it is easier to determine what is
ideal. We more open to speculate on what is idea.

The corresponding three forms of recognition that every person needs for a successful identify
development:
- Love
- (moral) Respect
- Solidarity

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26-11-2024
Capitalism and Alienation: Marx and the Frankfurt School

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Marx believes there is always a sense of inequality, people aways provide wealth for another.
What is capitalism?
- The mode of production that we share with each other, in its fundamental rationality
and logics has not changed.
- Capitalism is a system forced by property. Free market.
- Marx describes capitalism as the private property in the means of production. The
means of production are under private property (thus not public).
- This creates a division (not everyone owns a factory) This creates a worker who is
“free in a double sense” we are politically free, but we are also free of property. We
don’t own anything, so we have to use the property of others. Therefore we are still
“enslaved” to another. We only own our own labor power.
- This creates exploitation (result of normal capitalist actions)
- This exploitation leads to the contradiction between collective work and private
appropriation. -> we produce something collectively but we don’t own it collectively.
(= contradiction)
- This projects itself not as a logical contradiction but as antagonism between labor and
capital (according to Marx, we live in a class society)
- Everyone who works is supporting this motion, this is why Hegel doesn’t work. He
overlooks this constant contradiction.
“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces.”
- The worker is alienated

There are 4 dimensions of alienation:

1.. Alienation from the product: “Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore
the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product
means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists
outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its
own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts
him as something hostile and alien.”
- You produce something, but you become completely independent from that what
you created.

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2.. Alienation from the act of production: “labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not
belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but
denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and
mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels
himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is
not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home.“
- The labor is only the tool in the factory. The worker is one with the factory. The factory
is overmastering the worker. The worker is defined by the factory.

3.. Alienation from the species being: “It is just in his work upon the objective world,
(...) that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his
active species-life. (...) In tearing away from man the object of his production,
therefore, estranged labor tears from him his species-life, his real objectivity as a
member of the species, and transforms his advantage over animals into the
disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken away from him.“
- What makes one human is taken away through capitalism. One doesn’t want to work
in the factory. It degrades us lower than the elements. It is dehumanizing.

4.. Alienation from other people: “If the product of labor does not belong to
the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, then this can only be
because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker's
activity is a torment to him, to another it must give satisfaction and pleasure.
Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over
man.“
- Who are you making it for? We are alienated from the client. They only take our
products away from us. We only see each other of fellow worker, and not people with
needs.
What are the political consequence?
- Struggle for high wages is not enough. It will never overcome the fundamental
problems with capitalism
- Liberation of the proletariat is at the same time universal human emancipation
An alternative: “Human (communist) production” : voluntary, reciprocal, need-oriented (the
need of the other is the motivation for creating something)

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“What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the
victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (the workers are the grave-diggers of
capitalism)

Why do they fight ‘for’ their own bondage as if it were their freedom?
Frankfurter Schule (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse)
(connected to the institute for social research), Marxist, mostly Jewish
“To explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of
barbarism.”
è The Frankfurt school is focused on the critical theory
Critical theory takes a stance outside the society and question the most fundamental
parameters and theories about the society.
- Capitalist society is marked by alienation: this world is not ours
- Critical theory expresses itself in form of “conscious opposition”
- Critical theory points at the contraction between reality and what is possible based on
the current stage of the development of the means of production
- But theories are not simply the reflection of class standpoints: proletarian
consciousness not automatically liberated.
- Critical theorist has no organic social position.

The culture industry: They believed that this mask culture is deceiving everyone. The real
message is concealed. There is always a message of obedience. Amusement has become an
extension of labor. Consumerism is a form of social control because it produces false needs

“there is no right life within the wrong life.” (- Adorno, Minima Moralia)

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Marx
Alienation from the product
- The bigger the pile of object becomes, the further the worker becomes alienated from
that which he is created.
- The worker is expendable -> inequality
- The worker is cheapening himself, the more wealth he produces
“ the act of production
- You are not working for yourself, but for someone else.
- One “suffers” from his work, does not enjoy work, work to the extend what someone
else is telling you.
- For example: smiling when saying goodbye in a restaurant, you don’t want to smile,
and you won’t earn more money, so you’re working for someone else.
- This is most of the time in emotional labor, service labor
“ the species being
- “The productive life, is the life of the species.”
- We can reflect on our own life, animals don’t
- We don’t want to sit around all day
- Anthropocentric = human centralized
- Spontaneous being is important for the species being according to Marx, this is
freedom
“ other people
- Introduction of a person

Wages and private property are identical. The one cannot exist without the other.

Adorno
the world is not as innocent as it seems. Even a blooming tree is just a distraction from the evil
world. The world is therefore not innocent. It is distracting, and misreading, it shows us a
world that is not true.
The beautiful hides the ugly (WWII)
How does Adorno portray moral life: not to be at home in one’s home. It is unfair to be
comfortable.
But your home is a place of refuge. He aligns the different options through which we live. All of
these options cannot be considered the good life. There is always a bigger shadow.

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02-12-2024

- Aristotle’s naturalism as a justification of domination: some are by nature bound to

rule, some to be ruled
- Contractualism is based on the idea of a human being as unbound individual
- Hegel: women participate in ethical life by being married (family life)
(the views on women that canonical philosophers held were not side-noted, but had a
profound impact on core philosophical ideas.)

