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Robert Brandom and Political Theory

Countering the Pathologies of Recognition

Towards an Inferentialist-Expressivist Strategy for Social Critique
Gianfranco Casuso

Abstract

This paper explores the ambivalence of recognition within contemporary critical theory, moving beyond Althusser’s conception of recognition as a purely ideological mechanism. Building on Honneth’s analysis, it argues that recognition both reinforces social reproduction and enables self-realization, often in ways that are difficult to disentangle. The first section of the paper examines the claim that recognition, like any social practice, is structured by a system of norms that govern the reciprocal attribution of practical and moral attitudes, along with the commitments they entail. In the second section, I argue that inferential practices offer a powerful methodological framework for analyzing recognition claims, as they reveal tacit forms of knowledge and challenge the presumed immediacy of prevailing social categories. The third section explores the role of social struggles in articulating and advancing recognition demands, emphasizing the value of an inferentialist-expressivist perspective rooted in Robert Brandom’s philosophy. I contend that inferentialism’s foundations in Hegelian logic, phenomenology, and pragmatism provide critical resources for understanding the epistemic break with immediacy that underlies emancipatory forms of recognition, as well as for clarifying the logical structures of critique and normative transformation.

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Author's notes

This work was carried out with funding from the DFI-PUCP and is part of the research project number 2021-C-0038 / PI0802.

Full text

1. Introduction

  • 1 In “Recognition as Ideology,” Honneth uses three examples that aptly illustrate the way in which id (...)

1Althusser’s thesis on the potentially harmful effects of recognition for self-realization and the development of autonomy is well known. By reinforcing the image that individuals form of themselves through roles acquired via socialization and subjectivation, recognition serves to align their thoughts and behavior with the normative expectations of society (Althusser 2014: 236). This alignment generates a sense of satisfaction or self-affirmation that can, however, mask various forms of oppression, exploitation, or exclusion. The system thus reproduces itself by creating subjects who conform to the roles it assigns. Within contemporary critical theory, this pessimistic view has evolved into a more nuanced understanding of recognition. Rather than attributing to it a purely ideological function, as Althusser did, recent approaches emphasize the ambivalence of recognition – its dual capacity to reinforce social reproduction and to enable self-realization (Honneth 2007: 327-8). Consider, for instance, the frequently cited examples of the housewife who takes pride in being admired for her exclusive dedication to domestic labor, or the worker who derives self-worth and satisfaction from being recognized by their employer as proactive, creative, and committed.1 In both cases, recognition appears to promote individual self-affirmation while simultaneously reinforcing socially prescribed roles – of gender, class, or other structural categories. Individuals are gratified to the extent that they conform to normative expectations embedded within socially pre-established “spaces of reasons,” whose internal logic and criteria often remain opaque or inaccessible to them. From this perspective, it becomes difficult to distinguish, in the act of recognition itself, between its reproductive and emancipatory dimensions.

  • 2 As Honneth notes, this poses a genuine challenge for critical theory: how to account for the constr (...)

2Even granting this concern, it must be acknowledged that every recognition relation involves a reproductive dimension, since it unfolds within shared – often tacit – norms presupposed by both recognizer and recognized.2 The question, then, is not whether recognition can escape its reproductive function, but how reproduction can be reconciled with self-realization through recognition claims – not by adapting to existing norms, but by acknowledging agents’ epistemic capacities to reinterpret them. While this issue is well explored in social philosophy, I approach it here from the standpoint of inferentialism, a less-examined yet highly relevant framework. My aim is not to exhaust the inferentialist approach or to provide a full theoretical alternative but to contribute to ongoing efforts to connect diverse strands within contemporary critical theory.

3Upon this basis, section 2 explores the idea that recognition claims, like other social practices, are structured by systems of norms that enable the reciprocal attribution of commitments. Yet, as contemporary critical theorists emphasize, recognition that truly fosters self-realization requires more than conformity to established norms: it demands acknowledgment of the epistemic capacities of those affected, enabling them to reinterpret and contest prevailing standards. This epistemic dimension, I argue, is intrinsic to first-order recognition claims and secures their legitimacy without relying solely on appeals to individual moral experience. Section 3 advances the thesis that recognition claims are best understood as inferential processes, since inferences draw out implicit meanings, reveal tacit presuppositions, and interrogate the apparent validity of entrenched categories. This model highlights recognition as an active, interpretive practice. Section 4 turns to the role of social struggles in advancing recognition claims, defending an inferentialist-expressivist approach over non-inferential alternatives. By grounding this strategy in Hegelian logic and phenomenology, as well as in pragmatism, I show how it clarifies the rupture with immediacy at the heart of critical demands for recognition, illuminates the logical structures of critique and judgment, and aligns with the broader aspirations of critical theory.

2. The Ambivalence of Recognition

4Because recognition serves both to sustain social reproduction and to enable self-realization, its functions often overlap in ways that appear mutually reinforcing. Yet this very overlap can obscure underlying pathological dynamics. The task of social critique, then, is twofold: to disclose the multidimensional character of recognition claims and to delineate the normative conditions under which these functions can support one another without distortion. The analysis in this section proceeds in two directions: it examines the internal tension between the normative dimensions inherent in recognition relations (2.1), while addressing the contested authority of subjective consciousness in grounding and legitimizing recognition claims (2.2).

2.1. Two Dimensions of Recognition

  • 3 On the role played by the Kantian theory of judgment for the critique of society, see Ferrara 2012. (...)

