Recognition - Social Pathologies

This paper distinguishes between two main questions regarding the notion of privacy: “What is privacy?” and “Why do/should we value privacy?”. In developing a social-ontological recognitional model of privacy (SORM), it gives an answer to the first question. According to the SORM, Privacy is a second order quality of roles within social practices. It is a function of who is or should be recognized as a “standard authority”. Enjoying standard authority means to have the right to interpret and contest role behavior and role obligations within a specific practice (first level), as well as evaluate the normative structure, the fundamental practice norms as well as the roles and their status (second level). The SORM utilizes the concept of standard authority to explicate privacy with regard to two categories that capture the rele-vant phenomena of privacy: decisional and informational privacy. Within a practice, an actor is said to have decisional privacy if she as a BCR does not (or does not have to) recognize bearers of accidental roles as standard authorities. Vice versa, an actor is said to enjoy in-formational privacy if all other BCRs (and especially data collecting actors) recognize her as a standard authority. Additionally, the requirement of mutual recognition by the practice participants as standard authorities introduces a “weak normativity” into the theory, which can be used to identify deficient privacy arrangements within practices.

Beliefs once limited to the extremes of the North American gun culture have become mainstream, while the US Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and a spate of right-to-carry laws have contributed to the proliferation of guns in public life. These changes in political discourses, legislative agendas, and social practices are indicative of an emergent and pernicious form of subjectivity, which is here defined as self-defensive. Such subjectivity is characterized by a pathological identification with the right of self-defense, which undermines the social conditions of individual freedom and renders subjects unable to comprehend the function of abstract rights within an informal normative order. Practically speaking, this raced and gendered subjectivity relies on extra-legal relations of domination for its reproduction. The rapid expansion of gun rights and the recent loosening of restrictions on self-defensive violence are argued to be responses to a perceived threat to these identity-constituting relations, rather than to the threat of violent crime, which has long been on the decline.

Esta tese reconstrói a obra de Axel Honneth desde os estudos preparatórios para a teoria da luta por reconhecimento até os desenvolvimentos mais recentes, vinculados à ideia de liberdade social. A partir da análise das insuficiências teóricas do modelo crítico do reconhecimento, examina-se a possibilidade de encontrar, na própria lógica interna da teoria honnethiana, elementos que contribuam para superá-las. Tendo como referência sua perspectiva acerca dos potenciais de resistência frente a experiências de injustiça vivenciadas pelos atores sociais como sofrimento, são identificadas e discutidas três fases no pensamento do autor. 1) Modelo crítico do reconhecimento: nas décadas de 1980 e 1990, Honneth recorre à ideia de interesse emancipatório, segundo a qual o bloqueio da autorrealização causa nos atores sociais concernidos algum tipo de mal-estar que, por sua vez, guarda potenciais motivacionais para a resistência à dominação e a luta pela libertação do sofrimento. A experiência de injustiça representa, assim, uma oportunidade para os atores sociais articularem de modo reflexivo as expectativas normativas que conformam o seu repertório moral. 2) Fase de transição: durante os anos 2000, apresenta-se nos escritos de Honneth um bloqueio sistemático na conexão motivacional entre sofrimento e resistência. Nesse contexto, apesar de a ideia de sofrimento permanecer central, seu potencial de impulsionar uma resistência ativa nos atores concernidos sai de cena como consequência de um diagnóstico de época mais sofisticado, que identifica patologias sociais justamente na erosão do aspecto motivacional da experiência de sofrimento. 3) Modelo crítico da liberdade social: a partir da década de 2010, a ausência na obra do autor de análises sobre a possibilidade de resistência à dominação social pode ser atribuída à adoção de um modelo teórico de tendência sistêmica. Com o foco não mais nas experiências de desrespeito nem nas patologias sociais, mas nas chamadas anomalias sociais – entendidas como desequilíbrios funcionais na reprodução social –, Honneth deixa em segundo plano precisamente seu impulso teórico inicial: a busca por superar, no pensamento crítico, as abordagens funcionalistas que impediam que se revelasse, no âmbito da própria vida social, um potencial latente de resistência. Honneth abandona o vínculo fundamental, anteriormente defendido, entre desrespeito, sofrimento e disposição para a resistência. Tal ruptura não é fruto de um diagnóstico de tempo, como no caso das patologias sociais, mas de uma reorientação teórica em direção à perspectiva do observador, em detrimento da do participante, minando com isso o poder explicativo e normativo da ideia de interesse emancipatório. Todavia, uma noção ampliada de reconstrução normativa com foco na negatividade latente da realidade social (desenvolvida a partir da própria obra de Honneth, mas indo além de suas formulações mais recentes) pode assumir um caráter emancipatório – não porque de algum modo desfaz o dano causado pelo sofrimento, mas antes porque contribui para o trabalho reflexivo, distorcido por fenômenos patológicos, de articulação social do sofrimento individualmente experienciado. É, assim, na interação concreta entre as perspectivas do observador e do participante, mediada pela colaboração entre filosofia, teoria social e pesquisas empíricas, que uma teoria crítica reconstrutiva pode fazer justiça às suas intenções práticas.

