relational inquiry regarding meaning » concrete conditions » recognition
• Maslow's esteem needs: "All people in our society... have a need or desire for a stable, firmly based, (usually) high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect, or self-esteem, and for the esteem of others. By firmly based self-esteem, we mean that which is soundly based upon real capacity, achievement and respect from others..." (Maslow, A. H. [1943] p. 381).
• feminist conceptions of a relational self as opposed to an autonomous self
• Fukuyama's interpretation of Plato's thymos as "struggle for recognition": "...human beings seek recognition of their own worth, or of the people, things, or principles that they invest with worth. The propensity to invest the self with a certain value, and to demand recognition for that value, is what in today's popular language we would call 'self-esteem.' The propensity to feel self-esteem arises out of the part of the soul called thymos. It is like an innate human sense of justice" (Fukuyama, F. [1992] The end of history and the last man [Macmillan] p. xvii).
• Hegel: self-consciousness develops through a process of mutual recognition
• Taylor, C. (1992) The politics of recognition. In A. Gutmann, ed. Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition [Princeton UP 1994]: two world-centric (humanity-centered as opposed to ethnocentric or egocentric) political approaches—the modernist "politics of universalism" and the post-modern "politics of difference"—are often at odds, but needn't be when a presumption of (faith in) equal worth (across differences) leads to a dialogical fusion of horizons wherein genuine recognition of worth can occur.
_additional texts
• Iser, M. (2019) Recognition [The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
• Stueber, K. (2019) Empathy [The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