5Recognition presupposes the existence of socially shared criteria that allow individuals to be positively valued. For instance, if I recognize the merits of a scholar, it is because I take myself to have a reasonably clear understanding of the attributes that define that category. Those seeking recognition typically align their conduct with these same standards. This alignment points to a first-order normativity: the ensemble of beliefs and social meanings that provide agents with reasons for action within the context of existing parameters. One must therefore consider the general acceptance of the norms governing academic activity – such as the expectation that knowledge be produced through rigorous argumentation and empirical evidence, and that it be communicated coherently and subjected to peer review in publications and conferences. The degree of recognition a scholar receives is defined by their conformity to the network of such norms. Crucially, the authority of these norms derives not from each individual component but from the overall structure, which provides coherence and binding force to the category “scholar.” Moreover, the same norms that confer recognition also enable individuals to contest it. A subject may object to a judgment if they perceive the recognition-granting agent has failed to identify their actions as instances conforming to valid norms. In this sense, the subject appeals to a standard whose validity is presumed, allowing for a form of judgment analogous to Kant’s bestimmende Urteilskraft or “determining judgment” (Kant 1974: B XXVI). Such judgments provide a semblance of objectivity, insofar as they are governed by a “second nature” of socially embedded norms.3 At this level, it becomes difficult to determine in advance whether recognition under established norms supports or undermines the flourishing of the recognized subject. Here, the socio-reproductive and self-realizing functions of recognition converge without a clear distinction.

6The situation changes when a subject feels disrespected not because the relevant norms were misapplied, but because those norms themselves are perceived as inadequate. Consider a scholar whose academic activities do not align with hegemonic norms, which prioritize publication in indexed journals and participation in conferences as the main indicators of scientific merit. In contrast to this model, the scholar may instead favor pedagogical work and, either implicitly or explicitly, act in accordance with the belief that the rich formative experiences they foster among students are often unjustly overlooked in favor of evaluation criteria more aligned with a commercial logic – one driven by the accumulation of quantifiable outputs and managed by private interests. In this case, the claim still arises as a reaction to the awareness of unjust social treatment – that is, from the negative experience of someone who senses that they are being unjustly denied the recognition they need. However, the issue no longer lies in a deficiency of the agent’s evaluative capacities, but rather in a flaw within the evaluative framework itself, which proves inadequate for granting recognition to experiences that fall outside established normative expectations. This second case illustrates that recognition norms admit multiple interpretations and that marginalized interpretations, grounded in lived experience, could constitute challenges to hegemonic epistemologies (Honneth 2017: 917; 2022: 29). Here, critique rooted in disrespect points beyond norm misapplication toward the need for a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be someone within society. As Honneth rightly emphasizes, the epistemic demand for reinterpretation is not external to recognition struggles but intrinsic to them (Honneth 2022: 29). It is not a matter of distinguishing two separate forms of recognition struggles – those concerning norm application and those concerning norm content. Rather, every struggle for recognition inherently contains a transformative impulse, a potential critique of the prevailing meaning of the norm.

7Certainly, some individuals may find satisfaction in being integrated into categories defined by existing normative frameworks. However, from the standpoint of a critical theory of society, what matters most is that social critique retains a transformative function – one that is often carried out by those for whom prevailing categories are inadequate or even harmful, precisely because they constrain the possibilities for self-realization. In such cases, the distinction between the reproductive and emancipatory functions of social norms becomes crucial. For those who identify with dominant normative orders, these two functions may appear seamlessly aligned: social reproduction is assumed to foster self-realization. Yet for others, this alignment breaks down. Under certain conditions, mechanisms of social reproduction can actively hinder self-realization by excluding or misrecognizing experiences that, while potentially bearing legitimate claims to inclusion, are filtered out by the normative assumptions embedded in the dominant framework.

8In short, within this first-order normativity, subjects may direct their recognition claims toward at least two objects:

a) against the misapplication of current norms defining a social category;

b) against the inadequacy of current norms to account for the specificity of their experience.

9Even if we accept Honneth’s premise that type (b) claims possess reinterpretative potential – given the inherently contested nature of social categories and the norms that sustain them (Honneth 2017: 914-5) – we must also acknowledge that this very openness is frequently met with strong resistance, as the revisability of norms is not universally accepted. In our example, this resistance can appear when the subject’s attempt to understand, articulate, and share a divergent experience is ignored. Here, disrespect is no longer directed at their performance as a scholar but at their very capacity to contribute to the redefinition of what that role entails. Hence, while recognition claims at level (b) often arise from the particular moral experience of someone who feels they are suffering an injustice, turning this private experience into a driving force for social transformation requires understanding it, simultaneously, as part of a more complex structure of recognition relations. While these claims often manifest as deeply personal, inchoate, and hard-to-express sensations of harm, this does not mean that their normative basis is purely subjective. On the contrary, as I hope to show later on, reducing them to private grievances risks distorting their critical significance and, even more troublingly, contributes to the pathological obscuring of the very inferential structures that sustain them – structures that, even if not yet made explicit by those involved, underlie the intelligibility and legitimacy of such claims.

10This work defends the view that recognition claims at level (b) must not be interpreted as affirming the primacy of individual experience detached from inferential articulation. To do so would amount to endorsing a non-inferentialist critical stance that posits moral insight as immediate and self-sufficient – an assumption I will argue is ultimately untenable. Following the structure of the argument, I develop this position in a gradual and systematic manner across subsections 2.2, 3.2, and 4.2. In any case, this tension – between the experiential origin of recognition claims and the normative structures that render them intelligible – reveals two closely interrelated but analytically distinct dimensions: first, the existing factual norms of recognition and their possible reinterpretation (which I have previously referred to as (a) and (b)); and second, the normative framework that grants subjects the authority to participate in the formation, revision, and contestation of such norms. It is in light of this second dimension that we must identify a third object of recognition claims:

c) against structures that preclude criticism of type (b) – that is, that deny individuals the possibility of being recognized as co-authors of normative orders.

  • 4 Both Honneth and Fricker have commented on the similitudes and differences between their approaches (...)
  • 5 I use the notion of “transcendental” in the sense of a condition of possibility of experience. In t (...)

