Recognition - German Idealism as an Ongoing Challenge 9789004262287, 9789004262607

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Recognition—German Idealism as an Ongoing Challenge

Critical Studies in German Idealism Series Editor

Paul G. Cobben Advisory Board

simon critchley – paul cruysberghs – rózsa erzsébet garth green – vittorio hösle – francesca menegoni martin moors – michael quante – ludwig siep timo slootweg – klaus vieweg

VOLUME 10

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/csgi

Recognition—German Idealism as an Ongoing Challenge Edited By

Christian Krijnen

Leiden • boston 2014

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the ­humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1878-9986 ISBN 978-90-04-26228-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26260-7 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS List of Contributors ......................................................................................... Foreword ............................................................................................................

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1. Introduction ................................................................................................ Christian Krijnen

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2. Hegel’s Concept of Recognition—What Is It? .................................. Heikki Ikäheimo

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3. The Paradigm of Recognition and the Free Market ........................ Paul Cobben

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4. From Autonomy to Recognition ........................................................... Robert Brandom

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5. The Metaphysics of Recognition: On Hegel’s Concept of Self-Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit ....................... Arthur Kok

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6. Recognition—Future Hegelian Challenges for a Contemporary Philosophical Paradigm ........................................................................... Christian Krijnen

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7. The Tragedy of Misrecognition—The Desire for a Catholic Shakespeare and Hegel’s Hamlet .......................................................... 129 Simon Critchley 8. Recognition and Dissent: Schelling’s Conception of Recognition and Its Contribution to Contemporary Political Philosophy ................................................................................... 143 Emiliano Acosta 9. Kantian Version of Recognition: The Bottom–Line of Axel Honneth’s Project ............................................................................ 165 Donald Loose

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10. Anerkennung – Ein Ausweg aus einer Verlegenheit? .................. 191 Kurt Walter Zeidler 11. Recognition of Norms and Recognition of Persons: Practical Acknowledgment in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit ............... 207 Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer 12. Finitude, Rational Justification & Mutual Recognition ............... 235 Kenneth R. Westphal 13. Inter-Personality and Wrong ............................................................... 253 Klaus Vieweg 14. The Dialectic of Normative Attitudes in Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage ............................................................................................. 267 Sasa Josifovic 15. From Love to Recognition: Hegel’s Conception of Intersubjectivity in a Developmental-Historical Perspective .... 287 Erzsébet Rózsa 16. Friendship in Hegel and Its Interpretation in Theories of Recognition .......................................................................................... 311 Jean-Christophe Merle Index of Terms .................................................................................................. 323 Index of Names ................................................................................................. 332

List of Contributors Emiliano Acosta is a Postdoctoral Researcher (Research Foundation Flanders, FWO) at the Centre for Critical Philosophy of the Ghent University and Member of the Young Academy of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences and Arts of Belgium. His research focuses on topics of contemporary political philosophy such as recognition, liberty of expression and press, pluralism and cosmopolitanism in the light of the legacy of modern Philosophy, especially Kantian Philosophy and German Idealism. On these topics he published numerous articles. He is author of Schiller versus Fichte, Amsterdam/New York 2011. http://www.criticalphilosophy.ugent.be/ members?member=8 Robert B. Brandom is a Dinstinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic. Among his books: Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment, Harvard University Press 1994; Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism, Harvard University Press 2000; Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality, Harvard University Press 2002; Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism, Oxford University Press 2008; Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas, Harvard University Press 2009; Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary, Harvard University Press 2011. Paul Cobben is Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University (The Netherlands). His publications focus on practical philosophy, combining a systematic and historical approach. Among his books: Das endliche Selbst, Würzburg 1999; Das Gesetz der multikulturellen Gesellschaft, Würzburg 2002; (ed.) Hegel-Lexikon, Darmstadt 2006; The Nature of the Self. Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality, Berlin/New York 2009; (ed.) Institutions of Educations: then and today, Leiden/Boston 2010; The Paradigm of Recognition. Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death, Leiden/Boston 2012. Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (New York) and Professor of Philosophy at the Tilburg

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University. His work concentrates on Continental philosophy; phenomenology; philosophy and literature; psychoanalysis; ethical and political philosophy. Recent publications: Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, Verso Books 2012; Impossible Objects, Polity Press 2011; The Book of Dead Philosophers, Granta Books 2009/Vintage Books 2008; (with R. Schuermann) On Heidegger’s Being and Time, Routledge 2008; Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Verso Books 2007. Heikki Ikäheimo has a PhD from University of Jyväskylä in Finland (2003). He came to Australia in 2008 and worked as research fellow at Macquarie University until moving to UNSW in 2012. He works on an Australian Research Council project titled ‘The Social Ontology of Personhood—A Recognition-Theoretical Account’. He published following books: Nature in Spirit; Recognition and Social Ontology; Self-consciousness and Intersubjectivity. A Study on Hegel’s Encyclopedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (1830); Dimensions of Personhood; On the Nature of Social and Institutional Reality. Sasa Josifovic (PhD University of Cologne). His main fields of interests are Classical German Philosophy, Classical Chinese Philosophy, and the interplay of philosophy and literature. Recent publications: Hegels Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins in der Phänomenologie des Geistes, Würzburg 2008; Selbstbewusstsein, in: Kurt Appel und Thomas Auinger (eds.): Eine Lektüre von Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Teil 1: Von der Sinnlichen Gewissheit zur gesetzprüfenden Vernunft, Wien/Frankfurt am Main 2009; Die systematische und inhaltliche Bestimmung der ‘vollkommenen Selbstanschauung’ in Schellings Genieästhetik von 1800, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 119, 2012; The Crucial Role of Pure Apperception within the Framework of Kant’s Theory of Synthesis and Cognition, in: G. van der Vijver / B. Damarest (eds.), Objectivity after Kant. Its Meaning, its Limitations, its Fateful Omissions, Olms, Hildesheim / Zürich / New York 2013; (ed. with G. Yi/A. Lätzer-Lasar): Metaphysical Foundations of Knowledge and Ethics in Chinese and European Philosophy, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2013. Arthur Kok, PhD (2012), studied philosophy in Tilburg and Berlin. He is postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University. He works in the field of moral philosophy and the history of modern and contemporary philosophy. Recent publications: Kant, Hegel und die Frage der Metaphysik: Über



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die Möglichkeit der Philosophie nach der kopernikanischen Wende, München 2013; Sublimity, Freedom and Necessity in the Philosophy of Kant, in: D. Loose (ed.), The Sublime and Its Teleology, Leiden/Boston 2011. Christian Krijnen is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Tilburg and the VU University Amsterdam. His research focuses on Modern Philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy of Culture, Social Philosophy, Philosophy of Economics and Management & Organization. Among his books: Nachmetaphysischer Sinn. Eine problemgeschichtliche und systematische Studie zu den Prinzipien der Wertphilosophie Heinrich Rickerts, Würzburg 2001 (Dissertation); Philosophie als System. Prinzipientheoretische Untersuchungen zum Systemgedanken bei Hegel, im Neukantianismus und in der Gegenwartsphilosophie, Würzburg 2008 (Habilitation); (ed. with H. F. Fulda): Systemphilosophie als Selbsterkenntnis? Hegel und der Neukantianismus, Würzburg 2006; (ed. with M. Heinz): Kant im Neukantianismus. Fort­schritt oder Rückschritt?, Würzburg 2007; (ed. with K. W. Zeidler): Gegenstandsbestimmung und Selbstgestaltung. Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluss an Werner Flach, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2011; (ed. with M. de Launay), Der Begriff der Geschichte im Neukantianismus und seine Aktualität, Würzburg 2013. https://sites.google.com/site/christiankrijnen/ Donald Loose is Thomas More Professor at Erasmus Univerity Rotterdam and professor of Philosophy at Tilburg University. His main research deals with fundamental ethics, Kant and Enlightenment, post-modern French political philosophy and religion in the public domain. Some recent publications: Marcel Gauchet: politique, religion et christianisme, in: A. Braeckman, La démocratie à bout de souffle? Une introduction critique à la philosophie politique de Marcel Gauchet, Louvain (Peeters), 2007, pp. 95–110; Kant on Contingency in Christian Religion, in: D. M. Grube & P. Jonkers, Religions Challenged by Contingency. Theological and Philosophical Approaches to the Problem of Contingency, Leiden (Brill) 2008, pp. 67–88; “Der Augapfel Gottes”. Das Recht als Integrationsfaktor der interkulturellen Gesellschaft, in: H. Goris & M Heimbach-Steins, Religion in Recht und politischer Ordnung heute, Würzburg (Ergon) 2008, pp. 69–92; (ed.) The Sublime and Its Teleology. Kant—German Idealism—Phenomenology, Leiden/Boston 2011; The Excess of Reason and the Return of Religion. Transcendence of Christian Monotheism in Nancy’s Dis-enclosure, in: A. Alexandrova e.a. (Ed.), Re-treating Religion. Deconstructing Christianity with Jean-Luc Nancy; Fordham University Press 2012.

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Jean-Christophe Merle, professor at the Université de Lorraine, honorary professor at the Universität des Saarlandes at Saarbrücken. His areas of specializations are philosophy of law and political philosophy, as well as Kant and the post-Kantian tradition. He is the author of Justice et Progrès (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1997) and German Idealism and the Concept of Punishment (Cambridge University Press 2009; German original: Strafen aus Respekt vor der Menschenwürde, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2007); editor of Fichte. Grundlage des Naturrechts (Berlin: AkademieVerlag 2001), Globale Gerechtigkeit (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog 2005), Die Legitimität von supranationalen Institutionen (Münster: LIT 2012), and Spheres of Global Justice (Springer: Dortrecht 2013); and co-editor of several volumes in political philosophy and philosophy of law, as well as L’amitié (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2005). Erzsébet Rózsa (PhD 1984) is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Debrecen (Hungary). She is also the head of a German-Hungarian interdisciplinary bioethical research group and of the Graduate School of Humanities at the University of Debrecen. Since 2012, she is a fellow at the University of Münster and its Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics (Kolleg-Forschergruppe “Normenbegründung in Medizinethik und Biopolitik”). She has published monographs and articles on Hegel and German idealism, including Versöhnung und System (W. Fink, 2005), Hegels Konzeption praktischer Individualität (Mentis, 2007) and Hegel’s Theory of Modern Individuality (Brill, 2012). http://www.erozsa.eu/ Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Leipzig. His research focuses on the philosophy of logic and language, mind and action. He published among other: Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein dialogischer Kommentar. 2 Bde. Hamburg: Meiner 2013; Denken. Wege und Abwege in der Philosophie des Geistes. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2012; Philosophie des Selbstbewusstseins. Hegels System als Formanalyse von Wissen und Autonomie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2005; SinnKriterien. Die logischen Grundlagen kritischer Philosophie von Platon bis Wittgenstein. Paderborn: Schöningh 1995; Hegels Analytische Philosophie. Die Wissenschaft der Logik als kritische Theorie der Bedeutung. Paderborn: Schöningh 1992. http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~philos/stekeler/index.php Klaus Vieweg, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, is Professor for Philosophy. Fields of research: German Idealism (Hegel), scepticism. Major publications: Das Denken der Freiheit. Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie



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des Rechts, München 2012; Skepsis und Freiheit, München 2007; Philosophie des Remis. Der junge Hegel und das Gespenst des Skepticismus, München 1999; Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (ed. with W. Welsch), Frankfurt/M. 2008; Das Interesse des Denkens. Hegel aus heutiger Sicht (ed. with W. Welsch), München 2003. Kenneth R. Westphal is Professorial Fellow, School of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK). The central focus of his research is rational justification in non-formal domains, including both epistemology and history and philosophy of science, and moral philosophy (ethics, justice). His recent publications include Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism (2004), ‘Norm Acquisition, Rational Judgment and Moral Particularism’ (Theory & Research in Education 2012), ‘Hume, Empiricism and the Generality of Thought’ (Dialogue 2013), ‘Natural Law, Social Contract & Moral Objectivity: Rousseau’s Natural Law Constructivism’ ( Jurisprudence 2013) and ‘Hegel’s Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference, Newton’s Methodological Rule Four and Scientific Realism Today’ (Philosophical Inquiries 2013); http://eastanglia.academia.edu/KennethRWestphal Kurt Walter Zeidler is a Professor for Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Main fields of research: Idealism, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science. Major publications: Grundriß der transzendentalen Logik, Cuxhaven 1992, 21997; Kritische Dialektik und Transzendentalontologie. Der Ausgang des Neukantianismus und die post-neukantianische Systematik, Bonn 1995; Prolegomena zur Wissenschaftstheorie, Würzburg 2000, 22006; (ed. with Ch. Krijnen): Gegenstandsbestimmung und Selbstgestaltung. Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluss an Werner Flach, Würzburg 2011. http://homepage.univie.ac.at/kurt.walter.zeidler/

Foreword For the philosophers in the tradition of German Idealism, the French Revolution was an epoch-making historical event. In this revolution the great ideal of human freedom and equality became the central political focus point. It was established in the revolution that being human is not dependant on specific individual qualities, but rather on relationships of mutuality. Especially those beings are human who are universally recognized as human beings. In our contemporary, globalized world, recognition has become a central philosophical category which articulates a sense of freedom that diametrically contrasts with traditionalism, nationalism, subjectivism or objectivism. The German idealist philosophers made great efforts to elaborate an adequate philosophical conception of recognition. However, this collection makes clear that thinking about recognition is indeed an ‘ongoing challenge’. Eminent scholars, originating from three different continents and eight different nationalities, show that the concept of recognition has a multilayered meaning. Even within the framework of Hegel’s philosophical development, they give different interpretations and accentuations of the concept. Moreover, Hegel’s view is compared with the expositions in Kant, Fichte and Schelling. Combining historical with systematic approaches, the discussion of the concept sheds new light on such divergent topics as, for example, love, friendship, tragedy, free market, desire, misrecognition, autonomy, dissent, the wrong, the transcendental I, and rational justification. Paul Cobben (Tilburg University), Series Editor.

Chapter One

Introduction Christian Krijnen For the past couple decades there has been intensive debate about recognition (Anerkennung) which has commanded ever greater attention. This debate began with topics in practical philosophy, especially political and social philosophy. As it developed, however, recognition has achieved thematically and historically such broad significance, that a new philosophical paradigm indeed seems to be in the making: Recognition turns out to be a fundamental concept, relevant not only for understanding political issues, but for our human world as a whole. Hence, the concept of recognition now includes such notions as subjectivity, objectivity, rationality, knowledge, personality, sociality, identity, otherness, nature, logic, etc. The protagonists in this debate seek to make German idealism fruitful for contemporary problems. Whereas neo-Kantians a century ago also sought to update German idealism, though focussing on Kant as the philosopher of modern culture, contemporary theorists of recognition intend to rejuvenate especially Hegel’s philosophy. Both analytical and continental traditions of philosophy come together in this debate, developing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of what is going on in our modern world. Against this background, the conference Recognition—German Idealism As Ongoing Challenge took place at Tilburg University (The ­Netherlands) from 5 to 7 September 2012, organized by Paul Cobben and Christian Krijnen. Its aim was to explore, i.e. to diagnose, analyze and evaluate, prospects and limits of recognition as a philosophical paradigm. This exploration was lead by the question of whether the present debate sufficiently incorporates the systematic requirements of the philosophy of German idealism, which it pretends to inherit and update. Are there relevant fundamental aspects of German idealism which are not or insufficiently addressed in the contemporary debate on recognition? Recognition as a ‘new paradigm’ of philosophy does not only depart from highly influential convictions with regard to the philosophy of German idealism, its argumentative potential, internal development and limits. As a new

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paradigm for philosophy claiming to actualize German idealist philosophy, it provokes questions about the foundation of the principle of recognition itself and its exact place within, and structural relation to, other principles of philosophy and its corresponding philosophical disciplines, as well as questions about which philosophical method provides the best means for addressing recognition. Put in more historical terms, such questions concern, for example, the apparent preference in the debate for Hegel’s earlier works, partly favoring his Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), partly his pre-phenomenological investigations in the Jena period, both differing significantly from each other and from the comprehensive philosophy Hegel developed later in his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830). They of course also concern the concept of recognition in Kant and Fichte, their merits and shortcomings. This collection of essays is the result of the presentations and discussions during the conferences. It roughly follows the thematic arrangement leading the program of the conference. The first part of the book, containing contributions of Ikäheimo, Cobben, Kok and Brandom, focuses on Hegel’s concept of recognition as such. The second part of it, from Krijnen to Critchley, Acosta, Loose and Zeidler, critically revisits the current debate on recognition, especially its dealing with Hegel, but also considering Kant, Fichte and Schelling. The third part—Stekeler-Weithofer, Westphal, Vieweg, Josifovic, Rózsa, Merle—treats capita selecta of Hegel’s ideas on recognition. Let me briefly outline the content of the essays! Heikki Ikäheimo poses the question Hegel’s Concept of Recognition— What is it? He aims to provide some illumination on what ‘recognition’ in Hegel means by analysing the chapter ‘Self-consciousness’ of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. He shows that even in this relatively short and concise text what exactly ‘recognition’ means, is a rather complicated matter, or, in other words, that in using the term in this text, Hegel had in mind several issues which, though they are related, are by no means reducible to just one thing. Ikäheimo sorts out some of the different issues at stake, as this might be useful both for figuring out what is going on in Hegel’s text and for speaking in a more differentiated manner about the plurality of phenomena that may be at issue when we talk about ‘recognition’ today. He underlines that it is only with adequate consciousness of the variety of phenomena at stake, that we can work towards a conceptual unification of recognition-theory as a paradigm. In his The Paradigm of Recognition and the Free Market, Paul Cobben argues that the separation between the philosophy of consciousness and



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recognition clashes with the basic intention of Hegel’s project. For Hegel, as Cobben interprets him, recognition has to be understood as the sublation of the fear of death. Philosophy of consciousness does not oppose recognition, but rather is an essential moment of recognition. According to Cobben, the recognition relation is an attempt to conceptualize an internal unity between the relation to nature and the relation to the other. As long as this is not understood properly, an adequate insight into the modern market remains impossible. Cobben aims to substantiate this claim by discussing the ideas of Honneth and Schmidt am Busch. Both relate the modern market to the so-called second form of social recognition. In this relation, the individuals are related as persons and respect one-another as persons. Since Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right, discusses the relation between persons at the level of ‘Abstract Right’, it is not surprising that they link the second form of recognition with ‘Abstract Right’. As a result, they make being-a-person a contingent quality of concrete individuals. For Cobben, this could be a consequence of their anti-metaphysical Hegel-reading. Cobben shows, however, that this point of departure implies a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel’s concept of recognition. Robert Brandom sketches a route From Autonomy to Recognition. For him, Kant’s deepest and most original idea, the axis around all of his thought revolves, is that what distinguishes judging and intentional doing from the activities of non-sapient creatures is not that they involve some special sort of mental processes, but that they, as knowers and agents, are responsible for their beliefs and actions in a distinctive way. Kant’s normative conception of intentionality moves to the center of the philosophical stage the question of how we should think about the force or bindingness of normative statuses such as commitments, authority and responsibility. Kant’s response is to develop and extend the Enlightenment commitment to the attitude-dependence of normative statuses in the form of his autonomy model, which serves also as a criterion demarcating the realm of the normative from that of the natural. According to Brandom, Hegel sees that the very distinction of force and content that called forth Kant’s new normative conception of judging and intending demands a relative independence of those two aspects that cannot be accommodated on the autonomy model, so long as that model is construed as applying to individual normative subjects conceived in isolation from one another—that is, apart from their normative attitudes towards one another. For Brandom, Hegel notices that the requisite dependence and independence claims can be reconciled if they are construed in terms of individually necessary conditions, rather than individually sufficient ones.

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And understanding the sort of normative dependence and independence in question as ways of talking about relations of responsibility and authority, Hegel offers a social model of normative statuses as instituted by reciprocal recognition, according to which each recognitive relation (recognizing and being recognized) combines aspects of authority over and responsibility to those who are recognized or who recognize. In The Metaphysics of Recognition: On Hegel’s Concept of SelfConsciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Arthur Kok argues that Hegel’s ‘Self-consciousness’ chapter in his Phenomenology of Spirit intends to offer an alternative to Kant’s idea of the transcendental ‘I’. Although Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness has epistemological and socio-theoretical implications, Kok focuses on Hegel’s metaphysical position which justifies these implications. Different from Kant, Hegel not only points out the fundamental distinction between self-consciousness and nature, but also their oneness. According to Kok, the difference between them exists within the subject itself. This position is not alien to Kant, but belongs to his practical philosophy. Hegel takes Kant’s practical view on the unity of reason, autonomous freedom, to be the intrinsic unity of the transcendental subject and the thing-in-itself which remain irreconcilable in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. This is expressed in Hegel’s formula ‘Substance = Subject’. Hegel does not deny, however, that the thing-in-itself has no otherness for the subject. For Hegel too, philosophical or metaphysical knowledge exists only in a fundamental relation to otherness. His concept of self-consciousness as a relation between self and other Hegel calls recognition; it replaces Kant’s idea of the transcendental ‘I’, integrating the most important element of the transcendental subject, namely to think the unity of reason. Christian Krijnen discusses Recognition—Future Hegelian Challenges for a Contemporary Philosophical Paradigm. He is of the opinion that the present attempt to return to Hegel exhibits a remarkable turning away from Hegel’s mature system, as outlined in his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften of 1830. Hegel’s philosophical project of developing self-knowledge of the idea in the form of a system through the three elements of pure thought, nature and spirit appears to his critics as unconvincing. By contrast, Krijnen argues that Hegel as a systematic philosopher confronts the contemporary paradigm of recognition with difficult and far-reaching questions concerning its own foundation, both methodologically and thematically. This general thesis is specified and corroborated by three considerations, resulting in three challenges to the contemporary paradigm of recognition: First, Krijnen shows that Hegel’s concept



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of philosophy as a science of the absolute idea and its non-metaphysical character should be taken much more into account. With this result, he, then, is able to make clear how and why Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit is not practical philosophy, but philosophy of the (absolute) idea. Against the background of the these two considerations, Krijnen, finally, points to some problems arising from a general system philosophical perspective in the attempt to elevate recognition to a philosophical paradigm, and highlights some significant features of embedding the paradigm of recognition within Hegel’s philosophy of the idea. In his essay on The Tragedy of Misrecognition—The Desire for a Catholic Shakespeare and Hegel’s Hamlet, Simon Critchley draws the attention to the theme of misrecognition. He starts with the fact that the philosophical task after Kant was how to achieve a reconciliation of the dualisms of nature and freedom or pure and practical reason. The view that is adumbrated in Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment and announced in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man and incipient romantic and idealist trends in the Germanophone 1790s, is that the artwork is the vehicle for such reconciliation. Critchley, then, elaborates on Schelling’s concept of art, especially on the highest exemplar of art, drama, and its highest manifestation, tragedy, and on the equilibrium between freedom and nature, theoretical and practical reason, it offers. He then discusses Schelling’s and Hegel’s views on tragedy, especially on Hamlet, finally offering an analysis of Hamlet’s multiple misrecognitions. For Critchley, as a quintessentially modern tragedy, Hamlet enacts the tragedy of modernity, allowing us no relief, release or satisfaction of desire: Hamlet as a mournful, melancholic and melodramatic farce—just like our world. Emiliano Acosta explores Recognition and Dissent: Schelling’s Conception of Recognition and its Contribution to Contemporary Political Philosophy. He wants to offer an alternative notion of recognition, which consists of conceiving recognition in terms of fundamental and foundational dissent. The thesis of his article is that such a concept of recognition makes visible problems in the common understanding of recognition in contemporary debates on ethics, politics and right, such as the one about the conditions for a fair dialogue between cultures and/or religions. In doing so, Acosta’s alternative to the widespread concept of recognition opens up the possibility for reconsidering the way in which the theoretic framework of contemporary debates usually is built up. Acosta bases his alternative comprehension of recognition on Schelling’s New Deduction of Natural Right (1795/96). In order to identify critical points of the common understanding of recognition, he analyzes two cases of the modern struggle for

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recognition and connects them with Kant’s and Fichte’s accounts of recognition. Finally, he reconstructs Schelling’s concept of recognition in order to show to what extent this account of recognition offers a solution. Donald Loose turns to the Kantian Version of Recognition: The BottomLine of Axel Honneth’s Project. Loose points to the Kantian moral foundation as a precondition for a correct understanding of the Hegelian analysis of recognition Honneth refers to. From a Kantian perspective, Loose firstly emphasizes the absolute priority of the objective constitutive rational ground of morality for a coherent understanding of personal integrity, juridical respect and social esteem, considered by Honneth as being equally valid claims of recognition. Secondly, by introducing the notions of morally qualified means and ends, Loose responds to the criticisms of the Kantian paradigm: its so-called moral indeterminacy and juridical externalism. Finally, Loose adds a critical horizon to factual ethical life and the belief that social spheres and practices are bearers of right. According to him, only the individual judging person from the position of the real conditions of the human—including evil—can be considered as the ultimate metaphysical principle of a metaphysics of morals (Metaphysik der Sitten). Kurt Walter Zeidler addresses the question Anerkennung—Ein Ausweg aus einer Verlegenheit? According to Zeidler, in the last decades recognition has developed into a new paradigm of philosophy because key concepts of modern philosophy like reason, humanity, history, culture, science, etc., turned out to become more and more questionable. A theory of recognition seems to offer a theoretical reimbursement for the mentioned key concepts and therefore promises a way out of the confusion of post-modern thought. Unfortunately, however, there is no such a ‘theory’ in sight, though in some respect Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit could be read as a ‘theory of recognition’. For Zeidler, the Phenomenology is a ‘theory of recognition’ only insofar as the ‘movement of recognition’ (Bewegung des Anerkennens) paves the way for logic by anticipating, rather than explaining, Hegel’s understanding of the ‘concept’ (Begriff ) as ‘mediation’ (Vermittlung). Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer elaborates on Recognition of Norms and Recognition of Persons: Practical Acknowledgment in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. According to him, one of Hegel’s leading questions in the Phenomenology of Spirit is this: What is the difference between the performative side of the actual “I” in speaking and acting right now and the logically much more complex notion of the “self ”? What is the difference between just being a speaker or actor and referring to oneself by use of a phrase



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like “I myself?” This leads to the following questions: What is the unity of the self? How do I determine my own future self by my actions? What self lies behind our everyday talk about personal identity? In StekelerWeithofer’s view, these are Hegel’s central questions for understanding the unity of the subject’s self-consciousness. In his analysis, he presents Hegel’s surprising answer to the first question: The unity of the self is desire altogether. Hegel thereby reminds us of the conceptual contrasts, and connections, between desire and life, between animal appetite and its satisfaction, between wishes and intentions. For Stekeler-Weithofer, any serious philosophy of action and knowledge has to explicate how the trans-subjective notion of objective fulfilment (of correctness or truth conditions) depends on, and stands in contrast to, the merely subjective notion of satisfaction (of desires). Kenneth Westphal, in Finitude, Rational Justification & Mutual Recognition, holds that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains (empirical knowledge and morals), is in a fundamental way socially and historically based. For him, this is consistent with realism about objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about basic moral principles. To judge fully rationally that one judges—in ways which provide rational justification of one’s judgment about any substantive matter—requires recognizing one’s inherent fallibility and consequently also recognizing our mutual interdependence for assessing our own and each others’ judgments and their justification. According to Westphal, this is the most fundamental significance and role of Hegel’s account of mutual recognition in rational justification. Westphal argues that very minimal premises regarding our cognitive finitude suffice to justify Hegel’s two key theses transcendentally. He argues that infallibilism is only suited to formal domains, whereas all non-formal domains require fallibilism about rational justification. He then aims to show that our own fallibility, limited knowledge and finite skills and abilities, together with the complexities inherent in forming informed, well-reasoned judgments, require us to seek out and seriously consider the critical assessment of any and all competent others. Hence, for Westphal, in non-formal, substantive domains rational justification is socially based. He reinforces these points by criticizing contemporary Cartesianism and shows that in non-formal domains rational justification is also in part a historical phenomenon. In his Inter-Personality and Wrong, Klaus Vieweg discusses Hegel’s theory of personality. According to Vieweg, this theory testifies to the continuing and enduring modernity of Hegel’s conception of ‘Objective

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Spirit’ as a philosophy of the practical, as a theory of action. For Vieweg, the cornerstone of the entire building of Hegel’s philosophy of freedom is erected here. The problems treated range from the concept of the person, personality and inter-personality, fundamental rights (Grundrechte), property, the formation of the natural as self-formation and formation of external nature, sustainability, appropriation, intellectual property to contract, wrong (Unrecht), ‘second coercion’ (zweiter Zwang) and punishment. Vieweg, then, concentrates his elaboration on the problem of wrong and Hegel’s concept of ‘second coercion’. According to him, Hegel’s recognition based philosophical theory of wrong (Unrecht) can be seen as a radically new theory, still highly relevant for us today. It derives its intellectual power and fascination from its logical grounding—for Vieweg the essential reason for its topicality. Sasa Josifovic discusses The Dialectic of Normative Attitudes in Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage. He holds that, among other interesting and relevant aspects, Hegel’s Chapter on ‘Self-consciousness’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit including ‘Lordship and Bondage’ represents an exposition and dialectic of two most elementary normative attitudes that determine the practice of self-cognition and self-constitution: independence and dependence. Josifovic shows that as a result of recognition, these two normative attitudes become part of the experience and “education of the natural consciousness to the standpoint of science”. In her article From Love to Recognition: Hegel’s Conception of Inter­ subjectivity in a Developmental-Historical Perspective, Erzsébet Rózsa aims to explicate the development through which Hegel’s theory of inter­ subjectivity achieves its systematically mature forms in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Encyclopedia, and Philosophy of Right. She makes clear, that in this process the concept of love plays a role of great significance. Love and recognition are forms of interpersonal and social relationship through which Hegel elaborates models of intersubjectivity. These models, however, demonstrate differences which express conceptual changes in Hegel’s philosophy. According to Rózsa, the basic shapes of intersubjectivity are not regarded as forms of self-consciousness in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit, as they are in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but as forms of morality and ethical life. She is of the opinion that in Jena love is interpreted very similarly to the way it is later in the encyclopedic Philosophy of Spirit and Philosophy of Right: as ethical love. This conception of love turns out to be the immediate basis for the implementation of recognition as the basic shape of ethical and social life.



introduction

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Jean-Christophe Merle explores the notion of Friendship in Hegel and its Interpretation in Theories of Recognition. According to Merle, Hegel is a major source for the thesis of the intersubjective formation of selfconsciousness considered as recognition. However, the theories of recognition that rely on Hegel seem to claim much more than this thesis. According to them, recognition should apply not only to the universal dignity of self-conscious human beings, but also to their particular character, i.e. to their differences. Using the example of love—and particularly the example of friendship—as it is treated by Hegel, Merle attempts to show that there are two different, and radically heterogeneous, processes of recognition, of which Hegel investigates only the first one: the interpersonal formation of self-consciousness or the constitution of the self. Merle, then, stresses that this process of recognition does not include the recognition of particular or individual differences, but even expressly excludes it. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to a number of people and institutions: To my co-organizer Prof. Dr. Paul Cobben for his congenial efforts during the whole process of bringing both the conference and the publication of its results to light. To the Department of Philosophy of the Tilburg University and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), as they provided the necessary financial means for having a conference in a convenient setting. To the secretary Annette van Gemerden for her help before and during the conference. To the publishing house Brill, especially Julia Berick and Judy Pereira, for the pleasant cooperation.

Chapter Two

Hegel’s concept of recognition—what is it? Heikki Ikäheimo Much has been written during the last 20 years or so about “recognition”, and some of the best minds in contemporary philosophy have made it a central term in their own theoretical projects. But is it justified to talk of a “new paradigm” centred around the idea of recognition, in social and political philosophy, or perhaps even more broadly? This of course depends on what one expects from a paradigm. If one expects a family of shared basic intuitions and approaches to an overlapping or interconnected set of themes and problems, then probably yes. If one expects conceptual unity, or at least an organized and well-documented debate about and contestation of the basic concepts of the suggested paradigm, a fair amount of work still remains to be done. Part of the problem with the latter issues maybe the consoling sense of unity that a common reference point in Hegel gives: in referring to Hegel one easily creates the rhetorical effect that one is talking about more or less the same thing as others referring to Hegel are. Yet, Hegel never defined ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) and as any teacher of a course on the topic knows it is not particularly easy to come up with a concise answer to what exactly Hegel meant by it.1 In what follows, I will try to provide some illumination on this question by means of an analysis of one important text by Hegel in which whatever it is that Hegel means by ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) plays a central role. I will show that even in this relatively short and concise text what ‘recognition’ means is a rather complicated matter, or in other words that in using the term in this text Hegel had in mind several issues which, though they are related, are by no means reducible to just one thing. Eventually, what I hope to achieve in this article is to sort out at least some of the different 1 Robert Williams (1997, 1) suggests that recognition is not a “thematic” concept in Hegel which he would explicate anywhere, but rather an “operative” concept by means of which Hegel explicates other concepts. But even this may be too optimistic, as it still makes it sound as if there is one concept that the term ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) refers to in Hegel. Whether there is, is something I wish to clarify in this article.

