Habermas and ricoeur on recognition: Toward a new social humanism

The concept of recognition identifies a cornerstone of the new dynamic and problematic structures of contemporary social life, including the problems of recognition in a multicultural society, and the struggles for recognition of individuals, associations and identitarian groups. It is also a fundamental term for different theoretical and empirical areas of research, such as psychology, sociology, and politics. This paper will examine the issue of recognition in sociology, assuming a philosophical stance. It starts with a brief overview of the concept’s most important uses and its theoretical potential. It argues that philosophy reveals a problematic but potentially constructive balance between the two key-concepts of ‘struggle’ and ‘dialectics’.