11This second-order normativity concerns the demand to be heard and considered in relation to any norm of recognition that has become problematic. Given its role in enabling the generation of new knowledge, it is best understood as epistemic in nature. In his exchange with Miranda Fricker, Honneth acknowledges the indispensable role of attributing cognitive capacities in reciprocal recognition.4 However, he emphasizes that this attribution is morally charged, historically constituted, and contextually embedded – something he believes Fricker underplays by assigning to it a transcultural and ahistorical status (Honneth 2022: 30). I will not pursue the details of that disagreement here. What I want to underscore instead is the constitutive role epistemic recognition plays as a condition of possibility for any other form of recognition capable of contesting and reinterpreting existing standards. In this regard, I concur with Honneth that this second-order dimension is not an external supplement to the normative order within which recognition struggles unfold. On the contrary, because it becomes visible through the very experiences generated by such struggles, it is their implicit presupposition. We may go further and describe this order as transcendental in the Kantian-Habermasian sense: it encompasses the enabling conditions for the creation and contestation of first-order norms – those norms we typically encounter as pre-given frameworks that structure our forms of life, yet which remain open to revision and transformation.5

12To the extent that epistemic recognition is constitutive of all other forms of recognition, obstructing the expressive and transformative capacities it entails undermines the conditions for self-realization. In this third scenario, the relation between self-realization and social reproduction becomes pathological unless those capacities are safeguarded. Like all recognition relations, epistemic recognition requires a validating community and social roles to sustain it. Social reproduction also functions here as a means of sustaining such practices; however, insofar as these practices are directly linked to an openness toward potentially divergent experiences, they should facilitate – rather than hinder – the self-realization of those affected. Rather than introducing an external standard or alternative normative criterion, my aim is to deepen this inquiry through a relatively neglected perspective: the inferentialist-expressivist framework, grounded in Hegelian logic and phenomenology as well as in pragmatist traditions. As indicated earlier, before delving deeper into this issue, I will conclude this section with a brief but necessary discussion of the possibility of grounding recognition claims solely in particular experiences – what I will refer to in sections 3 and 4 as a non-inferential strategy. This approach interprets level (b) claims as remaining disconnected from broader conceptual articulation, thereby lacking the transformative capacity needed to overcome recognition pathologies.

2.2. The Problem of the Authority of Subjective Consciousness

13At first glance, it might appear that in order for complaints to be heard within a given social order, they must conform to the established categories through which discomfort, harm, or injustice are classified. This poses a serious dilemma: when a subject appeals to these categories, they are compelled to translate and adapt their experience into terms deemed intelligible by existing frameworks – often at the cost of losing the richness, specificity, or transformative potential of the experience itself. However, the opposite strategy – appealing to the alleged self-evidence or infallibility of particular moral experience as the ground of critical authority – entails equally problematic consequences. As Stahl (2022: 5) warns, this approach risks lapsing into a dogmatic reliance on subjective certainty. Hegel’s critique of the moral standpoint is instructive here. In his analysis, the individual moral consciousness (moralisches Bewusstsein) that withdraws into itself when confronted with a world that fails to do it justice cannot claim universal normative authority simply on the basis of its inner conviction. Without reference to an objective order of justification, such a consciousness ultimately elevates its own certainty (Gewissen) into an absolute standard (Hegel 1986c: §§137-8). While this kind of moral withdrawal may signal a real conflict between prevailing norms and lived experience – and may thereby indicate the need for normative transformation – it cannot, in itself, serve as the exclusive foundation for new normativity.

14Although it may seem intuitively plausible to treat subjective consciousness as a privileged alternative to grounding recognition claims solely in existing institutional norms – especially in the name of securing the conditions for self-realization – this assumption rests on a false dilemma. The error lies in focusing exclusively on the particular content of the claim, while neglecting the social and epistemic conditions under which that claim could be validated or even understood. What results is a model of “first-order normativity,” in which disrespected subjectivity is pitted against hegemonic interpretations in a binary of competing truths. Yet, from a critical theory standpoint, it is not enough to assume that normative orders are contestable; it is also necessary to clarify the conditions that make social transformation both conceivable and justifiable. Even without explicit reference to recognition, the link between critique’s epistemic basis and the ontological grounding of normative orders remains central to social philosophy. Whether it is Honneth’s search for fuller realizations of values embedded in existing norms, Jaeggi’s (2014) emphasis on problem-solving through accumulated experience and social experimentation, or Forst’s (2007) invocation of a “right to justification” presupposed by any just normative order, what underlies each of these positions is the idea that social disputes over normative interpretation presuppose some kind of second-order dimension that makes disagreement possible and potentially productive.

  • 6 For discussions on the notion of the epistemic agent – or simply the “knower” – and the socially co (...)

15What these approaches share is a commitment to a mode of critique that retains a relative autonomy from existing orders, while also acknowledging that the practices through which critique is articulated are themselves socially embedded and rule-governed. This applies equally to the practices of epistemic recognition, which concern not only the affirmation of individual identity but also the mutual attribution of epistemic authority.6 The validity of recognition claims, in this view, does not rest on the authority of personal experience alone, but on the socially mediated conditions that enable individuals to enter into practices of giving and asking for reasons. Thus, epistemic recognition is not in competition with other forms of recognition (legal, moral, or social); rather, it underlies them. What must be recognized is not simply the substantive content of a given experience, but the rules, principles, and material conditions that make epistemic agency possible in the first place. Understood as a social practice, the reciprocal attribution of epistemic status is governed by norms that can be reconstructed and subjected to critique. From this standpoint, the appeal to individual experience as a self-standing criterion of normative validity is inadequate. What emerges here is not the substitution of one first-order normativity for another, but the articulation of a second-order normative framework that has a transcendental status. Its aim is not to justify a particular content over others, but to establish the conditions of possibility for producing valid claims and generating new knowledge. For example, such a framework is necessary to determine what counts as a legitimate understanding of roles such as “scholar,” and what expectations can justifiably be associated with those roles. From this perspective, the question of whether subjectivity can “found” normativity loses its centrality. The issue is not about grounding the validity of some particular content in subjective experience but about enabling the intersubjective conditions under which novel claims can arise, be expressed, and gain traction in the space of reasons.