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issues at stake, with the hope that this will turn out useful both for figuring out what really is going on in Hegel’s text and for trying to speak in a more consciously differentiated manner about the plurality of phenomena that may be at issue when we talk about ‘recognition’ today. It is only with adequate consciousness of the variety of phenomena at stake that we can inquire into their connections and thus work our way towards a conceptual unification of recognition-theory as a paradigm. 1. Recognition in Philosophy of Subjective Spirit The text that I have in mind is the chapter ‘Self-consciousness’ in Hegel’s Berlin Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Why choose this text rather than the much more famous Self-consciousness chapter in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit? If one is to choose between these two texts in particular for the purpose of reconstructing what recognition in Hegel’s view does and what it is, there are several reasons to favour the Encyclopaedia version. First of all, the Encyclopaedia is free from a certain complication that very easily leads astray readings of the Phenomenology. This is the fact that in the Phenomenology of Spirit it is often difficult to determine whether something that Hegel writes is meant as a neutral description of the relevant phenomena themselves, or rather serves the very particular goal and the very particular method of the book as an introduction to his philosophical system. In contrast, such complications are absent in the Encyclopaedia which is not an introduction to the system, but simply the system itself. Another significant difference is that whereas the paragraphs explicitly discussing recognition in Phenomenology of Spirit end with a description of the unequal relationship of the master and the bondsman—a fact that has lead numerous readers and authors thinking that Hegel’s concept of recognition is somehow essentially about domination—the Encyclopaedia-version also describes (albeit very briefly) a state of reciprocal recognition in which domination by one party has been overcome. For sure, it is nowadays widely acknowledged that the story of recognition in Phenomenology of Spirit continues far beyond the chapter explicitly dedicated to it.2 But the fact still remains that if one is to focus just on the chapter on

2 See, for example, Canivez 2011.



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Self-consciousness—which at least for pedagogical purposes often makes good sense—the Encyclopaedia-version presents the whole story, whereas the Phenomenology of Spirit-version does not.3 A third advantage of the Encyclopaedia-version is that it is situated in Hegel’s mature philosophical system which presents his thinking in its most elaborated and worked through form, and includes important elements that are completely missing in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit, yet are important for understanding the full significance of recognition for Hegel. Most importantly, these include the Philosophy of Nature with its concluding discussion of the animal life-form, and the section on Anthropology in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (both of which in the Encyclopaedia precede the discussion on recognition), as well as the whole of Philosophy of Objective Spirit which is thematically closely connected to Subjective Spirit. But didn’t recognition lose much or most of its earlier importance for Hegel in the Encyclopaedia, and isn’t it therefore pointless to focus on any part of that text in discussing “Hegel’s concept of recognition”? As widely spread as this view once was, as far as I can see it was never based on very convincing scholarship, and it has been largely refuted by now.4 What I will say in this paper will hopefully also contribute a little more to its refutation. All in all, there are several good reasons to focus on the Self-consciousnesschapter of the Encyclopaedia in particular as a first point of contact with “Hegel’s concept of recognition”. 2. Spirit, Freedom and Recognition To get started with the theme of recognition in the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (or in the Philosophy of Spirit in general) one needs to grasp its connections to the concepts or themes of spirit and freedom. In the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel famously characterizes

3 Another nowadays well-known fact about the chapter in Phenomenology of Spirit in question is that Hegel does in fact first presents in it the structure of mutual recognition, though on a very abstract conceptual level (Hegel 1975, §§ 179–184), after which he then goes on to illustrate the dialectic of recognition with the story of the lord and bondsman which is an account of one-sided and thus not yet fully unfolded recognition. Hence on a certain abstract level also the chapter in Phenomenology of Spirit does of course also present “the whole story”. 4 See Williams 1997, Ikäheimo 2004, Honneth 2010.

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‘spirit’ as the “I that is we, and the we that is I”, or as “the unity of opposite self-consciousnesses”.5 The unity of opposite self-consciousnesses is basically the state or structure of mutual recognition, and thus we can say that in the Phenomenology of Spirit, or at least at this point in the book, Hegel presents the structure of mutual recognition as the basic structure of spirit—whatever that means more exactly. Is something like this true of recognition and spirit in the Berlin Encyclopaedia as well? Yes and no. “No” in the sense that in the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Spirit recognition is a subordinated principle, or a concrete instantiation of more general principles, and thus saying that the structure of mutual recognition is the basic structure of spirit in the Encyclopaedia would be somewhat misleading. But “yes” in the sense that recognition, at least in some of its modifications, is in the Encyclopaedia a necessary constitutive element of “spirit”, or in other words of a life-form that is not merely natural or animal, but a form of life of rational beings or persons. And “yes” also in the sense that mutual recognition is something whereby the more general principles are or can be realized to the maximum degree. Which principles do I mean? Let us take a brief look at how Hegel characterizes the concept of spirit in the Encyclopaedia. In the published version of the Encyclopaedia, at the beginning of Philosophy of Spirit (the final 1830 edition) Hegel discusses the “concept of spirit” and says that the “essence of spirit is [. . .] freedom [. . .] [or] absolute negativity”.6 In the 1827/8-lectures on Philosophy of (Subjective) Spirit Hegel explains this at some length: “the human being is natural, [yet] [. . .] not [. . .] merely natural, but also [. . .] spiritual”.7 Further, “[we] ourselves” “are spirit”, meaning that though we humans are both natural and spiritual (or both animals and persons), spirituality (or personhood) is our essence. Since our essence is spirit and spirit’s essence is freedom, our essence is thus to be free and this is also our “vocation (Bestimmung)”.8 By calling freedom our vocation Hegel is saying that it is something that we both have an inbuilt tendency or drive (Trieb)9 to realize and that it is our task to realize.10 5 Hegel 1975, § 177. 6 E3, § 382. 7 EW, 3. 8 EW, 6–7. 9 ‘Drive’ (Trieb) is Hegel’s general term for the teleological urge of the human life-form. He talks of the drive of spirit to cognize objectivity (HPSS, § 416 Addition), the drive of selfconsciousness to actualise what it is implicitly (ibid., § 425), the drive to knowledge (ibid., § 443 Add.), the drive to the good and the true (Hegel, 1991, § 225), and so on. 10 EW, 4–5.



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As in the published version, also in the lectures Hegel identifies freedom, as the essence of spirit and thus as our essence, with “absolute negativity” or “negation of negation”.11 He explains that freedom in the sense in question is not abstract or formal freedom which is the (impossibility of ) freedom from determination by otherness, but rather what he calls “concrete freedom”,12 or in other words being “at home with oneself ” in “what limits one”.13 Concrete freedom has the structure of absolute negation or negation of negation, or as Hegel also says “double negation”,14 where being limited or determined by some otherness is the first negation, and overcoming the externality, alienness or hostility of that by which one is limited or determined is the second negation completing absolute negation, and thus bringing about concrete freedom with regard to the otherness in question. The first one of the principles that I mentioned is exactly this principle of absolute negation or of concrete freedom, or, which is the same, the principle of being with oneself in otherness. This principle appears prominently in Hegel’s Logic, especially at the beginning of the Logic of Concept, as well as in his Philosophy of nature in which the more a natural phenomenon instantiates the principle the ‘free’er’ it is. Animal life, as the highest point of nature, exhibits internal “concrete freedom” in that an animal’s every organ affects or determines its every other organ (the first negation), yet in such a way that they all contribute to making possible each other’s existence and functioning (the second negation). An animal also exhibits some, though very minimal, degree of concrete freedom with regard to the external world, in that it can treat parts of it as its own environment (Umwelt) whereby it maintains its life.15 However, whereas nature can realize the principle of absolute negation or concrete freedom only to a very limited degree, the realm of spirit or the human realm realizes it maximally. The reason for this is that humans are conscious beings, equipped with Bewusstsein. In humans as conscious beings the principle of absolute negation or “being with oneself in otherness” takes the more concrete form of “conscious-being [bewusst-Sein]

11  EW, 140. 12 EW, 14. 13 “Concrete freedom means that in whatever determines, limits or negates me, I nevertheless remain at home with myself, and annihilate the other[ness].—Freedom constitutes the essential determination of spirit, and we can say that freedom is the concept of spirit.” (EW, 14) 14 Hegel 2010, 531. 15 E2, §§ 350–366.

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with oneself in otherness” or “consciousness of oneself in otherness”. Conscious-being with, or consciousness of, oneself in otherness is the second one of the principles that I mentioned. It is by being conscious of themselves in otherness that humans are spiritual beings and thus concretely free to a much larger extent than any merely natural beings are. (It should be added that since humans are animals too, the more limited ways in which animals instantiate concrete freedom partly also apply to humans.) The principle of “conscious-being with, or consciousness of, oneself in otherness” has various ways of realization. On the most general revel, there are theoretical (or epistemic) and practical ways or aspects of its realization. All epistemic activities involve, first, conceiving something as an external object and thus being determined, as a subject, by it. This is the first negation. Secondly, they involve, when successful, gaining knowledge or understanding of what is posited as object, and thus overcoming its foreignness. This is the second negation. In cognizing or understanding structures of reality (whether natural or spiritual) by means of concepts with which we can also operate in thought, we are able to “find ourselves”—or in other words our own thoughts or structures of thinking—in reality, be thereby concretely free in relation to reality, and thus feel at home in the world. Practical activities can similarly be ways of domesticating the world, by being ways of externalizing ourselves, our interests and thoughts in reality, and thereby making the world whereby we are necessarily determined a home that reflects ourselves or enables us to be “conscious of or ourselves” in it. It is by means of such practical activities that we leave external nature or a merely animal environment (partly) behind, and start (partly) dwelling in a world of ‘objective spirit’ of our own making. (I say “partly” because humans are also animals and thus can never leave nature completely behind.) Almost needless to say, the epistemic and practical dimensions of spirit’s, i.e. humanity’s coming to know itself in reality, or making it a place in which humans can be or feel “at home” are in Hegel’s thinking in many ways interrelated. Among all the ways in which humans can be conscious of or “find” themselves in otherness and thus be concretely free with what determines them, on Hegel’s account there is something very special about the way in which they can find themselves in one another. Importantly, this particular instantiation of the second principle is closely connected to how humans leave their internal nature or merely animal subjectivity (again partly) behind by developing embodied psychological structures that make them beings with “subjective spirit”. In contemporary philosophical



hegel’s concept of recognition—what is it?

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language we can say that on Hegel’s account finding ourselves in each other is closely connected to how we become and are psychological persons. What I am talking about now is the structure or principle of (mutual) recognition, which is the third and last one of the principles I mentioned. But what exactly is recognition according to the passage dedicated to the theme in the Encyclopaedia—the Self-consciousness chapter? 3. Recognition—Preliminary Distinctions To start clarifying things, let me first thematize six distinctions that are necessary for any attempt to answer the question just posed in a detailed way.16 These distinctions (except the sixth one) apply to discourses on recognition in general, but in this paper I will only apply them to a closer analysis of what is going on in the Self-consciousness chapter. (1) First, there is the distinction between vertical and horizontal forms of recognition, familiar already from Ludwig Siep’s Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie.17 ‘Horizontal recognition’ refers to recognition between individuals (and in principle groups) and it is what the expression ‘mutual recognition’ primarily refers to. ‘Vertical recognition’, on the other hand, at least as it applies to the text in question, refers to recognition between individuals on the one hand and social institutions or an authority upholding them on the other hand (whether this authority is a tyrant, a separate ruling class, or the community of individuals as a whole). (2) Secondly, ‘horizontal’ recognition comes in two importantly different variants which I will call purely intersubjective recognition and institutionally mediated (horizontal) recognition respectively. Institutionally mediated recognition is recognition of a subject as a bearer of institutional roles made up of rights and duties (or ‘deontic powers’). In contrast, purely intersubjective recognition is recognition of a subject which abstracts from or bares no internal or conceptual relation to his or her institutional roles, relating to the recognizee simply as a bearer of a certain kind of

16 A word of caution: distinguishing these various issues does not mean that they are unrelated or merely externally related. One is only able to understand how they are related by first distinguishing them. There is no proper synthesis without a proper analysis (and the other way around). 17 Siep 1979.

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psychological constitution. To keep these two phenomena that are easily confused with each other distinct, I will mark the institutionally mediated form of horizontal recognition with an asterisk (‘recognition*’). (3) Thirdly, and closely related to the previous two distinctions, we need to distinguish between, on the one hand, social norms and normsystems that are not institutionalized, and, on the other hand, institutionalized norm-systems or institutions proper. Whereas one can at least imagine non-institutional norms and systems of norms emerging in the interaction of an intersubjective dyad and upheld and administered by its members alone, institutions proper are norms-systems that are relatively independent of any single subject or intersubjective pair of subjects. In other words, institutions proper form a relatively independent ‘third instance’ authorized and administered not only (and in the extreme case only very minimally) by this or that particular individual or intersubjective dyad whose life they govern, but also (and in the extreme case almost exclusively) by some third person or persons.18 The concept of vertical recognition mentioned above applies only (or at least paradigmatically) when there is a ‘third’ relatively independent instance of social institutions and an authority upholding them. Similarly, the concept of institutionally mediated horizontal recognition of individuals as bearers of institutional roles applies only (or at least paradigmatically) when institutions and thus institutional roles are at place. (4.) Fourthly, what I have just called recognition in the purely intersubjective sense has two dimensions: a deontological and an axiological one. In short, whereas the deontological dimension of purely intersubjective recognition concerns issues such as norms, authority, obedience and respect, the axiological dimension concerns issues such as values, concern, care and love. (5.) Fifthly, both the purely intersubjective and the institutionally mediated forms of horizontal recognition have, on the one hand, modes that are in a certain sense not genuinely interpersonal or personifying, and, on the other hand, modes that are interpersonal or personifying. The notinterpersonal mode of institutionally mediated horizontal recognition is recognizing someone as a bearer of an institutional role or status that is not that of a person (but, say, of a slave), whereas the interpersonal

18 For example Robert Brandom’s talk in Brandom 2009, p. 70 of “reciprocal recognition” “instituting” “normative statuses” seems ambivalent between the purely intersubjective and the genuinely institutional norms.



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mode of recognition in this sense is recognizing someone as a bearer of the ‘institutional status of a person’, or of ‘person-making’ deontic powers such as the right to life or ownership of oneself. The not-personifying or not genuinely interpersonal mode of purely intersubjective horizontal recognition is recognizing someone in a way that does not quite attribute her the intersubjective significance of a person in the recognizer’s eyes (but, say, that of someone useful for one’s own purposes), whereas intersubjective recognition in the genuinely interpersonal or personifying sense involves precisely seeing the other in light of what we can call ‘person-making intersubjective significance’.19 (6.) There is one more distinction to make, a distinction that does not directly concern the meaning of the term ‘recognition’, but rather the very special architectonics or thematic structure of the text in question. Namely, the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (and broadly speaking the Realphilosophien as a whole) can, in principle, be read from two complementary perspectives or “directions”. From what we can call the bottom-up-perspective, the consecutive sub-chapters of the text describe consecutive stages in a developmental process so that real living entities can realize or instantiate a particular stage without realizing or instantiating the later more developed ones. In contrast, from the top-down-perspective the consecutive sub-chapters each describe internally connected moments of the fully developed or cultivated whole which is the fully ‘spiritual’ or free human person. Hegel himself seems to have had had both directions or perspectives in mind in writing the text. This has consequences not only but also for attempts to reconstruct the theme of recognition in it. 4. The Self-consciousness Chapter—A Brief Introduction Before analyzing the Self-consciousness chapter with the help of these distinctions, let me first briefly and with broad stokes outline the structure and main events of the chapter. I will do this only from the bottom-upperspective, understanding each sub-chapter discussing a distinct developmental stage or sequence. This ‘direction’ of reading fits the illustrative

19 Though they are in many ways (partly internally) related, being a person in institutional status, being a person in intersubjective significance, and being a psychological person are three different issues. For some of the details, Ikäheimo 2007.

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story of the master and slave or bondsman better and allows hence a more text-immanent reading of the text as it stands.20 4.1 The Primitive Subject of ‘Desire’ The chapter consists of a short introduction (§§ 424–425), and three sub-chapters: ‘Desire’ (Die Begierde) (§§ 426–429), ‘Recognitive selfconsciousness’ (Das anerkennende Selbstbewusstsein) (§§ 430–435), and ‘General self-consciousness’ (Das Allgemeine Selbstbewusstsein). In the first sub-chapter ‘Desire’ Hegel describes a primitive mode of practical intentionality or object-relation solely determined by the subject’s immediately given and felt physiological needs and by the desire for whatever objects its instincts point out as promising immediate satisfaction. Objects thus appear for the desiring subject solely in light of significances determined by its immediate needs and instincts (i.e. as something like ‘desirable’, ‘avoidable’ and so forth).21 Although the subject experiences the objects of its desire as distinct from its own body, their significance for the subject is in this sense thoroughly determined by the its own nature—something that Hegel expresses by saying that as independent objects they are determined as “a nullity” (ein Nichtiges).22 In terms of the principle of consciousness of oneself in otherness, desire hence instantiates consciousness of oneself in the object (the second negation or moment of “unity”), yet it does not instantiate a fully unfolded sense of otherness of the object (the first negation or moment of “difference”).23 One could say, to caricature a bit, that the subject is hence conscious only of itself in the object. 4.2 Cultivation Through a “Process of Recognition” The transition to the next sub-chapter ‘Recognitive self-consciousness’ takes place by the introduction of a new object, namely another sub­ ject that resists its reduction to the significances in light of which the 20 One should keep in mind that the master and slave or bondsman are only illustration, yet they are so central to the text that completely abstracting from them is not possible for an interpretation that tries to make sense what Hegel actually writes in the text. 21  Robert Brandom (2011) calls these “erotic significances”, Robert Pippin (2011) “orectic significances”. 22 E3, § 426. 23 In Hegel’s highly unconventional terminology one can also say that desire instantiates too much self-consciousness and not enough consciousness. One textual question that I cannot discuss here is the connection of Hegel’s description of ‘desire’ in the Selfconsciousness-chapter to his description of the animal world-relation in his Philosophy of Nature. See Ikäheimo 2011.



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primitive desiring subject sees the world. Hegel writes that whereas the object of desire is “without a self ” and therefore “can offer no resistance”24 to its reduction in the subject’s perspective to significances determined by immediate needs, the other subject is a “free object”25 that does resist such reduction. Hegel is hence suggesting that the other subject is, in a way, the paradigmatic object that first reveals the world for the first subject as genuinely independent of it. It is in this sub-chapter that we meet the famous figures of the ‘master’ and ‘bondsman’ or ‘slave’ (Hegel uses both terms). For both subjects the other subject is a problem exactly because of its resistance to being seen and related to in light of significances determined by one’s immediate needs. Whereas the intentional relation to objects of desire were characterized by unity without enough difference (or the second negation without the first), the encounter with the other subject is characterized by difference without enough unity (the first negation without the second). Neither subject can be conscious of itself in the other. The development or “process of recognition” described in this sub-chapter is basically a progress in the ways in and the extent to which subjects are able to relate to each other so that they are both genuinely independent with regard to each other and also conscious of themselves in the other in the more exact sense of affirmed by the other’s intentionality. The telos of this development is mutual consciousness of oneself in a free other, and thus a “concretely free” relationship. The first and most primitive attempt to realize freedom with regard to the other subjects is however still very far from this telos: it is a mutual attempt to completely eliminate the otherness or unyieldingness of the other, and thus a “struggle” or “fight”.26 To the extent that both really are unyielding, it is a struggle about “life and death” (ibidem). And yet, if a social relation is to ensue at all both subjects have to stay alive. The simplest solution to the problem in which both subjects stay alive and form a social relation is one subject yielding to the perspective or will of the other. The one who yields becomes thereby the slave or bondsman, making the unyielding other a master. The master is now conscious of itself affirmed by the obeying slave in that he is “recognized by the acquiescent slave”.27 The slave, on the other hand, is at first not recognized by the 24 E3, § 427. 25 E3, § 429. 26 E3, § 432. 27 E3, § 433.

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master and thus cannot be conscious of himself affirmed by the latter. As to the cultivation of subjectivities, the slave has left behind a mere desiredetermined practical orientation already by preferring “preservation of its life” over immediate satisfaction of desire, whereas the master apparently won precisely because he was less worried about his life. However, the master-slave-relationship cultivates also the subjectivity of the master, forcing him too to leave behind immediate desire-orientation. As Hegel puts it, “the means of mastery, the bondsman, has [. . .] to be kept alive”, and this creates a “community of need and concern for its satisfaction”. By having to care for the life of another subject, namely the bondsman, even the master cannot hold on to its/his immediate desireorientation characterized by “crude destruction of the immediate object”. Instead, what now arises is, as Hegel puts it, “acquisition, conservation and formation” of objects, a “provision [Vorsorge] that takes the future into account and secures it”.28 In only a few dense sentences Hegel describes the coming about of a wholly new practical orientation concerned not only for immediate satisfaction, but for life in general and thus future well-being; and not only of one’s own life, but also that of another. Clearly it is the slave who “acquires, conserves and forms”29 objects, or in other words labours to concretely provide for the future of both his master and himself. Yet, also the master is concerned for the future well-being of both and thus develops a psychological constitution radically different from that of a primitive solipsistic desiring subject. As for the slave, labouring for the master has further cultivating effects on his subjectivity or psychological structure: the slave “works off the singularity of his will in the service of the master [. . .] and sublates the inner immediacy of desire”.30 This is best understood as a description of the bondsman’s new future-oriented concern, one that sacrifices immediate satisfaction for future well-being, becoming habitualized as his “second nature”.31

28 “Since the means of mastery, the servant, has also to be kept alive, one aspect of this relationship consists of need and concern for its satisfaction. Crude destruction of the immediate object is therefore replaced by the acquisition, conservation and formation of it, and the object is treated as the mediating factor within which the two extremes of independence and dependence unite themselves. The form of universality in the satisfying of need is a perpetuating means, a provision which takes the future into account and secures it.” (§ 434) 29 Ibidem. 30 E3, § 435. 31  Hegel discusses habitualization as an important moment of subjective spirit, or psychological personhood, towards the end of Anthropology (E3, §§ 409–410).



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All in all, whereas the story of the master and bondsman begins with a mutual attempt to completely annihilate the challenge of the other, it gradually develops into a situation in which both relate to the other as distinct from oneself, yet can be conscious of oneself in the other, or in other words affirmed by the other’s consciousness or intentionality. The master can see the slave “recognizing” him or affirming his will in that the slave obeys him, and the slave can see the master, to some extent at least, “recognizing” him by affirming his interest for self-preservation and well-being by being concerned about it. (As we shall see below, there is in fact more to say about recognition between the master and bondsman.) Generally speaking this sub-chapter is hence simultaneously an illustration of development of concrete freedom in intersubjective relations, and of the cultivation of subjects from primitive animality to psychological personhood. 4.3 The Concretely Free Relationship of Mutual Recognition Hegel names the state that is the end of the “process or recognition” “general self-consciousness”. In the third and final sub-chapter of ‘Selfconsciousness’ with this term as its title, Hegel briefly describes the state in question in terms of the concept of concrete freedom as knowing of oneself in an independent other, and presents, very briefly, some thoughts about its concrete realizations. He writes: General self-consciousness is the affirmative knowing of one’s self in the other self. Each self has absolute independence [. . .], but on account of the negation of its immediacy or desire does not differentiate itself from the other. Each [. . .] knows itself to be recognized by its free counterpart, and knows this insofar as it recognizes the other and knows it to be free.32

Both (or all) subjects thus now “know” or are conscious of themselves in the other in the sense of being affirmed by the other’s recognition. Both are for each other “absolutely independent”, neither trying to subsume the other under one’s egocentric perspective (the first negation or moment of difference); yet, somehow neither of them “differentiates” herself from the other (the second negation or moment of unity). Hegel says that this is so due to the “negation” or overcoming of “desire”, but the “negation” in question must be understood not merely as the absence of the ­primitive orientation by immediate desire, but more positively as including the new 32 E3, § 436.

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form of subjective orientation in which recognition of the other has a central role. The unity that Hegel talks about comes about precisely through recognition, which involves on the one hand adopting the other’s concern for his own well-being as one’s own concern (which is what Hegel explained the master doing), and on the other hand taking the other’s will as authoritative on one (which is what Hegel explained the bondsman doing). It is through these ‘recognitive’ ways of relating to the other that the recognizer’s perspective adopts and thus affirms elements of the recognizee’s perspective, and when the recognizee is conscious of this, she “knows” herself “affirmatively” in the recognizer. Hegel goes on to say that “general self-consciousness” as mutual knowing of oneself in a free other is the “substance” of what makes modes of social life such as “the family, the fatherland, the state” as well “virtues, love, friendship, valour, honor, fame” truly “spiritual”.33 This seems like a rather motley list of phenomena, and Hegel is clearly only making a very general statement according to which all of these are instantiations of “spirit” and thus concrete freedom in the sense of mutual knowing of oneself recognized by free others.34 But why is it that one can only know oneself recognized by a free other “insofar as one recognizes the other”? The answer lies in the word “free”: recognizing the other (my recognizer) is what makes her concretely free since it is what allows her be conscious of herself in me. Thus only a recognizer who is recognized by me is concretely free in her relationship to me. 5. What is ‘Recognition’ in the Self-consciousness Chapter? How do the distinctions that I made in section 3 apply to the Selfconsciousness chapter, and what do they tell us about the concept or concepts of recognition operative in this text? 1) Starting with the distinction between the vertical and horizontal senses of recognition, Hegel himself does not articulate this distinction at all, and there is in fact an amount of ambivalence in the text as to whether 33 Ibidem. 34 In lecture notes from 1825 Hegel says “[t]he forms, which are those of feeling, inclination, benevolence, love, friendship do not concern us” (GK, 347). Hegel clearly speaks here in a rather high level of conceptual abstraction, focusing only on the structure of concrete freedom as knowing oneself in a free other which he considers as the “substance” of all these more concrete phenomena.



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the illustrative figures of the master and the slave or bondsman are to be read as being ‘horizontally’ or ‘vertically’ related. On the one hand, most of the text gives the impression that the master-bondsman-relationship is an illustration of a horizontal relationship between two individuals forming an intersubjective dyad. It is the primitive dyad of two desiring subjects encountering each other, and at the next step a struggle between two subjects on a more or less equal ‘horizontal’ footing, that at the beginning of the story leads to the relationship of a master and a slave or bondsman. Also, as I just indicated, Hegel conceives of the end of the development in the sub-chapter ‘General self-consciousness’ in what appears to be horizontal terms. Yet, on the other hand, in § 433 as well as in the lectures Hegel in fact talks about the empirical beginning of states though domination and clearly interprets the figure of the master as a ruler, king or tyrant ruling and thus ‘standing above’ a plurality of other people. In the lectures he talks of the tyrant Pisistratus, who imposed the laws of Solon on the Athenians, and clearly associates the figure of the ‘master’ with Pisistratus and that of the ‘slave’ or ‘bondsman’ with the plurality of the Athenians.35 What Hegel does not do at this point is to thematize the horizontal relations between individuals—or as he writes “the shared life of men” (Zusammenleben der Menschen, E3, § 433)—subjected to the law or authority, but the individuals are clearly to be thought of as vertically related to the “master” or tyrant, who is an external authority ruling but not ruled by them.36 Put in another way, whereas Hegel mostly seems to be thinking of the master-bondsman-relation as a dyadic relationship not involving any ‘third’ element, in § 433 and here and there in the lectures he in fact operates with a triadic model that involves both horizontal relations between individuals and vertical relations between them on the one hand and a ruler or “master” on the other. Hegel simply leaves the details of the triadic model for the reader to think through. It seems at first quite surprising that Hegel conceives of universal self-consciousness in horizontal terms only, leaving out any reference to vertical recognition even in mentioning “the state”. What about vertical 35 See E3, § 435Z.; EW, 173; GK, 345. 36 E3, § 433: “It is through the appearance of this struggle for recognition and submission to a master that states have been initiated out of the social life of men.” E3, § 435Z.: “After Solon had given the Athenians democratically free laws for example, Pisistratus necessarily assumed power by which he forced the Athenians to obey them. It was only when this obedience had taken root that the rule of the Pisistratids became superfluous.”

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recognition between the state and its citizens? This does not have to signal oversight on his part however for reasons that I will return to in discussing the next distinction. 2) Hegel’s text is also ambiguous between purely intersubjective and the institutionally mediated senses of horizontal recognition. To understand the relationship described in ‘Recognitive self-consciousness’ as a purely intersubjective one is to understand the ‘master’ and the ‘bondsman’ as intersubjective roles determined solely by the way in which the individuals in question regard each other: I regard you as my master and myself as your bondsman, you regard me as your bondsman and yourself as my master, and this alone is what makes you the master and me the bondsman. Recognition or lack of it in the purely intersubjective sense is here the essential element in the ways in which we regard each other, and thereby constitutive of mastery or bondage as relational or intersubjective roles. In contrast, to understand the master-bondsman-relationship as an institutionally mediated (or ‘institutional’) relationship means that one understands the ‘master’ and the ‘bondsman’ as roles, positions or statuses in an institutional system and thereby as relatively independent of the individuals in those positions and how they regard each other. For sure, they need to recognize* each other as bearers of their institutional or institutionally mediated statuses or positions, or as bearers of the deontic powers to go with them. Without such recognition* the institution of mastery and slavery would not be in power in their relationship. Yet, their recognition* alone is not enough for the institution to exist and thus for them to occupy the institutional roles in question. Since much of what Hegel says in the Self-consciousness chapter implies a strictly horizontal or dyadic model that makes no reference to a ‘third’ institutional instance, it seems to a large extent right to reconstruct the text in the purely intersubjective register. What this means, however, is that one must understand the expressions ‘master’ and ‘slave’ or ‘bondsman’ fairly metaphorically, since what we usually mean by them is not an isolated intersubjective dyad but individuals who occupy positions determined by the overall normative or institutional structure of their society. Slavery in a non-metaphorical sense in the real world is a social institution. This ambivalence between the purely intersubjective and the institutional senses of horizontal recognition also applies to Hegel’s short depiction of ‘General self-consciousness’ or the state of mutual recognition. One wonders what exactly Hegel had in mind with his rather haphazard list of phenomena for which “general self-consciousness” forms the “substance”



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of what makes them “spiritual” and thus instantiations of concrete freedom. These were, to repeat, “the family, the native country, the state, but also [. . .] all virtues, [. . .] love, friendship, valour, honour, [and] fame”. It seems largely right to say that the roles or positions of at least friends or people who love each other are essentially intersubjective ones and that the relevant sense of recognition in these relationships is the intersubjective one.37 In contrast, the roles and relationships that constitute the state of course also include institutional roles and relationships. Thus, if Hegel’s point is, as it seems to be, to say that horizontal recognition is the substance of what makes the state a ‘spiritual’ or in other words concretely free community, it is difficult to believe that he would not also be thinking of institutionally mediated horizontal recognition, or in other words recognition between citizens as occupiers of the various social positions comprising of the ideal society or state articulated in his Philosophy of Objective Spirit. There is however at least one candidate reason for why Hegel might want to emphasize purely intersubjective horizontal recognition especially. Namely, it is recognition in this sense that realizes the principle of self-consciousness in other subjects to the maximum degree in that it, as Hegel puts it, “unites humans internally” (E3, § 431Z). This is so because in purely intersubjective recognition the intentionality or subjective perspective of the recognizer adopts elements of the recognizee’s intentionality or subjective perspective into itself and thus makes the recognizer partly see the world from the recognizer’s perspective. This is not so with institutionally mediated recognition* where the recognizer* merely responds to the recognizee’s* institutional status without necessarily responding in any particular way to how the recognizee* sees the world as an individual. I will return to this theme shortly, in discussing how the fifth distinction between the non-personifying and personifying modes of intersubjective and institutionally mediated horizontal recognition applies to the text. It is more exactly the personifying mode of purely intersubjective horizontal recognition that to the maximum degree unites humans internally (without thereby compromising their freedom). All these considerations aside, it seems nevertheless unreasonable to assume that Hegel would not also have had in mind horizontal institutionally

37 Though ‘lovers’ and ‘friends’ can also stand in institutional relations with each other, this is not what constitutes them as each other’s lovers and friends. Rather it is their (relevant kind of ) intersubjective recognition of each other that does.

