Bert van den Brink is professor of political and social philosophy and vice- dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Utrecht University. His publications include Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Thought (co-edited with David Owen, Cambridge UP 2007) and ‘Recognition, Pluralism and the Expectation of Harmony: Against the Ideal of an Ethical Life Free from Pain’, in Danielle Petherbridge (ed.), Axel Honneth: Critical Essays (Brill 2011).