Paul Ricoeur and the Utopia of Mutual Recognition

This article situates The Course of Recognition in the context of Ricoeurian philosophy and contemporary debates on mutual recognition. This article reconstructs the debate between Ricoeur and mainstream recognition scholars, as well as with the other figures, such as Boltanski, Thevenot and Henaff, who had a direct influence in the way Ricoeur fleshed out his alternative conception of recognition. By connecting recognition with Ricoeur's notions of ideology and utopia, we are able to uncover a major blind spot in the standard model of recognition, and to undo ideological and reified forms of recognition. Honneth and Ricoeur both aim at societies whose members are duly recognized, but they do so in radically different manners. Whereas Honneth's model must be politicized in order to become relevant to social change, Ricoeur evisages social change in a pure ethics of recognition.