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mediated recognition* in thinking of “the state”. Even if purely intersubjective recognition might be the ideal instantiation of concrete freedom, rights and therefore mutual recognition* between citizens as rights-bearers are indeed an essential element of the state. Thinking of universal selfconsciousness in terms of recognition* also provides an explanation for why Hegel can forfeit in this context an explicit mention of vertical recognition, even if vertical recognition between the citizens and the state clearly is essential to social life in a state. Namely, the citizens’ vertical ‘upwards’ recognition of the state hardly is anything else than their acknowledgement or acceptance of its laws and norms, and the institutions that these constitute, as valid or legitimate. And their acknowledgement or acceptance of these laws, norms and institutions commits them to recognizing* each other as bearers of the rights and duties that the laws and institutions of the state attribute to them (or in other words that they have due to the state’s vertical ‘downwards’ recognition of them). Thus, in talking explicitly about horizontal recognition* between citizens as bearers or rights and duties one is in fact implicitly also talking about vertical recognition of and by the state. This vertical recognition is present in the paragraph in ‘universal self-consciousness’ by implication. (3) As to the third distinction between non-institutional norms and institutionalized norms or institutions proper, the problem with the text is that Hegel’s only explicit reference to norms anywhere in the Self-consciousnesschapter, as well as in the lectures, is in the context of the discussion of Solon, Pisistratus and the Athenians and thus refers to institutionalized norms or “laws” (Gesetz). Yet such norms do not fit the dyadic or purely intersubjective model (also) at work in Hegel’s text, as it simply does not and cannot involve any reference to an institutional ‘third’ instance. On the dyadic model one can only think of norms arising and administered by the subjects themselves forming the intersubjective dyad. If one wants to reconstruct Hegel’s account of recognition in the lordbondsman-story (solely or mainly) in the deontological register of norms, authority, and of recognition as either (purely intersubjective) attribution of authority on norms, or as (institutionally mediated) response to deontic statuses, it is important to be aware of this difference between the dyadic and triadic models and thus between an intersubjective and an institutional concept of social norms. 4) This brings us to the fourth distinction between what I have called the axiological and the deontological dimension of horizontal intersubjective recognition. On a rational reconstruction which is both sensitive to Hegel’s text and conceptually adequate for grasping the overall



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phenomenon discussed in it, recognition seems to have two dimensions: on the one hand some sort of concern for the life or well-being of the other, and on the other hand taking the other as having or sharing authority with oneself on the norms whereby interaction and life in common is organized and regulated. In ‘Recognitive self-consciousness’ Hegel first talks of the axiological dimension, emphasizing the master’s need to “keep the bondsman alive”, implying that the master has to develop a concern for the bondsman’s well-being.38 He talks of the deontological dimension in discussing the bondsman’s service for and thus obedience of the master.39 The impression that the text gives is hence that only the master has to develop recognition for the bondsman in the axiological register of concern for his well-being, whereas only the bondsman has to develop recognition for the master in the deontological register of acknowledgement of his authority. But in fact it is clear on reflection, on the one hand, that the bondsman too has to develop a concern for the master’s well-being. After all, the bondsman’s life and well-being largely depend on how well he is able to care for the master, satisfy the master’s needs and secure his well-being. On the other hand, it is easy to show that the master too has to develop recognition for the bondsman as having some authority in the relationship. How come? Because any norm or rule he that the master imposes on the bondsman requires that the bondsman applies it in concrete cases. Since no rule or norm can fully determine every possible concrete application and thus every case of following it, the bondsman has to use his own judgment in determining how to apply the given norm in concrete cases. If a norm says, for example, “prepare adequate food-stores for winter”, what this requires and thus means in concreto depends on various circumstances and has to be determined skilfully as they arise. There may even be instances where the slave must criticize the master. Hegel points to this in his lectures by emphasizing that commanding effectively requires that one commands reasonably, abstracting from anything preposterous and absurd.40 In a case where the master’s commands or rules are inconsistent or unrealizable, the slave is forced to make this

38 E3, § 434. 39 E3, § 435. 40 GK, 343: “Whoever wants to command must do so reasonably, for only he who commands reasonably will be obeyed.”

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explicit on pain of not being able to execute them.41 Not making explicit the master’s failure to command rationally and in this sense not criticizing him would not only make the slave vulnerable to punishment, but also leave the master’s commands or rules without realization. Similarly, since the slave is better acquainted with what exactly promotes or corrodes his own well-being, if the master fails to have adequate concern for the slave, he is in principle criticisable by the slave by appeal to the master’s own self-concern. All in all, if the master is to serve well his own self-interest as a master, he must in practice regard and treat the bondsman as having some (as it were technical) authority in the relationship. On a rational reconstruction of Hegel’s idealized developmental account one can thus say that both the master and the bondsman develop in it some kind of recognition for the other both in the axiological sense of concern for the other’s well-being, and in the deontological sense of regard for his authority. Many contemporary readings tend to see recognition in Hegel predominantly, and sometimes exclusively, in deontological terms of norms, authority and respect, and underrate or simply leave out the axiological dimension of values, concern, care and love.42 As important as the deontological dimension is and as valuable as insights about it are, focusing on it alone is both a one-sided reading of Hegel’s text and a one-sided view of recognition in general. 5) There is however still something important missing from a full comprehension of Hegel’s treatment of the theme of recognition in the text. We can articulate this missing element in terms of the distinction between what I called the non-interpersonal or non-personifying and the genuinely interpersonal or personifying modes of horizontal—both intersubjective and institutionally mediated—recognition. More in line with Hegel’s own terminology, we can formulate it as a distinction between not fully spiritual modes of horizontal recognition on the one hand, and fully spiritual modes on the other hand. Again, Hegel does not make this distinction explicit, nor is it commonly made in interpretations of him. The standard way to look at the development taking place in the masterbondsman-relationship is to see it as a development from a one-sided or 41  Robert Brandom’s idea of inferential commitments is very useful for thinking through in more detail what is involved here. 42 See for example Brandom 2009, chapters 1 and 2; Pinkard 2002, chapter 11. This is by no means to deny the great service that the Kant-inspired deontological readings by Brandom, Pinkard and others have done to the understanding of Hegel.



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extremely unequal or asymmetric relation of recognition to a fully equal or symmetric one. But this, as it were merely structural way of conceiving the development ignores something of fundamental importance. Let us reconsider what exactly recognition between the master and bondsman is as described so far, focusing first on recognition in the purely intersubjective sense. What exactly does it mean for the subservient slave or bondsman to recognize the master in the intersubjective sense, taking into account the two dimensions of horizontal recognition? On the deontological dimension, what seems to be at issue is the slave obeying the master’s commands and thus the master as an authority of the rules or norms of the relationship out of fear for the master (which is basically fear for his own life).43 The slave’s deontological attitude of recognition towards the master is hence something like fearful obedience. On the axiological dimension, what is at issue is the slave being concerned for the master’s life and well-being instrumentally, motivated by the slave’s (non-instrumental) concern for his own life and well-being, dependent as these are on those of the master. The slave’s axiological attitude of recognition towards the master is hence one of instrumental concern for his life or well-being. It is by virtue of the slave’s recognition of the master in the senses of fearful obedience of him and instrumental concern for his wellbeing that the master can be conscious of himself, or in other words of his authority and well-being affirmed by the slave. And as we saw, the master must also develop an instrumental concern for the slave’s well-being, as well as regard for the slave as having at least some (technical) authority in the relationship. It is by virtue of these attitudes by the master that also the slave can, to some minimal extent at least, be conscious of himself affirmed by the master. In the text Hegel makes a transition to ‘general self-consciousness’ right after discussing the bondsman’s fearful obedience of the master (in § 435).44 This inevitably raises the question whether Hegel really thinks 43 E3, § 435. 44 In the 1825 lectures Hegel fills in a little more detail, making the transition seem less abrupt, and thus doing more justice to the processuality or gradual change that he clearly is after: “The instrument [i.e. the slave or servant] also serves the master willingly however, being implicitly free self-consciousness, and the servant’s will therefore has to be made favourably inclined toward the master, who has to care for him as a living being, take care of him as an implicitly free will. By this means, the servant is brought into the community of providing, so that he also has a purpose, counts, is to be honoured, is a member of the family.” (GK, 343) Though these are only student notes from Hegel’s lecture and not always completely reliable, one can discern two important moments in a gradual development in this passage:

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that the mutual intersubjective recognition between free beings that he discusses in the final chapter ‘General self-consciousness’ which should fully realize concrete freedom as consciousness of oneself in otherness (more exactly in the other subject) is simply mutual instrumental concern for and mutual reluctant attribution of some authority to the other, both motivated either out of fear or practical necessity. If all that happens in the “process of recognition” is that recognition becomes mutual or symmetric, then this seems to be the implication. It does look rather cynical or disappointing as a picture of a community of mutual recognition between free beings. On a closer look Hegel makes it however clear that this is not a correct construal of what mutual recognition that fully realizes concrete freedom actually is. In § 436 of ‘General self-consciousness’ he says that in fact the “master who confronted the bondsman was not yet fully free, for he was not fully conscious of himself in the other”. This relates to a sentence in § 431Z: “freedom of one within the other unites humans inwardly, whereas need and necessity only brings them together externally”. I suggested above that what distinguishes purely intersubjective recognition from institutionally mediated horizontal recognition* is that only the former “unites humans inwardly”. However, this is in fact not yet fully true of the not genuinely personifying recognition between the master and the slave. Hegel himself does not explain what exactly he means by saying that the master is or was not yet fully conscious of himself in the slave, but the point can be put as follows: when A cares about B’s life and well-being merely instrumentally or conditionally—out of “need and necessity” to borrow Hegel—she does not care about it in the way in which B himself cares about it if B is a psychological person, namely intrinsically. Persons, in contrast to mere animals, are concerned for their well-being (1) The slave’s fearful obedience of the master turns into a less fearful prudential motivation to serve him, as the master turns from someone who motivates through immediate death-threats to someone who motivates, at least also, by positive incentives (the master promises to “take care of ” the bondsman if he works for him). This is a transition from a “slave” (Sklav) to a “bondsman” or “servant” (Knecht). (2) A relation of mutual instrumentalization turns into a relation involving also mutual non-instrumental concern, as well as honouring (Ehre). This is a transition of the “servant” into a “member of the family”. What comes to fore here is not only non-instrumental concern (or love), but also honour and mutual gratitude for contributions to the family as a “community of providing (Gemeinschaft der Vorsorge)”. (Thus also something like recognition or esteem for contributions, important in Axel Honneth’s work on recognition, is present in this passage.)



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or lives in general, and importantly they are not concerned for it (at least only) instrumentally or for the sake of something else, but (at least also) intrinsically or ‘for their own sake’. This means that if A cares about B’s well-being only instrumentally, she is thereby not affirming it in a way that fully reflects its importance for B himself. Or to put this in another way, axiological recognition in the mode of instrumental concern for wellbeing does not attribute the recognizee or her life and well-being the same significance in light of which the recognizee himself relates to himself as a psychological person. Instrumental concern is not a fully personifying, or fully interpersonal mode of intersubjective recognition, as it does not fully respond to, or fully affirm, an essential element of the kind of practical self-relation constitutive of psychological personhood. Something roughly analogical seems true on the deontological dimension: when A obeys B’s will merely conditionally, out of fear or some other purely prudential reason (“need and necessity”) his attitude towards B does not fully respond to, reflect, or affirm the way in which persons themselves grasp their own authoritativeness among other persons. When A obeys or recognizes B as having authority merely conditionally—in the sense that when the condition such as a threat of and fear for death ceases to be in place, B’s authority in A’s eyes simply vanishes, or in the sense of A taking B as having authority only for applying rules prescribed by A but not for questioning or changing those rules—she is thereby not responding to B fully seriously as someone with authority. To the extent that having authority on the norms or terms of interaction with others is also an essential element of what it is to be a person, recognition as obedience out of need, necessity or fear—or any other merely conditional forms of attribution of authority—is not a fully personifying or fully interpersonal mode of intersubjective recognition. It too does not fully respond to, or fully affirm, an essential element of the kind of practical self-conception constitutive of psychological personhood. Neither one of these not fully personifying modes of recognition allows the recognizee to be fully conscious of himself affirmed by the recognizer. Subjects hence remain in an important sense estranged from each other, or not genuinely or fully “inwardly” united. What is it then to recognize someone in the horizontal and intersubjective sense in a fully ‘personifying’ or fully ‘spiritual’ mode which enables the recognizee to be fully conscious of herself in, or affirmed by, the recognizer? In short, on the axiological dimension it is to care about the other in the same way in which she cares about herself, namely intrinsically

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or unconditionally—or “for her own sake”. Caring for the other in this sense is usually called love. Analogically, on the deontological dimension fully personifying intersubjective recognition is taking the other as having ‘unconditional’ authority on the norms or terms of one’s co-existence with her, and thus on oneself. Though Hegel does not use the term in this context, this phenomenon is usually called respect.45 What is at issue is not merely attributing the other technical authority in the interpretation and execution of ends set by oneself, but taking her as someone who has an independent viewpoint on ends and commands authority on the norms and principles of co-existence independently of my view-point. Unlike instrumental concern and conditional forms of attributing authority, love and respect do “unite humans internally”: in loving someone her well-being or perspective of hopes and fears partly determines what has positive or negative value for me independently of what value (if any) the same things or states of affairs would have for me would I not love the person in question. Analogically, in respecting someone her judgments of right and wrong have subjective or felt bindingness on me that does not derive from my own judgments on the same issues nor from my own prudential considerations or calculations. Her view on right and wrong partly determines what from my point of view actually seems or feels right or wrong. This is not to say that in loving another my evaluative perspective is completely determined by what is good or bad for the one I love, or that in respecting another my own independent judgments have no force at all. Rather, it is to say that the other’s axiological and deontological perspective becomes part of my own perspective and thereby partly decenters it.46 The loved or respected person can therefore be conscious of her perspective being genuinely affirmed by my recognition of her, and at the same

45 A lithmus-test of genuine respect in this sense is whether one could genuinely feel ashamed in front of the other, or in other words respond to her negative judgment of oneself with shame. 46 Speaking of “parts” sounds like conceiving the phenomenon in terms of external relations and this is at least partly right: my independent judgements and the judgements of those I respect can be in harmony, but they can also be in conflict and this is a conflict within me. Such conflict is central in what drives moral learning, the calibration of moral judgment and cultivation of moral imagination, but it can also lead to an (at least temporally) irreconcilable internal division or conflict within the subject. To put this in another way: integration is the ideal, but it is integration of partly independent elements or parts that can also remain unintegrated. For Hegel lack of inner integration is defining of psychological pathologies—some of which he discusses in the Anthropology-section of Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.



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time also be conscious that my own perspective remains irreducibly independent of hers.47 Hence, intersubjective recognition in the personifying mode realizes both moments of concrete freedom as absolute negation. It unites persons “internally”, and allows them to be “fully” conscious of themselves in each other without thereby compromising their independence. To be free in this purely intersubjective sense is to live among and thus to be limited or determined by other persons who have love and respect for one. As to institutionally mediated horizontal recognition*, it now seems to have a somewhat more marginal role in comparison to purely intersubjective recognition, since it is not capable of uniting humans to the same extent internally, and therefore does not enable them to be as fully conscious of themselves in each other. It simply does not involve the same psychological intimacy to recognize* someone as a bearer of rights or other deontic powers, since it does not mediate one’s perspective through that of the other in the same intimate or “internal” way. Nevertheless, the distinction between non-personifying and personifying modes does apply also to institutionally mediated recognition*. This difference between, on the one hand, recognizing someone as a bearer of deontic powers that does not make her a person in institutional status, and, on the other hand, recognizing someone as a bearer of deontic powers that does make her so is clear in the master-slave-story: it is a difference between someone who can be owned but not own (a slave who is not a person in the institutional sense) and someone who can own but not be owned (a master who is a person in the institutional sense). The distinction becomes centrally important if one wants to reconstruct the “process of recognition” in the Self-consciousness chapter in the institutional register, as an account of development of social institutions. Read in this way, ‘general self-consciousness’ consists of mutual recognition* or respect* between individuals as bearers of rights and other deontic powers that they have as persons in institutional status.48

47 This does not mean that subjects only remain independent insofar as the actual contents of their concerns and judgments remain separate. It rather means that the identity of these contents is never automatic since each subject is still formally a distinct “centre” of concerns and judgments. The “decentring” involved in recognition does not completely do away with the distinctness of subjects, or to the extent it does the relationship does not adequately instantiate the moment of difference which is as important an element of concrete freedom as the moment of unity is. 48 See the end of my discussion of the second distinction.

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6) As to the final distinction between bottom-up and top-down readings of Hegel’s text, I have discussed the text only from the bottom-upperspective from which it reads as a highly stylized developmental story of the coming about and cultivation of social and psychological structures that make humans full-fledged persons in each other’s eyes and in themselves. The complementary top-down-reading in contrast understands ‘desire’, unequal and conditional recognition, and full-fledged personifying recognition all as elements or moments of the fully developed or ideal concrete whole that is the full “spirituality” of humanity, or in other words the life-form of human persons fully realizing its essence which is concrete freedom. The important point that a top-down-reading makes visible is that the less than fully cultivated structures of intentionality, psychological profiles, interpersonal relations and institutional structures will always have some presence even in the ideal society. This is not only so because they will present themselves in every newborn and every new generation, but also because phenomena such as urges for immediate satisfaction or egoistic motivations with regard to other persons are a normal part of the life of full-fledged adults as well. What does happen however is that in cultivated adult persons the layers that are ‘earlier’ in the idealized developmental account are infused with phenomena belonging to the ‘later’ or more developed layers: the immediate desires of a cultivated adult are not those of an animal or a human infant, and the unequal or strategic relations of recognition between cultivated adults rarely take quite the brutal form of mastery and slavery. Still, the virtue of a top-down reading is to emphasize that both nature in the form of physiological need and desire, and the ‘halfspiritual’, instrumentalizing or strategic relations and attitudes are never totally overcome or eliminated, but play various roles also in forms of well-organized and cultivated social life that realizes concrete freedom maximally. Hegel’s theory of the state, presented in the Philosophy of Objective Spirit is centrally about the ideal institutional framework in which each of these layers of human being (the natural, the ‘half-spiritual’, and the fully spiritual) co-exist in such a way that they constitute social life that is life that is—all things considered—maximally free in the concrete sense of freedom.



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Conclusion To think of ‘recognition’ as a center point of a new paradigm in social and political philosophy, or perhaps even more broadly, requires thinking of it as a collective philosophical and scientific endeavor. This, in its turn, requires efforts to think through the distinguishing and unifying features in the various currently existing approaches and perspectives to the theme and the implicit or explicit understandings of the central concepts they involve. It also requires a clear awareness of the plurality of issues at work in the writings on the theme by the central common reference, Hegel. In this article I have drawn attention to the plurality of meanings that ‘recognition’ has in one central text by Hegel, and briefly outlined some of the connections between them. These are among the many distinctions and connections that a more synthetic work on the theme—both Hegelscholarship and systematic thought—should in my view be cognizant of if it wants to advance recognition-theory as a paradigm. Literature Brandom, R. (2011): ‘The Structure of Desire and Recognition: Self-Consciousness and SelfConstitution’. In: H. Ikäheimo and A. Laitinen (eds.): Recognition and Social Ontology. Leiden, 25–51. —— (2009): Reason in Philosophy. Cambridge/Mass. Canivez, P. (2011): ‘Pathologies of Recognition’. In: Philosophy and Social Criticism 37, 851–887. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1975): Phenomenology of Spirit. M. J. Petry (trans.). Oxford. —— (E2): Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature. M. J. Petry (ed. and trans.). 3 volumes. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970. —— (E3): Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. M. J. Petry (trans.). (Three volumes.) Dordrecht, 1978–79. —— (GK): ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit, Summer Term 1985’ (Based on transcripts by Griesheim and Kehler). In: Hegel, G.W.F. (E3), Volume 3, 270–357. —— (1991): The Encyclopaedia Logic. Transl. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, H. S. Harris. Indianapolis. —— (EW): Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827–8 (Based on transcripts by Erdmann and Walter). R. R. Williams (trans.). Oxford, 2007. —— (2010): Science of Logic. Cambridge. Honneth, A. (2010): The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory. Princeton. Ikäheimo, H. (2011): ‘Animal Consciousness in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit’. In: Hegel-Jahrbuch 2010. Berlin, 180–185. —— (2007): ‘Recognizing Persons’. In: Journal of Consciousness Studies 14, No. 5–6, 224–47.

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—— (2004): ‘On the role of intersubjectivity in Hegel’s Encyclopaedic Phenomenology and Psychology’. In: The Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 49–50, 73–95. Pinkard, T. (2002): German Philosophy 1760–1840: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge. Pippin, R. (2011): ‘On Hegel’s Claim that Self-Consciousness is “Desire Itself ” (“Begierde überhaupt”)’. In: H. Ikäheimo and A. Laitinen (eds.): Recognition and Social Ontology. Leiden, 53–83. Siep, L. (1979): Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes. Freiburg/München. Williams, R (1997): Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley.

Chapter Three

The Paradigm of Recognition and the Free Market Paul Cobben Introduction Is the Paradigm of Recognition an adequate conceptual framework to understand the contemporary (neo-liberal) society? Fraser and Zurn, for example, argue that this paradigm does not offer the opportunity to understand capitalism as a system.1 Therefore, the paradigm would be a backsliding into a position before Marx. However, Schmidt am Busch rightly maintains that a Marx-revival cannot be justified: his ideal society refers to family relations for which love is central.2 This is incompatible with the modern market. The modern market must be conceived of as an institution in a way that does justice to modern subjective freedom. This not only means that (in accordance with Marx) the market cannot be conceptualized as a system which is principally independent, but also (versus Marx) that the criticism of the market as an alienated system may not be based on a philosophical position which opposes market relations in general. Therefore, Schmidt am Busch thinks that Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action is not an acceptable alternative to Marx.3 Although Habermas opposes

1  N. Fraser (2003), C. F. Zurn (2005). 2 H. Schmidt am Busch (2011): “Marx’ Beschreibung des Verständnisses, das A und B von sich selbst und den Anderen haben, ist ein starkes Indiz für die Richtigkeit meiner These, dass seine Konzeption des menschlichen Wesens nach dem Vorbild von Liebes- und Familienbeziehungen konstruiert worden ist” (p. 110). “Folglich stützt sich Marx’ Kritik an Hegels Konzeption personaler Freiheit auf eine Theorie des Menschen (als Gemeinwesen), die von den Bürgern moderner westlicher Gesellschaften nicht geteilt wird” (p. 127). “Auch ohne eine eingehende Analyse der hier zitierten Texte lässt sich angeben, inwiefern die Marx’sche Theorie der Bejahung als Gemeinwesen und als konsumptiv-bedürftiges Individuum als eine Verallgemeinerung und ‘Essentialisierung’ einiger Kernelemente von Hegels Theorie der Liebe und Ehe zu verstehen ist” (p. 146). 3 H. Schmidt am Busch (2011): “Wie ich im Folgenden zeigen werde, ist Habermas’ Theorie der Ökonomie nicht befriedigend” (p. 31). “Wie auch Jürgen Habermas ist auch Fraser der Auffassung, dass kapitalistische Märkte nur systemtheoretisch angemessen analysiert werden können” (p. 62).

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the market as an alienating system (by criticizing the colonization of the lifeworld by the system) without generally rejecting market relations, he nevertheless remains tied, according to Schmidt am Busch, to a systemtheoretical analysis of the market and consequently cannot give a sufficient answer to its potentially alienating status.4 As with Axel Honneth,5 Schmidt am Busch6 argues that an adequate version of the paradigm of recognition has to return to Hegel’s analysis in the Philosophy of Right. Although I share Honneth’s and Schmidt am Busch’s opinion that Hegel’s version of the paradigm of recognition enables to understand the modern market from a critical philosophical framework, I think they have basically misunderstood the meaning which Hegel assigns to the free market. Moreover, I think that this misunderstanding is rooted in a ground position they share with Habermas. In his Theory of Communicative Action in which the subject/subject-relation is central, Habermas opposes the philosophy of consciousness in which the relation subject/nature is central. According to Habermas, the market system remains tied to the power of nature and ultimately has to manifest itself as a system of alienation as long as it is conceived of in terms of the philosophy of consciousness. Only if the market can be understood as a particular case of communication-theoretical relations, namely as a subject/subject relation which is mediated through “entsprachlichte Steuerungsmedien”, its independence principally can be restricted. More extremely than Habermas, Honneth and Schmidt am Busch resist the philosophy of consciousness: even as an “entsprachlichte Steuerungsmedien”, it must not return. I will argue that the separation between the philosophy of consciousness and recognition clashes with the basic intention of Hegel’s project: for Hegel recognition has to be understood as the sublation of the fear of death. Philosophy of consciousness does not oppose recognition, but rather is an essential moment of recognition. The recognition relation is an attempt to conceptualize an internal unity between the relation to 4 In Cobben (2012), however, I have elaborated that Habermas’ analysis of money as an “entsprachlichtes Steuerungsmedium” is completely in line with Hegel’s conception of money (pp. 158–161). The problem is that he is not able to understand the economic system as a moment of the recognition relation. Therefore, he does not understand the central meaning Hegel attributes to Bildung within the labor process. 5 Honneth (2011): “Ich wollte dem Vorbild der Hegelschen ‘Rechtsphilosophie’ in der Idee folgen, die Prinzipen sozialer Gerechtigkeit direkt in der Form einer Gesellschaftsanalyse zu entwickeln” (p. 9). 6 Schmidt am Busch (2011): “In der Tat stellen die GPhR mit dem Begriff des personalen Respeks eine Ressource zur Verfügung, mit der Märkte als Institrutionalisierungen einer spezifischen Anerkennungsform ausgewiesen und legitimiert werden können” (p. 155).



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nature and the relation to the other. As long as this is not understood, an adequate insight into the modern market remains impossible. Honneth and Schmidt am Busch relate the modern market to the socalled second form of social recognition. In this relation, the individuals are related as persons and respect one-another as persons. Since Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right, discusses the relation between persons at the level of abstract Right, it may not surprise us that they link the second form of recognition with abstract Right. As a result, they make being-a-person a contingent quality of concrete individuals.7 This is possibly a consequence of their anti-metaphysical Hegel-reading. I will show, however, that this point of departure implies a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel’s concept of recognition. 1. Being-person at the Level of Abstract Right “Sei eine Person und respektiere die anderen als Personen”8 is the demand which underlies abstract Right. Is this “being-a-person” a contingent quality of real individuals as Honneth and Schmidt am Busch state? No, if it would concern a contingent property of the individual, it would be senseless to deduce a demand from it. Being-a-person (die Persönlichkeit) expresses the concept of right in its most abstract form: it is the abstract concept of the free will in and for itself. The person expresses the most abstract form of autonomy. The autonomy of the free person implies that

7 It is true that Schmidt am Busch remarks “Deshalb ist eine rechtliche und wirtschaftliche Ordnung als eine adäquate Institutionalisierung von personalem Respekt anzusehen. Wenn jene Individuen aber Menschen sind, ist eine freie Marktwirtschaft problematisch. [. . .] Folglich kann die “Vollständige Entwicklung” und rechtliche “Anerkennung der personalen Einzelheit unter Menschen nicht die soziale Gestalt eines freien Marktes haben” (p. 203). Rightly, he distinguishes between the person and the concrete individual. However, in the Philosophy of Right, it makes no sense to speak about the adequate realization of the person distinguished from the real individual. The realization of the person is only adequate if the realization is in and for itself, i.e. the adequate realization cannot abstract from the real individual. All moments in the Philosophy of Right are necessary moments of the realization of the free and equal persons. Therefore, Schmidt am Busch is wrong when he states: “Menschen, die Personen sein wollen und einander als Personen respektieren, unterhalten nicht notwendigerweise wirtschaftliche Beziehungen zueinander. Es ist nämlich denkbar, dass jeder von ihnen die von ihm konsumierte Güter in Eigenarbeit herstellt” (p. 193). A person of the roman right can be conceived in this way. The person of the Philosophy of Right, however, presupposes all moments which are developed in the Philosophy of Right. Therefore, also the moment of the Contract is already presupposed all the time. 8 PhofR, § 36.

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it must be conceived of as substance. Only under this condition can it be understood how abstract Right results in a demand. Autonomy, the substantiality of the person can only be conceived in such a way that the otherness to which the person is related is also a person. Without the demand to recognize the other as a person, the person would contradict itself.9 However, the demand to recognize the other as a person is still insufficient. As long as the person/person relation is understood as an internal, formal relation, it opposes as a subjective (i.e. intersubjective) relation an independent nature and would lose as yet its substantiality.10 Therefore, the demand also implies that the person has to exist, i.e. it has to realize itself as a person in the natural world. The realization of the person/person relation in the natural world seems to be accomplished at the level of the Contract. In the thing as property nature already appears as an expression of freedom. And precisely because it becomes clear in the Contract that being-a-proprietor is mediated by another person, it is explicitly expressed that the person has a free relation to the thing. In its relation to the thing the person is related to the other person, and therefore, to itself. For the person, the thing does not have a strange independence. Insofar as the thing has its own quality, this is irrelevant in the Contract. The quality of thing is all the same in the Contract: the thing can be exchanged for a thing with another quality. However, it is only important that the thing expresses the being-a-person of the parties to the contract, i.e. their freedom. The exchange of qualitatively different things makes it clear that for the person the quality of the thing is not important. 2. Morality as the Thinking through of Being-a-person However, in the Contract the freedom of the person is not adequately realized. In the contract the realization of freedom is possible, but not yet necessary. That is to say, whether properties are really exchanged is

9 This point is made in Hegel (PhofS), in the Self-Consciousness chapter: “Selfconsciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness” (p. 110). 10 In Cobben (2012), I present a critical analysis of Honneth’s reading of the SelfConscious chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. (pp. 91–104) Honneth thinks that in this chapter the symmetrical relation between self-consciousnesses is developed. He overlooks, however, the fact that the central problem is how to reconcile the pure self-consciousness with nature. A symmetrical relation between real individuals is discussed for the first time at the level of Spirit, namely as the relation between the Greek citizens.



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not independent of their quality. Moreover, only if a thing is exchanged with a thing of a different quality is it explicitly expressed that the property is mediated by another person. Since, for the person, the quality of the property is accidental,11 the adequate realization of the free person cannot adequately be expressed at the level of abstract Right. Whoever attempts to maintain this realization of freedom at the level of abstract Right unjustly presupposes that the quality of the thing can be determined in the relation between person and thing. At the level of Wrong, Hegel elaborates that it can neither be determined that the person owns a specific thing, nor that the person has an adequate insight into the quality of the thing, nor that the person has the insight into the will of another person to exchange his property to a property with a different quality. Therefore, the exchange of properties which is actually performed, does not exclude Wrong. The possibility of Wrong can only be overcome when the person is determined more precisely and the contingency of the thing to which he is related has been sublated. Hegel discusses this more precise determination as the moral subject. The moral subject is the person who has become aware that he can only realize himself when he is able to exclude the Wrong, i.e. when he has overcome the accidentalness of the qualitative determination of the thing. In the first place this means that the moral subject has a positive relation to the quality of the thing. The subject no longer is only the exchangeable universal person, but realizes himself as also situated, i.e. is related to a particular thing. Only as subject, the person is aware that he has a unique body which incorporates his situatedness.12 The relation to a particular thing, however, can only then be harmonized with being-aperson, if Wrong is excluded. Therefore, the being-situated of the subject is not a factual observation (in this case: the acknowledgment of one’s own corporeality), but rather has the form of a moral demand. The determinedness of the thing’s content has to appear for the subject in a way that Wrong is excluded. The subject cannot be satisfied with a content which is externally given, but has to make this content accord with the 11  Hegel (PhofR), § 104 Anmerkung: “At the moral standpoint, the abstract determinacy of the will in the sphere of right has been so far overcome that this contingency itself is, as reflected in upon itself and self-identical, the inward infinite contingency of the will, i.e. its subjectivity.” 12 Of course, in some sense, the body is already thematized at the level of abstract Right: “But from the point of view of others, I am in essence a free entity in my body while my possession of it is still immediate” (PhofR, § 48). However, all persons are in immediate possession of their body and are, in this respect, exchangeable.

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freedom of the person through his actions. His actions have to exclude Wrong and guarantee the realization of freedom. Therefore, moral action is tied to three normative conditions. It must (i) guarantee that reality expresses freedom, i.e. has no strange independence, so that the (nonmalicious) Wrong is excluded; (ii) guarantee that the content of reality corresponds to the realization of the person’s freedom; (iii) guarantee that the interactions with others serve the good life (i.e. the others are not submitted to violence). Therefore, at the level of Morality the formal demand of abstract Right is concretized. The realization of the person presupposes that the person as subject underlies the demand to realize the good life. The question is, however, whether this demand does justice to reality at all. The demand only makes sense if natural reality is principally in harmony with freedom. But why would this harmony exist? Is freedom not hindered by the corporeal individual precisely because it is tied to the structure of his desires? 3. The Lord/Bondsman Relation as the Basic Model for the Harmony between Freedom and Nature In the Self-Consciousness chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel develops how the harmony between freedom and nature can be conceptualized in principle.13 He argues that the essence of the problem is not how to think the harmony between the pure freedom and the corporeal individual, but rather how this harmony has to be understood such that pure freedom already presupposes the corporeal individual all the time. Pure freedom has to be conceived of as a sublated fear of death. For the organism, the fear of death is an experience of absolute negativity. Death is the absolute lord14 who lets us experience the absolute futility of all corporeal determinedness. However, insofar as this futility is experienced as such by the self-conscious organism, the experience of the fear of death is at the same time the transcendence of death. It is the experience of finitude which has been conceived as such. In this experience, self-consciousness internalizes the absolute lord: in its awareness of finitude as such it is itself the absolute negation of its corporeality. Then, the absolute lord is no longer the external power of nature, but rather is self-consciousness’ 13 Cobben (2009), p. 37 ff. 14 Hegel states: “for it [i.e., the self-conscious organism, the bondsman, P.C.) has experienced the fear of death, the absolute Lord” (PhofS, p. 117).



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representation of its absolute essence: the representation of its freedom, namely the freedom to conceive nature in itself. In this manner, the principal unity of freedom and nature is explicated. Self-consciousness represents its absolute essence as lord, i.e. as god. Initially, self-consciousness only practically expresses that this god is the image of its pure freedom, namely by serving its lord as bondsman. By serving the lord, self-consciousness expresses its actions in such a way that they are no longer determined through nature (the laws of the instinct), but through a self-made, free law: a cultural law. This means that the harmony between freedom and nature is also objectively expressed. The law of culture is the institutional form of the fear of death which has been overcome. Hegel’s considerations in the Self-Consciousness chapter allow for the conclusion that the demand to which the moral subject is subjected only makes sense under the assumption that the moral subject already participates in a cultural community throughout, namely in a social organism in which its actions are not determined through the law of nature but through the law of culture. In the Philosophy of Right, this social organism is discussed as the family. The cultural law in which the family organism is realized manifests itself in the traditional norms and values of the family. However, also the family organism cannot be understood as an adequate realization of the free person. It is true that, considered from an external perspective, the actions of the family members presuppose the pure freedom of the person (after all, participation in a cultural law is only possible when the fear of death is endured and overcome),15 but considered from the internal perspective, this has not yet been explicated: the cultural law of the family appears as a given tradition to which the newly born children must subject themselves. Therefore, the social organism of the family presupposes a second institutional domain which guarantees that, also considered from an internal perspective, this awareness is developed in such a way that the fear of death is endured and overcome. This second domain, in which the modern free market is also situated, Hegel discusses as Civil Society.

