The third mode is that of esteem, a recognition that emerges
through the distinctive achievements of an individual. The achieve-
ments do not primarily point to generally acknowledged virtues or
talents, but they vary according to the societal context. Typically, they
are professional skills that help to advance societal goals. Because of
the great differentiation of modern societies, they can be very differ-
ent. In some sense, a person realizes his or her own life project in
terms of individual achievement. Such a development may also take
place, for instance, in various hobbies or sports. Esteem is in some
sense culturally conditioned, as the individual needs others who
are willing to grant it. At the same time, individual achievements
contribute to the self-esteem that the subject feels.^22
Not surprisingly, commentators have found many similarities
between the accounts of Taylor and Honneth. They both start with
the concept of love, and both divide the sphere of social recognition
into two domains, one of which concerns universal rights and
the other individual differences.^23 I would nevertheless claim that
Taylor’s‘politics of difference’has a very different role from Hon-
neth’s‘esteem’. While Taylor introduces his concept to elucidate the
political challenges of a multicultural society, Honneth is more con-
cerned with the individual life career. Although they both argue that
society should treat individuals with regard to their distinctive char-
acteristics, Taylor focuses on multicultural groups and Honneth on
the life of individuals. This being said, I also think that they agree on
many matters concerning the private sphere of love and the legal
sphere of universal respect.
As Honneth treats the psychological and philosophical features of
recognition in great detail, his discussion ascribes a fundamental
significance to the basic phenomenon of recognition. Both Taylor
and Honneth write that personal identities emerge in heteronomous
dialogue, but Honneth pays particular attention to this mechanism.
He claims to synthesize psychological research so that the formation
of the ego ‘takes place in stages of internalizing social responses
characterized by intersubjective recognition’. The inner core of the
personalities of small children thus consists in‘relating the approval,
encouragement and affirmation of their partners in interaction to
their own...experiences’.^24 Given this, one can ask whether
(^22) Honneth 1992, 197–210; Thompson 2006, 74–7.
(^23) Cf. Thompson 2006. (^24) Honneth 2012, 204.
Introduction 9