Wouter Wiersma

This paper challenges a prominent interpretation of Hegel’s theory of recognition according to which Hegel’s account of recognition resolves what has been called the ‘paradox of autonomy’ by socializing the act of self-legislation. The paradox arises because autonomy seems to require both that only self-legislated norms are binding, yet the act of self- legislation presupposes that we are already bound by norms. Against this interpretation, I argue that Hegel does not posit self-legislation as a necessary condition for the bindingness of norms. Rather, he maintains that norms are binding in so far as they can be shown to be necessary for the realization of freedom. I develop an alternative reading based on Hegel’s critique of Kantian formalism and his institutional conception of freedom. On this account, norms and institutions are binding only to the extent that they realize social freedom—not because they are self-legislated.

In this paper, I evaluate Rahel Jaeggi's theory of progress as outlined in her recent book Fortschritt und Regression. The central question of this paper will be whether Jaeggi's theory of progress in terms of an “accumulating problemsolving process” can answer the critique of progress put forward by Amy Allen in The End of Progress. I argue that Jaeggi's approach can sidestep the problems put forward by Allen. Jaeggi's formal theory of progress allows her to disconnect the concept of progress as a fact from the idea of progress in the future because she does not have to make claims about the normative superiority of one form of life over another. In this paper, I will put forward a different challenge to Jaeggi's theory. Jaeggi must explain how we are to determine what counts as a successful procedure for solving second-order problems. I argue that in doing so she runs into a dilemma: she must either commit to a form of objectivism or accept a progressive reading of history.

This paper examines to what extent Jaeggi’s concept of alienation can account for instances of alienation that have a social cause and require a social solution. The paper argues that there are three interrelated problems with her account of alienation. First, Jaeggi’s conception of alienation is unable to make a distinction between individual and social causes of alienation. Second, Jaeggi constructs alienation as an individual failure to appropriate norms and roles properly, but in doing so, conflates two requirements for appropriation, namely, objective appropriability, and successful appropriation. Third, the failure to make this distinction causes Jaeggi to be unable to understand alienation truly as a social pathology because she is unable to distinguish incidental sources for alienation from structural, social sources for alienation. Only the second kind of alienation can count as a social pathology. A solution is proposed to overcome those problems, namely to understand instances of structural alienation as blockages of social freedom. Structural alienation occurs if social structures make self-determination impossible, so that alienation is the result of a structural flaw. Understanding alienation in this way enables us to think of alienation as a social problem that requires a social solution. This is an important insight because, given the centrality of the concept of alienation, it suggests a way in which the concept of alienation can be used in the tradition of critical theory to criticize social conditions.