15 Therefore, Hegel stipulates in PhofR § 162: “But its (the marriage, P.C.) objective source lies in the free consent of the persons, especially in their consent to make themselves one person [. . .]”.

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Civil Society is the domain of the manifold of families and is characterized by what Hegel calls the “Verlust der Sittlichkeit”.16 Precisely in relation to other families, it becomes clear that the norms and values which are realized in one’s own family only have a contingent status, and consequently, cannot guarantee the realization of the person’s freedom. The “Verlust der Sittlichkeit” implies that the shared norms and values in this relation get lost. Therefore, Civil Society is characterized by the pure freedom of the relation of person to person. Although the persons try to realize their freedom through the exchange of properties, they are nevertheless distinguished from the person of the abstract Right. After all, the persons are now generated by the families, and therefore, have developed themselves as persons who appear as corporeal individuals. The corporeal persons relate to one another in what Hegel calls the “System der Bedürfnisse”. In this system, the persons can only realize their pure freedom if this realization is combined and in harmony with the satisfaction of the corporeal needs of persons. The exchange of property must also serve the satisfaction of needs. However, there is no guarantee that this demand is met. After all, the needs of persons are contingent. Therefore, the actual performance of the property exchange remains incidental. It is true that in the System of Needs the power of nature has acquired a social form, but this does not mean that it is in harmony with freedom. Nature’s interplay of forces, the external causality of nature, is transformed into an interplay of forces of the market. The laws of nature are continued in the laws of the market. For the realization of freedom, the result is catastrophic: whoever loses the competition of the market will also get lost. Under this condition the freedom of the market is pure ideology. It makes little difference whether the fear of death is generated through external nature or through a social system. However, in contrast to Marx, Hegel does not draw the conclusion that a social system is incompatible with the realization of freedom and must for that reason be abolished. The individual must have experienced the fear of death to manifest himself as a person, only then can he liberate himself from his natural drives. However, at the same time the experience of the fear of death has to result in the overcoming of the fear of death. 16 PhofR § 181.



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Hegel thinks that this victory gets shape in the theoretical and practical Bildung, the education of the labor process.17 The competition of the market not only enforces a supply which corresponds to a social demand, but the product must also be offered for a competitive price. This results in the ongoing rationalization of the labor process. The theoretical and practical Bildung of the workers belongs to this process of rationalization. Their work must become more and more efficient, i.e. it must correspond better and better to general technological rules. The Bildung of the workers can be understood as the institutional form in which the overcoming of the fear of death takes shape. The Bildung of the worker is a process of rationalization in which the worker step by step and again and again sacrifices his particularity. The process makes the “alles Fixe” continuously “bebt”.18 In this sense the fear of death is institutionalized. This sacrifice, however, results in an objectification of the world of labor in which all strangeness is sublated. In this sense, the worker returns from the process of objectification to himself, thereby sublating the fear of death. Through their Bildung in the labor process the persons acquire the insight that their pure freedom is the essence of reality.19 For them, the labor system appears as the finite reality which they continuously transcend in the process of Bildung. In its reality, the labor system throughout has a particular content. However, for the persons this content is accidental. Therefore, the labor system cannot be understood as the adequate realization of the general good, i.e. as the realization of the moral subject. 5. The Labor System and the General Good The general good cannot be determined at the level of civil society. After all, the corporeal person is related to the particular good (der besondere Inhalt des Wohls)20 and is not able to determine the general good. Hegel states that the general good can only be determined at the level of the 17 PhofR § 197. 18 PhofS, p. 117: “and everything solid and stable has been shaken to its foundations (und alles Fixe hat in ihm gebebt)”. 19 PhofR § 208: “As the private particularity of knowing and willing, the principle of this system of needs contains absolute universality, the universality of freedom, only abstractly and therefore as the right of property. At this point, however, this right is no longer merely implicit but has attained its recognized actuality as the protection of property through the administration of justice.” 20 PhofR, § 125.

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state. This means that he repeats the line of reasoning which was already under discussion in the lord/bondsman relation: the subjective certitude of the free person to be the “lord” of reality gets objective shape in serving the law of society which is already given in tradition throughout. The problem which Hegel has to solve is how to understand the transition from civil society into the state. That is, how the subjective selfrealization of the corporeal person can be reconciled with the law of society, which is already given all the time and which expresses the good life? After having explicated—at the level of the System of Needs and its sublation into the Administration of Justice—that the social organism of the family implicitly contains the realization of the person/person relation, now the awareness has to be developed that the family organism implicitly also contains the realization of the moral subject. It is not problematic for Hegel that the market presupposes a value community (in this case: the state). This community of value is not a compensation for the shortcomings of the market (as Honneth thinks), but a necessary presupposition to conceive the existence of the market at all. The problem is rather how a traditionally given determination of the good life can have legitimacy for corporeal persons, i.e. for individuals who have developed subjective freedom. Hegel solves this problem by the introduction of the Corporation, the labor community in which the individuals participate in a mediated form of subjective freedom. The transition to the good life is made because the labor system is conceived of as a manifold of corporations which are brought to a unity at the state level. Honneth rightly states that the corporation does not correspond to the institutions we know in contemporary society.21 However, he is less right if he argues that we can learn from Hegel that “the directions and the design of corrective institutions” must be derived from “the normative principles of the very economic system” that we seek to correct.22 The community of value not only is not a “corrective institution”, but can also not be deduced from the principles of the economic system. It is true in some manner that Hegel tries to deduce the corporation from the principles of the economic system, but this very attempt has to be criticized. Hegel reduces subjective freedom to the free choice that mediates the

21  Honneth (2010), p. 231. 22 Ibidem.



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subjective position in the labor system23 which is in service of the given content of the good life. However, free subjectivity cannot be reduced to free labor and the good life cannot be deduced from a given production system, even if this system is continuously revolutionized through the competition of the market. The community of value must rather be conceived as a “comprehensive doctrine” in the sense of John Rawls (be it that the reasonable discourse between communities of values must not be excluded). To free subjectivity also belong the dimensions which transcend the domain of labor, such as, religion, art, science and politics. Hegel’s reduction of subjective freedom to the economic domain must rather be understood as a narrowing which might be typical for the nineteenth century. Honneth rightly qualifies “the emptying of the work of all qualitative content” as a development of contemporary capitalistic labor which should be criticized. However, this criticism must not be understood as a position which can be deduced from the capitalistic labor system. Norms that labor may not be soul-killing or that everybody has the right to earn an income which enables a life worthy of a human being can be formulated in a community of value. They can get shape in the political framework within which the labor system functions. But in no way do these norms originate from the labor system itself. The only norm of the labor system is the constraint of rationalization which follows from the competition of the free market. This requirement to rationalize leads to an ongoing reorganization which calls for an ongoing Bildung of labor forces. This process almost certainly results in labor which, from a specific evaluative perspective, can be called soul-killing precisely because the rationalizing of labor again and again makes that parts of the labor are replaceable by machines.24 This mechanical labor is pre-eminently soul-killing and not worthy of a human being. Nevertheless this is not a reason to criticize this labor or the rationalization processes coupled with it or to try to make labor itself moral. Here, we have to deal with processes in which the overcoming of the fear of death is institutionalized. The attempt to make labor immediately moral is nothing less than the repression of the fear of death.

23 PhofR, § 207, “In this class-system, the ethical frame of mind therefore is rectitude and esprit de corps, i.e. the disposition to make oneself a member of one of the moments of civil society by one’s own act, through one’s energy, industry, and skill [. . .]”. 24 PhofR, § 198, “Further, the abstraction of one man’s production from another’s makes work more and more mechanical, until finally man is able to step aside and install machines in his place.”

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The endurance of the fear of death is the fundamental presupposition of the development of freedom, and consequently, for the development of communities of value which flatly oppose labor that is not worthy of a human being. Conclusion Appealing to the Paradigm of Recognition, Schmidt am Busch criticizes Jürgen Habermas’ system-theoretical analysis of the free market. In line with Hegel and Axel Honneth, he pretends to develop an alternative analysis based on the mutual recognition of persons. I argue that this Hegel reception is false. Not only because Habermas’ conception of money as “entsprachlichtes Steuerungsmedium” is completely compatible with Hegel’s conception of money, but also because Hegel neither analyzes the market as a social order “die (fast) ausschliesslich durch das abstrakte Recht strukturiert [ist]”,25 nor wants to introduce institutions which compensate for the market. For Hegel, the market necessarily presupposes a “community of value”. The criticism of neo-liberalism based on a Hegelian approach cannot concern a criticism of the market relations themselves, because they institutionalize the “fear of death”. It must rather concern the nature of the community of value in which the market relations are necessarily sublated. The community of value must neither be conceived of as a compensation of the market, nor as a corporation in the Hegelian sense. The community of value cannot be deduced from labor relations, but has already transcended labor relations throughout. The crucial problem that remains is how to develop a positive determination of the community of value.26 Literature Cobben, Paul (2009): The Nature of the Self. Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. —— (2012): The Paradigm of Recognition. Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

25 Schmidt am Busch (2011), p. 264. 26 Cobben (2009, 2011).



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Fraser, Nancy (1993): “Anerkennung bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verzerrt. Eine Erwiderung auf Axel Honneth”. In: N. Fraser, A. Honneth: Umverteilung oder Anerkennung? Eine politisch-philosophische Kontroverse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 225–270. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (PhofS): Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977. —— (PhofR): Philosophy of Right. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford University Press, 1967. Honneth, Axel (2010): “Work and Recognition: A Redefinition”. In: H. Schmidt am Busch, Ch. Zurn (eds.): The Philosophy of Recognition. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 223–241. —— (2011): Das Recht der Freiheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph (2011): “Anerkennung” als Prinzip der kritischen Theorie. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Zurn, Christopher (2005): “Anerkennung, Umverteilung und Demokratie. Dilemmata in Honneths Kritischer Theorie der Gesellschaft”. In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52/3, 435–460.

Chapter Four

From Autonomy to Recognition Robert Brandom I Kant’s deepest and most original idea, the axis around which I see all of his thought as revolving, is that what distinguishes judging and intentional doing from the activities of non-sapient creatures is not that they involve some special sort of mental processes, but that they are things knowers and agents are in a distinctive way responsible for. Judging and acting involve commitments. They are endorsements, exercises of authority. Responsibility, commitment, endorsement, authority—these are all normative notions. Judgments and actions make knowers and agents liable to characteristic kinds of normative assessment. Kant’s most basic idea is that minded creatures are to be distinguished from un-minded ones not by a matter-of-fact ontological distinction (the presence of mind-stuff ), but by a normative deontological one. This is his normative characterization of the mental. II One of the permanent intellectual achievements, and great philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment—and perhaps the greatest contribution modern philosophers have ever made to the wider culture—is the development of secular conceptions of legal, political, and moral normativity. In the place of traditional appeals to authority derived ultimately from divine commands (thought of as ontologically based upon the status of the heavenly lord as creator of those he commands) Enlightenment philosophers conceived of kinds of responsibility and authority (commitment and entitlement) that derived from the practical attitudes of human beings. So for instance in social contract theories of political obligation, normative statuses are thought of as instituted by the intent of individuals to bind themselves, on the model of promising or entering into a contract.

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Political authority is understood as ultimately derived from its (perhaps only implicit) acknowledgment by those over whom it is exercised. This movement of thought is animated by a revolutionary new conception of the relations between normative statuses and the attitudes of the human beings who are the subjects of such statuses, the ones who commit themselves, undertake responsibilities, and exercise authority, and who attribute or take themselves and others to exhibit those statuses. This is the idea that normative statuses are attitude-dependent. It is the idea that authority, responsibility, and commitment were not features of the nonor pre-human world. They did not exist until human beings started taking or treating each other as authoritative, responsible, committed, and so on—that is, until they started adopting normative attitudes towards one another. Those attitudes, and the social practices that made adopting them possible, institute the normative statuses, in a distinctive sense that it is a principal task of philosophy to investigate and elucidate. This view of the global attitude-dependence of norms contrasts with the traditional objectivist one, according to which the norms that determine what is “fitting” in the way of human conduct are to be read off of features of the non-human world that are independent of the attitudes of those subject to the norms. The job of human normative subjects on this picture is to conform their attitudes (what they take to be correct or appropriate conduct) to those attitude-independent norms—to discover and acknowledge the objective normative facts, on the practical side, just as they are obliged to discover and acknowledge objective non-normative facts on the theoretical side. Kant identifies himself with this tradition in that he embraces the Enlightenment commitment to the attitude-dependence of basic normative statuses. This is a thought that can be developed in a number of ways. One of Kant’s big ideas is that it can be exploited to provide a criterion of demarcation for the normative. To be entitled to a normative conception of positive human freedom as discursive spontaneity, Kant must be able to distinguish the normative constraint characteristic of knowing and acting subjects from the causal constraint characteristic of the objects they know about and act on. In his terms, he must be able to distinguish constraint by conceptions1 of laws from constraint by laws. What is the difference between adopting a normative status and coming to be in a natural state?

1 Or representations: “Vorstellungen”.



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What is the difference between how norms and causes “bind” those subject to them? Following his hero Rousseau, Kant radicalizes (what he and his followers thought of as) the Enlightenment discovery of the attitude-dependence of normative statuses into an account of what is distinctive of normative bindingness according to a model of autonomy. This model, and the criterion for demarcating normative statuses from natural properties that it embodies, is intended as a successor-conception to the traditional model of obedience of a subordinate to the commands of a superior. On that traditional conception, one’s normative statuses are determined by one’s place in the great feudal chain of normative subordination—which may itself be thought of either as an objective feature of the natural (and supernatural) world, or as itself determined normatively by some notion of the deserts of those ranked according to their asymmetric authority over and responsibility to one another. The contrasting autonomy idea that we (as subjects) are genuinely normatively constrained only by rules we constrain ourselves by, those that we adopt and acknowledge as binding on us. Merely natural creatures (as objects) are bound only by rules in the form of laws whose bindingness is not at all conditioned by their acknowledgment of those rules as binding on them. The difference between non-normative compulsion and normative authority is that we are genuinely normatively responsible only to what we acknowledge as authoritative. In this sense, only we can bind ourselves, in the sense that we are only normatively bound by the results of exercises of our freedom: self-bindings, commitments we have undertaken by acknowledging them.2 This is to say that the positive freedom to adopt normative statuses, to be responsible or committed, is the same as the positive freedom to make ourselves responsible, by our attitudes. So Kant’s normative conception of positive freedom is of freedom as a kind of authority. Specifically, it consists in our authority to make ourselves rationally responsible. The capacity to be bound by norms and the capacity to bind ourselves by norms are one and the same. That they are one and the same is what it is for it to be norms that we are bound by—in virtue of binding ourselves by them. Here authority and

2 The acknowledgement of authority may be merely implicit, as when Kant argues that in acknowledging others as concept users we are implicitly also acknowledging a commitment not to treat their concept-using activities as mere means to our own ends. That is, there can be background commitments that are part of the implicit structure of rationality and normativity as such. But even in these cases, the source of our normative statuses is understood to lie in our normative attitudes.

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responsibility are symmetric and reciprocal, constitutive features of the normative subject who is at once authoritative and responsible. This whole constellation of ideas about normativity, reason, and freedom, initiated by Kant, and developed by his successors, is, I think, what Heidegger means when he talks about “the dignity and spiritual greatness of German Idealism.” III The Kant-Rousseau autonomy criterion of demarcation of the normative tells us something about normative force—about the nature of the bindingness or validity of the discursive commitments undertaken in judging or acting intentionally. That force, it tells us, is attitude-dependent. It is important to realize that such an approach can only work if it is paired with an account of the contents that normative force is invested in that construes those contents as attitude-independent. The autonomy criterion says that it is in a certain sense up to us (it depends on our activities and attitudes) whether we are bound by (responsible to) a particular conceptual norm (though acknowledging any conceptual commitments may involve further implicit rationality- and intentionality-structural commitments). If not only the normative force, but also the contents of those commitments—what we are responsible for—were also up to us, then, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, “whatever seems right to us would be right.” In that case, talk of what is right or wrong could get no intelligible grip: no norm would have been brought to bear, no genuine commitment undertaken. Put another way, autonomy, binding oneself by a norm, rule, or law, has two components, corresponding to ‘autos’ and ‘nomos’. One must bind oneself, but one must also bind oneself. If not only that one is bound by a certain norm, but also what that norm involves—what is correct or incorrect according to it—is up to the one endorsing it, the notion that one is bound, that a distinction has been put in place between what is correct and incorrect according to that norm goes missing. The attitude-dependence of normative force, which is what the autonomy thesis asserts, is intelligible only in a context in which the boundaries of the content—what I acknowledge as constraining me and by that acknowledgment make into a normative constraint on me in the sense of opening myself up to normative assessments according to it—are not in the same way attitude-dependent. That is a condition of making the notion of normative constraint intelligible. We may call it the requirement of the relative independence of normative force and content.



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Kant secures this necessary division of labor by appeal to concepts, as rules that determine what is a reason for what, and so what falls under the concepts so articulated. (If being malleable is a conclusive consequence of being gold, then only malleable particulars can fall under the concept gold.) His picture of empirical activity as consisting in the application of concepts—of judging and acting as consisting in the endorsement of propositions and maxims—strictly separates the contents endorsed from the acts of endorsing them. The latter is our responsibility, the former is not.3 The judging or acting empirical consciousness always already has available a stable of completely determinate concepts. Its function is to choose among them, picking which ones to invest its authority in by applying to objects, hence which conceptually articulated responsibility to assume, which discursive commitments to undertake. Judging that what I see ahead is a dog—applying that concept in perceptual judgment— may initially be successfully integratable into my transcendental unity of apperception, in that it is not incompatible with any of my other commitments. But subsequent empirical experience may normatively require me to withdraw that characterization, and apply instead the concept fox. That is my activity and my responsibility. But what other judgments are compatible with somethings being a dog or a fox is not at that point up to me. It is settled by the contents of those concepts, by the particular rules I can choose to apply. In taking this line, Kant is adopting a characteristic rationalist order of explanation. It starts with the idea that empirical experience presupposes the availability of determinate concepts. For apperception—awareness in the sense required for sapience, awareness that can have cognitive significance—is judgment: the application of concepts. Even classification of something particular as of some general kind counts as awareness only if the general kind one applies is a concept: something whose application can both serve as and stand in need of reasons constituted by the application of other concepts. When an iron pipe rusts in the rain, it is in some sense classifying its environment as being of a certain general kind, but is in no interesting sense aware of it. So one must already have concepts in order to be aware of anything at all.

3 This does not require that the constitution of conceptual contents be wholly independent of our activity. Kant in fact sees “judgments of reflection” as playing a crucial role in it. It requires only that each empirical (“determinate”) judgment be made in a context in which already determinately contentful concepts are available as candidates for application.

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Of course, this is just the point at which the pre-Kantian rationalists notoriously faced the problem of where determinate concepts come from. If they are presupposed by experiential awareness, then it seems that they cannot be thought of as derived from it, for instance by abstraction. Once the normative apperceptive enterprise is up-and-running, further concepts may be produced or refined by various kinds of judgments (for instance, reflective ones), but concepts must always already be available for judgment, and hence apperception, to take place at all. Empirical activity, paradigmatically apperception in the form of judgment, presupposes transcendental activity, which is the rational criticism and rectification of ones commitments, making them into a normatively coherent, unified system. Defining that normative unity requires the availability of concepts with already determinate contents (roles in reasoning). Leibniz’s appeal to innateness is not an attractive response to the resulting explanatory demand. And it would not be much improvement to punt the central issue of the institution of conceptual norms from the realm of empirical into the realm of noumenal activity. It is a nice question just how Kant’s account deals with this issue. IV As I read him, Hegel criticizes Kant on just this point. He sees Kant as having been uncharacteristically and culpably uncritical about the origin and nature of the determinate contentfulness of empirical concepts. Hegel’s principal innovation is his idea that in order to follow through on Kant’s fundamental insight into the essentially normative character of mind, meaning, and rationality, we need to recognize that normative statuses such as authority and responsibility are at base social statuses. One of the problems this theory responds to, I want to claim, is set by the tension between the autonomy model of normative bindingness, which is a way of working out and filling in the Enlightenment commitment to the attitude-dependence of normative statuses, on the one hand, and the requirement that the contents by which autonomous subjects bind themselves be attitude-independent, in the sense that while according to the autonomy thesis the subject has the authority over the judging, in the sense of which concepts are applied, which judgeable content is endorsed (responsibility is taken for), what one then becomes responsible for must be independent of one’s taking responsibility for it, on the other. This is to say that the content itself must have an authority that is independent



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of the responsibility that the judger takes for it. And the problem is to reconcile that requirement with the autonomy model of the bindingness of normative statuses such as authority. Whose attitudes is the authority of conceptual contents dependent on? The autonomy model says it must be dependent on the attitudes of those responsible to that authority, namely the subjects who are judging and acting, so undertaking commitments with those contents and thereby subjecting themselves to that authority. But the requirement of relative independence of normative force and content forbids exactly that sort of attitude-dependence. To resolve this tension, we must disambiguate the basic idea of the attitude-dependence of normative statuses along two axes. First, we can ask: whose attitudes? The autonomy model takes a clear stand here: it is the attitudes of those who are responsible, that is, those over whom authority is exercised. This is not the only possible answer. For instance, the traditional subordination model of normative bindingness as obedience, by contrast to which the autonomy view defines itself, can be understood not only in objectivist terms, as rejecting the attitude-dependence of normative statuses, but also in terms compatible with that insight. So understood it acknowledges the attitude-dependence of normative statuses, but insists that it is the attitudes of those exercising authority, the superiors, rather than the attitudes of those over whom it is exercised, the subordinates, that are the source of its bindingness. (It is in this form that Enlightenment thinkers fully committed to attitude-dependence, such as Pufendorf, could continue to subscribe to the obedience model.) Hegel wants to respect both these thoughts. The trouble with them, he thinks, is that each of them construes the reciprocal notions of authority and responsibility, in a one-sided [einseitig] way, as having an asymmetric structure that is unmotivated and ultimately unsustainable. If X has authority over Y, then Y is responsible to X. The obedience view sees only the attitudes of X as relevant to the bindingness of the normative relation between them, while the autonomy view sees only the attitudes of Y as mattering. Hegel’s claim is that they both do. The problem is to understand how the authority to undertake a determinate responsibility that for Kant is required for an exercise of freedom is actually supplied with a determinate responsibility, so that one is intelligible as genuinely committing oneself to something, constraining oneself. This co-ordinate structure of authority and responsibility (‘independence’ and ‘dependence’ in the normative sense Hegel gives to these terms) is what Hegel’s social model of reciprocal recognition is supposed to make sense of. He thinks (and this

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is an Enlightenment thought, of a piece with that which motivates the autonomy criterion of demarcation of the normative) that all authority and responsibility are ultimately social phenomena. They are the products of the attitudes of those who, on the one hand, undertake responsibility and exercise authority, and on the other, of those who hold others responsible, and acknowledge their authority. In spite of the formal parity of the models as asymmetric, the modern autonomy model represents for Hegel a clear advance on the traditional obedience model in that it does aspire to endorse symmetry of authority and responsibility. But it does so by insisting that these relations of authority and responsibility obtain only when X and Y are identical: when the authoritative one and the responsible one coincide. That immediate collapse of roles achieves symmetry, but only at the cost of making it impossible to satisfy the demand of relative independence of normative force and content. The next clarificatory question that must be asked about the basic idea of the attitude-dependence of normative statuses is: what sort of dependence? In particular, are the attitudes in question sufficient to institute the normative statuses? Or are they merely necessary? The stronger, sufficiency, claim seems to be required to sustain the tension between the autonomy model and the requirement of relative independence of force from content. When I introduced the attitude-dependence idea, I characterized it in two different ways. On the one hand, I said it was the idea that Authority, responsibility, and commitment were not features of the non- or pre-human world. They did not exist until human beings started taking or treating each other as authoritative, responsible, committed, and so on— that is, until they started adopting normative attitudes towards one another.

This asserts only the necessity of normative attitudes for normative statuses. But I also put it as the idea that Those attitudes, and the social practices that made adopting them possible, institute the normative statuses.

Here the suggestion is of the sufficiency of attitudes to bring normative statuses—genuine obligations and rights—into existence. A moderate version of the normative attitude-dependence thesis rejects objectivism by insisting that the notions of responsibility and authority essentially involve (in the sense of being unintelligible apart from) the notion of acknowledging responsibility and authority. One can say that political legitimacy is not possible without the consent of the governed without



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thereby being committed to the possibility of reducing legitimacy without remainder to such consent. And a moderate autonomy thesis might treat subjects as responsible only to what they acknowledge as authoritative without dissolving the authority wholly into that acknowledgement. The one-sided obedience view took the attitudes of the superior to be sufficient to institute a normative status of authority and corresponding responsibility on the part of the subordinate. And the one-sided autonomy view took the acknowledgement of responsibility by the one bound to be sufficient to institute the authority by which he is bound. What Hegel sees as wrong about the obedience view is accordingly not that it makes each subject’s normative statuses dependent on the attitudes of others, but that it sees those attitudes as sufficient to institute those statuses all by themselves, independently of the attitudes of the one whose statuses they are. Taking someone to be responsible or authoritative, attributing a normative deontic status to someone, is an attitude that Hegel (picking up a term of Fichte’s) calls ‘recognition’ [Anerkennung]. Hegel’s view is what you get if you take the attitudes of both recognizer and recognized, both those who are authoritative and those who are responsible, to be essential necessary conditions of the institution of genuine normative statuses, and require in addition that those attitudes be symmetric or reciprocal [gegenseitig]. In a certain sense, Hegel also takes it that those individually necessary normative attitudes are jointly sufficient to institute normative statuses. What institutes normative statuses is reciprocal recognition. Someone becomes responsible only when others hold him responsible, and exercises authority only when others acknowledge that authority. One can petition others for recognition, in an attempt to become responsible or authoritative. To do that, one must recognize them as able to hold one responsible or acknowledge one’s authority. This is according them a certain kind of authority. But to achieve such statuses, one must be recognized by them in turn. That is to make oneself in a certain sense responsible to them. The process that synthesizes an apperceiving normative subject, one who can commit himself in judgment and action, become responsible cognitively and practically, is a social process of reciprocal recognition that at the same time synthesizes a normative recognitive community of those recognized by and who recognize that normative subject: a community bound together by reciprocal relations of authority over and responsibility to each other. Here is a mundane example. Achieving the status of being a good chessplayer is not something I can do simply be coming subjectively to adopt

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a certain attitude toward myself. It is, in a certain sense, up to me whom I regard as good chess-players: whether I count any woodpusher who can play a legal game, only formidable club players, Masters, or Grand Masters. That is, it is up to me whom I recognize as good chess-players, in the sense in which I aspire to be one. But it is not then in the same sense up to me whether I qualify as one of them. To earn their recognition in turn, I must be able to play up to their standards. To be, say, a formidable club player, I must be recognized as such by those I recognize as such. My recognitive attitudes can define a virtual community, but only the reciprocal recognition by those I recognize can make me actually a member of it, accord me the status for which I have implicitly petitioned by recognizing them. My attitudes exercise recognitive authority in determining whose recognitive attitudes I am responsible to for my actual normative status. As in the Kantian autonomy model of normative bindingness, we bind ourselves, collectively, and individually. No-one has authority over me except that which I grant by my recognitive attitudes. They are accordingly a necessary condition of my having the status I do. But as on the traditional obedience model, others do exercise genuine authority over my normative statuses—in the cases we care about, what I am committed to, responsible for, and authoritative about. Their attitudes are also a necessary condition of my having the status I do. The two aspects of normative dependence, authority and responsibility, are entirely reciprocal and symmetrical. And together, the attitudes of myself and my fellows in the recognitive community, of those I recognize and who recognize me, are sufficient to institute normative statuses that are not subjective in the same way in which the normative attitudes that institute them are. Hegel diagnoses the incompatibility of commitment to the attitudedependence of normative statuses according to the Kantian autonomy model and the relative independence of normative content from normative force as resulting from the autonomy model’s asymmetric insistence on the sufficiency of the attitudes of the committed one to institute the normative status in question, without acknowledging also any normative dependence, in the sense of a necessary condition, on the attitudes of others (due to an insufficiently nuanced appreciation of the dimensions along which the autonomy model of normative force or bindingness represents an advance over the obedience model). The reciprocal recognition model he recommends to resolve this incompatibility balances moments of normative independence or authority of attitudes over statuses, on the part of both recognizer and recognized, with corresponding moments of normative dependence or responsibility to the attitudes



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of others, by reading both of these aspects as individually only necessary, and only jointly sufficient to institute normative statuses in the sense of giving them binding force. V For Hegel, social substance is synthesized by reciprocal recognition. It is articulated into individual recognizing and recognized selves, which are subjects of normative statuses of commitment, authority, and responsibility— statuses instituted collectively by those recognitive attitudes. He sees these social recognitive practices as providing the context and background required to make sense of the Kantian process of integrating conceptual commitments so as to synthesize a rational unity of apperception. Hegel’s term for the whole normatively articulated realm of discursive activity (Kant’s “realm of freedom”) is ‘Geist’: spirit. At its core is language: “Language is the Dasein of Geist,” Hegel says.4 That is where concepts (which for Hegel, as for Kant, is to say, norms) have their actual, public existence. (To look ahead: we might here think of Sellars’s principle that “Grasp of a concept is mastery of the use of a word.”) Here is how I think the social division of conceptual labor understood according to the recognitive model of reciprocal authority and responsibility works in the paradigmatic linguistic case, so as to resolve the tension with which we have been concerned. It is up to me which counter in the game I play, which move I make, which word I use. But it is not then in the same sense up to me what the significance of that counter is—what other moves it precludes or makes necessary, what I have said or claimed by using that word, what the constraints are on successful rational integration of the commitment I have thereby undertaken with the rest of those I acknowledge. It is up to me what concept I apply in a particular judgment—whether I claim that the coin is made of copper or silver, for instance. But if I claim that it is copper, it is not then up to me what move I have made, what else I have committed myself to by using that term. So, for instance, I have thereby committed myself to the coin melting at 1084° C, but not at 1083° C—in the sense that if those claims are not true then neither is the one I made. And I have made a claim that is incompatible with saying that the coin is an electrical insulator. I can bind myself 4 In the Phenomenology of Spirit, [A. W. Miller, (trans.), Oxford University Press] paragraph 652.

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by these determinate conceptual norms because they are always already there in the always already up-and-running communal linguistic practices into which I enter as a young one. An essential part of what maintains them is the attitudes of others—in this case, of the metallurgical experts who would hold me responsible for those commitments on the basis of my performance, if the issue arose. My authority to commit myself using public words is the authority at once to make myself responsible for and authorize others to hold me responsible for determinate conceptual contents about which I am not authoritative. It is a petition for determinate recognition (attribution of specific commitments) by those I implicitly recognize as having, and thereby grant the authority so to recognize me. That is granting them the authority to assess the correctness or success of my rational integrative performances. The point with which I want to close is that Hegel’s social, linguistic development of Kant’s fundamental insight into the essentially normative character of our mindedness provides a model of positive freedom that, while building on his notion of autonomy, develops it substantially. One of the central issues of classical political philosophy is how to reconcile individual freedom with constraint by social, communal, or political norms. Kant’s vision of us as rational creatures opens up space for an understanding of a kind of freedom that consists in being able constrain ourselves by norms—indeed, by norms that are rational, in the sense that they are conceptual norms: norms articulating what is a reason for what. The normative conception of positive freedom then makes possible a distinctive kind of answer to the question of how the loss of individual negative freedom—freedom from constraint—inevitably involved in being subject to institutional norms could be rationally justified to the individual. In the Kantian context, such a justification could in principle consist in the corresponding increase in positive freedom. The positive expressive freedom, the freedom to do something, that is obtainable only by constraining oneself by the conceptual norms implicit in discursive social practices, speaking a public language, is a central case where such a justification evidently is available. Speaking a particular language requires complying with a daunting variety of norms, rules, and standards. The result of failure to comply with enough of them is unintelligibility. This fact can fade so far into the background as to be well-nigh invisible for our home languages, but it is an obtrusive, unpleasant, and unavoidable feature of working in a language in which one is not at home. The same phenomenon is manifest in texts that intentionally violate even a relatively small number of central grammatical and semantic norms,



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such as Gertrude Stein’s prose. But the kind of positive freedom one gets in return for constraining oneself in these multifarious ways is distinctive and remarkable. The astonishing empirical observation with which Chomsky inaugurated contemporary linguistic theory is that almost every sentence uttered by an adult native speaker is radically novel. That is, not only has that speaker never heard or uttered just that sequence of words before, but neither has anyone else—ever. “Have a nice day,” may get a lot of play in the States, and “Noch eins,” in Germany, but any tolerably complex sentence is almost bound to be new. Quotation aside, it is for instance exceptionally unlikely that anyone else has ever used a sentence chosen at random from the story I have been telling. And this is not a special property of professor-speak. Surveys of large corpora of actual utterances (collected and collated by indefatigable graduate students) have repeatedly confirmed this empirically. And it can be demonstrated on more fundamental grounds by looking at the number of sentences of, say, thirty words or less that a relatively simple grammar can construct using the extremely minimal 5000-word vocabulary of Basic English. There hasn’t been time in human history for us to have used a substantial proportion of those sentences, even if every human there had ever been always spoke English and did nothing but chatter incessantly. Yet I have no trouble producing, and you have no trouble understanding, a sentence that (in spite of its ordinariness) it is quite unlikely anyone has happened to use before, such as: We shouldn’t leave for the picnic until we’re sure that we’ve packed my old wool blanket, the thermos, and all the sandwiches we made this morning. This capacity for radical semantic novelty fundamentally distinguishes sapient creatures from those who do not engage in linguistic practices. Because of it we can (and do, all the time) make claims, formulate desires, and entertain goals that no-one in the history of the world has ever before so much as considered. This massive positive expressive freedom transforms the lives of sentient creatures who become sapient by constraining themselves by linguistic—which is at base to say conceptual—norms. So in the conceptual normativity implicit in linguistic practice we have a model of a kind of constraint—loss of negative freedom—that is repaid many times over in a bonanza of positive freedom. Anyone who was in a position to consider the trade-off rationally would consider it a oncein-a-lifetime bargain. Of course, one need not be a creature like us. As Sellars says, one always could simply not speak—but only at the price of having nothing to say. And non-sapient sentients are hardly in a position

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to weigh the pros and cons involved. But the fact remains that there is an argument that shows that at least this sort of normative constraint is rational from the point of view of the individual—that it pays off by opening up a dimension of positive expressive freedom that is a pearl without price, available in no other way. Hegel’s idea is that this case provides the model that every other social or political institution that proposes to constrain our negative freedom should be compared to and measured against. The question always is: what new kind of positive expressive freedom, what new kinds of life-possibilities, what new kinds of commitment, responsibility, and authority are made possible by the institution? VI Kant’s normative conception of intentionality moves to the center of the philosophical stage the question of how we should think about the force or bindingness (his ‘Gültigkeit’ or ‘Verbindlichkeit’) of normative statuses such as commitment, authority, and responsibility. Kant’s response is to develop and extend the Enlightenment commitment to the attitudedependence of normative statuses in the form of his autonomy model, which serves also as a criterion demarcating the realm of the normative from that of the natural. Hegel sees that the very distinction of force and content that called forth Kant’s new normative conception of judging and intending demands a relative independence of those two aspects that cannot be accommodated on the autonomy model, so long as that model is construed as applying to individual normative subjects conceived in isolation from one another—that is, apart from their normative attitudes towards one another. He notices to begin with that the requisite dependence and independence claims can be reconciled if they are construed in terms of individually necessary conditions, rather than individually sufficient ones. And understanding the sort of normative dependence and independence in question as ways of talking about relations of responsibility and authority, he offers a social model of normative statuses as instituted by reciprocal recognition, according to which each recognitive relation (recognizing and being recognized) combines aspects of authority over and responsibility to those who are recognized or who recognize.

