What Is Berlin's Desire For Status And Recognition

I.) Berlin’s interest in ‘desire for status and recognition’ may be contextualized as a desire to be favorably received in a society of others: status comprises the wish to hold a position of value within society, and recognition comprises the wish to have one’s autonomy and humanity affirmed by others. Its value to individuals and groups may be understood in the context that an individual’s environment plays a role in its definition and mode of being. There are several examples of this impulse towards the attainment of status and recognition, a useful example exists in the Indian non-violent movement to obtain Home Rule. Status in its most basic state is simply a position within a society: a ‘status’, in the indicative sense of the word.
This is where we find the palpable link between Berlin’s writings on this topic and the core ethical traditions of the enlightenment: we are human insofar as we are autonomous, possess reason, are able to act upon that reason, and are recognized as being capable of these things. Without this external affirmation of our reason and autonomy, there is no possibility of obtaining a status as equal or even as inferior to another human; once our faculty of reason is deemed deficient, we are made sub-human; we are denied the possibility of a relation to another save for one of submission and servitude . Indeed, we are denied the very possibility of virtue or vice! Taken within this context, we may consider Berlin’s thoughts on Kant in clearer light.
“This gives a far wider than a purely rationalist sense to Kant’s remark that paternalism is despotic, not because it is more oppressive than naked, brutal, unenlightened tyranny, nor merely because it ignores the transcendental reason embodied in me, but because it is an insult to my conception of myself as a human being... (pp
The centralized, organized, and focused attempt to bring to fruition particular virtues in the governed may very well afford them, even at the lowest material rungs of society, a respectable position as initiates, students, faithful worshippers, or industrious proletariats. In fact, it may offer a fuller recognition for the many that ascribe to the approved ideology: these chosen are given preference and prestige by the governing mechanisms of society; the unorthodox, however, are denied legitimate recognition of their faculties of reason in a rather clear-cut fashion. The highest questions in a society organized around positive freedom have already been addressed and the acceptable responses organized; the application of reason and its arrival at a divergent ideology is in itself evidence of the deficiency of the unorthodox thinker, who is seen not as a rival or a respected (albeit hated) dissident, but instead as an invalid and an