Is it Justice? Therapeutic History and the Politics of Recognition

Abstract

The contemporary world is characterized by the loss of a web of meaning through which people make sense about who they are and where they stand in relation to others. The British sociologist, Ralph Fevre (2000) characterizes the feeble sense of moral reasoning as the ‘demoralization of western culture’. Instead of a moral code that endows experience with meaning we live in an age of ‘values’. As James Davison Hunter (2000: xiii) notes ‘values are truths that have been deprived of their commanding character’. Values are oriented towards the individual self. ‘Values are personal preferences, inclinations and choice’ observes Hunter (2000: 76). It is through values that therapeutic culture attempts to give meaning to the place of the self in society. According to the German sociologist, Ulrich Beck, one of the key components of the therapeutically influenced value system is the ‘principle of “duty to oneself”’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 38). Since values exist in a plural and individual form they cannot provide a moral grammar of meaning for society as whole. The orientation towards values makes questions like ‘who we are’ and ‘what is our place in this world’ difficult to answer.