Transparency and Recognition

Abstract

What difference does it make to the way you relate to other people that you are relating, specifically, to other subjects? Philosophers often write as though having a point of view makes humans a kind of object that warrants special treatment, much as being beautiful makes works of art warrant contemplation. My dissertation argues instead that the subjectivity of other people bears on the question of how to relate to them by changing why that question matters. The first two essays develop parallel views of love and respect. In both cases, I argue that your deliberative conception of how other people count provides others with recognition, acknowledgment to them of how they count for you. This idea reconciles the thought that we love other people for who they are with the essentially intersubjective character of some of love’s most valuable expressions. And it makes sense of the relational features of interpersonal morality that motivate contractualism but leave its foundations obscure. The third essay defends the principle that social criticism should rely only on normative criteria that are “immanent” to the society under evaluation. The key idea is that the practical aim of a normative theory can place legitimate constraints on its contents. I argue that there is a valuable form of social criticism which aims to contribute to the reflection of members of society on how to orient themselves to their social world. Social and historical circumstances can render a normative criterion ineligible for use in social criticism of this kind.