  • 7 Honneth (2007) conceives social pathologies as processes that generate suffering or injustice while (...)
  • 8 While the present article explores points of convergence between recognition-based theories of soci (...)

16In the next section, I show how refusing to revise dominant knowledge despite emerging inconsistencies constitutes a pathology of recognition. Drawing on contemporary critical theory, I use the concept of social pathology, which serves as a critical lens for revealing structural forms of harm and misrecognition not as accidental anomalies but as systemic distortions inherent in the normal functioning of social institutions. This approach diagnoses such pathologies as internal contradictions within institutions and forms of life that fail to live up to their own normative promises – such as those of freedom, equality, or recognition.7 Specifically, I will examine how the failure to uphold the norms that govern the reciprocal attribution of epistemic authority results in the systematic disqualification of certain voices.8 To clarify how such an analysis might proceed, I will develop the hypothesis that the validation of recognition claims beyond existing orders depends on the possibility of breaking with ideologically secured, immediate knowledge – a break that must be grounded not in subjective certainty but in intersubjectively reconstructible criteria. To substantiate this claim, I will return to the elements examined in this section, now reformulated through an inferentialist-expressivist lens. In doing so, I aim to show that this approach offers a productive framework for analyzing the conditions under which recognition practices with a critical intent can emerge.

3. Recognition Practices and Inferential Processes

17Let us begin by accepting that relations of recognition imply the assumption of roles within a normative structure. When recognition occurs between A and B with respect to x in E – where A is the recognizer, B is the recognized, E denotes a space of valid reasons, and x represents a value within that space – what A performs is not merely a descriptive report of empirically observable features in B. Rather, A’s act of recognition expresses a set of beliefs that entail normative commitments and practical attitudes. This claim builds on the pragmatist-inferentialist thesis that conceptual competence involves not only the ability to relate concepts inferentially, but also the capacity to adopt the practical commitments associated with their appropriate use. To recognize B as a scholar, for instance, entails understanding that their practices differ from those of a bricklayer or a banker. But beyond this cognitive dimension, such recognition gives rise to a practical relationship governed by normative expectations, orienting agents to act and interact according to the roles they assume. In turn, for B to be recognized, they must be able to meet these expectations – that is, they must be capable of making appropriate inferences within a given space of reasons. Both the coherent combination of the concepts that define B’s social identity and the capacity to assume related commitments are guided by inferential rules tacitly shared by A and B. Building on this framework, this section first examines the scope of the inferentialist model in addressing the pathological effects of recognition (3.1), and then considers whether it is necessary – or even possible – to abandon inferentialism in order to reconcile the demands of social reproduction with those of individual self-realization (3.2).

3.1. Pathologies of Recognition and the Reach of Inferentialism

  • 9 Brandom refers to the social practices of individuals in a space of reasons that generates behavior (...)

18In a Sellarsian spirit, we may say that the difficulty in reconciling the socio-reproductive function of recognition with its emancipatory or self-realizing dimension lies in the fact that any recognition relation between A and B is mediated by a shared space of reasons, whose consistency must be assumed by both parties (Sellars 1997: 74-6). That such a space is “consistent” means that the reasons justifying the validity of a concept or social category are structured in a way that renders them intelligible and acceptable to all involved. The alleged rationality of a belief system lies in this internal consistency. This presumption of rationality enables agents to make valid inferences within the space of reasons and to commit to the practical consequences of concept use. In doing so, individuals orient themselves within a normatively structured world and thereby qualify for recognition (Brandom 2001: 89-92).9 Thus, recognition not only can coexist with the maintenance of the status quo – it is often what enables the reproduction of belief systems and social meanings through ideological reinforcement. The more rational or consistent the social order appears, the less urgent the perceived need for its transformation. This dogmatic structure reinforces a belief in the already-achieved coherence of the system and renders demands for recognition as mere calls to fulfill preexisting expectations within a supposedly rational order.

19While the inferentialist framework illuminates the socio-reproductive function of recognition, the question remains whether it can also shed light on the tension between this function and the possibility of self-realization. As we have seen, the experience of misrecognition – of not being appropriately recognized – can function as a privileged standpoint for engaging this issue. To pursue this line of inquiry, let us return to the question posed in the previous section: what happens when B is not recognized by A? As noted, this experience of epistemic or moral injury can generate three possible responses:

a) B may accuse A of failing to draw the correct inferences within the shared space of reasons – treating A as a “bad player”;

b) B may challenge the structure of the space of reasons itself, based on their own experiences and judgment;

c) B may contest the space of reasons on the grounds that, by obstructing their transformative capacities, it forecloses their possibilities for self-realization.

20I refer to these three responses to the experience of misrecognition as: (a) the conservative strategy, (b) the non-inferential strategy, and (c) the inferentialist-expressivist strategy. This distinction is framed by a broader concern: how to avoid reducing recognition claims to a fixed repertoire of socially typified grievances – a reduction that risks obscuring divergent experiences and emergent forms of injustice. Since the first strategy does not amount to a genuine form of social critique – focusing instead on individual agents or institutions responsible for misapplying already accepted recognition norms – I will concentrate in what follows on the relationship between the latter two strategies.

3.2. Can Inferentialism be Renounced? Disrespect and Epistemic Injustice

  • 10 Fricker distinguishes between two forms of epistemic injustice: a “testimonial” injustice, related (...)

