Recognition and Dissent. Schelling's Conception of Recognition and its Contribution to Contemporary Political Philosophy

In the present article I offer an alternative notion of recognition consisting in understanding it in terms of fundamental and foundational dissent. My thesis is that thinking of recognition in terms of dissent makes visible some problems in the usual understanding of recognition in contemporary debates on ethics, politics and right, such as the one about the conditions for a fair dialogue between cultures and/or religions. In doing so, this alternative to the broadly used concept of recognition opens up the possibility for reconsidering the way how the theoretic framework in such debates uses to be built up. This alternative comprehension of recognition is based on Schelling's New Deduction of Natural Right (1795/96). I will firstly examine the widespread notion of recognition, according to which recognition basically consists in social inclusion of individuals in an already established social order or system of values and meanings. I will analyze two cases of the modern struggle for recognition and very briefly refer to Kant's and Fichte's accounts on recognition in order to illustrate this way of conceiving and materializing recognition and to identify its critical points. then I will offer a reconstruction of Schelling's concept of recognition and show at what extent his account on recognition can be employed to solve the critical points in the traditional understanding of recognition and of some of its related concepts.

ISBN:978-90-04-26228-7

Jaar van publicatie:2014

Trefwoorden:Disagreement, Schelling, German Idealism, Recognition