Differences, Inequalities and Recognition

The criticism addressed to the concept of equality carried out in the name of difference has helped to recall the limitations of certain conceptions of equality and to denounce the lack of attention to the dimension of cultural and symbolic domain. However, all that has fostered a trend to translate inequality into the code of cultural injustice as well as to consider in opposite terms the relationship between equality and difference, between economic and political struggles of identity, between the welfare state and multiculturalism. The thesis of the article is that the Hegelian theory of recognition, in recent times revived by Axel Honneth, offers an important perspective to imagine a more subtle differentiation of rights and to counter the experiences of injustice in both the material and symbolic-cultural fields.