In this paper, making reference to Robert Brandom's philosophical proposal - and against the background of Brandom's debate with Jürgen Habermas - I shall endeavor, first, to define the relation between recognition and normativity and then between recognition and criticism; in the final part of the paper I shall suggest a perspective that approaches recognition in terms of capacities. On this basis I attempt to see the critical attitude as something that is founded more on individual potentials than on formal criteria and that is essentially connected with a power of redescription: a dialectical anthropology of recognition is thus the most promising base to account for that which substantiates our critical powers.

Gli scritti adorniani degli anni Quaranta inquadrano nella prospettiva dell’individualità il problema dell’elaborazione metodologica della teoria critica della società, consentendo inoltre di riscoprire il programma, successivamente abbandonato, di una «nuova antropologia». Gli inediti dei primi anni Cinquanta, poi, emergendo dai cantieri di quest’ultima opera e della fenomenologia della individualità offesa quivi articolata, permettono di apprezzare come la questione della crisi dell’individuo borghese nel mondo amministrato sia rimasta per Adorno il nodo centrale per la messa a punto di un modello di teoria critica quale diagnosi delle patologie sociali della modernità e dei suoi dispositivi biopolitici di amministrazione della vita. Questa crisi è infine l’occasione non per la liquidazione, bensì per il ripensamento ex novo dell’individualità sia nel suo potenziale critico-negativo – quale nucleo di opposizione e resistenza al dominio – sia nel suo nesso emancipativo con la categoria della solidarietà.

Social pathologies are social processes that take their name as opposed to what would be a healthy social state that is taken as a reference, which can be reconstructed from the way we exercise our freedom and autonomy as manifestations of our practical rationality. The tradition that has conceptualized social pathologies establishes as their distinctive feature the imposition of the means-ends rationality on spaces alien to it. I will defend that this feature can be generalized and radicalized to contemplate that in pathological social processes all types of practical rationality can be imposed on social spaces that are alien to their logic. In turn, an explanation of these processes based on the cognitive mechanisms that lead to an unconscious transformation of our beliefs and that modify the meaning of a shared practice will be introduced



Las patologías sociales son procesos sociales que toman
su nombre en contraposición con lo que sería un estado social salu-
dable que se toma como referencia, y puede reconstruirse a partir de
la forma en que ejercemos nuestra libertad y autonomía como mani-
festaciones de nuestra racionalidad práctica. La tradición que ha con-
ceptualizado las patologías sociales establece como rasgo distintivo a
la imposición de la racionalidad de medios a fines en espacios sociales
ajenos a ella. Voy a defender que este rasgo puede generalizarse y
radicalizarse para explicar a los procesos sociales patológicos como
casos de imposición de los diferentes tipos de racionalidad práctica
en espacios sociales ajenos a su lógica. A su vez, se introducirá una
explicación de estos procesos a partir de los mecanismos cognitivos
que llevan a una transformación no consciente de nuestras creencias
y que modifican el sentido de una práctica compartida.

