Recognition and Social Ontology

Book excerpt: This unique collection focuses on the unexamined connections between two contemporary, intensively debated lines of inquiry: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung) and analytical social ontology. These lines address the roots of human sociality from different conceptual perspectives and have complementary strengths, variously stressing the social constitution of persons in interpersonal relations and the emergence of social and institutional reality through collective intentionality. In this book leading theorists and younger scholars offer original analyses of the connections and suggest new ways in which theories of recognition and current approaches in analytical social ontology can enrich one another.