21Within the framework of social epistemology, one of the most compelling recent attempts to account for the critical and socially constitutive role of those affected by injustice centers on the notion of epistemic injustice. Without delving too deeply into this well-established field – developed primarily by Miranda Fricker – I will focus on a few key ideas from what she calls “hermeneutical injustice,” which are particularly illuminating for understanding the expressive dimension of struggles for recognition.10 A central contribution of this approach is its ability to articulate the intersection between epistemic and moral dimensions inherent to any non-pathological recognition relation. Failing to recognize someone as an epistemic agent – a knower – not only excludes them from the domain of knowledge production but also carries moral implications. As we have seen, recognizing someone as occupying a particular status or role involves adopting a set of practical commitments and normative attitudes toward them. Consequently, overcoming epistemic injustice requires the establishment of practices and norms that enable the mutual attribution of epistemic agency – that is, the capacity to create or reshape the very categories needed to articulate one’s own experience as worthy of recognition. This kind of injustice differs fundamentally from injustices that involve the transgression of already established social norms. Just as not being recognized under existing norms differs from being excluded from the very process of norm-creation, hermeneutical injustice involves a deeper form of exclusion: it deprives individuals of the conceptual tools needed to render their experiences intelligible, both to themselves and others (Fricker 2007: 168). Yet epistemic disrespect and epistemic injustice cannot be reduced to the suffering caused by being individually excluded from the formation of social norms. Beyond this form of exclusion, these pathologies obstruct self-realization across various domains of social life. This is because the agency required for processes of social transformation is itself a necessary condition for creating the kinds of spaces in which individuals can form relationships oriented toward the full development of their personality – free from the constraints imposed by predetermined, hegemonic forms of knowledge.

22This line of inquiry raises a fundamental question concerning the extent to which the experience of suffering can be understood as an individual phenomenon that legitimately grounds claims to recognition (Renault 2017, 2019; Casuso 2024). But this question makes sense only if we understand that this form of disrespect does not stem from so-called first-order injustices – that is, harms already recognized as valid grounds for claims within a shared normative space. Yet, this does not imply that overcoming disrespect depends on a purely subjective or creative force by which new concepts can spontaneously emerge from individual experiences of suffering. This confusion is precisely what the non-inferential strategy fails to resolve. While it rightly underscores the legitimacy of particular moral experiences, it overlooks the crucial point that epistemic recognition cannot be achieved merely by attending to the specific content of those experiences. Rather, it requires the consolidation of a normative framework that enables the reciprocal attribution of epistemic roles. Put differently, the expressive dimension emphasized in theories of epistemic injustice does not consist in generating alternative or parallel spaces of reasons, which would leave existing epistemic orders untouched. A truly critical strategy must disrupt the apparent normality and coherence that social reality initially and immediately presents. The process begins by revealing the contingent and constructed nature of what passes as stable or self-evident – thus opening space for transformative agency within the inferential structure itself.

23In the following section, I will develop what I refer to as the inferentialist-expressivist strategy by drawing on two of its most important sources: first, a logical-phenomenological approach rooted in the Hegelian tradition; and second, a pragmatist approach grounded in the social accumulation of experiences. Both have been richly explored within critical theory – particularly by Honneth and Jaeggi. My aim here is not to repeat their contributions, but to extend this line of thought by proposing additional conceptual tools that clarify the emancipatory potential of inferentialism when understood expressively.

4. Epistemic Recognition and the Inferentialist-Expressivist Strategy

  • 11 In a way that closely anticipates contemporary discussions of epistemic injustice, Marx speaks of “ (...)

24While injustices such as forced displacement, gender-based violence, and racism have become widely recognized and morally condemned, the role of critical theory cannot be confined to analyzing these visible harms. Its distinctive task is to diagnose deeper social pathologies: the failure of society to recognize certain forms of suffering as problems that implicate the social order as a whole. As scholars such as Zurn (2011), Freyenhagen (2018, 2019), Laitinen (2019), and Renault (2019) emphasize, these are not just first-order harms but second-order failures of recognition, communication, and normative articulation that obscure them. Overcoming this invisibility requires that affected groups articulate their suffering in ways that expose internal social contradictions and press for structural transformation, revealing unmet conditions of justice.11 To address this challenge, this section will develop an inferentialist-expressivist framework by drawing on Hegel’s phenomenology and his doctrine of the concept. It will argue that the rupture with immediacy and the diremption that gives rise to judgment are key to the emergence of critical self-consciousness (4.1), and will explore how social experimentation and accumulated experience help counter the ideological limits of recognition while realizing its epistemic potential (4.2).

4.1. In the Beginning was Immediacy: Concept, Judgment, and Syllogism

25In Hegelian terms, “immediacy” refers to a kind of certainty that uncritically equates knowledge with its object, as if the world simply is what it appears to be. Such immediacy characterizes pre-reflective attitudes – what Hegel refers to, for instance, as the “sense-certainty” (Hegel 1986a: 82). Observation and habitual classification, where properties (P) are seamlessly ascribed to subjects (S), are typical manifestations of this. In this regard, Robert Brandom recalls that the immediate has, for both Hegel and Kant, the appearance of the non-inferential and non-conceptual (Brandom 2019: 110-2). This does not mean that knowledge is possible without concepts, but rather that, in order to have true knowledge, the necessary link that holds S and P together must have been demonstrated. This mediating element is, properly speaking, the concept, but only once its content has been made explicit – i.e., its determinations have been externalized. This happens, first, in the form of judgment, whose truth, initially present only as a subjective certainty, can later be inferentially verified through the syllogism (Hegel 1986b: 301). According to Kant, as Brandom also recalls,

[a]ll certainty is either immediate or mediated, that is, it either requires proof, or it is not capable of it and does not require any proof. Even if so much of our knowledge is true only mediately, that is, through proof, there must still be something unprovable or immediately certain, and all our knowledge must come from immediately certain propositions. (Kant 1992: 575)