The article is focused on the role that the question of neoliberalism plays in Axel Honneth’s work. The author aims to show that when Honneth tries to conceptualize the very nature of the neoliberal transformations, he is forced to abandon some of the presumptions that underlie the
systematic approach developed in his most important work, Freedom’s Right. It seems to emerge from Honneth’s studies on neoliberalism, not only the difficulty of analysing the capitalist market economy as a sphere of social liberty, as presupposed in Freedom’s Right, but also a much less
consensual and teleological image of contemporary societies – an image in which norms and values are always intertwined with mechanisms of power, social integration is always also based on the exercise of domination, force and ideology and the capitalist can also exist without a background of shared normative orientations. The author suggests finally that, in order to give a better account of the neoliberal transformations, one should rediscover the importance of the original Gramscian category of cultural and political hegemony.

In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness.

En el artículo se describe el modelo de voluntad racional autónoma que presenta Harry Frankfurt (buscando levantar parcialmente la crítica que Charles Taylor le realiza a esta perspectiva); se intenta caracterizar la indiferencia sobre la voluntad como un posible efecto de la patología social del consumismo y se esbozan algunas ideas referidas a la potencialidad de la deliberación pública para revertir la apatía de los wantons sobre el carácter de su voluntad.

What is distinctive about Frankfurt School Critical Theory (FSCT)? One prominent answer has been that a particular conception of social pathology is constitutive of and unique to this tradition. This Chapter presents an analysis of the idea of social pathology and its role in FSCT. It suggests that this idea can, indeed, set FSCT apart from mainstream liberal approaches, but also notes the challenges involved in doing so and urges proponents of FSCT to return to something more like its original, interdisciplinary program. The Chapter is structured as follows: I begin with a section on the idea of social pathology in general; then I investigate the claim that there is a specific FSCT conception of it; and, finally, I discuss two case studies. Throughout these sections, I gradually build a list of possible general characteristics and FSCT specifications of the idea of social pathology, and conclude by reviewing that list in its entirety.

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The notion of social pathology has become a common term which is being used very broadly: in common speech as well as in academic discussions. The paper focuses on the historical development of this notion. The author explores its usage from the early meaning of the term in medical vocabulary (Jean François Fernel in the16th century) through its application in the area of morality by Kant (pathology as a moral passivity, non-practical and thus immoral behaviour) to Herbert Spencer’s ideological extrapolation of the notion to the social sphere (thereof the broad usage of the term). The critical contribution was offered by Georges Canguilhem, who emphasized unscientific features of Spencerian shift and also critically referred to its consequences. He suggested the substitution of the metaphor based on organism-like picture of society by some new, more adequate metaphor, e.g. the metaphor of the invention of a harmonious and well-running mechanism or machine (i.e. society), which would be tested by heroes, i.e. people who are able to overcome outdated norms of the society. According to Canguilhem, rather than therapists of society we need social heroes. Canguilhem’s intention was not to interdict using metaphors on the whole, but to use them as critically as possible.

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen Axel Honnethin kriittistä teoriaa ja tunnustusteoria. Pyrin esittelemään Honnethin sosiaalifilosofista ajattelua yleisesti lähestymällä hänen rikasta tuotantoaan irreduktiivisesti sosiaalisten vääryyksien näkökulmasta.

Malinchism is a social phenomenon distinctive of Latin America that generates an internalisation of valuation patterns characterized by denying and underestimating local cultural expressions and considering foreign cultures as models of emulation. I also defend a concept of social pathology understood as the imposition of a type of practical rationality in a social space alien to it. I propose that malinchism is such a complex social phenomenon that can be conceptualized as a social pathology insofar it is the result of the imposition of a type of practical rationality, but can also be explained as a pathology of recognition and involves personal alienation in the ones affected. The introduction of cognitive dissonance is presented as the main resource to counteract the effects of malinchism.

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-be norms; they are not as they ought to be; there is something wrong with them. In contrast, moral wrongs are violations of ought-to-do norms.
Social wrongs typically, but not invariably, include dyadic wronging. We examine who or what can wrong whom or what, and by what means: we can be wronged by individuals and groups, as well as by practices, institutions or structures (2.1-2.3). The notion of structural injustice is compared to the notion of social wrongs in 2.4.
Social wrongs are defined as there being something wrong with the social reality (3.3), in comparison to there being something wrong with an organism or a system (3.1), including the narrowly political wrongs of systems of governance (3.2).