Chapter Five

The Metaphysics of Recognition On Hegel’s concept of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit Arthur Kok Introduction This contribution proposes to understand Hegel’s self-consciousness chapter in his Phenomenology of Spirit (PhoS) as his alternative to Kant’s idea of the transcendental ‘I’. Kant’s project: Thinking the possibility of metaphysics is comparable to Hegel’s project in the PhoS. Of course, Hegel’s theory of self-consciousness has epistemological and socio-theoretical implications, but in this paper I will focus on Hegel’s metaphysical position that justifies these implications. It is not original to draw attention to making the comparison between the transcendental ‘I’ and the Hegelian self-consciousness. Well-known scholars have already emphasized that Hegel’s concept of self-consciousness aims to improve the Kantian notion of it.1 In my opinion, however, they fail to identify the precise difference because they overlook an important similarity. In this paper, I will present the view that Hegel further develops the Kantian idea that we cannot perceive unity, but only think it. Yet, this is not the only similarity to Kant. Like Kant, Hegel holds on to the view that although we are unable to perceive nature’s unity, and that we ourselves are the unity of nature, it still exists relatively independently from us. In opposition to ‘standard’ idealism, such as Berkeley’s, in which nature only exists insofar as it is perceived, Hegel does not reduce nature to being just an idea of reason. Different from Kant, however, Hegel not only points out the fundamental distinction between self-consciousness and nature, but also their oneness. The difference between them exists within the subject itself. This position is not alien to Kant, but belongs to his practical

1 E.g., the recent wave of Anglo-Saxon Hegel-scholars, including most notably, Pippin, Pinkard and Houlgate, all emphazise that Hegel takes the Kantian project as his starting point.

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philosophy. The practical standpoint of reason implies a position in which the subject is both natural and intellectual. So, Hegel’s actual program in the self-consciousness chapter then is to think the unity of practical and theoretical reason. Thus, the core problem that Hegel tries to tackle is the problem of the unity of reason. I claim that Hegel takes Kant’s practical view on the unity of reason, autonomous freedom, to be the intrinsic unity of the transcendental subject and the thing-in-itself which remain irreconcilable in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Hegel does not regard the relation between the transcendental subject and the autonomous subject as ‘precise concordance’,2 as does Kant, but shows that freedom—not in the sense of spontaneity, but as autonomy—is the essence of the transcendental ‘I’. In Hegel’s view, the autonomous subject is identical to the thing-in-itself, because the thing-in-itself as such has the structure of a subject. Hegel does not deny, however, that the thing-in-itself has no otherness for the subject, but this otherness is not alien to it, as Kant maintains. Philosophical or metaphysical knowledge, i.e. knowledge of the thing-in-itself, is self-knowledge, yet the self or subject that is known exists essentially in a relation to otherness. In the end, the essence of our being, autonomy, must be understood as the unity of independency and dependency of the subject. This is made explicit in the lord/bondsman relation in the selfconsciousness chapter of the PhoS. Hegel calls this relation of independency and dependency recognition. His concept of recognition replaces Kant’s idea of the transcendental ‘I’ as an adequate concept for selfconsciousness, without failing to integrate the most important element of the transcendental subject, namely to be the condition for metaphysics. To make my thesis about the metaphysical importance of the selfconsciousness chapter in the PhoS more feasible, I will first draw some relations between this book and the Science of Logic (SoL). In the introduction to The Science of Subjective Logic, Hegel discusses directly with Kant about the nature of subjectivity. This discussion is helpful to understand how we can relate the self-consciousness chapter in the PhoS to Kant’s transcendental project of the possibility of metaphysics. The main body of my contribution will consist in a reading of the self-consciousness chapter of the PhoS. I will systematically evaluate the dialectical structure of this chapter, drawing special attention to Hegel’s famous introduction of life in the first part of the self-consciousness chapter. 2 I borrow this phrase from Martin Moors (1990), p. 20.



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1. Hegel’s Criticism of Kant’s Theoretical Reason In the end, Kant is only able to think a merely formal correspondence between pure self-consciousness and moral agency. In Hegel’s eyes, this is a provisional result; one which he wants to develop further into a relation of pure adequacy, i.e., as a unity of form and content. To do this, Hegel must question Kant’s idea of transcendental freedom. Transcendental freedom is the possibility to be the cause of an action—i.e., the possibility of a subject to possess free will—as opposed to merely sensible, affective determination which is impure or pathological. Transcendental freedom is the result of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPuR), a purely theoretical construction of the free will. Kant’s conclusion is that transcendental freedom is not adequate to the entire concept of freedom, but is only compatible with it in the sense that we can comprehend the logical possibility of it, i.e., it enables us to think freedom re-affirmatively. Nonetheless, the entire concept of freedom presupposes a unity of form and content which is unobtainable by theoretical reflection and can only be indicated as the immediate practical standpoint of the free agent. For Kant, it is impossible to ascertain the existence of free will theoretically because, given our sensible nature, we conceive every possible object of consciousness a priori as something given to us which contradicts the nature of free will, viz. to be something self-positing. He says, however, that from the faculty of the understanding’s spontaneity, we can deduce the logical possibility of a synthesis with a non-sensible intuition; indeed, only as a boundary concept, but still this concept—of the Noumenon— allows for a critique of speculative reason.3 This critique purifies the theoretical reason from all its possible infections by sensible determinations, and makes it compatible with the pure—and thus also purely negative— idea of freedom. As a result, we can think the possibility of free will as the logical possibility to apply the categories of the faculty of understanding to the noumenal sphere whose existence we cannot exclude, and whose nature has to be defined in contradistinction to sensible nature. (These characterizations do not define the intelligible objects as such, but our 3 I do realize that this is not the ‘common’ reception of Kant’s first Critique. I hold the view, however, that in the reception of Kant the role of the intellectual intuition is systematically underestimated. Although we do not possess an intellectual intuition, it is a necessary fiction that we must commit to if we want to think freedom. Kant’s concept of the Noumenal brings both elements together: it articulates the possibility of pure, noumenal freedom as purely logical. For the complete argumentation underlying this claim, I must refer to the first part of my dissertation “Kant, Hegel, und die Frage der Metaphysik”.

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finite rational articulation of them.) To actually accept this merely logical, i.e. epistemologically meaningless, possibility as a real possibility, we need to take the standpoint of practical reason. In his criticism outlined in the SoL, Hegel challenges the very beginning of Kant’s reasoning. In the introduction to The Science of Subjective Logic, “Of the concept in general”, Hegel remarks: Just as the Kantian philosophy did not consider the categories in and for themselves, but declared them to be finite determinations unfit to hold the truth, on the only inappropriate ground that they are subjective forms of self-consciousness, still less did it subject to criticism the forms of the concepts that make up the content of ordinary logic.4

In pointing out that Kant’s critical philosophy is not critical enough because it does not reflect on the nature of the categories, Hegel legitimizes his project of the SoL, which can be regarded as Hegel’s version of the Kantian project of the critique of pure reason. So, to consider the categories not as a priori conditions for experience, but as that which they are “in and for themselves”, is not hostile towards Kant, but thinks through the original project of Kant more radically. For example, in the same text, Hegel praises Kant for using the term ‘transcendental’ to the extent that this term expresses that our conceptuality is constitutive for experience; a claim which Hegel supports wholeheartedly. However, Hegel is also right in pointing out that it is impossible that the spontaneous unity of the faculty of understanding, i.e., self-consciousness, at the same time has an a priori given categorical structure. Interestingly, Hegel doubts the validity of Kant’s argument that the categories are “finite determinations” because they are “subjective forms”. The incorrectness of this inference can indeed be demonstrated because, insofar as Kant already acknowledges that a subject must be self-conscious, he must admit that the categorical forms are precisely subjective as far as they have the form of self-consciousness. Consequently, the many categories must be deduced as a coherent whole that as such expresses self-consciousness.5 Kant’s transcendental deduction of self-consciousness, however, only

4 GW 12, 28. For all translations from the Science of Logic, I use G. W. F. Hegel, George di Giovanni (transl.), Hegel Cambridge Translations: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic, Cambridge University Press, 2010. 5 I do not want to let someone think that Hegel simply takes the Kantian categories and ‘applies’ to them self-consciousness. He develops the different categories as intrinsically related to one another throughout the entire SoL. Hegel develops the categories of quantity, quality and relation in the Objective Logic, but the categories of modality only take form



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one-sidedly shows that self-consciousness is the necessary precondition of any possible categorical structure, but Kant does not unfold how this categorical structure in-itself has the form of self-consciousness. Therefore, in Hegel’s eyes, Kant’s account of self-consciousness is not entirely in the wrong direction, but falls short simply because it is—even measured by Kant’s own criteria—far from exhaustive. As a result, given the inner contradiction of a subject, which essentially is a self-conscious faculty, but whose structure is a priori given, Kant’s transcendental self-consciousness is not an adequate articulation of selfconsciousness in-itself. The conceptual nature of the categories as subjective forms of self-consciousness should not be grasped as the pure, yet finite, determinations that are left-over after abstracting from all content; instead, conceptuality is, in itself, an act of abstraction; and consequently, this act of abstraction must be comprehended as a self-conscious act. This also seems to be Hegel’s move when he elaborates that the transcendental self-consciousness, or the ‘I’, still is a limited and inadequate representation of self-consciousness. In the introduction to The Objective Logic, “General division of the logic”, Hegel clarifies this: However, if there was to be a real progress in philosophy, it was necessary that the interest of thought should be drawn to the consideration of the formal side, of the “I,” of consciousness as such, that is, of the abstract reference of a subjective awareness to an object, and that in this way the path should be opened for the cognition of the infinite form, that is, of the concept. Yet, in order to arrive at this cognition, the finite determinateness in which that form is as “I,” as consciousness, must be shed. The form, when thought out in its purity, will then have within itself the capacity to determine itself, that is, to give itself a content, and to give it as a necessary content—as a system of thought-determinations.6

We see that the relation between concept and self-consciousness is no longer left in the dark. The concept-in-itself is adequate to the infinite form which is the adequate form of the self-consciousness. So, when Hegel says that “the finite determinateness [. . .] must be shed”,7 his intention is not to get rid of finitude as such, but of the specific falsely asserted finitude in the Subjective Logic. This is important, because the transition from the Objective Logic to the Subjective Logic can compared to that from consciousness to self-consciousness in the PhoS. So it is impossible to say of a singular, i.e. abstracted, category like quantity that it has the form of self-consciousness. We can only derive the unity of self-consciousness from the intrinsic relatedness of the categories. Cf. Cobben (2003). 6 GW 21, 48. 7 The original German text says ‘abstreifen’, which literarily means ‘to strip off ’.

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in the Kantian sense. Although the creation of “a system of thoughtdeterminations” is the task of the SoL, its grounding idea, i.e., the infinite form as a radicalized form of Kantian self-consciousness, is not developed in the SoL, but its presupposition.8 The philosophical grounding of this idea, i.e., the actual development from a Kantian-like transcendental selfconsciousness, or the ‘I’, to self-consciousness as an infinite form or as concept, is found in the self-consciousness chapter of the PhoS. 2. The Metaphysical Significance of the Phenomenology of Spirit Although the SoL might be the most metaphysical work of Hegel, we must not forget that the topic of the PhoS, viz. the possibility of absolute knowledge, has an outspoken metaphysical character. Furthermore, whereas the beginning of the PhoS is not, like in the SoL, the standpoint of absolute knowing, but an outline of the assessment of its possibility, the PhoS’s project is infinitely closer to Kant’s project of the CPuR than the SoL because the CPuR thematizes the possibility of metaphysics, too. Nonetheless, the PhoS has a distinctively different program than the CPuR because, in the end, Hegel does not deny that absolute knowledge is possible. Kant, on the other hand, rejects that such knowledge is possible, and maintains that we ought to limit our knowledge aspirations to the sensible world which is distinguished from the supersensible world of intelligible beings. We have already seen, however, that Hegel traces back this difference to the fact that the distinction between theoretical and practical reason is absolute for Kant. Hegel does not accept the Kantian separation between the sensible and supersensible world. Despite the fundamental similarity between the PhoS and the CPuR, viz. to take the unity of reason as the crucial building block for metaphysics, the mere definition of the problem in the PhoS is already an attempt to overcome the difference between theoretical and practical reason, and sensible and supersensible nature. For Hegel, philosophical knowledge is knowledge of substance. Hegel’s main influence here is Spinoza, especially 8 Cf. GW21, 32: “In the Phenomenology of Spirit I have presented consciousness as it progresses from the first immediate opposition of itself and the subject matter to absolute knowledge. This path traverses all the forms of the relation of consciousness to the object and its result is the concept of science. There is no need, therefore, to justify this concept here (apart from the fact that it emerges within logic itself ). It has already been justified in the other work, and would indeed not be capable of any other justification than is produced by consciousness, as all its shapes dissolve into that concept as into their truth.”



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in his capacity as critic of the Cartesian conception of substance. Substance can only exist as one, not as a plurality of substances, as Descartes thinks. It is the same as the absolute because it encompasses oneness and manifold. This is, again, anti-Cartesian, since Descartes famously distinguishes between the one as a substance, i.e., res cogitans, and the many as a different substance, i.e., res extensa. Henceforth, the Spinozist conception of substance articulates the absolute unity of reason. Hegel does not simply commit to this conception of substance, but takes seriously Kant’s criticism of Spinoza. Kant denies that Spinoza has formulated a substantial insight. The latter’s representation of the absolute is not real knowledge, but a subjective representation, to the extent that it is the result of a reflection that is necessarily mediated by a practical standpoint, which in the end reduces morality to virtue, i.e., to some natural denomination to do good.9 The problem is that this involves two subjects: a thinking subject and a moral one, of which, according to Kant, the inner unity cannot be thought. Whereas this twofoldness obviously again has to do with the Kantian separation between theoretical and practical reason, Hegel understands that he must resolve this separation if he is to make sense of his claim that philosophical knowledge is knowledge of substance. He makes explicit the underlying problem of thinking substance is that the subject lacks unity. Consequently, to think the unity of the subject would also make it possible to think substance, since for Kant the latter presupposes the former. On the other hand, the sole criterion for a subject’s unity is that it must be existing oneness; therefore, it is only possible to think the unity of the subject if we think it as substance. The fundamental philosophical problem of the PhoS—How to think substance?—can only be affirmatively

9 In my opinion, in short, Kant’s criticism of Spinoza has both theoretical and practical characteristics. Theoretically, Kant rejects the possibility to have substantial knowledge, i.e., knowledge of the thing-in-itself, in general. In the second of the Critique of the Power Judgment, the Critique of Teleological Judgment, however, Kant puts forward a practical objection to Spinozist ethics (§ 87). In Spinozist ethics, morality exists, but only as virtue, and there is no transcendent God. As a result, Kant argues, morality must be immediately reflected in nature. In such ethical position the difference between nature and reason is entirely lost, and the obvious question: why should nature meet this expectation?, cannot be posed. Consequently, Spinozist ethics cannot express what Kant values most about morals, namely that they are based on rules. In other words, morality exists not as nature, but in our relation to nature. I believe that for Kant this practical objection is decisive, and that this objection is clearly overcome in Hegel’s posing of the question: What is substance? Hegel would certainly not deny that morals are rules for behavior, and that there is a fundamental—yet not contradictory—difference between nature and morality.

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answered when we think substance as subject. Hegel expresses the fact that the truth of substance is that it is subject in his formulation that the absolute is ‘the self-movement of spirit’. On the one hand, Hegel conceives the absolute as something whose existence is fully contained within itself, but, on the other hand, to give the self-movement a spiritual character makes explicit that Hegel’s absolute only exists in-itself as a selfcomprehending subject. Thus, Hegel’s spirit is not opposed to nature, but his idea of spirit opposes the standpoint that nature is immediately identical to substance. Again, this refers to Spinoza, who can be regarded as the most concise protagonist of the idea that substance is nature. Spinoza distinguishes between natura naturens and natura naturata, which indicate, respectively, nature as self-cause and nature as something caused. As this natura naturens, nature exists as an absolute, and fully encompasses the natura naturata. In this absolute, all difference is made subordinate to the self-contained oneness of the self-cause. This conception of the absolute is vulnerable to Kant’s criticism because it does not take into account the moment of subjectivity. In taking substance as spirit, Hegel basically wants to think the self-contained oneness of the self-cause as the self-positing of the subject. This shift, however, whereas it aims to integrate Kant’s critical stance, implies that the conception of the absolute as self-cause must be challenged. Hegel’s self-consciousness presents an alternative to the idea of the self-contained oneness of the absolute. He introduces a different idea of selfhood which he calls ‘recognition’. If Hegel’s concept of recognition has to be understood as an answer to this fundamental problem inherited from modern philosophers such as Spinoza and Kant, this tells us some things about the way we should read the self-consciousness chapter. Firstly, the subject matter of the PhoS is not an individual consciousness, but the infinite form of substance. This infinite form is not yet known at the beginning, although Hegel hypothesizes that we should think it as subject. Secondly, it makes no sense to read the PhoS from a developmental perspective, in which self-consciousness emergences from consciousness, because Hegel precisely wishes to transform the idea of self-cause which is closely linked to the idea of emergence. For the same reason, it is useless to employ the view of developmental psychology to understand the PhoS.10 The abstract and exclusively philosophical purport of the PhoS, 10 E.g. Kesselring (1981), who compared Hegel to Piaget, is correct in claiming that it is meaningful for developmental psychology to try to find the logical shapes in the differ-



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viz. the unfolding of the infinite form, is purely logical. Only from this perspective does a comparison with Kant’s project of the possibility of metaphysics make sense. 3. Self-consciousness as Recognition In the self-consciousness chapter of the PhoS, Hegel develops selfconsciousness as a relation of recognition. Hegel’s critical analysis and refutation of the representation of self-consciousness as the ‘I’ in this chapter can be read as a criticism of Kant’s transcendental ‘I’, although Hegel’s formulation of the ‘I’ as a tautology targets a broader range of ‘I’-thinkers, which also includes Descartes and the early Fichte.11 In the present assessment of the self-consciousness chapter, I hope to elucidate that Hegel’s critique of the ‘I’ is clenched together in his claim that the ‘I’ has the shape of desire, which turns out to be a contradiction-in-itself. Hegel’s alternative shape for self-consciousness, viz. recognition, overcomes this contradiction of desire because it essentially grasps itself as a relation to an other self-consciousness. Somewhat disobeying the linearity of the original self-consciousness chapter, but for the sake of clarity, I will start with outlining Hegel’s first determination of recognition. Of course, this determination is the result of a preceding analysis, viz. the contradiction of the ‘I’, which I reconstruct retrospectively. My disobedience is motivated by the fact that most interpreters of the self-consciousness chapter wrongly believe that the relation of recognition, which is introduced halfway through the self-consciousness chapter, describes a relation between individuals. Not only do I think this view is decisively mistaken, but also this presumption would make it difficult to understand the relation to Kant’s idea of self-consciousness. Hence, I will first make some remarks on this issue, even though they might seem slightly out of context.

ent stages of the psychological development of an individual. However, his claim that the purely logical development in the PhoS could benefit from the insights of developmental psychology is incorrect. Developmental psychology still is an empirical science that produces only contingent knowledge. 11 With the early Fichte, I mean the Fichte of the Science of Knowing 1794. After that, Fichte writes new versions of the Science of Knowing several times. The last complete version of it, which stems from 1812, is much more developed than the 1794 version. Hegel probably has not read any Science of Knowing after 1794. Especially Reinhard Lauth and Helmut Girndt have done excellent research on the late Fichte.

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To see how Hegel introduces the term ‘recognition’ in the PhoS, let us consider the following quote from the PhoS: Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being recognized.12

Two things have to be kept in mind when interpreting this. Firstly, Hegel clearly says that to recognize others is not so much a feature of selfconsciousness, but that self-consciousness only exists as something recognized. Secondly, the phrase “for another” does not refer to other individuals, but functions as an antithetical concept for “for itself ”. Despite the fact that most interpretations of this text are inclined to assume that Hegel speaks here about a plurality of concrete self-conscious individuals who mutually recognize each other, there is no reference to individuals. More importantly, Hegel treats “in being recognized” as an ontological qualification of self-consciousness, i.e., there exists no self-consciousness other than in the shape of the being-recognized. In other words, we are not yet in the position to say in what form it makes sense to speak about a real self-consciousness. The follow-up question Hegel thus understandably addresses directly after this, is what a being’s determination as ‘beingrecognized’ means, and how it may solve this fundamental question. Hegel explicates this determination as follows: The twofold significance of the distinct moments has in the nature of selfconsciousness to be infinite, or directly the opposite of the determinateness in which it is posited.13

This quote undermines any interpretation which assumes that, for Hegel, recognition primarily describes a relation between pre-existing individuals. Already the image of an individual, or even a plurality of individuals, presupposes a manifold and a oneness that have been reconciled in one way or another. In Hegel’s picture, however, the possible unity of the one and the many is highly problematic. Of course, Hegel would agree that selfconsciousness can only exist as the unity of oneness and manifold, but this unity cannot have the shape of an immediately given entity.

12 GW 9, 114; Miller, 111. I slightly modified the translation. Miller translates “als ein Anerkanntes” with “in being acknowledged”. This translation does not express clearly enough that ‘Anerkanntes’ is an inflexion of ‘Anerkennung’, which is Hegel’s word for recognition. Cf. Pinkard’s translation: “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself by way of its existing in and for itself for an other; i.e., it exists only as a recognized being.” (Pinkard 2012, 81; unpublished but can be found on the web.) 13 GW 9, 114; Miller, 111.



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This impossibility is made explicit by Hegel when he shows that there is a “twofold significance” to self-consciousness. The meaning of this “twofold significance” can only be understood in the light of a post-Kantian account of transcendental self-consciousness, especially Fichte’s, that interprets Kant’s transcendental self-consciousness, the ‘I’, as a selfrelation, the “I am I”. This self-relation, which is further examined as desire in the next section, basically entails that the unity of self-consciousness can encompass manifold or difference because it is in-itself the externalization of itself from itself, and henceforth, is the source of difference. However, in becoming other-than-itself, self-consciousness remains the same existence because the becoming simply is the exertion of its immanent nature. The “twofold significance” of this self-relation is, therefore, that self-consciousness is at the same time a relation, i.e., the negation or externalization of itself, and the negation of this relation because through the first negation it does not become another existence. For Hegel, this evident contradiction is the inevitable result of Kant’s transcendental ‘I’; and the concept of recognition is introduced to solve the contradiction. In this regard, it makes sense to read the self-consciousness chapter in the PhoS as a discussion with Kant. Observed from this highly abstract standpoint, the connection with Hegel’s discussion with Kant in the SoL also becomes more visible. Firstly, we see that Hegel’s problem with Kant, viz. that Kant’s unity of self-consciousness could not account for the fact that the faculty of understanding was in itself differentiated in a manifold of categories, is systematically thematized here as the question: What is the unity of self-consciousness? Secondly, when Hegel introduces ‘recognition’ in the PhoS, his choice of words is remarkably close to that of the SoL. Just as in the SoL, the infinite form of self-consciousness is presented as the result of overcoming the problematic representation of self-consciousness as an ‘I’. This gives us a good reason to believe that recognition is indeed meant to be the first shape of the infinite form, which is characteristic for the SoL. 4. The Contradiction of the Self-certainty of Self-consciousness Similar to Kant, Hegel takes self-consciousness to be the essence of empirical consciousness. Empirical consciousness can be defined as the cognition of an object, i.e., it exists insofar as the cognized object exists. However, the object thus cognized cannot be conceived of as an external impulsion for consciousness because the object is only definable as an object in relation to consciousness; therefore, the object does not

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exist for itself, but only for consciousness. Yet, then, consciousness is not identical to the object, but exists as the other, for whom the object is an object. Since empirical consciousness, i.e., the immediate identity with the object, turns out to be a contradiction in itself, its essence must be the exact opposite of itself. The position of empirical consciousness, i.e., that existence is purely objective, implies that there is no selfhood. Thus, the counter position of consciousness is the standpoint that existence essentially is selfhood or subjectivity; in other words, self-consciousness. Kant grasps this selfhood as the transcendental subject. This subject does not refer to a concrete individual, but to the unifying act of thinking, which is the necessary condition for every representation to be an object of experience, and which is called subject because it has to be spontaneous, i.e., it has to be selfhood. Also for Hegel, thinking about selfhood should not be confused with thinking about individuals; although, in opposition to Kant, Hegel’s subject is not inferred from the fact that sensible intuition alone is insufficient to think the possibility of experience, but derived from the contradiction of consciousness. As a consequence, there is a fundamental difference between Kant’s conception of selfhood and Hegel’s conception. We have already seen that Kant introduces selfhood as a separate faculty, the understanding that has an a priori structure. Precisely as far as Kant does not derive this structure from his critique of sensible intuition, but merely uses this critique to legitimatize that the a priori categories can be obtained through abstraction, i.e. exclusion, from the sensibly given, he cannot conclude otherwise than to say that this transcendental subject is finite because it does not encompass sensible intuition. In Hegel’s case, however, the conclusion that empirical consciousness is not able to identify an object tells us something about the nature of the object. The result that an object only exists for a subject defines the object as a whole, and Hegel’s conception of selfhood thus encompasses the entire world of the senses. In the beginning of the self-consciousness chapter, Hegel takes as his starting point the thesis that the subject exists in this encompassing manner. In doing so, he already takes self-consciousness as an infinite form, which, however, is not yet adequately expressed as this infinite form. In the course of the self-consciousness chapter, it will become clear that the infinite form cannot be immediately real, but that this reality has to be a mediated one. (We will shortly see that it is mediated by life.) The infinite form that takes itself to be immediately real is what Hegel calls “the I”. This ‘I’ is not fully comparable to Kant’s transcendental subject, because this subject is not an infinite form and does not encompass the



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sensual world. However, we have also seen that under this condition, Kant cannot account for the spontaneity of self-consciousness. In order to solve this problem, it makes sense to represent the ‘I’ as an infinite form that shares the most important characteristic of the transcendental subject, namely that it is the result of the exclusion of sensible nature. The self that is thus conceived of as an ‘I’ exists purely as a relation to itself. It is a self-positing subject, whose existence is immediately given with its essence. (Again, this is not an adequate description of Kant’s position, but the only meaningful way to understand his notion of spontaneity. Of course, the impossibility of this immediate identification, which Hegel will point out, is also articulated by Kant, but in an inconsistent fashion.14 Precisely in this way, we can see that Hegel does not simply refute Kant, but provides the Kantian project with its proper derivations—nonetheless changing the status of metaphysical knowledge.) On the one hand, the self-positing subject is the immediate unity of subject and substance, but on the other hand, it is also self-consciousness, i.e., the essence of consciousness. The essence of consciousness was that it is in-itself for-an-other, i.e., the difference between essence and existence, which means that selfconsciousness is a self-relation, i.e., the unity of essence and existence that is at the same time the sublation of otherness. The self-positing of self-consciousness, therefore, must be a movement of externalization— becoming other than itself—and the sublation of this otherness. However, the movement must consist of different moments, selfness and otherness, that must have relative independence opposite one another. For a selfpositing subject, this relative independence has no meaning whatsoever because it takes both moments to be immediately the expression of its one existence. Within this configuration, the moment of otherness cannot become explicit, so it is negated in the sense that it is excluded rather than included. Hegel correctly assesses that the representation of selfconsciousness as the ‘I’ results in an exclusion of nature.

14 In the §§ on the transcendental deduction of the categories of the understanding, Kant explicitly says that the spontaneity of the understanding cannot be the ground of the existence of objects. His argumentation is based, however, on the distinction between understanding and intuition, which Hegel does not accept. Still, we should not simply assume that Hegel takes the opposite position, i.e., that the subject is the ground of existence. For Hegel, the problem is the use of the notion of grounding. Once we have transformed our conception of what ‘grounding’ means, we can—within certain boundaries—say that the subject’s essence is to become ground of its existence.

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Hegel does not deny that self-consciousness actually has such a structure that contains the moments of externalization and sublation of otherness, but in the immediate certainty of the self, this structure remains not only implicit, but is even repressed. The self of this specific certainty is the result of a repression, but it does not know this. As a result of this unawareness, the ‘I’ cannot be the truth of self-consciousness. We have already seen that the self-certainty cannot only be maintained through the exclusion of nature, but insofar as this nature is characterized as empirical nature, it has no existence in-itself; and, it is not really possible to repress something that does not exist. However, insofar as the essence of empirical nature is consciousness, i.e., to exist for-an-other, there is somehow a moment of otherness implicated. This other is, of course, the subject; yet, taken as this result, it follows that the subject must exist as a sensible being. Although the nature of sensibility is inadequately understood in terms of sensible consciousness, we can commit to the assumption that every sensible being must at least be a living being. We will see that this life of self-consciousness is exactly that, which is repressed by the selfcertainty of self-consciousness. The introduction of life in the self-consciousness chapter has puzzled many interpreters, but there is no reason at all to be surprised. In fact, at the end of the preceding consciousness chapter, Hegel already concludes that the essence of consciousness, i.e., self-consciousness as self-relation, is also the essence of life: This simple infinity, or the absolute Notion, may be called the simple essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood, whose omnipresence is neither disturbed nor interrupted by any difference, but rather is itself every difference, as also their supersession; it pulsates within itself but does not move, inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest. It is self-identical, for the differences are tautological; they are differences that are none. This self-identical essence is therefore related only to itself; ‘to itself ’ implies relationship to an ‘other’, and the relation-to-self is rather a self-sundering; or, in other words, that very self-identicalness is an inner difference.15

This quotation makes clear that the logical result of the consciousness chapter, viz. the sublation of all difference, constitutes a pure identity with itself. The essence of this identity is, as Hegel points out, that there exists no otherness for it. On the one hand, this results in the reduction of differences to sameness, which means that they have a tautological

15 GW 9, 94–5; Miller, 100.



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character. On the other hand, however, it results in the fact that the selfrelation must be understood as a whole. So, it cancels out all differences to the extent that it no longer possesses any kind of opposedness against anything else. This all-encompassing character of the self-relation, which Hegel later calls self-consciousness, is of course not adequately articulated in the expression that all differences are tautological because, insofar as differences are excluded, otherness is placed outside of the unity with itself, and—without mediation—the holistic nature of the self-relation cannot be maintained. Despite being purely logical, the result of the consciousness chapter is not a single clear-cut idea of self-consciousness, but a double-sided one. It is, nonetheless, indisputably logical because the sublation of all difference has in itself this double-sided result of being the exclusion as well as the inclusion of otherness. Self-consciousness, taken as the essence of consciousness, incorporates both moments. In contrast to consciousness, in which basic separate moments were unity and difference, both basic moments of self-consciousness bring together unity and difference in a separate way. The ‘I am I’, or the tautology of self-consciousness, which sublates difference in the sense that it represses otherness, is separated from the other kind of sublation which abrogates difference through taking itself to be otherness. Now, this second moment, which is the true internalization of difference, articulates a form of self-consciousness that is at the same time the essence of life. It is important to remember that, although we have to infer from the fact that consciousness is the presupposition of self-consciousness that self-consciousness presupposes life, is it wrong to assume that consciousness knows that it is living. Hegel rejects the notion of self-affection which is employed by Hume and, more moderately, Kant, because consciousness does not have life as its object but as its presupposition. Hegel comprehends the relation between consciousness and its life as a negation, too, as is elaborated in the following quote: Infinity, or this absolute unrest of pure self-movement, in which whatever is determined in one way or another, e.g. as being, is rather the opposite of this determinateness, this no doubt has been from the start the soul of all that has gone before; but it is in the inner world that it has first freely and clearly shown itself.16

16 GW 9, 96; Miller, 101.

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Hegel calls the infinity—read: truth—of consciousness “absolute unrest” because it is defined by its absolute impossibility to produce any determination, i.e., to identify anything at all. We have seen that consciousness is indeed unable to determine any object because the object in-itself is both sameness and otherness in an irresolvable manner. The movement of consciousness results in an endless inversing, i.e., a constant passingover-into, of any possible object’s determination in its opposite. However, to grasp this movement of inversion at once inevitably means to break out of the movement and to be no longer immersed in it. The “inner world” that is thus shown, and which is the life of consciousness, sublates all inversion: In the inversion of the object’s determination, the substance remains the same. This selfsame substance differs from the empiricist’s illusion that there is objective matter existing independently from consciousness. In fact, logically, it is the negation of the object, which means that it is subject. Still, it is not comparable to the Kantian transcendental subject, but essentially a subject that encompasses the entire world of appearances as its inner world. In the consciousness chapter, Hegel does not further specify the characteristics of this encompassing self-subsisting infinity, but in the selfconsciousness chapter, it reemerges as life. In the self-consciousness chapter, the self-subsistence of the infinite form turns out to be self-conscious life. First, Hegel compares the in-itself of this self-subsistence to the species, a term used in biology to unite a manifold of individual organisms (the exemplars of the species), only to conclude that as a species, life cannot be self-conscious. This is so because organic life is also characterized by a relation to inorganic nature. The unity of the species is not merely a subjective projection of the biologist, but is, to a certain extent, practically recognized by the individual exemplars of the species in the activity of sexual reproduction. Their sexual behavior can be seen as subservient to the existence of the species as a whole, rather than their individual existence. In this regard, Hyppolite remarks that the birth of the child is the death of the parents.17 The species and the individuals relate to one another as the universal form to its realization. The species comes into existence through externalizing itself into a manifold of individuals, yet the essence of this individual does not 17 Hyppolite (1946), 151, Footnote 15: “Les deux mouvements se rejoignent, et la vie est bien ainsi un cycle. L’individu se nie lui-même, mais cette auto- négation est la production d’un autre être ou d’une subsistance individuelle. Ainsi ‚la criossance de l’enfant est la mort des parents’.”



