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175Social Equality, Recognition, and Preconditions of Good LifeIn Michael Fine, Paul Henman & Nicholas Smith (eds.), Social Inequality Today, . 2003.In this paper I analyze interpersonal and institutional recognition and discuss the relation of different types of recognition to various principles of social justice (egalitarianism, meritarianism, legitimate favouritism, principles of need and free exchange). Further, I try to characterize contours of good autonomous life, and ask what kind of preconditions it has. I will distinguish between five kinds of preconditions: psychological, material, cultural, intersubjective and institutional. Afte…Read more
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168Solidarity: Theory and Practice. An IntroductionIn Arto Laitinen & Anne Birgitta Pessi (eds.), Solidarity: Theory and Practice, Lexington Books. pp. 1-29. 2014.This is an introduction to a collection of essays on solidarity. It maps the most important meanings of solidarity at the micro- and macrolevels.
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158Solidarity: Theory and Practice (edited book)Lexington Books. 2014.In this collection, philosophers, social psychologists, and social scientists approach contemporary social reality from the viewpoint of solidarity. They examine the nature of solidarity and explore its normative and explanatory potential.
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123On Identity, Alienation and Consequences of September 11th. An Interview with Charles TaylorIn Arto Laitinen & Nicholas H. Smith (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor, Acta Philosophica Fennica. pp. 165-195. 2002.HR/AL: Professor Taylor, what are you working on these days? CT: Well, several things. One of the things I am working on is something I was lecturing this fall at the New School University, and that I have called ‘modern social imaginaries’. It is an attempt to understand western modernity in terms of the different ways in which people imagine their social existence. These imaginaries are a condition for new kinds of practices that are characteristic of modernity. This research is an internal pa…Read more
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104AI Systems and Respect for Human AutonomyFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence (-): -. 2021.This study concerns the sociotechnical bases of human autonomy. Drawing on recent literature on AI ethics, philosophical literature on dimensions of autonomy, and on independent philosophical scrutiny, we first propose a multi-dimensional model of human autonomy and then discuss how AI systems can support or hinder human autonomy. What emerges is a philosophically motivated picture of autonomy and of the normative requirements personal autonomy poses in the context of algorithmic systems. Rangin…Read more
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91From Recognition to Solidarity: Universal Respect, Mutual Support, and Social UnityIn Arto Laitinen & Anne Birgitta Pessi (eds.), Solidarity: Theory and Practice, Lexington Books. pp. 126-154. 2014.This chapter examines whether solidarity can be understood as a form of mutual recognition; or possibly, as a social phenomenon, which combines different forms of mutual recognition. The emphasis is on the connection between the thin principle of universal mutual respect, and the thicker relations between people, more sensitive to their particular needs and contributions, which social solidarity involves.
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90On the Ambivalence of RecognitionItinerari 2021 (1). 2021.n this article I address the idea that recognition is fundamentally ambivalent: not only can there be bad forms of recognition – misrecognition, nonrecognition, disrespect – but that even the good or adequate forms of recognition may in some ways be detrimental to the recipient or sustain societal domination (Ikäheimo, Lepold, Stahl 2021). One version of the challenge is that social movements do better by focusing on other concepts than recognition, for their progressive aims. I will discuss the…Read more
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82Perspectives on the philosophy of Charles Taylor (edited book)Acta Philosophical Fennica. 2002.The essays in this volume offer a range of new perspectives on Charles Taylor's philosophy. Part one addresses key metaphilosophical themes such as the role of transcendental arguments, the critique of representationalism, and the dialectics of Enlightenment. Part two critically examines Taylor's views on personhood, selfhood and interpersonal recognition. Part three discusses issues in Taylor's moral and political theory, including the nature of his moral realism, his theory of modernity, and h…Read more
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80Taylor on SolidarityThesis Eleven 99 (1): 48-70. 2009.After characterizing Taylor’s general approach to the problems of solidarity, we distinguish and reconstruct three contexts of solidarity in which this approach is developed: the civic, the socio-economic, and the moral. We argue that Taylor’s distinctive move in each of these contexts of solidarity is to claim that the relationship at stake poses normatively justified demands, which are motivationally demanding, but insufficiently motivating on their own. On Taylor’s conception, we need some un…Read more