This contribution draws on Nancy Fraser’s concept of ‘participatory parity’ to analyze the reproduction and contestation of inequalities internal to land reform settlements affiliated with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) located in the cacao lands of southern Bahia, Brazil. These inequalities are variously manifest in unequal control over land and legal documents, disparities in status and what Fraser calls ‘voice’. These circumstances help account for quantitative evidence that shows a strong preference among local landless populations for land reform organizations that are more decentralized and less hierarchically organized. These circumstances also motivate direct actions undertaken by grassroots MST settlers seeking to destabilize the conditions that ground these inequalities. This research highlights the importance of attending to local histories and interactions through which participatory disparities are christened and reproduced; indicates potential methodological consequences; and examines the interplay of transgressive action, dialogue and recognition as settlers struggle to bring about ‘participatory parity’ – or what they might call genuine ‘friendships’ – in their communities.

The aim of this paper is to explore a tension between two concepts designed to expose social discomforts in Axel Honneth's mature work, namely social pathologies and anomie. Particular emphasis will be given to how they contribute or obstruct Honneth's apprehension of social tensions. In the first session of this exposition I will show that Honneth's interpretation of social pathologies is based on a conception of society as an organic whole (I). While this interpretation represents a slight change regarding Honneth's understanding of social pathologies in Das Recht der Freiheit, it does not change the fact that in his work subsequent to that book the concept of false developments has not been properly theorized. Accordingly, social discomforts related to deviations from expected patterns of a normative reconstruction remain largely ignored. This calls for a perspective more fully able to grasp the heteronomy of social life (II). As a result, in Honneth's mature work there seems to be a tension between the aims of a normative reconstruction and those of social critique, mainly due to an inability of the author to combine both elements of his social theory. In its final section (III), the paper will address that tension in order to critically contribute to Honneth's attempt to link normative reconstruction, social analysis and criticism.

Social pathologies are social processes that hinder how individuals exercise their autonomy and freedom. In this book, Gustavo Pereira offers an account of such phenomena by defining them as a cognitive failure that affects the practical imagination, thus negatively interfering with our practical life. This failure of the imagination is the consequence of the imposition of a type of practical rationality on a practical context alien to it, caused by a non conscious transformation of the individuals’ set of beliefs and values. The research undertaken provides an innovative explanation in terms of microfoundations based on the mechanism of “availability heuristic”, by which the diminished exercise of the imagination turns the intuitively available or prevailing rationality into the one that regulates behaviour in inappropriate contexts. Additionally, this incorrect regulation results in a progressive distortion of the shared sense of the affected practical contexts, which becomes institutionalized.
Consumerism, bureaucratism, moralism, juridification, some forms of corruption and the particular Latin American case of “malinchism” can be interpreted as social pathologies insofar as they imply such distortion. This way of conceptualizing social pathologies integrates the traditional sociological macro explanation manifested through the negative consequences of the processes of social rationalization with a micro explanation articulated around the findings of cognitive psychology such as availability heuristic.
Understanding social pathologies as a cognitive failure allows us to identify the introduction of normative friction as the main way to counteract their effects. One of the potential effects of normative friction, as a specific form of cognitive dissonance, is the intense exercise of the imagination, thus operating as a condition of possibility for the exercise of autonomy and reflection. Democratic ethical life, understood as a shared democratic culture, as well as social institutions and narratives, are the privileged social spaces and means to trigger reflective processes that can counteract social pathologies through a reflective reappropriation of the meaning of the shared practical context.

The main aim of the paper is to illustrate the distinctive features of the Finnish school of critical theory and social philosophy. In this respect, it will provide a concise description of the philosophical work of some of its members: Onni Hirvonen, Heikki Ikäheimo, Arto Laitinen and Arvi Särkelä. In the first part, we will try to describe the ways these scholars have reinterpreted Axel Honneth's paradigm of recognition. In the second part, we will clarify how the Finnish theoreticians have discussed Honneth's reflections on the theme of social pathology. In this regard, first we will seek to show how the leit-motif of Finnish scholars consist in the critique of two conceptions of social pathology that Honneth has explicitly endorsed in recent times. The first one is Christopher Zurn's idea of pathology as second-order disorder. The second view is the organicist conception of social pathology that Honneth himself has exposed in the essay The Diseases of Society: Approaching to Nearly Impossible Concept. Furthermore, we will explain why the criticisms of Laitinen, Ikäheimo, Hirvonen and Särkelä are, in any case, consistent with Honneth's philosophical perspective.