26We arrive at the first type of certainty in a non-inferential way – for example, by simple observation. The second form of certainty, on the contrary, is the result of an inference: it therefore requires a proof, which constitutes the middle term of the syllogism. Following Sellars, Brandom differentiates between a simple descriptive report based on observation and authentic knowledge coming from the ability to perform inferences (Brandom 2019: 113). Thus, the attribution of a category or concept as “scholar” can occur immediately, but the inferential links that connect it with many other concepts can also be made explicit. The latter is what constitutes its justification and foundation, and what opens the possibility of reviewing the validity of such links, and with it, of the concepts themselves. According to this, although the immediate is the unfailing first step in the construction of all true knowledge (precisely by virtue of its appearance of unquestioned certainty), there is no possibility of error in it yet. Hegel builds on the Kantian thesis according to which the absence of error is not due to the fact that immediate certainty always judges correctly, but rather due to the fact that it does not judge at all. The ability to judge (Urteilskraft), as Kant shows, is a mediate thinking that subsumes the particular under the universal (Kant 1974: B XXV). This for Hegel means that judging is “the determination of the concept through itself” (Hegel 1986b: 302), that is, the act of extracting from itself its particular content, making it explicit and knowable. Initially, the concept appears as the subjective moment – tacit or immediate – not yet realized, which requires the judgment to be expressed. Thus, judgment simply divides the concept into its constituent moments, subject and predicate, thus enabling its foundation and eventual revision. Hegel argues, in this regard, that the determined content of P is only one of the many possible determinations of S. With Brandom, we can see, in this sense, that the logical form that language acquires “has the expressive role of making explicit, in the form of logically compound assertible sentential contents, the implicit material commitments in virtue of which logically atomic sentences have the contents that they do” (Brandom 2001: 153). We can say, then, that the expressive dimension refers to the ability to make such determinations and their links explicit and, in this way, it allows us to detect possible contradictions in the current understanding of the concepts.

27This brings us back to the question of recognition. To accept the validity of the non-inferential strategy would mean that the B is appealing for recognition on the basis of a newly assumed immediacy – confronting a socially given attribution (e.g., “you are not a legitimate scholar”) with an ungrounded counter-assertion (e.g., “but I am”). The confrontation would be between competing intuitions, not between articulated positions. Endorsing this strategy, then, is to privilege the immediacy of a seemingly more compelling subjective certainty while disregarding the fact that both positions are ultimately embedded in complex inferential structures whose justificatory connections remain latent or unacknowledged. By contrast, the inferentialist-expressivist strategy seeks not to oppose one brute certainty to another, but to demand the as-yet-unseen middle term: the justification that mediates and grounds the attribution of a predicate like “scholar.” Only in this second strategy are the normative requirements fulfilled that make any successful claim for recognition possible.

28Recognition involves more than the acknowledgment of individual experiences – it requires a transformation in the inferential roles of concepts: how they relate to other concepts and how they shape the normative structure of social meaning. In other words, when B challenges their exclusion from being recognized as a good scholar because the prevailing meaning of the term fails to account for their particular experiences, they are not simply opposing one immediacy to another – nor can their claim be dismissed as arbitrary, since subjective experience alone is not a sufficient source of normativity. Rather, B is invoking a deeper dimension of recognition: the demand to participate in the justification and potential reconstruction of the very categories through which their actions are defined, evaluated, and their identity is constituted. Furthermore, B is not merely asking to be included within a pre-existing concept, but to take part in the reconstruction of the concept itself. In Brandomian terms, this is not a matter of asserting new content, but of revising the material inferences that determine how that content is connected and justified. Judgment, in this sense, is both the logical and political form through which new modes of intelligibility are instituted. The expressivist moment enables suffering to appear not merely as a private grievance, but as a public contradiction – one that demands the transformation of the normative space in which recognition takes place.

4.2. Diremption and the Emergence of Critical Self-Consciousness

29We are now in a position to formulate two conclusions. First, what often appears as a kind of non-conceptual certainty underlying some recognition claims is more accurately understood as a lack of awareness of the inferential structures that implicitly shape this type of knowledge. Immediate knowledge may appear to offer the greatest degree of certainty precisely because it presents itself as self-evident and unmediated. However, the very distinction between truth and error only becomes possible once this immediacy is disrupted and articulated in conceptual form – namely, through judgment, which renders explicit the inferential relations that had previously remained tacit. The problem, then, is not that such knowledge is devoid of conceptual content, but that its justificatory status is presupposed rather than examined. It is only in moments of contestation or disruption that the apparent immediacy of such knowledge becomes problematized, exposing the inferential architecture on which it depends.

30Second, we may conclude that the starting point for resisting an unjust social reality is not subjective experience in isolation, but rather the challenge to hegemonic beliefs whose apparent certainty remains immediate in the sense just described. For Hegel, the overcoming of immediate certainty begins when we recognize that the concepts through which we think we experience the world fail to capture its full richness – when the phenomenon (Erscheinung), what appears, is revealed not as the truth, but as appearance (Schein) only (Hegel 1986a: 75-9). This disjunction between appearance and reality – between the content of consciousness and the object – is what Hegel terms Entzweiung, or diremption: the splitting or separation that opens the space for critical reflection. Once this rift occurs, the possibility emerges of new determinations, alternative configurations, and a refusal of the given as the only rational order of things (ibid.: 72-5). This is the same mediating process described earlier: the operation that transforms unreflective certainty into contestable knowledge by reintroducing doubt (Zweifel) where there had been none. Through this diremption, society becomes capable of recognizing that the world could be otherwise (ibid.: 23-5, 72-5). In this light, criticism can be understood as the demand for the grounding of immediate knowledge. Its first step is to render explicit the conceptual content of tacit, pre-reflective or abstract knowledge, articulating it in judgments. While concepts can function in various ways – including in shaping practical commitments (e.g., calling someone a “scholar” immediately implicates certain social expectations and roles) – the genuine or reflexive use of concepts involves something more. It requires an awareness of the inferential relations in which they participate (judgment) and the capacity to justify those relations (inference). As Brandom insists, a competent user of concepts must be able to position them within a space of implications: in our example, to grasp and articulate what follows from classifying someone as a scholar – both in relation to adjacent concepts and in guiding action. It is only at this stage, through judgments that make inferences explicit, that the possibility arises to contest their validity.

  • 12 For a more thorough examination of the function of this phenomenon and for arguments concerning the (...)

