WARUM NICHT NICHT-IDENTISCHES?
WHY NOT THE NON-IDENTICAL

Summary/Abstract: “Why not the non-identical?” is the central question of Blagovest Zlatanov’s paper too. Here, Honneth’s paradigm of recognition is debated through the genealogical reconstruction of its general logic in the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy of identity. According to Zlatanov, Hegel uncovered the problems of non-identity (i.e. the ontological and logical difference) but yet he reduced this discovery of his for the sake of anchoring his philosophical system in one ultimate principle, the Absolute. (For Hegel the Absolute is identity of the identical and the non-identical, of subject-object.) The impressive shifting of perspectives notwithstanding, we could trace in Honneth’s social theory a similar logic stemming out of a substantially similar premise: Insofar as according to Honneth, on the basic level the personal identity is interiorized intersubjectivity, it preserves the basic pattern of Hegel’s Absolute (as identity of the identical and the non-identical, as an absolute subject-object). Precisely that presupposed ontological identity that absorbs the non-identical (the difference) allows Honneth further on to discuss law, solidarity, justice and other forms of social unity in social-philosophical terms. Moreover, that ontologically presupposed identity exposes Honneth’s theory of recognition to the same kind of critics, which Adorno poses against Hegel.

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