In the prehistory of the concept of recognition Spinoza's social philosophy deserves a special place. Although we rarely think of Spinoza as a social philosopher, Spinoza understood well the ways in which individual subjectivity is shaped by the social forces. I will argue that Spinoza offers a mechanism to understand the way in which recognition works, in order to untangle the web of affect, desire and ideas, which support the recognitions and misrecognitions at the foundation of social life. Spinoza sets out this mechanism in Book Three of the Ethics, but his extended example of the first Hebrew Kingdom in the Theological-Political Treatise, shows how he applied his theory of social recognition to the great problem of his times – the debate between faith and reason, and the need to unify a commonwealth. Social unity based on shared religion, for Spinoza, could be powerful, though not so powerful as democracy. Only through understanding Spinoza's views of social subjectivization can we understand why.

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 pervasive and socially caused’ (Zurn, 2011, 345-346). The paper argues that the cases even as discussed by Zurn do not actually match that characterization, but that it would be premature to conclude that they are not thereby social pathologies, or that they do not have a structure in common. It is just that the structure is more complex than originally described, covering pervasive socially caused evils (i) in the social reality, (ii) in the first order experiences and understandings, (iii) in the second order reflection as discussed by Zurn, and also (iv) in the ‘third order’ phenomenon concerning the pre-emptive silencing or nullification of social criticism even before it takes Place.

This paper focuses on Hegel's views on the idea of retrospective and intersubjective determination of intention. The main point is to distinguish four perspectives to human action: 1) The agent's "moral" perspective and the understanding and description under which the agent acted; from this perspective we can thematize the operative intention-in-action and distinguish "action" from "deed". 2) The agent's retrospective awareness and appropriation of the action: was what I did really justified and did it express my true goals? 3) The retrospective takes of others concerning the action, from within relevant social practices and the prevailing Sittlichkeit. 4) The perspective of Reason or Idea as emerging in the world history. In this paper I use this differentiation of perspectives to discuss Hegel's views on action. I defend the primacy of the individual herself in the first aspect mentioned, in what Hegel calls the "moral" perspective. I hope to show that while the Hegelian or expressivist theme of "retrospective determination of intention" as discussed by Charles Taylor and Robert Pippin is true and important concerning retrospective awareness, retrospective appropriation and retrospective justification of action, we should not take it to imply that the intention-in-action is determined intersubjectively or retrospectively. The intention is formed by the self-determining agent herself, before or at the time of the action, just like a common sense theory of individual action assumes. Hegel's distinction in Philosophy of Right between "action" and "deed" and his views concerning the role of intended results and foreseen consequences in discussing the responsibilities of the moral agent make clear that this is also Hegel's mature view. In Phenomenology, Hegel toys with the idea of retrospective determination of intention, but does not put it forward as his own view.

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Medicine has traditionally been seen as a problem for democratic theory. This paper suggests that it is also an opportunity. Medicine appears as primarily a problem for democracy when it is understood in the usual terms of expert knowledge and material distribution. It appears additionally as an opportunity if it is understood differently, in terms of recognition – that equality of respect which democrats cherish. We will see the politics of medicine as a politics of recognition if we attend to the phenomenon of medicalization. Medicalization is a social process in which non-medical problems are reconceived as medical problems. My argument is that recognition is what is politically at stake in this process, as medicalization can both grant and deny respect. Medicalization as a struggle for recognition is an attempt to “reduce insult to injury.” This reduction is complex and easily backfires, producing misrecognition and insult.

