Marx’s economico/political anthropology gives up arbeit, or labour as the essence of humanity. I’ve argued elsewhere that this seems too narrow, and am in agreement with Honneth that a weaker formal anthropology would be more appropriate. Habermas, replaces this concept with ‘communication’ in turn, Honneth feels that ‘recognition’ is more appropriate. I’m not sure that this is the right manoeuvre.
Honneth would argue that human beings do not become fully ’socialised’ just through language but through mutual recognition; the acknowledgement of an other’s self-worth, the generation of self-respect and so on. As an aside, the similarities to Kant’s moral philosophy are quite striking, particularly with respect to the various iterations of the categorical imperative. Moving on, Honneth argues that it is wrong to equate the the (chief) medium through which the activation of social agency occurs, with logic contained in that medium. Now, I don’t agree with this argument. Firstly, I should point out that I also disagree with Habermas- the when the ’system’ imposes itself on the life-world, it is meant to disrupt social communication, imposing its non-linguistic edicts on social relations. I don’t believe this to be true. Systems do have a language/communicative aspect- the stock market can interact in a symbolic/linguistic way with people, so too can governments and bureaucracies. Reification, in the Marxist/Lukácian sense, seems to be the more fundamental problem- abstract entities being granted human autonomy. I should also point out that I have a very broad notion of communication, drawn from both contintental semiotics and analytic philosophy of language. Anything that can be thougt about the world can be expressed through a language of sorts, even if a thoughts initial utterances, though symbols, speech or writing etc. are unclear- they are always open to the possibility of further refinement and clarification. I think perhaps that I would go as far to say that reason is itself language, or at least, can only be expressed through language- in the most fundamental sense, language represents the ability to recognise relationships between persons and things, and to communicate this recognition to others thus incorporating both the core Habermasian and Honnethian ideas.
However, can language (in the above sense) be separated from recognition? I’m pretty certain that it can’t- the way in which we interact with others must be able to be described or represented in some form for it to have any meaning and be acknowledged by others, in the same way that the ability or desire to communciate at all represents an act of recognition. Indeed, the concept of recognition can itself, only be expressed through language, and vice versa. Recognition and communication are fundamentally inseparable concepts, neither should be given ontological priority over the other- neither can exist without the other, and like the relationship between the individual and the society, their relationship is dialectical.
