Wednesday 21 January 2015

Philosophical Analysis of Recognition Theory

After a year's work in the CoE, having written two papers on recognition and a third one on its way, I reformulated the short description of my research themes:

The aim of my research is to contribute to the understanding of the concepts and phenomena of recognition. My research is primarily based on contemporary discussions of recognition theory initiated in the early 1990s by Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth. Their ideas have been further analysed and developed by Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, whose work I also explicitly utilise in my own. One of my specific thematic focuses is on the trilateral notion of mediated recognition. This is understood as a method in which disagreeing parties nevertheless agree about a third party such as a referee, a set of common rules, or a shared form of rationality.

In order to be useful, conceptual analysis needs to be practiced in view of relevant issues, both contemporary and historical. Moreover, to avoid arbitrary stipulation, the analysis also needs to be sensitive to input from various kinds of sources. With its three teams and their wide range of expertise, the Centre of Excellence Reason and Religious Recognition provides a good context for multidisciplinary research aiming to produce informed analyses of and constructive suggestions to recognition theory. The produced analyses and suggestions can then be used as conceptual tools for interpreting and dealing with a variety of textual materials as well as social and political realities. Philosophical analysis of recognition theory has immediate societal relevance also through its close systematic connections with the topics of multiculturalism and identity politics.

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