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lie in the individual insofar as it exists separately from the other individuals, but in the unity of the species. Therefore, the essence of the individual, as an individual of the species, lies in the sublation of the individual. The sublation of the individual, which can be exemplified by sexual reproduction (especially when this sexual behavior takes the shape of a selfsacrifice) has, in its basis, the form of a self-negation. However, it is not a real self-negation because the self of the organism is both the species and the individual. At no point in the continuous circular process of coming to be and passing away of the individuals of the same species does the self become detached from itself. Instead, the subsisting self is the movement of organic life as a whole. In the movement of life, described as species, it is not the self that is negated, but the negation is only introduced as a moment of the whole. Under this condition, it is impossible to speak about a self-conscious movement because every difference between the individuals of the species is a relative one which is dissolved in the continuous process of reproduction. From another perspective, however, we would have to say that even the existence of the species as a whole is not unconditioned. As evolution theory points out, the survival of species depends on material conditions and the species’ ability to adapt to these conditions. This means that we cannot maintain the idea that species are absolutely self-subsisting. For us, it is obvious that organic life can only exist in places where inorganic matter has a configuration that allows for the possibility of life. So, we can hardly be surprised by the fact that Hegel stresses that the self-subsistence of the species is characterized by a fundamental dependency on an outside world.18 Still, in the light of the development of the PhoS, the dependency of life on inorganic nature poses an interesting problem. The result of the consciousness chapter, namely, was that the essence of inorganic nature is life; in other words, inorganic nature has no other self than that of the subject. The fact that, for its subsistence, this subject is again dependent on inorganic nature, suggests that inorganic nature is not mere appearance, yet has to manifest itself as something, which has no reality for us.

18 Please note that this is not the reason why Hegel considers the species not to be a real self-subsistence in the end. The species is an inadequate concept of substance, because it is self-subsisting only in-itself but not for-itself. A real self-subsisting being must always have self-consciousness. In the transition from the life of the species to the self-conscious life, it will become clear that precisely that, which becomes for-itself, is the fact that life is depending on inorganic nature.

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To understand how Hegel develops the relation between organic and inorganic nature as constitutive for the existence of self-consciousness, we have to go back to the beginning of the consciousness chapter. Already at the most primitive level of consciousness, viz. sense-certainty, Hegel remarks, on the side, that animals sublate the being-other of objects by eating them. Sense-certainty takes the absolute or the in-itself as the nature, which is immediately taken as the object of consciousness. We have already seen that such nature is not for-itself, but only for-an-other. It is a selfless nature without subsistence, and this pure difference without identity is the nothingness of appearing nature. At the end of the sensecertainty chapter, Hegel remarks—clearly as a joke—that empiricists are, in a certain respect, dumber than animals, for the animals at least practically acknowledge the nothingness of sensible objects by consuming them. However, when Hegel introduces his basic idea of life as an organic nature that preserves itself through consuming inorganic nature, the initially harmless joke turns out to have an unexpected, yet implicative, undercurrent. When we take this selfless nature as inorganic nature, i.e., as the earth, it must exist as the means of the preservation of the natural species. The pure difference, which was dismissed at the end of the consciousness chapter as unessential, as the absolute nothingness of appearance, is now re-introduced again; not as something subsisting in-itself, but as something on which self-subsisting nature is depending for its very existence. (Viz. the earth on which the organism lives.) In other words, the reality of difference, whose acknowledgment and explication Hegel deemed crucial for the PhoS’s success from the very beginning, can only be articulated through making explicit this relation of dependency which is innate to the self-conscious subsistence of human life. In retrospect, the sudden movement to underline the relevance of the selfless nature, which was previously discarded as the absolute nothingness of appearance, is not so sudden. Re-appropriated from the perspective of self-consciousness, Hegel’s remark about the animals eating from the earth also makes clear that the presumably evident nothingness of appearance, i.e., the subjective certitude of self-certainty, is in fact not absolute at all, but the result of negating nature by consuming it. To show that I am not overanalyzing Hegel here, let us have a look at the following quote: In the first moment there is the existent shape; as being for itself, or being in its determinateness infinite substance, it comes forward in antithesis to the universal substance, disowns this fluent continuity with it and asserts that it



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is not dissolved in this universal element, but on the contrary preserves itself by separating itself from this its inorganic nature, and by consuming it.19

Here Hegel speaks about the consuming of inorganic nature exactly in the sense that the living being preserves its independency “by separating itself from this its inorganic nature”. Although we clearly see that this relation to inorganic nature describes a relation of neediness, i.e., dependency from nature, for the living being, the whole point of consuming is to reject nature. Yet, this implies, on the one hand, that the living being is only independent from its nature as far as it fulfills this negation. On the other hand, however, it is impossible to fulfill the negation through consuming nature because the movement of negation determines the independency of life; henceforth, the negation must be such that the negated is at the same time preserved. In relating to nature as something that has to be consumed, this is not the case: What is consumed is the essence: the individuality which maintains itself at the expense of the universal, and which gives itself the feeling of its unity with itself, just by so doing supersedes its antithesis to the other by means of which it exists for itself. Its self-given unity with itself is just that fluidity of the differences or their general dissolution.20

For a living being, whose existence depends on nature, nature is essential. This truth is the opposite of the subjective certitude of the desire, viz. that nature is unessential. Holding on to this certitude, the self will continuously experience nature as something hostile: To exist, it must prove that nature is unessential through negating it, but this very activity is in itself a dependency from nature, so nature will inevitably return as this opposing hostile essence that must be negated again. Entangled in the irresolvable contradiction, desire is unable to become aware of the fact that this negating is the movement of life in-itself. Therefore, for us, the shape of desire turns out to be immediately related to nature, i.e., to a satisfaction of needs which it is unable to sublate, precisely because desire excludes any dependency from nature. Systematically, it is of the utmost importance that this specific emphasis on the life of self-consciousness has the implication that self-consciousness’ tautology, or identity-with-itself, is not immediately true for self-consciousness, but the result of a negation. This negation is neither the self-negation 19 GW 9, 107; Miller, 107. 20 GW 9, 108; Miller, 108.

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of the species’ individual, nor that of consuming nature, nor nature negating us. The nature of self-conscious life is that it does not exclude anything by negating. In that regard, it is incomparable to the species because, for the species, the relative independency of inorganic nature is not recognized as such. The only negation that can satisfy self-consciousness, i.e., that can objectify the truth of its subjective self-certainty, is the negation which has as a result that inorganic nature cannot be negated; and, that the self ’s essence must be the same as the essence of nature. In other words, nature must have a self, too. Here, the result of the consciousness chapter returns for the third time, but from a completely opposite perspective: The self of inorganic nature, i.e., the subject, is not the self of self-certainty, but the other self. In this context, Hegel brings up that “Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness”.21 Although this is, no doubt, one of the most famous phrases from Hegel’s PhoS, I hope that my analysis until now makes clear that the content that is expressed here is far from unambiguous, even far from a clear-cut solution to the problem which we are facing: the identity of the self. Of course, the obvious importance of this sentence is that the existence of another self is crucial to the existence of self-consciousness, but it is often overlooked that the necessity of the existence of another self-consciousness has no other ground than self-consciousness’ dependency from nature. But, this very fact makes the necessity of the other self-consciousness ambiguous. Self-consciousness turns out to be doubled in itself, i.e., it contains real difference within itself. This duplicity of self-consciousness fundamentally differs from the manifold of individuals of the species because the self-conscious individuals are not immediately dissolved into the self-subsisting unity of the species, but they remain infinitely opposed to each other as different individuals. Their unity, and henceforth the unity of self-consciousness as such, is mediated in-itself. At this point, we are able to clear out one of the most common misunderstandings—from Gadamer to Honneth—about the self-consciousness chapter in the PhoS: At the level of self-consciousness, it makes no sense to speak about self-conscious individuals. Just as Kant in the CPuR, Hegel deals here with the general form of self-consciousness, which has nothing to do with concrete individuals. The duplicity of self-consciousness is also not expressed in the manifold of individuals, but in the fact that self21 GW 9, 111; Miller, 110.



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consciousness has the logical structure of being in-itself a relation to otherness. Consequently, the other self of self-consciousness is not another individual, but the sublation of nature in the form of otherness. We have seen that the self of self-consciousness can only exist through negating nature, but also that it is not capable of achieving this. So, desire is unable to realize its certainty, unless it is faced with a reality in which nature is already sublated. The other self-consciousness presents this reality, and precisely, therefore, it satisfies self-consciousness. Notwithstanding the fact that Hegel speaks about satisfaction, as if selfconsciousness still exists as desire, the only logical conclusion of this ‘satisfaction’ is that the contradiction of desire is now for desire, itself. The self-certainty of self-consciousness is definitively disproven, and Hegel must come up with another shape of self-consciousness which integrates the insight that we have just gained. This new shape of self-consciousness, which will turn out to be the adequate spiritual shape, is recognition. 5. The Lord/Bondsman Relation Halfway through the self-consciousness chapter, Hegel thus concludes that the first attempt to think the substance as self-consciousness, viz. as the immediate unity of being and subject in the shape of a self-positing subject, the ‘I am I’, fails because this ‘I’ has the shape of desire; and, desire is an contradiction. However, consistent with Hegel’s logic of determined negation, the negative result of this refutation can be taken up as a new shape for self-consciousness, which Hegel calls recognition. This new certitude is promisingly described by Hegel as the “turning point” of consciousness because here, for the first time, consciousness “steps out into the spiritual daylight of the present”.22 In the way in which Hegel expresses himself, it again becomes clear what the goal of his entire undertaking is: Self-consciousness must be conceived as the essence of consciousness. This fundamentally means that the absolute self ’s dependency from nature must be articulated in a manner that does not compromise the absoluteness of the self ’s subsistence. Hopefully, we now have acquired a better understanding of what Hegel means when he defines recognition as the fact that “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another”.23 22 GW 9, 113; Miller, 110–111. 23 GW 9, 114; Miller, 111.

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The new subjective certitude of self-consciousness that it exists only in relation to another self-consciousness, i.e., as recognized, is the logical result of the self-certainty of self-consciousness in the sense that the implicit assumption of self-certainty, viz. that self-consciousness is the essence of consciousness, now becomes the explicit content for self-consciousness. In other words, although it is clear for us that self-consciousness is initself sublated nature—a fact that, so far, can only be acknowledged by the reader of the PhoS—can only become explicit within a relation of recognition. We also already know why this is the case. It is impossible for the self to negate nature through exclusion because nature is a moment of its existence; but, for the self-subsistence of self-consciousness, nature must be unessential; therefore, self ’s existence is both essential and unessential to the self-subsistence of the self. Consequently, the self-subsisting essence of existence is self ’s absolute other, through which the self is itself. In other words, in the other as other, the self is one with itself. This absolute other thus is not simply another self-conscious individual, as some interpreters think, but is the transcendent self-subsisting of existence, and existence must negate itself to become aware of its self-subsistence as spirit. Recognition is the identity of the self explicated as a relation to absolute otherness. The part of the self-consciousness chapter that is called “Lordship and bondage” is dedicated to showing that this identity is a purely logical relation which can only be represented indirectly. I realize that this interpretation of the lord/bondsman relation sounds surprising, especially to those who believe that the lord and the bondsman refer to concrete individuals, but nonetheless, it follows irrefutably from the logical development of the PhoS. Most interpreters acknowledge that Hegel’s position is that self-consciousness can only exist under the condition of social order. This social order is fundamentally characterized by two ‘social roles’. Firstly, we have the role of the bondsman. The bondsman is the self-consciousness that serves the other self-consciousness, i.e., it satisfies the other’s needs, so that the other is no longer opposed by nature (as desire was). This other self-consciousness has, secondly, the role of the lord. The lord rules over the bondsman and uses him to work nature, so that the lord is able to enjoy it. To this extent, I have drawn a familiar picture, but a fact that is often overlooked in this picture is that the lord’s mastery over the bondsman also makes him the ruler of nature. Precisely this feature of the lord is the key to understand what is at stake here. We have seen that, in the shape of recognition, the other self-consciousness is not an undetermined other,



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but is sublated nature. This knowledge is for us, but still has to become knowledge of self-consciousness because the very essence of self-consciousness is defined as being in the possession of this knowledge. Factually, the lord/ bondsman relation articulates that the ‘satisfaction of self-consciousness’ consists of a differentiation between labor and enjoyment which is a classical Aristotelian distinction, but these are not just concrete activities. Since they are the activities of a free and spiritual being, we could say that enjoyment and labor metaphorically express, respectively, the pure and impure reality of absolute freedom. I will call the pure reality of absolute freedom ‘subsistence’ and the impure reality of it ‘existence’.24 Together, they constitute the absolute essence of human nature. On the one hand, they form a dialectical opposition; on the other, they are an absolute difference within the oneness of substance. Therefore, the division between lord and bondsman as two shapes that together define the essence of self-consciousness, principally solve the fundamental question of the PhoS: how to think the unity of oneness and difference? The first part of the self-consciousness chapter has left us with the insight that unity—not a unity, but unity as such—is sublated nature which, on the one hand, means that nature is negated, but on the other hand, self-consciousness’ dependence on nature is made explicit. Nature cannot be negated and made explicit at the same moment, so both sides must be divided over different shapes. Logically, this follows from the result that the self of self-certainty could not realize itself immediately. The self-subsisting essence of the self must be understood as a mediation, which qua form, already implies a relation consisting of two moments. What is new, however, in the “Lordship and bondage” passage in the PhoS is that this truth has to be obtained by self-consciousness. Therefore, in the reconstruction of the experience of self-consciousness, Hegel repeats the logical development from immediacy to mediation. Of course, we know beforehand that the attempt to realize the subjective

24 Hegel does not distinguish between existence and subsistence. He speaks about reason that realizes itself. In this context, ‘substance’ refers the whole of reason; not only reason that expresses itself, but also to the reason’s returning back to itself. The ‘reality’ of reason is in the end not the same as the ‘reality’ of reason’s realization; or to put it differently, reason is not the same as its realization. To my taste, to express this crucial, often overseen difference between the absolute and its realization in English without losing the clarity of Hegel’s German language, it is acceptable to reformulate the intended conceptual distinction with new terms. Consequently, I will use the term ‘subsistence’ to indicate the reality of the absolute as such, i.e., the substantiality of the in-and-for-itself, and I distinguish it from the self-realization of the absolute which I will call ‘existence’.

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certitude of recognition immediately will necessarily fail, but only through the experience of this failure can self-consciousness obtain the truth of recognition. The first shape in which self-consciousness tries to realize itself is in the “trail by death”.25 The trail by death is an engagement between selfconsciousnesses in which they fight until one of the self-consciousnesses dies. Again, this is not to be taken literally, but as imaginative construction that has to help us to understand the more abstract and unimaginable logical development that it expresses. From an external standpoint, the one self-consciousness recognizes the other as other to the extent that the nature, which has to be killed, is conceived as something identical to the self. However, the otherness of the other self-consciousness is only expressed insofar as it is negated. In the actual killing of the other self-consciousness, which should be the affirmation of the initial certitude that the other is also a self, the other ceases to be a self and the certitude is contradicted. Instead of endlessly wracking our brains about why the otherness of the other can only be experienced in the killing of the other, we should focus on the underlying logical problem, which is crystal clear. Hegel points out that the characteristic of the trail by death is self-consciousness’ willingness to put its life at stake. Self-consciousness trying to realize itself immediately as sublated nature means that it no longer tries to prove that nature is unessential otherness, as desire did, but takes otherness to be something which negates itself. We know, however, that the self-negation of the other presupposes the negation of the self, because in this relation the self could only take the other as self-negating insofar as it has put its own life at stake. As a result, self-consciousness has no experience and no knowledge of the fact that it has put its life at stake. Therefore, the systematic problem of the trail by death is the fact that the otherness of the other is recognized because self-consciousness is self-negation; but at the same instance, this recognition is immediately negated; so, it cannot become an explicit content for self-consciousness.26 Self-consciousness has now also experienced that it is impossible to realize its certitude—to be sublated nature—immediately, but it does not yet know the truth of this experience, viz. the fact that the negation of the

25 GW 9, 119; Miller, 114. 26 As a result, it is senseless to speak about the “struggle for recognition” as an actual struggle between self-conscious individuals, as Honneth (2008) does.



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other is a self-negation, because in the negation of the other, the otherness is not preserved. Nonetheless, self-consciousness must go through the experience of a trail by death, because nature can only be sublated by the experience of the inessentiality of life. For us, it is clear that this inessentiality of life is the result of a self-negation, and thus presupposes the essentiality of life. What does this essentiality of life mean here? The truth of selfconsciousness is not the existence of self-consciousness, but that its subsistence determines what self-consciousness in-itself is. This is the essence of spirit, which Hegel calls “freedom”. Still, subsistence comprises existence in superseding it, and the negation of existence is a self-negation. In the transitory movement in which self-consciousness becomes that which it is in-itself—sublated nature—, the essentiality of life is preserved as that which is overcome in the representation of self-consciousness as sublated nature. This is a threefold movement. Firstly, since sublated nature is not a given, but is the result of a movement of self-consciousness, it is outside self-consciousness; as this outside, it is nonetheless the essence of self-consciousness; henceforth, self-consciousness exists in-itself outside of itself, i.e., it is in the other. This is not surprising for us, because this is exactly the definition of recognition. Therefore, secondly, it is the experience of the essentiality of life—that is thus sublated in the other— that makes it is possible for consciousness to actually displace itself in the other, and take the other instead of himself to be the essence of selfconsciousness. Thirdly, this being-in-otherness is the transcendent subsistence of the existence of self-consciousness and, as such, the essence of self-consciousness only subsists through this movement of becoming other than itself. In the lord/bondsman relation, Hegel unfolds this fundamental movement in its entirety for the first time because, 1) the lord represents the power over nature; 2) as such it represents the essence of the bondsman; 3) the bondsman’s representation of its essence being outside of itself, viz. as the lord, is again essential to the very subsistence of the lord. As such, it explicitly contains, in my view, the whole movement of spirit, but in a highly undifferentiated way.27 This means that in the lord/bondsman relation 27 I do realize that to say that the whole is present in this part of his philosophy is kind of a sweeping statement because, according to the adage of systematic philosophy, ‘the parts presuppose the whole, and the whole presupposes the parts’; so, it is quite evident that even the smallest part implicitly contains the whole. What I mean to say is that here we can understand what the whole of spirit actually is.

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no moment of the self-movement of absolute spirit is left out or excluded. At most, we can say that the essential differentiatedness of being-in-itself, which is experienced as such here, is comprised in the lord/bondsman relation in one mode of existence, which means that in the representation of freedom as the lord, the reality of freedom is exclusively connected with one specific social order. At the end of this paper, I will briefly discuss this point, although it certainly needs further clarification. The self-negation of consciousness, which is the presupposition of self-consciousness, is experienced in the “fear of death”.28 Building further on the imagery of the trail by death, Hegel asks us to visualize a selfconsciousness that, without knowing it, puts its life at stake and loses the struggle. In this case, self-consciousness experiences that its initial certitude that its life was unimportant to it is wrong, because without its life, it ceases to be a self, and goes asunder in the power of nature. The self-consciousness has no way of knowing what holds power over it, so it is impossible that self-consciousness experiences the power of the other self-consciousness. In fact, it is clear that not the other self-consciousness, but nature, has this hold over him. Ultimately, it is not confronted with the power of the other self-consciousness, but with its mortality. In the manifestation of its mortality, self-consciousness experiences its dependency on nature. Because self-consciousness does not yet possess any positive sense of self, such as one of embodiment, this experience is purely negative: Self-consciousness not only experiences its body solely in its possible destruction, but also, whereas this fact disproves its initial certitude that life has no importance to it, self-consciousness’ first reaction is to alienate itself from this bodily existence and regard it as inessential. However, it is no longer possible for self-consciousness to maintain that its own existence is independent from nature. To preserve its self, consciousness must negate its existence altogether, and take up the position that the essence of its existence subsists in the other. As a result, the self-consciousness that experiences the fear of death in the trail by death will subject itself to the other self-consciousness because it sees its own essence in the other. From an outside perspective, we see that the life of the self-consciousness is, indeed, in the hands of the other self-consciousness; and that it holds this power because it has put its life at stake, which means that it takes itself to be sublated nature. On the one hand, the desire to realize 28 GW 9, 125; Miller, 117.



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this certainty, which could not be satisfied on the level of the trail by death, is now satisfied by the subjection of the serving consciousness because the latter’s bondage sublates nature in taking the other self-consciousness as its essence. So, precisely because the bondsman negates itself, the other self-consciousness can appear as sublated nature, i.e., as the lord or the bondsman’s essence, thus giving the bondsman its compelling reason to subject to the lord. This situation, in which two self-consciousnesses hold each other in place, can never be the result of a linear or chronological development: In this specific sense, the distinction between lord and bondsman is a dialectical one. Again, it is Hegel’s construction: The subjection takes place because the other appears as sublated nature; yet the other is sublated nature precisely because subjection takes place. Lord and bondsman presuppose each other, and the purpose of this metaphor for mutual dependency is to explicate the truth of self-consciousness. The metaphor of the lord and bondsman primarily functions to clarify the fact that self-consciousness is a self-negation, meaning that consciousness can only be thought without contradiction as a finite existence, which nonetheless transcends its finiteness insofar as it subjects itself to the infinite self-subsisting form, i.e., freedom. To further understand what it means to take freedom as the sublation of nature, it is useful to compare it to Hegel’s understanding of organic life as a species. As a species, life can survive the death of the individual exemplars through reproduction. In this regard, organic life is in-itself infinite in the sense that it has overcome the absolute power of nature, which takes the shape of death. It is, therefore, no coincidence that Hegel uses the term ‘subjection’ when he describes the relation between the individuals and the species: If we distinguish more exactly the moments contained here, we see that we have, as the first moment, the subsistence of the independent shapes, or the suppression of what diremption is in itself, viz. that the shapes have no being in themselves, no enduring existence. The second moment, however, is the subjection of that existence to the infinity of the difference.29

The first moment, the “suppression” of difference, is the negation of otherness, which was exemplified by the ‘consumption’. The individual exemplar of the species must suppress nature to maintain itself, and in that sense, it is its existence’s subsistence, but because every living organism will ultimately lose this battle against nature, this subsistence has no endurance. To the exemplar of the species, however, nature’s manifestation as a death 29 GW 9, 107; Miller, 107.

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force is not an alien force, because insofar the death of the individual is the condition for the reproduction of the species it has become a moment in the continuity of the species as a whole. Therefore, the subsistence of the individual’s existence is not this existence in-itself, but the transcendent unity of the species. However, as Hegel has already pointed out, the species does only subsist as the manifold of individuals. So the species—and this goes for all organic nature—does not exist independently from nature, but it is able to persist, given the forces of nature.30 Hegel’s analysis that the individual’s existence subsists as the species also means that the species is not a transcendent entity besides nature. When Hegel expresses that the subsistence is “the subjection of that existence to the infinity of the difference”, he articulates the fact that the species exists as the negation of nature (as a force) too, but expressively, i.e., nature is negated and preserved in the subsistence. In other words, the infinite form does not exist without its finite realization. Applied to the lord/bondsman relation, we finally see the essential point of the bondsman’s subjection to the lord, and why Hegel calls it the turning point of consciousness. The problem of the species was that it was not able to really preserve nature in its negation because the species does not actualize its subsistence consciously. The bondsman’s subjection to the lord describes the same subjection as the one to the species, but from the perspective of consciousness. The bondsman who subjects to the lord, in fact, subjects to the same infinite of difference, but this time as consciousness, meaning that the bondsman is the consciousness that has felt the infiniteness of difference as such, i.e., it has felt that it is impossible to exclude nature. Of course, this insight is still only for us and not for consciousness itself, but consciousness at least has experienced that nature exists as something in itself. This experience, which has already been described as the fear of death, makes clear that self-consciousness can only exist under the condition of a social order. Still, the absolute power, which Hegel attributes to the lord, is not to be understood as a new external force that represses the consciousness of the bondsman. The sole reason that this social order must exist is the fact that the power of nature has to be overcome in order for self-consciousness to exist. In other words, Hegel’s point is that 30 To put it more simply: For its existence, an organism depends on a specific configuration of physical laws, but the whole of this organism cannot be reduced to the whole of physical laws.



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the very existence of self-consciousness presents us with the fact that we are no longer subjected to the power of nature, but to the power that has overcome the power of nature. Of course, the power of nature cannot be cancelled out: The power of nature, in the form of death, is absolute and unavoidable, as well. Also, we have already seen that the lord can only manifest itself as lord, i.e., as sublated nature, because the bondsman mediated between him and nature. This gives rise to the question: In what sense can we actually overcome nature? This brings us finally to the metaphysical purport of the self-consciousness chapter. So far, we have seen that the lord/bondsman relation, when put in metaphysical terms, envelops the idea that the substance does not exist independently from what its finite realization entails. This relation can be described as one between subsistence and existence, i.e., subsistence is not independent from existence, but is only as the essence of existence. Furthermore, this relation is a pure self-relation, i.e. the subsistence expresses nothing more than that which existence in itself is. So subsistence depends on existence, precisely because it is, in actu, the articulation of what existence in itself is. Nature is sublated in the comprehension of nature in itself. Self-consciousness subsists in the knowledge of its existence. In the consciousness of ourselves as self-conscious beings that also have a body, i.e., that are also natural beings under the reign of death, we maintain ourselves as substance. In other words, we subsist in the insight that we are the unity of mind and body, and that there is no mind without a body, and no body without a mind. Conclusion The philosophical knowledge, which consists in the self-knowledge of the subject, is distinguished from the Kantian transcendental subject in the sense that it encompasses sensible intuition. However, sensible intuition is not encompassed within the subject, in the sense that there is an intellectual subject which posits sensible nature, as if sensible nature is merely the product of a self-positing subject. We have seen that such a self-positing subject, or the ‘I am I’, cannot be thought without contradiction because it excludes nature rather than produces it. In this way, Hegel develops his notion of self-consciousness well beyond Kant’s problematic idea of self-consciousness as the transcendental ‘I’, but nonetheless, preserves one very important element of Kant’s analysis. Just as does Kant, Hegel maintains the idea that sensible nature, in relation to

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the subject’s existence, has a relatively independent existence. It would absurd to attribute to Hegel the idea that ‘spirit’ means that we produce our body through thinking. All we can do is comprehend our bodily existence. Still, Hegel is more differentiated on this point than Kant. For Hegel, sensible nature is not simply intuited, making the acknowledgment of its existence problematic (Hegel does not have to posit the Thing-in-itself ), but as far as we can differentiate between lifeless nature and organic nature, viz. through understanding lifeless nature as a moment of organic nature, we are able to formulate an insight in our own bodily existence. Just to be sure, this is not just a true insight; it is the only possible way to think about nature philosophically. The most important implication is a negative one: It is absolutely impossible to think inorganic nature as something that has an existence independently from us, like most contemporary, empirically-oriented thinkers still do. Lifeless nature has no self, or at least not a self that we are able to say anything about (I mean, if God has created nature then He would be the self of nature, but this is not a philosophical idea) but we can solely grant lifeless nature a relatively independent existence insofar as we know that we need lifeless nature to maintain ourselves. So, we can express lifeless nature’s independency merely in terms of our own neediness as bodily beings. Nonetheless, it is a form of knowledge. I think this knowledge has a transcendental status, but not in exactly the same way as Kant’s subject is transcendental. Comparable to Kant, Hegel’s self-consciousness, or subject, is transcendental in the sense that it is the openness towards that which nature is initself; but, Kant cannot think transcendental subject as openness towards nature, as Hegel does; and therefore, Kant is forced to come up with his surrogate theory about the categories of the understanding, which Hegel so fiercely criticized in his SoL. Finally, I want to make one brief consideration about my reading of the self-consciousness chapter. I think this reading is convincing and sheds a different light, not only on the importance of the PhoS to understand Hegel’s entire philosophical position, but also on the overall metaphysical position, which Hegel defends. However, I have briefly mentioned already that one differentiation, which is also very important for Hegel’s position, is not yet explicated in the lord/bondsman relation. In a way, although the lord represents freedom as sublated nature, it still manifests itself historically as a power that is also natural. This aspect is important to understand Hegel’s idea of historical development. For example, in ancient Egypt, the lord was represented as the pharaoh, who was both man and god. As a



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result, the lord was given contingent features, most importantly the fact that the pharaoh is mortal. The highly sophisticated Egyptian death cult shows how they somehow could not accept these contingent features, but had not yet understood that the lord cannot be fully represented by any objective experience. Only at the level of the Greek Polis, i.e., after a significant historical development, does this essential differentiation become explicit in the distinction between divine law and human law. Of course, this distinction is implicit in the lord/bondsman relation, but appears there as a contradiction: The transcendent essence of the lord cannot be unified with its material appearance as this or that lord. Still, this problem, and Hegel’s solution for it at the end of the PhoS, cannot be properly comprehended without understanding the precise role of the self-consciousness chapter. Literature Berkeley, G. (1710): A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, (Ed.) D. Wilkins (2002), online source. Cobben, P. (2003): The logical structure of self-consciousness. in: A. Denker, M. Vater (Eds.), Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit: New critical essays, Humanity Books, New York: Amherst, 193–212. —— (2009): The Nature of the Self: Recognition in the form of right and morality, Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter. —— (2012): The Paradigm of Recognition: Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death, Boston-Leiden: Brill. Fichte, J. G. (1794): Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre als Handschrift für seine Zuhörer, hrsg. von F. Medicus, Hamburg: Meiner, 1997. Giovanni, G. di (2010) Transl.: G. W. F. Hegel, The Science of Logic, Cambridge University Press Hegel, G. W. F.: Gesammelte Werke, hrsg. von der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, bisher 32 Bde., Hamburg: Meiner, 1968 ff. Hollak, J. (1962): De structuur van Hegels Wijsbegeerte, in: Tijdschrift voor Philosophie (24), Leuven, 351–403 & 524–614. Honneth, A. (2008): Von der Begierde zur Anerkennung. Hegels Begründung von Selbstbewußtsein, in: K. Vieweg; W. Welsch (Hrsg.), Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes: Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu einem Schlüsselwerk der Moderne, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Houlgate, S. (2005): An Introduction to Hegel. Freedom, Truth and History, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell. Hyppolite, J. (1946): Genèse et structure de la Phénoménology de l’esprit de Hegel, Paris. Kant, I.: Akademieausgabe der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, bisher 29 Bde., Berlin 1900 ff. Kesselring, T. (1981): Entwicklung und Widerspruch. Ein Vergleich zwischen Piagets genetischer Erkenntnistheorie und Hegels Dialektik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kok, A. (2011): Sublimity, freedom, and necessity in the philosophy of Kant, in: D. Loose (Ed.), The sublime and its teleology, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 79–114.

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—— (2013): Kant, Hegel, und die Frage der Metaphysik. Über die Möglichkeit der Philosophie nach der kopernikanischen Wende, HegelForum Studien, München: Wilhelm Fink. Miller, A. V. (1977) Transl.: G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Cambridge University Press. Moors, M. (1991): Gestalten van het ik bij Kant, in: L. Heyde (Ed.), Problematische Subjectiviteit: Kant, Hegel en Schelling over het Ik, Tilburg University Press, 3–31. Pinkard, T. (1994): Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason, Cambridge University Press. Pippin, R. (1989): Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness, Cambridge University Press.

