Paradigms of Justice

Redistribution, Recognition, and Beyond

Denise Celentano, Luigi Caranti, Denise Celentano, Luigi Caranti

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000206319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

This book explores the relation between redistribution and recognition, two key paradigms in the contemporary discourse on justice. Combining insights from the traditions of critical social theory and analytical political philosophy, the volume offers a multifaceted exploration of this incredibly inspiring conceptual couple from a plurality of perspectives. The chapters engage with concepts such as universal basic income, property-owning democracy, poverty, equality, self-respect, pluralism, care, and work, all of which have an impact on individuals' recognition as well as on distributive policies.

An important contribution to the field of political and social philosophy, the volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of politics, law, human rights, economics, social justice, as well as policymakers.

Part I
THE ‘RECOGNITION SIDE’ OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

1
BASIC INCOME IN THE RECOGNITION ORDER

Respect, care, and esteem

Jurgen De Wispelaere and Arto Laitinen

1 Introduction

Justifications of the proposal to grant each individual member in the polity an unconditional cash grant – an unconditional basic income – draw support from both principled and pragmatic arguments (Barry 1996; Van der Veen 1997). The leading principled justification proposes that basic income is a precondition for individuals having the freedom to live their lives in accordance with their own values and plans. This freedom-based argument comes in many forms, including a liberal-egalitarian (Maskivker 2011; Birnbaum 2012), republican (Pettit 2007; Casassas and DeWispelaere 2016), and even a libertarian variant (Tomasi 2012; Zwoliski 2012). It is most importantly associated with the real-libertarian justification advocated by Philippe Van Parijs (1995) or, more recently, the status freedom proposed by Karl Widerquist (2013).¹

Freedom-based arguments typically adopt an individualist stance in which social agents – including groups in either aggregate or corporatist form – feature in one of two instrumental guises. On the one hand, social agents are modelled as part of an agent’s preferences or life plans: for instance, I prefer to live my life with a partner rather than on my own and expect social policy to support this free choice. On the other hand, social agents are often modelled as constraints or impediments on my free choices: for instance, I would like to engage in a more creative manner with my job, but my boss imposes a strictly controlled regime on all her employees, reducing my freedom at work. In both these cases, social agency remains decidedly instrumental and ‘thin’, failing to capture the variety of ways in which human agents interact with each other at different levels and consequently are embedded in social networks that are constituted by virtue of social interaction. In short, the freedom-based approach is missing a social ontology.

In this chapter we propose to examine the justification of basic income from a recognition-theoretical perspective as a complement to the freedom-based justification. Rather than seeing freedom and recognition as competing approaches, we suggest that both share important features and can be fruitfully combined to achieve a more plausible account of the role a basic income could play in an individual’s life. Basic income advocates and recognition theorists have by and large ignored each other.² This is odd to the extent that basic income debates already contain important recognition-theoretical components. For instance, basic income advocates have made a strong case for the importance of granting each individual an unconditional basic income as a condition for securing equal dignity, regarding basic income as one of the social determinants of self-respect (McKinnon 2003; Maskivker 2011). This respect-recognizing case for basic income largely turns on the fact that its universal application mirrors and promotes the equal standing of each member of society, while the lack of conditions avoids the reliance on undignified and intrusive social monitoring by state agents (Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017). Similarly, the critical link between basic income and promoting care for others – a second key feature of what Axel Honneth (2003 a, 2003b) refers to as the ‘recognition order’ of a society – is widely acknowledged and debated, especially in the feminist basic income literature (Zelleke 2011). While dignity and care offer recognition theorists a way into the basic income debate, the relation between both and their role within a broader theory of recognition remains under-theorized.

In what follows we first characterize three modes of recognition: respect, care, and social esteem. We argue that a strong recognition-theoretical argument for basic income emerges from combining considerations of universal respect and care (or concern) for well-being. We then turn towards what is arguably the most challenging mode of recognition for defenders of basic income: social esteem. Esteem is a critical feature of Honneth’s recognition order but at the same time appears in constant tension with the basic income ideal. We examine this tension by focusing on the particular nature of esteem as a relational and positional good. Conceptually distinguishing different forms of social esteem, we offer several ways in which a universal basic income can be made compatible with a recognition order that gives pride of place to differential esteem.

2 Three kinds of recognition: respect, care, and esteem

From a recognition-theoretical perspective there are three main forms of the recognition order of a society: respect for equal dignity, concern or care for others, and social esteem (Honneth 1995, 2003 b; Ikäheimo 2002; Laitinen 2002, 2010). This section briefly sets out each of these forms or modes to stage the scene for examining their relation with basic income in subsequent sections.

First, respect is responsive to the equal dignity of human persons. Every person is assumed to have an equal positive standing; divisions into first-and second-class forms of personhood are inimical to the equal dignity principle. Equal respect is a universalistic form of recognition that abstracts from the numerous differences between individuals and is often expressed in the form of basic rights that apply equally to all members in the relevant social order. Hegel’s (1807) famous master-slave dialectic is a prime example of a failure of mutual recognition, since both masters and slaves suffer from lack of recognition as equals. The special relational good of being positioned as a ‘social equal’ must be distinguished from the positional desire to be a ‘social better’. Fukuyama (1992) refers to these fundamentally oppositional desires as isothymia (the desire to be recognized as an equal) and megalothymia (the desire to be recognized as better than others). This distinction between egalitarian isothymia and competitive megalothymia will be relevant for the recognition-theoretical defence of basic income.³

Second, care or concern for the well-being and suffering of others, especially those who are regarded as needy and vulnerable, is a key mode of recognition. But care or concern comes in two distinctive forms. In its most familiar form, care is highly selective and partial and attached to a specific person – such as a family member, for instance. This form of care or ‘love’ is singular. But care can nevertheless also be universal when it responds not to a specific person or relationship but instead to the many predicaments that are common to members of humanity. This type of care – or concern – is often triggered by disasters such as war, flooding, or hunger in even the remotest parts of the world. In its universalistic modality, care often takes on a sufficientarian stance reflecting the norm that every person ought to live a minimally decent life compatible with basic human dignity. In the next section, we argue that the universalistic mode of care for others makes for a forceful case for basic income when joined with equal respect.

