Sanford Diehl (New York University): 'Recognition as Actualisation'
Abstract: Human beings care what other human beings think of them. Yet the attitudes we care about—others’ love, respect, and esteem, for instance—are valuable only when they are fitting responses to facts about us. Is there good reason to care about others’ actual attitudes, rather than about the properties which make them fitting? My answer adapts Joseph Raz’s proposal that some kinds of value are actualized only through engagement. A sculpture comes into its own only in aesthetic experience. The full reality of a talent or project requires that its possessor be related to the world in a way that enables its exercise. I propose that central aspects of who we are combine these two forms of dependence: engagement from another subject (the analogue of a statue being appreciated) is the condition of being able genuinely to live out our relations with others (the analogue of executing a project or realizing one’s talents). Recognition mediates between one’s first-person perspective on the world and one's concrete existence with and for others, integrating and thereby actualizing each.