Chapter Six

Recognition—future hegelian challenges for a contemporary philosophical paradigm Christian Krijnen 1. Hegel as a Challenge Though it seems somewhat excessive to characterize the theory of recognition as a “well-established and mature research paradigm in philosophy”,1 it cannot be denied that for the past couple decades there has been intensive debate about recognition which has commanded ever greater attention.2 This debate began with topics in practical philosophy, especially political and social philosophy. As it developed, however, recognition has achieved thematically and historically such broad significance, that a new philosophical paradigm indeed seems to be in the making: Recognition turns out to be a fundamental concept, relevant not only for understanding political issues, but for our human world as a whole. Hence, the concept of recognition now includes such notions as subjectivity, objectivity, rationality, knowledge, personality, sociality, identity, otherness, nature, logic, etc. The protagonists in this debate seek to make German idealism fruitful for contemporary problems. Whereas neo-Kantians a century ago also sought to update German idealism, though focussing on Kant as the philosopher of modern culture,3 contemporary theorists of recognition intend to rejuvenate Hegel’s philosophy.4 This attempt to return to Hegel exhibits rather divergent interpretations of his philosophy, and also a remarkable turning away from Hegel’s mature system, as outlined in his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften of 1830. Hegel’s philosophical project of developing self-knowledge of the idea through the three elements of pure thought, nature and spirit appears 1  Cf. Zurn 2010, 1. 2 Cf. for an overview, e.g., Schmidt am Busch (2010). 3 Heinrich Rickert published 1924 a book with this much-telling title. The title, of course, suppresses how much of Hegel is effective in neo-Kantianism. Cf. for Hegel and neo-Kantianism Krijnen (2008). 4 Cf. as placeholders for many Honneth (2001), Siep (2010a) and Cobben (2009b).

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to his critics just as unconvincing as, e.g., his non-dialogical, monological, concept of rationality and normativity. By contrast, I shall argue that Hegel as systematic philosopher confronts the contemporary paradigm of recognition with difficult and far-reaching questions concerning its own foundation, both methodologically and thematically. Consider first the following background considerations. According to the protagonists of recognition, the principle of recognition is central to Hegel’s practical philosophy in his Jena period, especially in his unpublished “Geistphilosophie” (1805/6) and Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807).5 Yet it can hardly be said that in these texts Hegel develops a comprehensive theory of recognition. Hence it is little surprise to find detailed, though independent attempts to interpret e.g. the Phänomenologie as the core of Hegel’s theory of recognition.6 And Hegel’s later philosophy, as published in his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830) and the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821), does not seem to pay much attention to the principle of recognition (let alone the principle of mutual recognition). It is subordinated to other, more embracing principles. Hegel’s later works are characterized by a relation to logic very different to his early works. This reflects a further important contrast: In his early works, Hegel, inspired by Kant, elaborated something like ‘practical philosophy’.7 Yet in the course of his intellectual development Hegel criticized Kant’s moral philosophy and philosophy of religion ever more radically. Hegel’s mature views present a philosophy of spirit which seeks to overcome the opposition between theoretical and practical philosophy, or more precisely: from the start it has already overcome that opposition. Unlike Hegel, however, the protagonists of recognition conceive Hegel’s philosophy of spirit as ‘practical’ philosophy; indeed, ‘Hegel’s practical philosophy‘ functions, in various permutations, as a popular book title.8

5 Cf. influential studies like Siep (1979). 6 Cf. for instance Cobben (2009b), who, in order to hold his thesis, is forced to press the Phänomenologie into a different programmatic corset and to ascribe to this work a different place in Hegel’s system. Kok (2013) follows Cobben in this. 7 Cf. for the Kantianism of the young Hegel, e.g., Bondeli (1997), Fulda (2003, Teil I) and Henrich (1971); for the development of the young Hegel cf. also Siep (2010a, 24–62). 8 Cf. e.g.: Siep 2010a; Pippin 2008; Rózsa 2005. As for many others, for Honneth too Hegel’s philosophy of objective spirit is “practical philosophy” (2001, 17 f., 41). Also Quante follows this route; he emphasizes a “primacy of the practical” as Hegel’s “pragmatic” root (2011, 238). Cf. also Quante 2011, 24 f.: Here Quante states that the free will is the basic principle of Hegel’s “practical philosophy”, and 19 f. he is of the opinion that the “central goal” of Hegel’s “whole practical philosophy” is to reconcile the tension between individual interests and the ethical (sittlich) collectivity, i.e. to develop an “Aristotelian conception



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In contrast, Hegel’s Enzyklopädie conceives philosophy as philosophy of the idea, and conceives of spirit in its objective dimension not as practical, but as free spirit, embedding the distinction between theoretical and practical in a new, more fundamental constellation of philosophy of spirit. It is essential to Hegel’s mature philosophy (both in the Logik and in his philosophy of spirit) to sublate the traditional, pervasive and influential distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy, and between the theoretical and the practical. Hence it is unsurprising that many theorists of recognition favor Hegel’s early philosophy, and regard his mature philosophy either (a) as insufficient for a philosophy of recognition, which must instead be developed, e.g., from the Phänomenologie;9 or (b) as requiring considerable modification to become relevant to contemporary philosophy. The first strategy can at best conclude that, from a systematic point of view, there is a continuity concerning the theme of recognition in Hegel’s development. In order to determine this continuity, however, certain perspectives of the younger Hegel must guide the interpretation of Hegel’s mature philosophy. This results in the view that Hegel’s later philosophy is retrograde with respect to the Phänomenologie.10 On the second strategy, Hegel’s view that philosophy and its disciplines should be determined within the framework of a ‘system’ of philosophy, granting the Logik even a foundational and guiding role for a contemporary philosophy of recognition, is dismissed as ‘metaphysical’.11 Hegel is said to hold implausibly speculative, metaphysical premises, together with a corresponding teleological concept of history and a Euro- and Christocentrism which simply fail in the face of today’s multicultural society.12

of moral philosophy (Ethik)” for “modern society”. Cf. on this also my footnote 39.—All translations from German texts into English are mine. 9 Halbig et al. (2004b, 10) concurr that in the contemporary debate about Hegel’s heritage, especially the Phänomenologie is central to efforts to revitalize Hegel’s views for contemporary philosophy. 10 Cf. Cobben (2009b). Also Brandom is fascinated by Hegel’s Phänomenologie, most notably he appreciates the tight connection between normativity and sociality, which according to him Hegel conceives in terms of mutual recognition; Brandom gives Hegel’s philosophy a neo-pragmatist coating (cf., e.g., 2006; 2005; 2002; 1999). Accordingly, he reads Hegel’s text through (social)subjectivist glasses, which do not seem to fit to Hegel’s objectivist orientation. Brandom too must restrict the role of the Logik for the system of philosophy, and modify Hegel’s method of philosophical knowledge. 11  Cf., e.g., Honneth 2001; 1994.—Very critical about Hegel’s system is also Quante (2011, chap. 3). 12 Cf. Siep 1979; 2010a; 2010c.

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These general considerations are specified and corroborated by the following three considerations: First, Hegel’s concept of philosophy as a science of the absolute idea and its non-metaphysical character must be considered more closely (§ 2). This provides the basis for showing that and why Hegel’s philosophy is not practical philosophy (§ 3). Finally, both two considerations highlight some significant features of embedding the paradigm of recognition within Hegel’s philosophy of the idea (§ 4). 2. Speculative Idealism, not Metaphysics I now consider critically two presuppositions of the recognition debate from a Hegelian perspective. The first concerns the relation between metaphysics, logic and the system of philosophy. The second concerns the place of the Phänomenologie in Hegel’s philosophical system. (1) Metaphysics can be conceived as fundamental knowledge transcending nature, or our experience of nature, insofar as metaphysics concerns the basic, systematic structure of our concepts and their interconnections, which we presuppose in thinking about objects, and the ontology implicit in our conceptual scheme, which makes possible our thought of objects. This conception of metaphysics is insufficient for understanding metaphysics within German idealism, which is guided by a more determinate concept of metaphysics, based upon the distinction between a metaphysica generalis and a metaphysica specialis. Moreover, for Kant as for Hegel, metaphysics has a thematic,13 and also a methodic determination,14 according to which metaphysics is dogmatic insofar as it fails to reflect critically upon its own foundations. Due to Kant’s critical analysis of metaphysics, and from the perspective of the history of philosophy, Hegel (E, § 27) brands metaphysics as “former metaphysics”. Although Hegel seeks to surpass Kant’s transcendental philosophy through his speculative idealism, Hegel does not restore metaphysics against Kant’s intentions.15 13 E.g. that metaphysics is about “supersensible” (übersinnliche) objects, capturing conceptually objects “in-themselves” (Ansich), the “essence” (Wesen) of things. 14 Irrespective of whether metaphysics is described as a type of knowledge, lacking “critique” (Kritik), as Kant puts it (cf. the prefaces and introduction of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft), or as an “attitude of thought towards objectivity” which consists only in the “perspective of understanding towards objects of reason” (Verstandes-Ansicht der VernunftGegenstände: E, § 27), which in a “naïve way” (E, § 26) supposedly obtains knowledge of its objects, but in fact only sells “the determinations of thought as the fundamental determinations of things” (E, § 28, cf. I, 46 f.). 15 As Fulda (1988; 1999; 2003; 2004a) has shown in detail.



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Instead of reviving pre-Kantian metaphysics, in Hegel’s speculative idealism the science of logic supercedes pre-Kantian, but now superfluous metaphysics (cf. I, 46 with E, § 24). By conceiving of logic as the “genuine” metaphysics (I, 5), Hegel gives metaphysics a thematic and methodic significance very different to its pre-Kantian predecessors.16 At the same time, Hegel deviates from Kant’s transcendental concepts of general and special metaphysics. For Hegel, metaphysics should not take its determinations as determinations of “substrates”, gathered from “representation”; instead it considers the “nature” of the determinations of thought and their “value” as such (an und für sich: I, 46 f.). In this context, Hegel states what is methodologically essential: that in philosophical knowledge the “nature of the content” itself “moves”; hence, the content itself “posits” and “generates” its determination (I, 6). Such a logic is no pre-Kantian metaphysics, but a logic of the (absolute) idea; namely a logic that evolves itself through an immanent process of determination, beginning with thought as the indeterminate immediate (‘Being’, Sein) and completing this evolution by comprehending its own evolution (‘absolute idea’). This self-movement of the ‘concept’ must of course be a justified movement: it occurs in the ‘form of necessity’ (E, § 9). Already this suggests that, according to Hegel, philosophy has only one content and object: the idea, more precisely: the absolute idea (II, 484), i.e. the “concept which comprehends itself ” (sich begreifende Begriff: II 504), the “absolute truth and all truth” (E, § 236, cf. II, 484). Therefore, the idea is not a being (Seiendes). Instead, the absolute idea proves itself to be the method, i.e. the processuality proper to the determinations of pure thought, treated in the Logik, together with the system of these thought-determinations. So conceived, philosophy does not plague itself with substrates of representations, or any other ‘pre-given’; the absolute idea contains all determinacy within itself (II, 484). Containing all determinacy in itself, the idea is not exhausted merely as a logical idea. Taking the whole of philosophy into account, the absolute idea is addressed by Hegel in three perspectives of determination: within pure thought, within nature and within spirit.17 Hence Hegel’s philosophical program must include nature and spirit, i.e. the realms of reality, 16 For Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegel makes an “ontological turn” (2005, 155), leading from the “critique of knowledge” (i.e. Kant) to a “critical ontology of meaning” (sinnkritischen Ontologie: 2005, 153). Such ontological readings of Hegel nolens volens pave the way for ontological misinterpretations of Hegel: As a critical ontology of meaning, ontology is no longer what it used to be as an ontology. Quante too reads Hegel’s theory of rationality, including the logic, as an ontology (cf. 2011, 23 f., 29, 31 f., 84, etc.). 17 Cf. for this and what follows: Krijnen 2008, 4.2.1.2.

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within philosophy; they must be included in an immanent development of the idea which acknowledges ‘experience’.18 The logic functions here as the “foundation” of any natural or spiritual determination.19 Because of its radical foundational role, Hegel qualified the logic as both the “first” and the “last” science of the system of philosophy (II, 437). This implies, inter alia, that each and every determination—whether empirical or philosophical determinations of nature and spirit, which fund the empirical—has its basis in logic, while at the same time the logic is retained in the other realms of the philosophical system as their foundation, and finally, at the end of the system, logic becomes a logic that comprehends itself as a logic that is the unity of nature and spirit, and, hence, is the grounding principle of reality. By reaching this insight, philosophy—a figure (Gestalt) of the absolute spirit—comprehends itself as truly a science of foundations, or conversely: as truly a science of totality.20 Regarding Hegel’s programmatic conception of philosophy, I see no reason to side with theorists of recognition who, in making Hegel’s philosophy of right relevant today, argue that for “methodological” reasons Hegel’s argumentation fails, because it rests on his logic, which purportedly is fully unintelligible to us due to its “ontological” concept of spirit.21 However, vague reference to the “theoretical and normative conditions of the present age”22 hardly suffices for such a far-reaching estimate of Hegel’s logic. To the contrary, any interpretation of Hegel’s

18 Immanent development is meant here as a methodological qualification. As far as the content is concerned, speculative idealism, according to its self-understanding, is committed to the ‘fruitful bathos of experience’ (Kant). Hegel leaves neither the empirical dimension nor the history of philosophy aside: he acknowledges empirical and philosophical knowledge as material, but he (trans)forms this material to conform with the knowledge claim of his speculative philosophy and the methodology belonging to it. Cf. Krijnen 2008, 190 ff. 19 II, 224, cf. Hegel TWA, Bd. 8, § 24, Z 1. Hegel denotes the logic also as the “pure figure” (reine Gestalt) of the “intellectual view of the universe” (I, 31) as well as “inner figurator” (inneren Bildner) and “pre-figurator” (Vorbildner: II, 231) of his philosophy of reality (Realphilosophie). 20 Cf. for the logic as the last science: Krijnen 2008, 4.2.3, esp. pp. 228 ff. The absolute spirit is, however, not just “the spirit which knows that it has to appear in the finite life that Hegel conceives of as world history” (Kok 2013, § 6.8.3); the “transcendental openness” for which Kok pleads does not cover Hegel’s concept of absolute spirit. Absolute spirit entails a specific closure of spirit; Hegel thinks openness and closure together in such a way that this unity is not only a “unity of spirit and nature”, but a unity of the idea, nature and spirit. From the perspective of the history of philosophy, philosophy is a particular (jeweiliges) knowledge of totality; cf. Krijnen 2008, chap. 4; 2010. 21  Honneth 2001, 12 ff. 22 Honneth 2001, 13 f.



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concept of objective spirit which neglects its relation to Hegel’s system of philosophy, neglects essential determinations of Hegel’s concept of philosophy.23 Hegel himself understands his Rechtsphilosophie as an elaboration of his philosophy of objective spirit (E, § 487 A; cf. §§ 483–552).24 Accordingly he also notes that the Rechtsphilosophie borrows its method from the Logik (R, §§ 2 Z with 31):25 The Logik plays a fundamental role for the Rechtsphilosophie, both as such and concerning its specific content. The elaboration of the Rechtsphilosophie follows the developmental process of self-knowledge of the absolute idea as absolute spirit.26 In accord with the logic of a speculative development of concepts, the beginning of the philosophy of objective spirit must concern a concept of spirit that is maximally extrinsic to the concept attained by subjective spirit: ‘right’ (Recht, ius, justice).27 Hegel overcomes the outwardness of the idea within 23 By contrast, for Honneth it is important that the “genuine” (eigentliche) substance” of Hegel’s philosophy of right can be provided by an account of objective spirit that does not refer to Hegel’s system of philosophy (2001, 14 f.). 24 Vgl. R, § 2: “Die Rechtswissenschaft ist ein Teil der Philosophie. Sie hat daher die Idee [. . .] aus dem Begriffe zu entwickeln oder, was dasselbe ist, der eigenen immanenten Entwicklung der Sache selbst zuzusehen.” 25 Generally, Hegel’s two philosophies of reality regard their object as necessarily conforming to the “self-determination of the concept” (E, § 246). 26 Hence, as a spirit that has not been reached within the philosophy of objective spirit. Objective spirit is a finite spirit, not a cognitive self-relation. Only in absolute spirit is a figure of knowledge reached “in which knowing reason [is] free for itself ” (E, § 552). The concept of spirit, and hence also the concept of the absolute idea, is actualized only with the concept of absolute spirit.—Cobben (2009b, 137, cf. 143) is surprised that regarding absolute spirit there is a considerable difference between Hegel’s Phänomenologie and his Rechtsphilosophie: in the latter, absolute spirit plays no role on the level of social institutions. According to me, this absence of the absolute spirit fits well to Hegel’s program of philosophy as self-knowledge of the absolute idea as absolute spirit: it results from the function absolute spirit has within Hegel’s system of philosophy. That is why—pace Cobben (2009b, 148)—Hegel does not conceive right and morality as “objective and absolute spirit”. For Hegel, right and morality are both figures of objective spirit, because they are, unlike the absolute spirit, not forms of self-knowledge of spirit as spirit. For Cobben the “logical structure” of the Rechtsphilosophie cannot be understood without considering Hegel’s intention to connect the epochs of European history with corresponding forms of the self (2009b, 8, cf. Chap. 7–9). In his Enzyklopädie, however, Hegel himself takes a different tack. Whereas for Cobben the Rechtsphilosophie is to be understood as an elaboration of the rationality developed in the Phänomenologie (2009b, 116), within Hegel’s system of philosophy the Rechtsphilosophie is an objectivation of free spirit, i.e. of the final stage of subjective spirit. Here, Hegel shows that and how spirit can be a knowing spirit, both theoretically and practically: Spirit must be free spirit, a spirit that “knows” and “wants” itself as free (E, § 482). Such a spirit is autonomous in the sense that it can determine itself. This spirit is free, but pre-social and pre-individual, as sociality and individuality (of subjects) play no role prior to the philosophy of objective spirit. 27 More precisely, abstract right as the existence (Dasein) of freedom in the form of possession. According to Hegel’s concept of right, the concept of right, as existence of the

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objective spirit by realizing (realisieren) this concept of right, by making explicit the abstract generality of that concept as the beginning of series of meanings (II, 488 ff. with 241; E, § 84).28 (2) The philosophical system outlined by the mature Hegel, oriented towards self-knowledge of the idea, also entails that the Phänomenologie des Geistes is demoted as a paradigm of philosophy. This demotion not only strikes the introductory function of the Phänomenologie,29 but also the (partial) integration of this work in the Enzyklopädie. When the Phänomenologie appeared, for Hegel it had the function of an introduction within the system of science, especially in its foundational discipline: in the logic (cf. I, 7 f.). Whereas Hegel first conceived of the Phänomenologie as the first part of the system, later the Phänomenologie no longer functioned as an introduction to, nor first part of, the system.30 Hegel even excludes the Phänomenologie from the order of the system, insofar he integrates essential parts of the Phänomenologie into the philosophy of subjective spirit in the Enzyklopädie. In addition, the Enzyklopädie obtains a new introduction (E, §§ 1–18), and the logic of the Enzyklopädie even an introduction of its own (E, §§ 19–83). The Phänomenologie, within the system outlined by the Enzyklopädie, surely does not have the task of introducing us into philosophy. Hegel sometimes writes of the Phänomenologie as a superfluous introduction into the logic,31 though he never fully gave up the introductory role of the Phänomenologie des Geistes (he holds to it even in the second edition of his Seinslogik of 1832):32 Non-philosophical consciousness (natürliches Bewußtsein) retains its right to be led to the standpoint of speculative philosophy.

free will that has freedom as its “inner determination and goal”, must be actualized in an “external pre-given objectivity”, so that the concept is perfected as “idea” (E, §§ 483 f.). In the beginning of this process, the subjectivity of free spirit does not manifest itself in a free spirit, but in an external matter (äußerlichen Sache) in which “I” put my “will” (E, §§ 488 f.). Cf. Krijnen 2012b. 28 Against this background of Hegel’s conception of philosophical justification, the justificatory status of “social pathologies”, which is extremely important to Honneth (2001, 16 f., 49 ff.; 2008), is just as problematic as his conception of philosophical foundations of reality. Cf. Krijnen 2011a, 189 ff. 29 Cf. in detail Krijnen 2008, 59 ff. with 90 ff. 30 Cf., e.g., Bonsiepen (1988, L ff.) and Jaeschke (2003, 180 (§ 6)) about the place of the Phänomenologie in Hegel’s intellectual development. 31  According to Hegel, an introduction via the route of a self-completing skepticism— i.e. the route of the Phänomenologie—is ‘unpleasant’ and ‘superfluous’ (E, § 78 A). 32 Cf. 1990, 9 (footnote); I, 29 ff., 53; cf. the note to the second edition of the Phänomenologie (PG, 448).



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Furthermore, the Logik is capable of justifying itself: The “concept of science” results from the Logik itself (I, 29); the determination of the method of philosophy is part of the Logik, whereas the Phänomenologie turns out only to be an “example” of this method (I, 35). Although the Phänomenologie might serve as a possible route to the Logik, the Phänomenologie is not constitutive for the Logik in the sense of a necessary condition for its standpoint.33 The section ‘With what must science begin?’ (I, 51–65) makes clear that the Phänomenologie cannot serve as the beginning of the Logik, because the opposition between consciousness and object (as well as that between thematized (‘for it’) and thematizing (‘for us’) consciousness), constitutive for the Phänomenologie as an introduction, contains too many presuppositions. Science must begin with (pure) ‘being’ (Sein), regardless of whether one reaches the Logik by the Phänomenologie or by what Hegel’s calls a ‘decision’ or ‘resolution’ (Entschluß: I, 52–54). A look at the Phänomenologie within the Enzyklopädie (E, §§ 413–439) shows significant differences to the Phänomenologie of 1807, also substantiating my thesis that Hegel downgrades the Phänomenologie. In first instance, this concerns the different embedding and focus of the development: The Phänomenologie of 1807 aims to examine appearances of true knowledge in order that subsequent forms of its appearance introduce natural consciousness into a scientific philosophy as pure, comprehending knowledge.34 This introduction departs from the basic opposition of Hegel’s time: the opposition between subjectivity on the one side and that which restricts this subjectivity on the other: the subject-object dualism. The paradigmatic figure of this opposition, both for common sense and for philosophy, is consciousness.35 At the end of the history of its education, in “absolute knowledge” (PG, 422–433), consciousness has overcome subject-object dualism. The appearing knowledge becomes actual, it becomes philosophical knowledge. This knowledge, then, is developed in the system of philosophy; the Phänomenologie concludes with only an immediate knowledge of the absolute. 33 Kok (2013, § 4.2.1 f.) is of a different opinion. Concerning Hegel’ system, Kok takes the Phänomenologie to be necessary for introductory and foundational reasons. However, Kok’s argumentation considers neither Hegel’s elaborations of the self-foundational capacity of the Logik, nor Hegel’s remarks about the deficient argumentative (called räsonieren) and historical character of ‘introductions’ (cf. Krijnen 2008, 62 f.). 34 Hegel presents the program of the Phänomenologie mainly in the Introduction (PG, 53–62). For recent literature, cf. for instance Fulda (2003, 81 ff.; 2008). 35 Hegel’s Phänomenologie therefore is shaped as a “science of consciousness” (PG, 61) which is a science of “knowing as it appears” (PG, 434).

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In the system of philosophy, this absolute proves itself to be the absolute idea. For Hegel, the absolute idea is the only theme of philosophy. Hence, philosophy is “presentation of the idea” (E, § 18). The Phänomenologie, however, only concerns consciousness, i.e. a specific aspect of the idea, as a case of application of the philosophical method. In his Enzyklopädie, Hegel treats consciousness in this narrow sense; accordingly, in his philosophy of subjective spirit he positioned consciousness as a link between ‘anthropology’ and ‘psychology’ (E, §§ 413 ff.). From this embedding in the Enzyklopädie, it becomes clear that the problem of consciousness is part of the philosophy of the idea and what the specific profile of consciousness is. The philosophy of spirit too is philosophy of the idea: philosophy of the idea, “returning from its otherness to itself ” (E, § 18), arriving at its “beingfor-itself ” (E, § 381). The task of Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is to comprehend the absolute as spirit (E, § 384 A). Again, this comprehension is a function of actualizing the absolute idea: at the end this process of actualizing, the absolute idea knows itself in an adequate way, i.e. in the form of the concept. As the actualization of the absolute idea within the element of spirit is complete when the spirit is freed from all forms not adequate to its concept; because spirit achieves this freedom only through its own activity (Tätigkeit), the philosophy of spirit addresses the spirit as “producer of its own freedom” (TWA 8, § 382 Z). In the realm of spirit, spirit is ‘free spirit’ (E §§ 382, 384). As subjective spirit, the development of free spirit concerns this spirit itself in a narrow sense. Because the “concept” of spirit becomes “for it”, its being (Sein) becomes “with itself, i.e. becomes free” (bei sich, d.i. frei zu sein: E, § 385). Hence, the development of subjective spirit is one of increasing self-knowledge; the levels of its development are levels of spirit’s self-knowledge, and hence also of the absolute idea as spirit. The philosophy of the subjective spirit must clarify how spirit determines itself to knowledge. In accord with the logical idea, this concerns both the theoretical and the practical dimension of knowledge, and has three levels of development: First, (subjective) spirit “in itself ” as “soul” or “nature spirit” (Naturgeist); second, (subjective) spirit “for itself ” as “consciousness”; third, (subjective) spirit in and for itself as “spirit that determines itself, as subject for itself ” (E § 387), as a subject of theoretical and practical activity. On the first level Hegel overcomes the opposition between body and soul; on the second he masters the opposition between (conscious, selfconscious) I and world, enabling him, on the third, to overcome the opposition between theoretical and practical reason, thinking and willing.



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On the second level spirit is conceived as consciousness. For Hegel, this level is articulated especially by Kant and Fichte. Hegel writes that they achieve at most a “phenomenology”, though not a “philosophy” of spirit; they do not attain to the “concept”, to spirit “in and for itself ”: they consider the “I” only “in relation to something else” (E, § 415 A), not as spirit determining itself within itself (E, § 387). In Hegel’s view, consciousness contains constitutively the opposition between subject and object—an opposition Hegel must overcome. Overcoming this opposition in the development of (subjective) spirit is tantamount to rejecting any philosophy of consciousness or self-consciousness as a paradigm for Hegelian philosophy. Once the soul becomes an I, it becomes a consciousness (E, § 412). The development towards reason as the concept of spirit overcomes the abstractness of spirit qua consciousness and self-consciousness (E, §§ 416 f.). Hegel’s doctrine of recognition (E, §§ 430–436) emphasizes that selfconsciousness is not an individuated but a general self-consciousness (E, §§ 435 f.). This level of spirit as general self-consciousness achieves the intrinsic relation between subject and object, and thus “reason” (E, § 437), though as a “simple identity”, hence only in its abstractness (E, § 438).36 This identity is only the initial figure of what Hegel calls “spirit” as “knowing truth” (wissende Wahrheit) of itself (E, § 439, cf. §§ 440 ff.). Accordingly, not in phenomenology, but rather in psychology, and hence in the philosophy of the properly37 subjective dimension of spirit, do we comprehend what knowledge is: an endeavor of the free spirit, both theoretical and practical. 3. Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit is not Practical Philosophy (1) For Kant, the concepts of science and of system are closely related; architectural unity constitutes the scientific character of our knowledge (KrV, B 860), also within philosophy. Kant develops his philosophy accordingly, following Aristotle’s38 influential division of philosophy into theoretical and practical philosophy, or into the realms of nature and of

36 Therefore de Vos (2010) is right that self-consciousness cannot clarify its own structure. 37 Hegel occasionally characterized his psychology as “genuine doctrine of the spirit” (II, 437). 38 Cf. Nik. Eth. VI 2–4, I 1, 1095a5 f., X 6–7 and Met. I 2.

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freedom. The original unity of these two branches, however, was a major challenge to German idealists, not least to Hegel. Nevertheless, theoreticians of recognition, such as Siep or Honneth, according to their own selfunderstanding, elaborate a practical philosophy,39 purportedly: Hegel’s practical philosophy. This practical impetus of contemporary theory of recognition is unsurprising, since the discourse about recognition was (and is) largely motivated by politics, human rights, democracy, globalization, economization and multiculturalism, hence, by socio-political matters.40 In that connection, though, one rather would have expected, at least programmatically, a turn to Kant’s presently much debated, and highly vaunted, practical philosophy, especially his Critique of Practical Reason and his Metaphysics of Morals. Yet to many theorists of recognition, Kant’s views appear inferior to Hegel’s. They raise standard arguments against Kant’s practical philosophy: the individualistic and contractual account of his theory of justice is supposed to be inadequate for understanding social relations; furthermore, Kant’s empty ethical formalism is to be overcome by a Hegelian idea of substantial ethical life, just as Kant’s atomistic and monologic concept of reason is said to lead to a deficient concept of subjectivity, because the subject is essentially social. This farewell to Kant would require a study of its own, far beyond the present article.41 Hegel, to be sure, engaged seriously with Kant’s architecture of reason. To develop his concept of philosophy as a speculative doctrine of the absolute idea, Hegel needed not only to sublate the restrictions of both theoretical knowledge under the idea of the truth and practical knowledge under the idea of the good (II, 429 ff.), he also had to sublate the opposition between the theoretical and the practical operations of the spirit in a doctrine of free spirit (E, §§ 445 ff.): the terminus of

39 As noted (cf. my footnote 8), Honneth characterizes Hegel’s philosophy of objective spirit as practical philosophy (2001, 17 f., 41), understands the philosophy of objective spirit as ethics, moral philosophy, philosophy of right or ethical theory of legal right (2001, 20 f., 31 f., 53), takes the free will to be a moral principle (2001, 34, Anm. 16), etc. Siep dealt in many studies with Hegel’s “practical philosophy”; recently he tried to sound out its “limits and actuality” (Grenzen und Aktualität) (2010a). In the terminology of Hegel’s mature works, he means by practical philosophy Hegel’s philosophy of “objective spirit” (2010b, 14).—Also beyond the discourse of recognition it is common to talk about Hegel’s practical philosophy or ethics, cf., a.o., Peperzak (1991; 2001, 387) or Düsing (2002, 1984; 2000, 289 ff.; 1999, 120 ff.). The standard translation of Hegel’s Sittlichkeit is ‘ethical life’. Recently, Buchwalter (2010) and Vieweg (2012) published on Hegel’s ‘practical philosophy’. 40 Cf. for instance the work of Habermas, Honneth, Taylor and Fraser. 41  Cf. in this volume the chapter of Donald Loose.



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Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit and starting point of his philosophy of objective spirit is free spirit as a unity of theoretical and practical spirit. Whoever treats Hegel’s philosophy of objective spirit as a practical philosophy, should explain what then is Hegel’s theoretical philosophy: is it the logic, the philosophy of absolute spirit, the philosophy of subjective theoretical spirit? Is it parts of these, or a combination?42 Should the philosophy of objective spirit not primarily be understood from Hegel’s concept of spirit, and hence consider the concept of the practical as determined within the context of the concept of spirit? Whoever seeks to understand it in another way, or who reads, e.g., the philosophy of spirit as an ethics, should make explicit his own understanding of what ‘practical’ and ‘ethical’ mean—most likely taken from the history of philosophy—and justify this understanding in the context of Hegel’s philosophy, before characterizing Hegel’s philosophy by such concepts. To be sure, Hegel’s philosophy of spirit offers formal and substantive points of contact for practical philosophy and for ethics beyond Hegel’s own views, but Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is neither of these. I now examine more closely the idea, widespread in the recognition discourse, that Hegel has a ‘practical’ philosophy, and make clear that and why Hegel doesn’t have one, and indeed, that it would be a real challenge for the protagonists of recognition to show how a genuine practical philosophy is possible within the framework of Hegel’s speculative system. First I address Kant’s concept of theoretical and practical philosophy (2). I then consider Hegel’s overcoming of this opposition in the logic (3) and in the philosophy of spirit (4). These considerations reveal that Hegel offered no practical philosophy (5). (2) Reconsidering Kant is very illuminating for understanding Hegel’s conceptions of the absolute idea and of free spirit, because Hegel’s determination of the forms they each sublate are recognizably Kantian: Kant’s architectonics is Hegel’s template. Kant consistently divides philosophy into theoretical and practical parts, and divides their respective domains into those of nature and freedom. Accordingly, he distinguishes theoretical knowledge from determination of the will, and accordingly also the philosophy of nature from philosophy of morals (as “practical legislation according to the concept

42 Halbig et al. (2004a, 14 f.) use the opposition ‘theoretical—practical’ without hesitation to assess Hegel’s relevance. Accordingly, they do not consider what Hegel’s theoretical philosophy would be.