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79Taxation: its justification and application to global contextsIn Helmut P. Gaisbauer, Gottfried Schweiger & Clemens Sedmak (eds.), Philosophical Explorations of Justice and Taxation: National and Global Issues, Springer. pp. 219-236. 2015.This article focuses on the justification of taxation, in other words the principled rather than the technical aspect of taxation. We first show how democracy is on the one hand required for legitimate taxation, and how on the other hand democratic communities are dependent on taxation, and argue there is no vicious cirle. We then present a typology of ways of justifying taxation, according to which taxation can base its legitimacy on (1) meeting basic needs, (2) financing public goods, (3) redi…Read more
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78On the Scope of ‘Recognition’: The Role of Adequate Regard and MutualityIn Thomas Kurana & Matthew Congdon (eds.), The Philosophy of Recognition, Routledge. pp. 319-342. 2010.A conflict arises from two basic insights concerning what recognition is. I call them the mutuality–insight and the adequate regard–insight. The former is the idea that recognition involves inbuilt mutuality: ego has to recognize the alter as a recognizer in order that the alter’s views may count as recognizing the ego. There always needs to be two–way recognition for even one–way recognition to take place. The adequate regard –insight in turn is that we do not merely desire to be classified as …Read more
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71Recognition, Solidarity, and the Politics of Esteem: The Case of Basic IncomeIn Odin Lysaker & Jonas Jacobsen (eds.), Recognition and Freedom: Axel Honneth’s Political Thought, . pp. 57-78. 2015."The Nordic welfare states have arguably been successful in terms of social solidarity – although the heavily institutional and state-driven solutions as opposed to community- or family-based ones in various issues from child to elderly care may have made it seem as mere ‘quasi-solidarity’ in comparison to more communitarian ideals. This essay approaches such social solidarity in terms of Axel Honneth’s recognition-theoretical framework – arguing that there’s much more potential in Honnethian id…Read more
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69Charles Taylor is one of the leading living philosophers. In this book Arto Laitinen studies and develops further Taylor's philosophical views on human agency, personhood, selfhood and identity. He defends Taylor's view that our ethical understandings of values play a central role. The book also develops and defends Taylor's form of value realism as a view on the nature of ethical values, or values in general. The book criticizes Taylor's view that God, Nature or Human Reason are possible consti…Read more
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68Social bases of self-esteem: Rawls, Honneth and beyondNordicum-Mediterraneum 7 (2). 2012.This paper discusses Rawls’s thesis that the social basis of self-respect is one of the primarysocial goods. While the central element of the social basis consists in the attitudes of others(e.g. respect or esteem) the social basis may include also possession of various goods. Further,one may distinguish, following Honneth, universalistic basic respect from differential esteem andfrom loving care. This paper focuses on esteem, and further distinguishes three importantvarieties thereof (anti-stig…Read more
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66Collective Intentionality and Recognition from OthersIn Anita Konzelmann Ziv & Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Contributions to Social Ontology., Springer. pp. 213-228. 2014.This paper approaches questions of collective intentionality by drawing inspiration from theories of recognition (e.g. Honneth 1995, Ricoeur 2005, Brandom 2007). After some remarks about recognition and groups, the paper examines whether the kind of dependence on recognition that holds of individual agents is equally true of group agents. In the debates on collective intentionality it is often stressed that the identity, existence, ethos, and membership-issues of the group are up to the group to…Read more
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66One of the central concepts in Charles Taylor’s philosophy is that of strong evaluation. What is strong evaluation? The crucial idea is that human relations to the world, to self and to others are value-laden. In the first subsection the central features of the concept of strong evaluation are discussed, namely qualitative distinctions concerning worth and the role of strong evaluation for identity. The nature of strong evaluations both as background understandings and explicit judgements is cla…Read more
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60Kant and Hegel on purposive actionPhilosophical Explorations 21 (1): 90-107. 2018.This essay discusses Kant and Hegel’s philosophies of action and the place of action within the general structure of their practical philosophy. We begin by briefly noting a few things that both unite and distinguish the two philosophers. In the sections that follow, we consider these and their corollaries in more detail. In so doing, we map their differences against those suggested by more standard readings that treat their accounts of action as less central to their practical philosophy. Secti…Read more
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60Review of Hegel's Theory of Responsibility by Mark Alznauer (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2016. 2016.