Simone de Beauvoir

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one”

- To refute the thought that gender gives people a certain social role. Biology is not
destiny.
“Existence precedes essence”
“woman is not a completed reality, but rather a becoming, an it is in her becoming that she
should be compared with man; that is to say, her possibilities should be defined.”
- Against biologism (“not born”) – against nominalism (“one becomes one”)

The tension between: Appearance <-> Essence

“He is the subject, he is the absolute – she is the Other”

- Othering implies hierarchy

Techniques of Othering: naturalization, romanticization

Reactions to domination:
- Feminine woman: complicit with gender roles
- Emancipated woman: values herself and devalues men
- Modern woman: takes over male values
è Beauvoir’s perspective: “she must shed her own skin and cut her own new clothes.
This she could do only through a social evolution.”

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Equality feminism: overcoming gender-based inequalities
Difference feminism: appreciate female experiences (being a woman is a set of skills)
Queer feminism: deconstruct the gender binary
Intersectional feminism: analyses and critique gender together with other axes of domination

First wave: Women’s Rights Until Ca. 1914 Political and social rights
Movement
Second wave: Women’s Ca. 1960-80 Social rights and
Liberation Movement politicization of the private
Third wave: intersectionality, Ca. 1980 Influences of black
of color and Queer feminism, queer feminism
movement and intersectionality.

‘Bad faith’: (a point of view for de Beauvoir and Sartre) a way of living your life that is turned
away from existential freedom. (The family life is living ‘in bad faith’)
Simone de Beauvoir gets us to think about the individual life vs the social life. This is an
interactional question on how we should live our life.
- She can be considered an existentialist (not as much as her partner Sartre)

For women, taking on a position in complicity is way more rewarding. This is therefore alluring.
- There is also an economical risk

The important thing we should take from this: even in the absence of external forces between
men and women, there are also internal forces that keep this afloat.
- Complicity is also a choice. This can be a psychosocial aspect -> this should be
acknowledged

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03-12-2024
The political Animal and its race: Fanon

Androcentrism in philosophy: Man as absolute, woman as other

Feminist intervention: De-Naturalisation
Racism in Philosophy: Philosophy as justification of slavery and colonialism

Colonialism is not only a form of military, economic and political, but also of epistemic
domination. -> it is not just about material appropriation, but also involves form of epistemic
devaluation. They were also systematically destroyed.
- Kipling describes this as ‘the white man’s burden’ -> we are showing the world how it
can be, we are giving these underdeveloped people a reason to become better.

A lot of decolonizing parties used their own western philosophy against themselves. In the
revolution of Haiti, they wore French military costumes and demanded from the point of view
of the French law. They do should apply to all.
Boomerang effect: What we do to others, will also have an effect on us. It will come back to
us, we will be its victims too.

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)

4 forms of harmful aspects of a negative address:
è Impossibility of a positive self-relation
Is people keep talking down to you and heavily insulting you, where it is embedded in a world
of insults, it is impossible to maintain a positive self-relation.
è Impossibility of a positive relation to the other
“you are too late, much too late. Always there will be a world – a white world – between you
and me.”
People don’t connect anymore and experience a form of trust. All relations are stained with
prejudice.
è Impossibility of a positive relation to the world
“I had rationalized the world, and the world had rejected me in the name of the prejudice of
skin color.”
One cannot relate and connect to each other, but therefore also cannot connect to the world
in it entirely

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 è Impossibility of a positive relation to tradition
Because of all the critique, people don’t feel like themselves anymore and therefore are afraid
to act to one’s culture. There is a certain image and one can therefore not flow into that
culture since it is not accepted. It can never be innocent.

Fanon says that they build a world that can only be sustained by means of violence.
- Freedom cannot be given to you. You have to struggle for it yourself.

Aimé césaire: mentor Fanon, came up with the idea of thingification (very much related with
objectification). This is the process where a person is being regarded as a object and not a
human being and being made as an instrument for other people.

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06-12-2024
SEMINAR

Simone de Beauvoir

A woman is not simply a person with a uterus. Biologically they may be woman but they may
not grasp the femininity.
But they are also not just contained in an essence of a woman. (so femininity does not exist as
an essence)
- You get born and then you’re situated within a context, within a body and within a
certain sex/gender.
Despite what a woman is not, woman do exist. This is proved through a phenomenological
experience. How do people appear?
- Gender is purely something constructed.

Men are people and women are just the other. Men are positive, women are negative. Women
are inessential as a being and therefore the Other.
Man made up a feminine essence to justify their own beliefs on where a woman should be ->
in the kitchen.
There is a sense of mystification -> the woman is mystified into this essence of what the man
would like her to be.
She says that man need women and women need man. Women have to recognize their
dependency while man don’t
- She is focused on white western women.

Immanence: the subject accepts its fate to no be able to develop. You don’t have possibilities.
- It is hard to lead an authentic life.

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Franz Fanon

- He uses racial slurs to show you his lived experience. -> phenomenological method
= going out in the world and perceiving things. He wants to show how he experiences the
world.
- As with dye, one is putting the color into something or someone. The white person is
putting blackness into him. He can’t escape because he will always be black. The
white person is saying with his gaze that his skin color is all that matter.
- Fanon wants to stabilize the way that is natural. You are not a lion and a tiger; you are
both human.
Transcendence: reaching out in an open-ended future.
There is a sense of projection. You blame someone of what you do to yourself. It might feel
good to project your insecurities onto others. The white man is benefiting from being racist.
There is some kind of equality necessary for recognition. The white man wants recognition but
is devaluing himself by not respecting the black man. There is no recognition possible.

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