Abstract

This article aims to establish a dialogue between notions of development and recognition. The epistemic foundation of this discussion is framed in Ricoeur consideration that bets on the individual's condition as a capable man or "I can", with the power to speak, act and impute actions, basic conditions to face the path to recognition of himself. However, these individual capacities to act, on the collective level, extend to social practices of mutual recognition based on an ethical principle, from which, it is possible to identify three imperatives dialoguing with the notion of development: to tend towards the good life, in and with others, and with just institutions. It concludes by affirming that the crisis regarding the notion of development proper to modernity has given it the possibility of resignifying the approaches that exalt human capacities in the search for subjective well-being that are oriented towards the path of mutual recognition.