In this article we intend to articulate Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition with the Gift Theory, developed by several authors, among them Paul Ricoeur, Marcel Hénaff and Alain Caillé. From this dialogue between German tradition and contemporary French philosophy results the thesis that a demand for recognition is also a sacrifice, a gift. The idea is that a theory of giving presupposes recognizing it and being recognized as being a symbolic order of the gift. In articulating the proposals of agonistic or conquest recognition, derived from the Hegelian current, with the idea of mutual symbolic recognition, concretized in the gift, we intend to complete the studies of recognition and explore its consequences in contemporary social and political thought.
Recognition; Gift; Honneth; Ricoeur; Caillé