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51Paul Ricoeur ja narratiivinen identiteettiIn Petri Kuhmonen & Seppo Sillman (eds.), Jaettu jana, ääretön raja, Jyväskylän Yliopisto Filosofian Julkaisuja 65. pp. 168-195. 1998.Paul Ricoeurin perustelut narratiivisuuden mukaan tuomiseksi persoonallista identiteettiä koskevaan keskusteluun voi jakaa seuraaviksi väitteiksi, joita jatkossa tarkastelemme lähemmin:1) Idemin ja ipsen erottamatta jättäminen häiritsee persoonallisesta identiteetistä käytävää keskustelua; silloin sekoitetaan keskenään 'kuka?' ja 'mikä?' -kysymykset (1.1.-1.3.). 2) Näiden erottaminen tuo esiin sen, että ipse-identiteetti on sisäisesti aporeettinen eli sisältää ratkeamattomalta vaikuttavan toisaa…Read more
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47SolidarityIn Byron Kaldis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Sage Publications. pp. 948-950. 2013.An encyclopedia entry on "solidarity". Around the 1840’s the term was adopted in German and English, and was politicized, adopted to social sciences, and came to be used in a broader meaning of emotionally and normatively motivated readiness for mutual support, as in the slogan “one for all and all for one”. In rival meanings, the concept has been used in four main contexts: first, in the context of explaining or understanding the nature of social cohesion, social order, ‘groupness’ or the ‘glue…Read more
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47Social wrongsCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (7): 1048-1072. 2023.In this paper we elucidate the notion of ‘social wrongs’. It differs from moral wrongness, and is broader than narrowly political wrongs. We distinguish conceptually monadic wrongness (1.1), dyadic wronging (1.2), and the idea of there being something ‘wrong with’ an entity (1.3). We argue that social and political wrongs share a feature with natural badness or wrongness (illnesses of organisms) as well as malfunctioning artifacts or dysfunctional organizations: they violate so called ought-to-b…Read more
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46On Some Counter-Examples to the Guise of the Good-Thesis: Intelligibility without DesirabilityEthical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1): 21-36. 2018.This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable. These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and act…Read more
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45Sisäisyys ja suunnistautuminen. Inwardness and orientation. A Festchrift to Jussi Kotkavirta (edited book)SoPhi. 2014.
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43Pathologies of Recognition: An IntroductionStudies in Social and Political Thought 25 3-24. 2015.This paper is an introduction to the special issue on Pathologies of Recognition. The first subsection briefly introduces the notion of recognition and trace its development from Fichte and Hegel to Honneth and his critics, and the second subsection turns to the concept of a social pathology. The third section provides a brief look at the individual papers. The special issue focuses on two central concepts in contemporary critical social theory: namely ‘recognition’ and ‘social pathology’. For d…Read more
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42Culturalist Moral RealismIn Arto Laitinen & Nicholas H. Smith (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of Charles Taylor, Acta Philosophica Fennica. pp. 115-131. 2002.In this paper I defend a ‘culturalist’ but nevertheless non-relativistic moral theory, taking Charles Taylor’s writings on this topic as my guide.1 Taylor is a realist concerning natural sciences, the ontology of persons and the ontology of goods (or meanings, significances or values). Yet, his realisms in these three areas differ significantly from one another, and therefore one has to be careful not to presuppose too rigid views of what realism must be like. Taylor’s moral realism can be calle…Read more
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40Between normativism and naturalism: Honneth on social pathologyConstellations 26 (2): 286-300. 2019.
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39Social Pathologies, Reflexive Pathologies, and the Idea of Higher-Order DisordersStudies in Social and Political Thought 25 44-65. 2015.This paper critically examines Christopher Zurn’s suggestion mentioned above that various social pathologies (pathologies of ideological recognition, maldistribution, invisibilization, rationality distortions, reification and institutionally forced self-realization) share the structure of being ‘second-order disorders’: that is, that they each entail ‘constitutive disconnects between first-order contents and secondorder reflexive comprehension of those contents, where those disconnects are perva…Read more
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37Recognition, Acknowledgement, and AcceptanceIn Heikki Ikäheimo & Arto Laitinen (eds.), Recognition and Social Ontology, Brill. pp. 309-347. 2011.In this chapter I distinguish between a) recognition of persons, b) normative acknowledgement and c) institution-creating acceptance. All of these go beyond a fourth, merely descriptive sense of the word “recognition,” namely identification or re-identification of something as something. I distinguish four aspects of "taking someone as a person": R1 A Belief that the other is a person, and can engage in agency-regarding relations.R2 Moral Opinion that the choice whether and when to engage with pe…Read more
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36Hegel on PurposeHegel Bulletin 40 (3): 444-463. 2019.In this paper we propose a new interpretation of Hegel's views on action and responsibility, defending it against its most plausible exegetical competitors.1Any exposition of Hegel will face both terminological and substantive challenges, and so we place, from the outset, some interpretative constraints. The paper divides into two parts. In part one, we point out that Hegel makes a number of distinctions which any sensible account of responsibility should indeed make. Our aim here is to show tha…Read more
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35Four conceptions of social pathologyEuropean Journal of Social Theory 22 (1): 80-102. 2019.This article starts with the idea that the task of social philosophy can be defined as the diagnosis and therapy of social pathologies. It discusses four conceptions of social pathology. The first two conceptions are ‘normativist’ and hold that something is a social pathology if it is socially wrong. On the first view, there is no encompassing characterization of social pathologies available: it is a cluster concept of family resemblances. On the second view, social pathologies share a structure…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |