Recognition, Personhood, and Fundamental Ethics

Title: Recognition, Personhood, and Fundamental Ethics

Time: 27 Sep 2022

Site: G3 Morven Brown UNSW Kensington Campus

Speaker: Heikki Ikäheimo (UNSW Sydney)

He talks about his new book. 

Ikaheimo H, 2022, Recognition and the Human Life-Form: Beyond Identity and Difference, Routledge.

The basic argument of the book is that “recognition” (Anerkennung) in several conceptually interrelated senses of the term is a central ontological constituent of a life-form which all human societies or all particular forms of human co-existence are specifications of. Furthermore, not only is recognition ontologically constitutive of this general life-form—call it the human life-form or the life-form of human persons—, certain modifications of it also constitute a “fundamental ethics” in the sense of immanent ethical ideals.

There are three features of the human life-form:

1, Shared norms 

2, Concern about well-being in the future

3, Cooperation, treating others as contributors

The three can be applied to all human society. His job is to build up an anthropological universalism.