31At this point, the question arises: How does this form of critical self-consciousness emerge in practice? The answer – anticipated throughout this paper and central to many themes in critical theory – lies in the struggles for diremption, followed by the articulation and expression of negative experiences of disrespect that emerge within concrete social contexts which appear normal due to their seeming consistency.12 Importantly, this transformative activity is not the result of solitary introspection, but rather of collective processes: coordinated action within shared spaces of interaction, where previously isolated experiences can acquire common meaning and critical force. What emerges, then, is a form of expressive rationality – a mode of meaning-formation grounded in dialogical interaction and social participation, rather than in monological reasoning.

  • 13 I have explored this idea of dissonance directly in relation to recognition practices understood as (...)

32A paradigmatic illustration of this dynamic is the practice of consciousness-raising, particularly as developed within feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These collective processes were not merely therapeutic or expressive; they served as powerful epistemic interventions that enabled participants to critically reconfigure their understanding of the social world. By sharing personal experiences that, in isolation, may have appeared anomalous, trivial, or even self-blaming, participants came to recognize structural patterns of injustice that had previously remained obscured or misrecognized. What had seemed to be private misfortunes were reframed as socially patterned forms of oppression – thus disclosing the ideological mechanisms that had rendered them unintelligible in the first place. This process is central to Fricker’s account of overcoming hermeneutical injustice, a form of epistemic harm that arises when marginalized individuals lack access to the interpretive resources necessary to make sense of their experiences. Fricker emphasizes the role of a felt sense of dissonance as “the starting point for both the critical thinking and the moral-intellectual courage that rebellion requires” (Fricker 2007: 167-8). When such dissonance is shared among differently situated individuals with differing resistances and vulnerabilities to dominant discourses, it can become a source of epistemic insight, and collective critical empowerment.13 Consciousness-raising practices thus function as epistemic correctives. They aim to recover the coherence of shared social experience – but now rearticulated from the standpoint of those who had previously been excluded, silenced, or misrecognized. This does not merely expand the content of social knowledge by incorporating new perspectives; it also reconfigures the very process by which knowledge is generated and validated. The authority to define social reality becomes redistributed, enabling a more inclusive and dialogical construction of meaning.

  • 14 In A Spirit of Trust 2019, Brandom develops the notion of “magnanimous recognition,” which involves (...)

33This transformative process can also be interpreted through the lens of ideology critique. Drawing on Jaeggi’s conception, ideology should not be understood solely as a distortion of belief, but more profoundly as an obstruction of experiential learning (Erfahrungsprozess). Ideology, in this sense, functions by blocking agents’ capacities to interpret their own experiences in ways that could inform self-understanding and enable self-realization. It undermines the expressive dimension of experience – that is, the ability of subjects to articulate the significance of what befalls them in relation to their own lives and aspirations. Such obstruction constitutes a form of moral harm. It is not just that individuals are misled or manipulated at the level of cognition; rather, they are systematically denied access to the space of reasons, the shared discursive terrain where normative claims are assessed and social meanings negotiated (Jaeggi 2014: 407-11; Casuso 2021: 5-9). This denial erodes their capacity to be recognized as full participants in the normative order, thereby weakening other forms of recognition essential to both personal integrity and collective transformation. In this light, practices like consciousness-raising do more than facilitate personal insight or group solidarity; they become sites of resistance against ideological closure. They re-enable the interpretive and expressive capacities that ideology suppresses and open up the possibility for new forms of critique, solidarity, and world-disclosure. The epistemic and moral dimensions of such practices are inseparable: to be able to articulate one’s experience meaningfully in a shared space is already to reclaim a form of agency and recognition that ideology had foreclosed.14

5. Concluding Remarks

34The affinities between critical theory, Hegelian logic-phenomenology, and pragmatist thought are well documented. It is therefore unsurprising that the latter have frequently served as resources for articulating the questions and practices associated with social critique. This paper has contributed to that tradition by exploring a persistent tension within recognition theory: the opposition between the socially reproductive function of recognition and its emancipatory potential in enabling self-realization. My aim has been to demonstrate the theoretical potential of Robert Brandom’s semantic inferentialism and expressivist logic for analyzing demands for recognition not merely as moral claims, but as epistemic practices. Such demands, I have argued, seek to ground and justify the very concepts that structure existing knowledge and social roles. On the one hand, I have traced a connection between the Hegelian doctrine of the concept and a critical strategy informed by inferentialist-expressivist analysis, showing the role of syllogistic structures in mediating and revising knowledge claims. On the other hand, I have emphasized how Hegel’s account of experiential learning – shared with the pragmatist tradition – illuminates the role of social processes in enabling critical agency and the formation of new normative orders. In light of this, I considered two contrasting approaches to the critique of disrespect. I concluded that only a strategy which incorporates the epistemic dimension of recognition – rather than one grounded merely in the authority of subjective consciousness – can fully account for the possibility of self-realization, while also sustaining the socially integrative functions of recognition. It is only when we render the inferential commitments of our shared practices explicit – and when we collectively reconfigure them in light of marginalized experience – that critique becomes a force both of resistance and of rational transformation.

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Notes

1 In “Recognition as Ideology,” Honneth uses three examples that aptly illustrate the way in which ideology operates in a non-repressive way through different forms of recognition and social rewards. The first one is that of the character of Uncle Tom, from the novel of the same name, who is recognized for his submission and virtues as a good servant in a slave society; the second, that of a soldier praised as an example of heroism in the defense of his nation; and the third, already mentioned, that of the good wife who dedicates herself completely to the care of her home, serving to support the “core of society” (Honneth 2007: 325-6).

2 As Honneth notes, this poses a genuine challenge for critical theory: how to account for the constraint imposed by existing normative frameworks while preserving the possibility for critique and transformation (Honneth 2007). His use of criteria such as autonomy, respect, and self-esteem aims precisely at identifying the point at which recognition becomes ideological and inhibits the autonomous development of the individual.