In this paper, I argue for the existence of pathologies of juridicism. I attempt to show that the Western regime of right tends to colonize our intersubjective relations, resulting in the formation of affective and habitual dispositions that actually hinder participation in social life. Speaking of pathologies of juridicism is to claim that the legal form fundamentally contaminates the way in which we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world, resulting in an ethically deformed, distorted or deficient form of (inter-) subjectivity. To support my thesis I consult a philosopher, whose work still provides a powerful analysis and critique of juridicism, namely, Hegel. Hegel provides an historic and a systematic theory of the pathologies of juridicism. His historical theory locates the origin of the abstract subjectivity of right in Roman antiquity. His systematic theory understands the negative effects of an absolutization of the legal domain as a persistent threat to social integration and an individual’s pursuit of the good life. I clarify these argumentative dimensions in two steps, beginning with Hegel’s historical analysis of right in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History. I then reconstruct Hegel’s critique of the subjectivity of right in the short chapter on the ‘Condition of Right’ in his Phenomenology of Spirit. In conclusion, I argue that, although Hegel’s diagnosis is correct, his prescribed therapy must fail: instead of radically altering abstract right in terms of content and form, it only recommends its complementation through other ethical spheres.

"The status of the citizen in the modern nation-state is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, individualism is encouraged. Freedom to choose how to lead one’s life is seen as the core aspect of the Western, liberal state. On the other hand, this individualism is strictly bound within specific limits, beyond which the individual is seen as a deviant. Acting in tandem, masses of individuals can cause a perceived crisis in the system. This was in the case in the 1960s and 1970s when the civil rights and political movements in the United States and Europe were seen as causing a “crisis of democracy”, the crisis being that the traditional system of control and authority had broken down, thus putting pressure on an ostensibly democratic system.

Today this crisis, perceived as such by elites, persists. Now we are seeing the rise of right-wing movements who in some cases are being elected to positions of power by the electorate. The latter is therefore seen as irrational. The crises, however, have the same cause: A top-down approach to democracy.

To that end, this paper proposes to examine both crises; their causes, and the reaction of elites. It also examines what it means to be a citizen and looks more deeply into the foundational rights of citizenship. By going beyond the generally accepted, but somewhat shallow, rubrics of civil, political, and social rights, we can see how easily citizenship and citizenship rights can be corrupted by states and elites. That is, we must consider citizenship as consisting of a spectrum of interlocking and interlinked rights. By conceptualising it thusly, one can demonstrate how easy it is for states to control and/or repress citizens in various ways whilst seemingly giving them full citizenship and its concomitant rights."

"France is now facing a major social transition. During the 90s and at the beginning of the 2000s, the country was transformed by a new politics of modernisation and the impact of globalisation. It is the end of the so called “French exception”. In this conjuncture, the unprogrammed meeting of a social expectation (telling the roughness of the social change, the disrespect of concrete person) and the psychoanalytical discourse (Lacanian) had shaped a provisionnal, but deep, consensus with the phenomenological and critical category of social « suffering ». This was a way to tell the « civilization and his discontents » (in Freudian terms) and identify new « social pathologies » (in Honneth terms), in particular a spate of suicides.
My paper aims at addressing, in this case study, the tension between the social production of psychosocial distress and the social construction of a critical discourse in order to define and identify a social etiology. Specifically, in terms of what is gain and what is loss within this « moral economy » of social suffering in France : how do we think today in treating people ? With what kind of unequal distribution of attention and sentiment ?
Within a political anthropology of mental health and the moral economy perspective (An ERC Research program directed by Didier Fassin), I want to compare three seats of this general tension between psychiatric epidemiology and the suffering discourse : the social work of homlessness (i.e. the social suffering), the care of adolescents (i.e. the suffering of adolescents), the care of worker (i.e. the suffering in the workplace). Based on a multi-sited ethnography where psychiatrists are implicated, I study a number of proposed solutions to the problem of the impact of social change on mental health.

Keys words
France, mental health, distress, social suffering, psychosocial risk management, political anthropology of mental heath, moral economies"