A third form of recognition, social esteem, is distinct from both universal and singular modes of recognition. Esteem is fundamentally responsive to the relevant differences of individuals, including their merits, efforts, contributions, achievements, and talents. Esteem is particular in that it is sensitive to what kind of a person is being estimated. It focuses on the general properties that esteemed persons should hold, independent of which specific person effectively ends up holding them. Genuine esteem is different from singular care because it does not respond to specific relationships, ignoring friendship, kinship, or co-nationality. Social esteem also eschews the universality and equality attached to each person and instead focuses on the differential ranking of persons based on their abilities and achievements. Where respect and dignity recognize equal standing, social esteem recognizes difference and allocates positive and negative esteem in accordance to the differential ranking established by different esteem criteria (Taylor 1992; Laitinen 2002; Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2007).

3 Respect, care, and basic income

From a recognition-theoretical perspective, respect and care offer obvious ways to consider how basic income would fit into a recognition order. As mentioned previously, basic income advocates have made a strong case for the importance of granting each an individual unconditional basic income as a condition for securing first of all dignity and respect, including viewing basic income as a social determinant of self-respect (e.g., McKinnon 2003; Pinzani 2010; Van Parijs and Vanderborght 2017). The respect-recognizing case for basic income turns on the fact that its universal application mirrors and promotes the equal standing of each member of society (Pateman 2003; Morales 2019). Furthermore, the lack of conditions avoids the reliance on undignified and intrusive social monitoring by state agents, which has reached endemic forms in conditional welfare support (Handler and Babcock 2006). A basic income regime fulfils Philip Pettit’s so-called eyeball test: with a regular basic income each individual has the robust capacity to ‘look others in the eye without reason for the fear or deference that a power of interference might inspire; they can walk tall and assume the public status, objective and subjective, of being equal in this regard with the best’ (Pettit 2012: 84; see also Pettit 2007). Mulligan (2013: 159) sees as the main connection between basic income and recognition the granting of ‘the necessary material security to enable basic relations of reciprocal recognition’.⁴

Another straightforward defence of basic income considers the relationship between the recipients of basic income and the recognizer as one of concern or care for its most vulnerable or marginalized citizens. As outlined in the previous section, care in the recognition order has both a universal-istic and particularistic character. Care is universal where we – typically the state, but in democratic states ultimately its citizens – collectively embrace our responsibility towards the vulnerable (Goodin 1985). But care is also simultaneously particularistic because care relations typically take the form of a carer (or care institution) caring for a particular person in need. The universal and the particular dimension are closely linked in the recognition order by virtue of the fact that both the carer and the person in need of care are owed recognition of their particular needs. In many societies those in need of care are increasingly left to their own devices but also those who are taking up care roles are often insufficiently supported (Alstott 2005). Enter basic income, which discharges our collective responsibility of concern and care by offering necessary support for those in need – without stigmatizing those in need by requiring they engage in ‘shameful revelation’ (Wolff 2006) – but also, crucially, for those who undertake care roles in society (Zelleke 2011).

Respect and care each offer a route for recognition-theorists to embrace basic income, but importantly the recognition order must balance both to avoid the danger of paternalism on the one hand, and the danger of insensitivity to actual welfare on the other. A key feature of the recognition-based justification of basic income is that it simultaneously promotes the respect and care dimensions of the recognition order and, in doing so, reinforces the structural connection between respect and care. Historically, as social support systems evolved from forms of voluntary charity and philanthropy to legally recognized social rights, the concern for well-being has matched the concern for autonomy and dignity (Waldron 1988). Policies that focus primarily on the concern or care for the needs and welfare of vulnerable citizens, risk imposing paternalistic measures that promote welfare at the cost of autonomy and dignity. By contrast, policies that preserve dignity may do so at the cost of paying insufficient attention to their welfare: this is the case when formal rights do not offer ‘real’ access to or opportunities for welfare (Van Parijs 1995). Honneth (2003 b: 149) made this point when he argued that

[t]he normative argument which made social-welfare guarantees in a certain sense “rationally” unavoidable is essentially the hardly disputable assertion that members of society can only make actual use of their legally guaranteed autonomy if they are assured a minimum of economic resources, irrespective of income.

The key insight of the basic income discussion is that the secure provision of an income floor is a precondition for both respect (or dignity) and the well-being of each member in a society. Moreover, providing income security in an unconditional and universal manner assures that society simultaneously expresses respect and care. In other words, basic income mutually reinforces the recognition of care and respect horizontally – the interpersonal recognition of equal standing across society – as well as vertically – the hierarchical interaction between state apparatus and citizens. This interlocking of considerations of respect, care, and the instituti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I The ‘recognition side’ of distributive justice
• Part II Dimensions of equality
• Part III Rethinking grammars of oppression and inclusion
• Part IV Moral economies of respect and esteem
• Index