3 On the role played by the Kantian theory of judgment for the critique of society, see Ferrara 2012. For an overview reading of Ferrara’s theses in the context of a Sellarsian approach to social criticism, see Stahl 2022.

4 Both Honneth and Fricker have commented on the similitudes and differences between their approaches to the phenomenon of social disrespect. On the details of these positions, see Fricker 2018 and Honneth 2022. In section 3 I will return to this discussion regarding the relationship between epistemic injustice and the inferentialist-expressivist approach that I defend.

5 I use the notion of “transcendental” in the sense of a condition of possibility of experience. In the case of Apel and Habermas, this refers to a universal pragmatics that analyses the normativity underlying the communicative-argumentative use of language, assuming the social existence of the latter as a factum (Habermas 1984). In my case, I am referring to the conditions of possibility of normative orders. In that sense, such transcendentality constitutes a higher order or “second order” normativity, whose historical circumstances can be accessed only from the concrete experiences that occur at the level of factual or first order norms and values.

6 For discussions on the notion of the epistemic agent – or simply the “knower” – and the socially constituted nature of epistemic agency, see Sellars 1997, Fricker 2007, and Congdon 2018.

7 Honneth (2007) conceives social pathologies as processes that generate suffering or injustice while remaining obscured by entrenched norms. These pathologies – such as exclusion, reification, the instrumentalization of labor – distort the conditions for recognition and autonomy. Jaeggi (2014) reframes them as contradictions within forms of life: when practices erode their own normative ideals (e.g., equality under capitalism), they persist through habituated norms despite becoming self-undermining. Neuhouser (2023), drawing on Rousseau and Hegel, emphasizes that pathologies arise from institutions’ failures to realize their normative purposes, thus obstructing self-governance and autonomy. Critique must therefore expose the gap between institutions’ normative self-understanding and their actual functioning. This framework has been enriched by debates on social suffering and second-order disorders – pathologies that obscure harm itself – developed by Zurn (2011), Freyenhagen (2018, 2019), and Laitinen (2019). I thank an anonymous reviewer for having emphasized the need to further clarify the notion of pathology used in this paper.

8 While the present article explores points of convergence between recognition-based theories of social pathology and the inferentialist-expressivist framework in which Robert Brandom plays a central role, it also marks a critical distance from what might be construed as a notion of pathology in Brandom’s own account. Unlike standard approaches within critical theory, Brandom offers a rational reconstruction of Hegel’s theory of recognition that eschews both the diagnostic vocabulary and the normative orientation associated with social pathology. On this view, recognition is not a matter of affective affirmation or sociocultural inclusion, but rather the retrospective attribution of intelligibility to others’ normative commitments – a process through which communities achieve reconciliation by integrating past failures into an evolving rational order (Brandom 2019: esp. chaps. 15 and 16). Although Brandom draws extensively on Hegel’s concept of mutual recognition, he tends to sideline the lived experience of alienation, marginalization, and social harm that animates the tradition of critical theory. I return to this point in greater detail in section 4.

9 Brandom refers to the social practices of individuals in a space of reasons that generates behavioral expectations based on the mastery of inferentially related concepts. When acting in search of recognition, what we do is apply prudential reasoning that leads us to make correct inferences according to the social status to which we have committed ourselves (and not responding to arbitrary desires or preferences).

10 Fricker distinguishes between two forms of epistemic injustice: a “testimonial” injustice, related to the lack of credibility assigned to socially undervalued groups, and a “hermeneutical” injustice, related to the impossibility of understanding and articulating negative experiences due to the lack of corresponding concepts. Although in this section I refer mainly to hermeneutics, I am going to use the generic term “epistemic injustice,” since it corresponds better to the terminology used throughout the paper.

11 In a way that closely anticipates contemporary discussions of epistemic injustice, Marx speaks of “injustice as such” or “injustice in general” (Unrecht schlechthin). For Marx, the suffering of the proletariat is not merely particular or idiosyncratic. Precisely because it does not correspond to any group already recognized within the liberal political framework, its grievances cannot be adequately addressed by appealing to a failure to meet existing social norms or standards. As “the class that is not a class in society” (Marx 1976: 390), the proletariat embodies a form of universal suffering. This universality implies that redressing its condition requires more than inclusion within current institutions; it demands a fundamental transformation of the social order itself (Casuso 2021).

12 For a more thorough examination of the function of this phenomenon and for arguments concerning the critical importance of diremption and articulation as conceptual tools for enabling critique and fostering social transformation, see Taylor 1989; Casuso 2013, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025; Haslanger 2021; and Congdon 2024.

13 I have explored this idea of dissonance directly in relation to recognition practices understood as inferential practices in Casuso 2023.

14 In A Spirit of Trust 2019, Brandom develops the notion of “magnanimous recognition,” which involves acknowledging others as norm-responsive agents with generosity (Edelmütigkeit) and trust (Brandom 2019: 597). This attitude presumes that others can take responsibility, correct themselves, and contribute to shared norms, and it reframes errors or even harmful actions as expressions of freedom, provided agents can learn from them. Brandom thus shifts from conflictual models of recognition toward a post-conflictual sociality grounded in forgiveness and confidence in rational capacities (Brandom 2019: 621-8). Critical theory, by contrast, emphasizes recognition as something won through struggle and highlights the moral harm of misrecognition and the social pathologies it produces. Thus, whereas Brandom centers the epistemic virtue of trust in the recognizer, critical approaches highlight the ethical stakes involved in recognition’s denial or failure. Knappik (2020) has questioned whether Brandom’s magnanimous model can account for enduring power asymmetries, raising doubts about its adequacy. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this dimension of Brandom’s work.

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References

Electronic reference

Gianfranco Casuso, “Countering the Pathologies of Recognition”European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XVII-2 | 2025, Online since 16 December 2025, connection on 21 April 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/5281; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15d8i

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About the author

Gianfranco Casuso

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
gcasuso[at]pucp.edu.pe

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