n his recent theory of recognition (2011), Honneth distinguishes two forms of social discomfort: social pathologies and anomie (or, as he puts it, false developments). Social pathologies, which are understood as false understandings of the intersubjective conditions for the realization of social freedom, are deeply related to a conception of society as an organic body (2014), for they are described as having their causes within the norms of interaction themselves; anomie, however, are described by Honneth as having their causes somewhere else, that is, outside of that organic conception. In more recent work (2015), tough, Honneth appears to endorse explanations of social discomfort as social pathologies. As a result, the analysis of anomie, that discomforts that have not to do with the internal logic of the recognition's system, finds no room within the architecture of his theory. Nevertheless, recent research have highlighted the need of a more refined understanding of the negative side of recognition (Klikauer, 2016; Martineau et all, 2012; Kaletta, 2008).
This paper will argue, against Honneth's emphasis on internal discomforts. that either the organic conception intentionally refrains from apprehending the complexities of social conflict or it tries to subsume anomie within the concept of social pathologies, hence making the distinction between both unnecessary. The paper will advance the idea that Honneth tends to second option. Yet, the first one is a more promising strategy for a social philosophy interested in investigating the moral grammar of social conflicts. In advancing this critique, the paper will defend the idea that Honneth's option for following a philosophical tradition that goes back to Parsons, Hegel and Kant makes him indebted to what some critics have called normative history (Freyenhagen, 2015). As an alternative suggestion, a social philosophy which retrieve a Hobbesian theory of conflict would be a promising alternative to the Honnethian model of cooperative normativity.

References

Freyenhagen, Fabian (2015) “Honneth on social pathologies: A critique”. Critical horizons 16(2): 131-152.
Honneth, Axel (2011) Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel (2014) „Die Krankenheiten der Gesellschaft. Annäherung an einen nahezu unmöglichen Begriff“. Westend. Neue zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 01: 45-60.
Honneth, Axel (2015) Die Idee des Sozialismus. Versuch einer Aktualisierung. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Kaletta, Barbara (2008) Anerkennung oder Abwertung. Über die Verarbeitung sozialer Desintegration. Erste Auflage. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Klikauer, Thomas (2016) “Negative recognition: Master and slave in the working place”. Thesis Eleven, 132(1): 39-49.
Martineau, Wendy, Meer, Nasar, Thompson, Simon (2012) “Theory and practice in the politics of recognition and misrecognition”. Res Publica, 18(1): 1-9.

Onadescriptivelevel,thearticlepointsoutthatWesternpopulationshave experienced an increase in possibilities for self-realization, but also that the rise in options has led to a paradoxical increase in different forms of psychic distortion. On a more normative level, it has become clear that the neo-liberal idea of freedom, which seems to state that a free market will facilitate all forms of self-realization options, is incomplete. Application of the neo-liberal idea of freedom makes it clear in two ways that the recognition–graduation semantics are twisted in such a manner that individuals cannot cognitively make sense of what can and cannot be an object of recognition, and that intersubjective recognition relations are eroding to such an extent that commonly shared pathological development tendencies are in danger of being suppressed by the lacking ability to join in a collective will-formation. It seems that the neo-liberal idea of freedom is creating a cognitive discrepancy be- tween a promise for more and more self-realization options through deregulation and the actual stable possibilities for individual self-realization. What is becoming evident is that no secure self-realization options are offered, but rather that the indi- vidual has to have options in order to gain recognition.

Drawing on a corpus of 80 advice books for success in the workplace and romantic partnerships, my contribution would ask the question if or in what ways the self-help discourse contributes to social pathologies, particularly concerning our (public) economic life and (private) intimate relationships. So far, advice literature for these realms has been chastised – mostly by Foucauldian commentators – for using the language of psychotherapy and (thus) informally promoting a neoliberal agenda that privatizes social problems. Self-help literature puts all the emphasis on individual suffering, frames it as the need for personal transformation/optimization and thus begs the question of social suffering and the need for collective action. However, virtually all clinical studies on bibliotherapy suggest that advice literature does in fact ease individual suffering and helps overcome personal problems. Additionally, qualitative reception studies show that advice literature is used in diverse ways and does, surprisingly enough, allow for solidarity to emerge by sharing books in smaller social circles and making people feel less alone with their troubles. I want to ask the question: How can we, as critical social scientists, make sense of this ambivalent diagnosis? Although my talk will not be able to give a definitive solution to this puzzle, one answer may lie in the type of knowledge self-help books provide and the symbolic tools they employ to persuade ourselves and others: vivid metaphors, palpable narratives, and concrete “social tropes” (recipes for action) that can be grasped easily, require not much commitment, and promise almost immediate change in emotionally charged and personally challenging situations. Having examined some of these devices, my conclusion will come back to the question of social pathologies by asking what kind of agency self-help books grant and whether this practical genre may have any chance to foster a more political type of social consciousness.