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of freedom”).43 More precisely, Kant specifies the human intellect as such, qua higher capacity for knowledge, i.e. reason in the wide sense,44 as a capacity to think and therefore to judge. He conceptualizes thinking as a synthesis effected through judgments. Both theoretical and practical reason are ways of thinking, hence judging: the determination of objects of experience occurs in theoretical judgments; the determination of the will occurs in practical judgments. One and the same pure reason does both, operating in a theoretical or a practical direction.45 Whereas theoretical reason is about objects which are given to it from elsewhere, namely through sensory intuitions, practical reason relates to objects which it can itself produce, since practical reason is immediately about the determination of the will by the representation of an object. For Kant the determinability of the subject through freedom is not expressly the theme of theoretical philosophy, but of practical philosophy. However, due to the determinability of the theoretical subject through the law of (theoretical) validity, made explicit by Kant in his theoretical philosophy—hence, by another causality than that of nature—, the theoretical and the practical cannot be defined against each other, as Kant actually does.46 Hegel aims to overcome Kant’s opposition between theoretical and practical philosophy and to sublate it in a higher, more original unity:47 For Hegel, ‘practical’ philosophy is a deficient form of knowledge, inadequate to his concept of philosophy. Consequently, it is not a basis of any of the disciplines of his philosophy of reality (Realphilosophie). (3) The inadequacy of practical knowledge is discussed in Hegel’s doctrine of the idea in the Logik. According to Hegel, the idea as truth is the unity of concept and reality, of subject and object (II, 408 ff.; E, §§ 213–215). Subject and object function here as moments of comprehensive thinking, by which this constellation is known on different levels of its logical actualization, the idea finally revealing itself to be the absolute idea as a unity of subject and object that knows itself in the mode of the concept. The different levels of the idea’s self-knowledge correspond to different ideas; each of them specifies, in its specific way, the idea qua unity

43 Cf. KrV B 868 f., 830; KpV A 29; KdU V 167 f., 171, 174, 178 f., 416, etc. On Kant’s architectonic, see Krijnen 2011b; 2013. 44 Not in the narrow sense as a ‘capacity to conclude’. 45 Cf. Kant KpV A 31 f., 96 f., 159; AA IV, 391. 46 Cf. Krijnen 2011b; 2013. 47 Cf. for Hegel’s Frankfurt period for instance Siep (2000, 29 f.), for the Phänomenologie Cobben (2009a).



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of subject and object.48 This ‘becoming for itself ’ of the concept as the “ideal content of the idea” (des ideellen Inhalts der Idee: E, § 213) occurs as the “process” of the idea overcoming the “hardest opposition in itself ” (II, 412 f., cf. E, § 215).49 Beginning from the idea in its immediacy (‘the idea of life’), this process results in the idea of knowledge. As the “idea of knowledge”, the idea achieves the determinacy of relating to itself qua idea (sich zu sich als Idee verhält: II, 429). In knowledge, the opposition, the “one-sidedness of subjectivity and that of objectivity”, is sublated in “One activity” (E, § 225). This process of sublation evolves in two distinct directions.50 One direction of knowledge is the drive of cognition towards “truth”, i.e. the “theoretical” activity of the idea. Here, the “one-sidedness of subjectivity” is sublated by taking in, through the subjective activity of cognition, the “existing world” (seiende Welt), which counts here as the “genuine, truthful objectivity” (wahrhaft geltende Objektivität) as such. The other direction of knowledge is the drive towards the “good” realizing itself: “volition”, the “practical” activity of the idea. Here, the “onesidedness of the objective world”, counting in this regard as mere “show” (Schein) and “inconsequential form” (nichtige Gestalt), is likewise sublated: by “determining” it through the “subjective inwardness” (Innere des Subjektiven), counting in this regard as the “genuine, truthful objectivity”, by the subject “forming” (einbilden) objectivity. Neither of these processes of knowledge suffices to comprehend the effective activity (Wirksamkeit) of the concept; in neither case does the concept correspond with itself in its objectivity. The indicated doubling of the idea is characteristic of the idea of knowledge as subjectobject unity (cf. E, § 225). Likewise characteristic is that, in both cases, the unity to be achieved by the speculative concept is actualized from the subjective side.51 Both processes of knowledge are also distinct: The idea of knowledge is characterized as a process which evolves in two converse directions. In the theoretical idea (idea of truth), the one-sidedness of subjectivity is sublated by taking the presupposed extant world (which provides the content) into the subjective. In the practical idea (idea of the 48 Hegel distinguishes the ‘idea of life’ (II, 413 ff.; E, §§ 216–222), the ‘idea of knowledge’ (II, 429 ff.; E, §§ 223–225) and the ‘absolute idea’ (II, 483 ff.; E, §§ 236–244). 49 For a presentation of Hegel’s doctrine of the idea, see, e.g., Düsing (1976, 289 ff.) or Schäfer (2002); for detailed examination, including the philosophy of spirit, see Fulda (2004b). 50 Cf. E, §§ 225 f., 233; II, 429 ff., 438, 477 f., 480 ff. 51  The absolute idea on the level of the idea of knowledge is the “idea in its subjectivity and thereby in its finitude as such” (II, 438, cf. 413).

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good), the one-sidedness of subjectivity is sublated by forming (Hineinbilden) the subjective into the objective world. To this extent, Hegel’s view is an exaggeration of Kant’s, since according to Kant’s transcendental turn concerning the problem of philosophical foundations, whatever is ‘given’ is not objectivity as such. Still, Kant defines nature and freedom against each other in a way that Hegel’s characterization reveals to be a deficiency of Kant’s transcendental philosophy: On the one side, reason is thought to be the ground of objectivity (and not only an infinite goal); on the other side theoretical and practical reason are determined against each other without comprehending their difference from their ‘common root’.52 Hegel shows the logical deficiency of the indicated theoretical and practical processes of knowledge in such a way that the theoretical and the practical idea cannot be separated; hence they cannot be distinguished from each other, and so they cannot be determined against each other: Each taken by itself determines the concept only inadequately; they are not figures of knowledge that conform to speculative philosophy. Consider more closely Hegel’s accounts of theoretical and practical knowledge. a) Theoretical knowledge, in its “outer action”, functions under the direction of the concept, making up the “inner thread” of its progress (E, § 226). Therewith, theoretical knowledge has “left” its “starting point”, i.e. the encountered given of its content; because of its own knowledge claim, the “concept that relates to itself ” takes its place (E, § 232, cf. II, 477). Hence, within the framework of theoretical knowledge, concept and object are related to each other insufficiently: the concept has not yet become the “unity of itself in its object or its reality” (II, 476 f., cf. 440; cf. E, §§ 231 f.). Rather, by emphasizing the self-reference of the concept, the idea reaches something non-given, something which belongs intrinsically or immanently to the subject: the theoretical idea itself makes the transition to the “idea of volition” (E, §§ 225, 233), of the “practical”, of “action”, the good (II, 477).53 b) In the realm of the “idea of the good”, the mere giveness of the content has been overcome (cf. E, § 233; II, 477 f.) and the objective has obtained the form of a “free unity and subjectivity” (II, 478). Still, the actualization of the good is conceived here as an “infinite progress”, and hence

52 Cf. Krijnen 2013. 53 Cf. Krijnen (2012b) for a problem-oriented discussion of Hegel’s identification of the capacity of determination and volition.



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is determined only as an “ought” (E, § 234; cf. II, 479 f.). The idea of the accomplished (vollendet) good remains therefore absolute only within the determinacy of “subjectivity”: also in this conception of knowledge, concept and reality are inadequately related to each other as extrinsic (äußerlich) purpose (II, 479 f.). The practical idea lacks exactly that moment characteristic of the theoretical idea’s relation to reality as genuine being (II, 480 f.). Accordingly, the practical idea prevents its own actualization: as such it must be “supplemented” by the theoretical (II, 481; cf. E, § 234); otherwise, what actualizing goals, executing the good (in general: practical knowledge) means or is would remain unintelligible. In practical knowledge, too, the “view” this type of knowledge has “of itself ” (eigene Ansicht von sich) proves to be a deficient determination of the concept: it “restricts” (begrenzt) the “objective” concept (II, 482). This objective concept no longer relates the subjective and the objective to each other extrin‑ sically; on the contrary, they are now related intrinsically. As in the case of the theoretical idea, knowledge and volition cannot be distinguished from each other; hence neither can they be determined against each other. Making explicit the goal or purpose of knowledge proper to the idea of truth and to the idea of the good shows that another concept of knowledge is necessary. This other concept must no longer be relative to any opposition between the subjective and the objective; instead, it must be absolute insofar as it is determined only by and from itself and presents itself accordingly, as the absolute idea. The absolute idea sublates the structure characteristic for the idea of knowledge (Idee des Erkennens): the doubling, the hardest opposition, the reconciliation achieved from the side of the subject. Within the absolute idea, “actuality” has the “concept” as its “inner ground and actual existence”, and the subject “knows” itself as the “concept which is determined in and for itself ” (II, 483). As a result, a figure of knowledge appears which is not knowledge of objects of theoretical and practical reason, but knowledge of reason itself. Therefore, the absolute idea is the only content and object of philosophy (II, 438, 483 f.). As such an idea, it proves to be the identity of the theoretical and practical idea (II, 483)—and the starting point for all that follows in Hegel’s system. (4) Two aspects of the absolute idea within the element of reality, as developed in the Enzyklopädie, are of particular interest here: a) Just as Hegel’s system philosophy programmatically aims at selfknowledge of the idea as absolute spirit, his philosophy of spirit is bound by the Delphic oracle’s command to self-knowledge (E, § 377). Accordingly, the philosophy of subjective spirit aims to clarify how spirit, as ‘concrete

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spirit’, determines itself to knowledge; hence, knowledge is not only to be regarded as the logical idea of knowledge (E, § 387). In the Logik the idea of knowledge differentiates itself into subject and object, so that subject and object are not interrelated by the concept. Instead, here the concept is active only on the side of the subject. In contrast, for the spirit, as the “idea” which, returning from nature, has become “for itself ”, it is characteristic that the “concept” is both its “object” and its “subject” (E, § 381). Hence, spirit is the absolute idea which has become for itself, the truly “rational” (vernünftig) “speculative” concept. Within subjective spirit, Hegel integrates aspects of his doctrine of the logical idea so that theoretical and practical spirit do not form a dualism. Instead, the conceptual relation between thinking (theoretical spirit) and the will (practical spirit) is retained. In the introductory sections of his philosophy of spirit, Hegel opposes the “dismemberment” (Zersplitterung) of the “vivid unity of the spirit” into an assortment of distinct, mutually independent capacities, forces or activities (E, § 379). With the transition to the absolute idea, Hegel overcame this dualism in his doctrine of the logical idea. In contrast to the Logik, within the philosophy of spirit, the idea of knowledge is construed from the start in relation to the absolute idea. b) Spirit, too, which begins with subjective spirit, reveals a structure which develops out of the opposition between the theoretical and the practical into an internally differentiated unity. Hegel’s point is that the theoretical and the practical already belong together in knowledge. Therefore, on the level of the philosophy of reality, too, it is mistaken to conceive of knowledge in terms of an antinomy between the theoretical and the practical. Ultimately, knowing spirit not only determines the object of knowledge, but at the end of the development of theoretical spirit, a constitutive aspect of the self-knowing of the idea, theoretical spirit knows itself “as that which determines the content” (als das Bestimmende des Inhalts: E, § 468), i.e. as practical spirit. Thinking and willing, hence, are not mutually independent entities, capacities, forces, or activities (E, § 445 A; R, § 4 Z). As in the doctrine of the logical idea, both cognitive processes are designed to liberate themselves from their initial, one-sided subjectivity: Whereas theoretical knowledge starts by finding a content which exists unto itself, yet ultimately determines this content as its own (hence, being present with itself in the other, i.e. being free), determining itself as a singularity in itself; practical knowledge starts with this selfdetermination and ends with spirit, which by setting and actualizing purposes, achieves the form of generality, thus transforming the will into a



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“thinking will” (E, § 469, cf. § 443). Just as thinking as the “free concept” turns out also to be free in its “content” (E § 468), so the will overcomes its subjectivity by a self-determination that is freedom (E, § 480). In subjective spirit as free spirit (E, §§ 481 f.), all activities of theoretical spirit and practical spirit are oriented towards the goal of freedom, and so are relative to that goal. Only such a self-determining entity is able to achieve truth, i.e., objectively valid convictions. The theoretical and practical dimensions of spirit come together in the “actual free will” as the “unity of theoretical and practical spirit” (E, § 481), in spirit which knows and wants itself as free. Without this spiritual capacity to determine itself, to free itself from mere subjectively valid determining grounds and to determine itself by general, objectively valid ones (hence, determining the content of knowledge), there is no spiritual activity which justifiably can claim to be true knowledge. (5) These considerations show that Hegel does not pursue practical philosophy. On the contrary, he intends to overcome the opposition between theoretical and practical philosophy from within, replacing it by a structure which, as absolute idea, is the truly scientific perspective of knowledge, and as free spirit, provides a conception of the subject which is able to actualize its purpose, freedom, within an “externally found objectivity” (E, § 483). Hegel’s philosophy of reality is developed on the level of the absolute idea. Accordingly, the idea of knowledge in the philosophy of spirit is from the start construed in terms of the absolute idea. To grant parts of the philosophy of spirit an independent status, for instance (self-)consciousness, practical spirit or objective spirit, neglects that within Hegel’s philosophy of spirit—unlike in his philosophy of nature— the stages of conceptual development do not exist for themselves: spirit’s determinations and stages are “essentially only moments, conditions, determinations of the higher stages of the development” (E, § 380), which are organized according to the absolute idea. Consequently, the claims of the theoretical and of the practical as such, and hence also those of this influential, traditional division itself, lead to more fundamental, more encompassing concepts, such as those of the absolute idea and free spirit. Already in his early writings Hegel sought to overcome the opposition between freedom, subjectively understood, and nature, understood as an instrument of, or an obstacle to, freedom, through a concept of freedom designed to reconcile what is divided. Nature too must be conceived as a manifestation of the idea, and so as something determined by principles which subsume and subordinate the theoretical and practical conceptions of nature, by conceptualizing nature

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itself as freedom in Hegel’s sense: as being with oneself in one’s other. Furthermore, freedom is the ground of theoretical and practical spirit and of their relation, whereas they remain conceived dualistically within the contexts of the ideas of truth and of the good. Their dualism is overcome by Hegel through the transition from the logical idea of knowledge to the absolute idea; and it does not recur in the development of subjective spirit. Hegel’s system of philosophy (strictly speaking, his Phänomenologie des Geistes too, in which stages of consciousness as appearing knowledge lead to the Logik) addresses theoretical and practical knowledge, including their objects, though not from their own perspectives. Accordingly, Hegel’s system of philosophy provides neither practical knowledge nor theoretical knowledge; instead, it comprehends these types of knowledge speculatively within his system of philosophy. What, then, can practical philosophy be within the framework of Hegel’s mature philosophy? Kant’s project of practical philosophy, i.e., a philosophy from the perspective of the practical, not from the absolute idea, is, in view of the practical-societal concerns of contemporary recognition theory, too important to dismiss, even if one is not satisfied with Kant’s execution. Is such a practical philosophy possible within Hegel’s mature philosophical system? If so, where, and how would it look? Within Hegel’s speculative philosophy, would a practical philosophy be able to develop its genuine practical impetus? What roles would Hegel’s doctrines of the logical idea and of subjective spirit play? These are intriguing Hegelian challenges to the contemporary paradigm of recognition. 4. Recognition as a Paradigm? (1) With this, I come to the final of the three Hegelian challenges. It is linked to the two preceding challenges, both of which touched upon the problem of a philosophical architectonic of reason. The third challenge concerns problems arising from a general system philosophical perspective on the attempt to elevate recognition to a philosophical paradigm. Twentieth-Century philosophy put paid to the venerable idea of a philosophical system. A frank assessment, however, would indicate that it is high time to revisit the quest for a philosophical system. The idea of such a system is complex, of course, especially so as Hegel conceived it. Neither these complexities, nor the controversies about them, can be considered here. Here it suffices to note that any philosophy which purports to inherit the mantel of German Idealism—as do the current discussions of



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recognition—cannot dispense with important features of Hegel’s idea of a system of philosophy.54 According to Hegel, philosophy without system is simply unscientific (E, § 14 A; PG, 21 f.); Hegel’s method “extends” itself as “absolute” (II, 490 f.; I, 7) or “speculative” (E, §§ 79, 82) into a system; for Hegel, “the true is the whole” (PG, 19; cf. E, § 14 f.), and all aspects of his system are characterized as necessary (E, §§ 9 with 1, cf. 81 A). Accordingly, recognition must be conceived as a systemic concept. If recognition is to be philosophically paradigmatic, it must be conceived as the most fundamental concept in the system of philosophy. Within the context of Hegel’s conception of philosophy, this raises many fundamental methodological and systemic questions, questions about the beginning of thought, the division of the parts of the system of philosophy and the completion of the system. The paradigm of recognition must deal productively with such questions, at the very least, to assure itself about its own determinacy, and the soundness of its own presuppositions.55 Here I can only consider one aspect of these questions, an aspect related to Hegel’s monism, including his view that the idea develops itself through the elements of logic, nature and spirit, an aspect which also concerns the distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy.56 (2) The philosophical school of South-West neo-Kantianism indeed trans‑ formed the concept of recognition into a paradigm of philosophy, while also reshaping the idea of a system of philosophy against the backdrop criticisms of Hegel which remain current today.57 The South-West neoKantians too sought to revitalize German idealism. Based upon a Fichteinspired interpretation and appropriation of Kant, they reconceived recognition as a fundamental concept of philosophy, its disciplines and its

54 On the history of the idea of a philosophical system, Hegel’s system and its relevance, see Krijnen (2008). 55 The three “reasons” Quante (2011, § 3.4) gives for the collapse of Hegel’s system are unconvincing, already because his considerations are to sketchy compared to his profound presentation of Hegel. Regarding the relevance of Hegel’s idea of a system, I reach quite different, more nuanced conclusions (cf. Krijnen 2007; 2008; 2010). Like Honneth and Siep, Quante too must disown much of the core of Hegel’s thought in order to revitalize the remainder. 56 Ikäheimo and Laitinen (2011, 8 f.) distinguish four meanings of recognition: identification, acknowledgment, interpersonal recognition, institutional recognition. They take ‘identification’ very broadly, so that it includes everything that is. In Hegel’s words, it thus becomes a logical determination of thought. It would therefore be of great interest to integrate the different meanings of recognition into one conception of totality; this they do not provide. 57 Cf. Krijnen 2001; 2008.

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systematic division.58 Neo-Kantianism, however, remains unrecognized in the current debates about recognition. If the term ‘neo-Kantian’ occurs at all in the Anglo-Saxon literature, it usually means something like contemporary philosophy developed within a Kantian conceptual framework (for instance, O’Neill, Höffe, Korsgaard, Herman). For the South-West neo-Kantians, as for Hegel, the traditional distinction between the theoretical and the practical is inadequate. The SouthWest Neo-Kantians claim to identify a fundamental axiological relation (axiotisches Grundverhältnis) in which reason itself is related to theoretical and practical activity, so that the specific link between activity and the practical is dissolved. The fundamental discipline for this operation is theory of knowledge; in neo-Kantianism, theory of knowledge is philosophia prima. According to Heinrich Rickert, the object of knowledge qua criterion is not some kind of being, but must be conceived as an ought, and hence as a value. The knowing subject, then, proves to be a subject that ‘takes a position’, and consequently it is a subject who ‘recognizes’ values: Values are, from the perspective of the subject, the ‘what’, the ‘object’, the ‘goal’ of taking any position: knowing is taking a position toward values. As it is put in contemporary theories of inferential semantics: subjects follow rules.59 As Kant puts it—and not without reason, this is the motto of Rickert’s book about the Gegenstand der Erkenntnis60—, the relation of our representations to an object is based on a rule. On the basis of such insights, the activist theory of knowledge is made fruitful axiologically: It contains principles with relevance far beyond the realm of knowledge; they acquire a universal function, determining the whole system of philosophy. On the South-West neo-Kantian view, ‘theoretical’ culture contains fundamental relations which are philosophically

58 Although Brandom (cf., 2002, 46; 2006; as well in this volume) emphasizes that intentionality, knowledge, and action are all normative, and he advocates an encompassing concept of normativity, it is only partially correct to praise Kant for this idea. Such a Kant interpretation was initiated by Fichte, picked up by Hegel and the neo-Kantians, all of whom were more interested in the ‘spirit’ than in the ‘letter’ of Kant. This ‘activist’ model of philosophy entails many problems, such as the determinacy of the genuine practical and its place within the system of philosophy; cf. Krijnen 2012a. 59 Cf. for instance Brandom 1994. 60 “Wenn wir untersuchen, was denn die Beziehung auf einen Gegenstand unseren Vorstellungen für eine neue Beschaffenheit gebe, und welches die Dignität sei, die sie dadurch erhalten: so finden wir, daß sie nichts weiter thue, als die Verbindung der Vorstellungen auf eine gewisse Art nothwendig zu machen und sie einer Regel zu unterwerfen” (KrV, B 242).



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paradigmatic insofar as they recur as basic structures in all cultural realms. Making fundamental theoretical relations fruitful axiologically, hence paradigmatically, leads Rickert to a relation that he characterizes as the “starting point” and “common root” of all philosophy: the “correlation between valid values and the valuing subject” (1928, 438). As a consequence, any meaningful structure (Sinngebilde), and hence culture, has the structure of a subject relating to values guiding its actions. By recognizing values the subject shapes culture. All philosophical disciplines, then, treat values (specific orientations for subjects, more precisely: for humans as rational beings) and their realization61 by subjects who recognize them (thus producing ‘cultural goods’). (3) The theory of knowledge shows that theoretical meaning—that is, meaning constituted by the value ‘truth’ and the subjects valuing this value—is characterized by an objective or noematic aspect and by a subjective or noetic aspect. Therefore, recognition can become a fundamental logical concept, obtaining system-axiological relevance. To put it with Hegel, the fundamental axiological relation of South-West neoKantianism has both a logical aspect and, on that basis, an aspect of the philosophy of reality, more precisely: of spirit. These neo-Kantians, like Hegel, regard logic or theory of knowledge as an objective logic, as a logic of “comprehending thought” (I, 23); they address thought as principle of objectivity. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between Hegel’s view and those of the South-West neo-Kantians, starting with the logical basis of the fundamental axiological relation, especially concerning the ‘idea of knowledge’ and the ‘absolute idea’:62 Considered in the perspective of the system of philosophy, by using basic concepts of logic, the South-West neo-Kantians identify a fundamental axiological relation which consists in the self-formation of the subject: The founding principle systemically ordering all the subject’s activities regarding values (Wertverhalten), and hence all realms of values, is the self-formation of the concrete subject by values which are valid ‘transcendentally’, that is to say: their validity does not depend on the subject; on the contrary, such values qualify the subject’s subjectivity. Rickert conceives self-formation as a relation between subjectivity, conditional fulfillment, on the one side and objectivity, an unconditional task, on the other. 61  —in the sense of: shaping reality according to values. 62 Cf. for a more extensive account: Krijnen 2008, 349 ff. Here, the dimension of the philosophy of spirit is expressly de-emphasized (2008, 356, Anm. 199).

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The ordering of the system, then, is guided by various possibilities for fulfilling (completing) this unconditional task (Vollendung). Hegel also affirms a fundamental logical relation with systemic implications: a relation of the subject’s self-knowledge qua self-realization of the concept, hence of the absolute idea. This suggests a similarity between the neo-Kantian’s fundamental axiological relation and Hegel’s doctrine of the idea. Whereas the neo-Kantian analysis of knowledge presents relations which prove to be paradigmatic for non-cognitive realms, Hegel’s idea develops itself speculatively into itself, first in logic and then in reality, which is founded in the idea, which manifests itself until it knows itself as spirit.63 Notice that the neo-Kantian doctrine of the fundamental axiological relation seems to involve a distance between subject and value (i.e. the normative factor), unlike Hegel’s logical doctrine of the idea. However, Hegel emphasizes this distance in his philosophy of reality, more precisely: in his philosophy of spirit. Here the constellation of a ‘subject’ which subordinates itself to ‘values’ and so shapes ‘culture’ has its proper place. Within the context of his determination of practical spirit, Hegel even comes to a positive assessment of the ‘ought’ (Sollen), which he had criticized so sharply at the level of the logical idea. In the development of the practical spirit (E, §§ 469 ff.) it becomes clear that and how spirit, by “giving itself its own content” (E, § 469), contains a “doubled ought” (gedoppeltes Sollen) in its self-determination (E, § 470). In his way, Hegel etches the relation of spirit to validity, progressing from conditional to unconditional formation of the spirit.64 The fundamental axiological relation is the basic constellation of the South-West neo-Kantian system of philosophy; it is a relation of selfformation. Although the neo-Kantians regard theory of knowledge as first philosophy, they do not systemically articulate this self-formation as selfknowledge: self-knowledge as the fundamental constellation of the development of the system of philosophy. Hegel, on the contrary, does so: he achieves the required return into the concept in the absolute idea. Such a return into the concept is indispensable, regardless of whether Hegel’s or the neoKantian conception of knowledge would require logical revision (which would have, of course, numerous implications for the internal relations of knowledge and the system). The required return into the concept is part of the knowledge claim of philosophy: philosophy is the science of ‘totality’. 63 Cf. Krijnen 2008, 4.2.3 f.; 2006. 64 For detailed comparison between the fundamental axiological relation and Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, see Krijnen 2012b, § 2.4.



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The speculative movement of the concept rules out any neo-Kantian, axiologized fundamental logical relation, which elaborates theoretical philosophy as one cultural realm among others: Hegel advances a progress of the self-determination of the idea, from the logical into the real, and through the real back into itself. (4) This problem of the division or ordering of an idealist philosophical system is only one of many which arise when comparing Kantian and Hegelian conceptions of normativity. Another problem concerns the determinacy of the practical. Properly speaking, Hegel has no practical philosophy; instead he transforms the opposition between theoretical and practical philosophy through the absolute idea and free spirit. Whereas Hegel’s option raises the question: How is practical philosophy possible once it has been idealized within his philosophical system?, the South-West neo-Kantian option raises a question about the particular determinacy of the practical: What can practical philosophy be once it is axiologized? The fundamental axiological relation integrates ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ reason. Because knowledge includes ‘recognizing values’, and so is a kind of ‘practical’ behavior,65 Rickert thinks this overcomes the traditional position, in which theory and practice, or more generally, theoretical and practical values were opposed (1928, 438; 1929, 689). This axiologizing of the sphere of knowledge entails that traditional concepts of ‘practical’ philosophy are transformed axiologically, thus becoming fundamental concepts of philosophy as such, and hence, of all philosophical disciplines, including such concepts as autonomy, duty, conscience etc., which concern the validity-noetic aspect of the axiological relation (their ‘immanent meaning’).66 This approach faces a problem about the particular character of practical philosophy. Considering carefully the treatment of the practical within the South-West school makes clear that the project of transforming practical reason into an axiological foundation is very difficult.67 It also makes clear that the relation between theoretical and practical reason recurs in a sublimated form—despite neo-Kantian efforts to universalize practical reason. Consequently, the primacy granted to practical reason loses its particular practical character: it is replaced by a primacy of self-formation, which appears in various kinds of self-formation (knowledge, morality, religion etc.), and so in various ‘cultural realms’ (Kulturgebiete). Thus the systemic 65 Cf. Rickert 1914, 208 ff.; 1928, 185 f., 434, 438; 1929, 689 ff. 66 Cf. Rickert 1911, 161; 1914, 209; 1921, 309 f.; 1928, 435 ff.; 1929, 690, 694; 1934, 179 ff. 67 Krijnen 2012a.

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construction of neo-Kantian philosophy of culture as the elaboration of a philosophy of recognition again raises the question: Is the determination of the totality as the ground of everything, i.e. the topic of philosophy, best conceived as a whole of well-ordered constellations of self-formation, or as a whole of well-ordered constellations of self-knowledge?68 Literature Aristoteles (Nik. Eth.): Die Nikomachische Ethik. Übers., eing. u. erläut. v. O. Gigon. Zürich/ München: DTV, 1991. —— (Met.): Metaphysik. Hg. v. Ursula Wolf. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1994. Bondeli, Martin (1997): Der Kantianismus des jungen Hegel. Die Kant-Aneignung und KantÜberwindung Hegels auf seinem Weg zum philosophischen System. Hamburg: Meiner. Bonsiepen, Wolfgang (1988): Einleitung. In: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hg. v. Hans-Friedrich Wessels, Heinrich Clairmont und Wolfgang Bonsiepen. Hamburg: Meiner, IX–LXIII. Brandom, Robert (1994): Making it explicit. Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge, Mass. et al.: Harvard Univ. Press. —— (1999): Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms. In: European Journal of Philosophy 7, 164–189. —— (2002): Tales of the Mighty Dead. Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. —— (2005): Sketch of a Program for a Critical Reading of Hegel. Comparing Empirical and Logical Concepts. In: Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus 3, 131–161. —— (2006): Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning, and Rationality. In: Philosophical Topics 34, 1–20. Buchwalter, Andrew (2010): Dialectics, politics, and the contemporary value of Hegel’s practical philosophy. London: Routledge. Cobben, Paul (2009a): Anerkennung als moralische Freiheit. Grundmotive in der Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 116, 42–58. —— (2009b): The Nature of the Self. Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality. Berlin/ New York: de Gruyter. Düsing, Klaus (1976): Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Prinzip des Idealismus und zur Dialektik. Bonn: Bouvier. —— (1984): Politische Ethik bei Plato und Hegel. In: Hegel-Studien 19, 95–145. —— (2002): Ethik und Staatslehre bei Plato und Hegel. In: Klaus Düsing: Subjektivität und Freiheit. Untersuchungen zum Idealismus von Kant bis Hegel. Stuttgart-Bad-Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 236–249. Fulda, Hans Friedrich (1988): Ontologie nach Kant und Hegel. In: Dieter Henrich und Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Hg.): Metaphysik nach Kant? Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 44–82. —— (1999): Die Ontologie und ihr Schicksal in der Philosophie Hegels. Kantkritik in Fortsetzung Kantischer Gedanken. In: Revue Internationale de Philosophie 53, 465–484. —— (2003): G.W.F. Hegel. München: Beck. 68 I would like to thank Kenneth Westphal very much for his many helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.



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—— (2004a): Der letzte Paragraph der Hegelschen “Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften”. In: Hans-Christian Lucas, Burkhard Tuschling und Ulrich Vogel (Hg.): Hegels enzyklopädisches System der Philosophie. Von der „Wissenschaft der Logik“ zur Philosophie des absoluten Geistes. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 481–506. —— (2004b): Hegels Logik der Idee und ihre epistemologische Bedeutung. In: Christoph Halbig et al., Hegels Erbe, 78–137. —— (2008): “Science of the phenonomenology of spirit”. Hegel’s program and its implementation. In: Dean Moyar und Michael Quante (ed.): Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 21–42. Halbig, Christoph; Quante, Michael; Siep, Ludwig (2004a): Hegels Erbe—eine Einleitung. In: Christoph Halbig et al., Hegels Erbe, 7–19. Halbig, Christoph; Quante, Michael; Siep, Ludwig (Hg.) (2004b): Hegels Erbe. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (I): Wissenschaft der Logik. Zweiter Teil. Hg. v. G. Lasson. Leipzig: Meiner, 1951. —— (II): Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Teil. Hg. v. G. Lasson. Leipzig: Meiner, 1951. —— (PG): Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hg. von W. Bonsiepen und R. Heede. In: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 9. Hg. v. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hamburg: Meiner, 1968 ff. —— (TWA): Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Hg. v. Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. —— (E): Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830). 8. Aufl. Hg. v. F. Nicolin und O. Pöggeler. Hamburg: Meiner, 1991 (= PhB Bd. 33). —— (R): Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Hg. v. J. Hoffmeister. Hamburg: Meiner, 1955. —— (1990): Die Lehre vom Sein (1832). Hg. von Hans-Jürgen Gawoll. In: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 21. Hg. v. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hamburg: Meiner, 1968 ff. Henrich, Dieter (1971): Historische Voraussetzungen von Hegels System. In: Dieter Henrich: Hegel im Kontext. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 41–72. Honneth, Axel (2008): Sozialphilosophie. In: Stefan Gosepath, Wilfried Hinsch, Beate Rössler (Hg.): Handbuch der politischen Philosophie und Sozialphilosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1234–1241. —— (1994): Pathologien des Sozialen. Tradition und Aktualität der Sozialphilosophie. In: Axel Honneth (Hg.): Pathologien des Sozialen. Tradition und Aktualität der Sozialphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 9–69. —— (2001): Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Eine Reaktualisierung der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Stuttgart: Reclam. Ikäheimo, Heikki; Laitinen, Arto (2011): Recognition and Social Ontology. An Introduction. In: Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen (ed.): Recognition and social ontology. Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 1–21. Jaeschke, Walter (2003): Hegel-Handbuch. Leben—Werk—Schule. Stuttgart: Metzler. Kant, Immanuel (AA): Kants gesammelte Schriften. Bd. I–XXVI. Hg. v. Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin, 1900 ff. (zit. nach Bd. und S. bzw. als KrV, KpV, KdU). Kok, Arthur (2013): Kant, Hegel, und die Frage der Metaphysik. Die Möglichkeit der Philosophie nach der kopernikanischen Wende. München: Fink. Krijnen, Christian (2001): Nachmetaphysischer Sinn. Eine problemgeschichtliche und systematische Studie zu den Prinzipien der Wertphilosophie Heinrich Rickerts. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. —— (2007): Hegel und der Neukantianismus. Eine systemphilosophische Konfrontation. In: Dietmar Heidemann und Christian Krijnen (Hg.): Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 301–325.

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—— (2008): Philosophie als System. Prinzipientheoretische Untersuchungen zum Systemgedanken bei Hegel, im Neukantianismus und in der Gegenwartsphilosophie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. —— (2010): Hegel und das Problem der Abgeschlossenheit des philosophischen Systems. In: Hamid Reza Yousefi et al. (Hg.): Von der Hermeneutik zur interkulturellen Philosophie (FS H. Kimmerle). Nordhausen, 135–153. —— (2011a): Das Soziale bei Hegel. Eine Konstruktion in Auseinandersetzung mit der kantianisierenden Transzendentalphilosophie. In: Christian Krijnen und Kurt Walter Zeidler (Hg.): Gegenstandsbestimmung und Selbstgestaltung. Transzendentalphilosophie im Anschluss an Werner Flach. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 189–226. —— (2011b): Teleology in Kant‘s Philosophy of Culture and History. A Problem for the Architectonic of Reason. In: Donald Loose (ed.): The Sublime and its Teleology. Kant, German Idealism, Phenomenology. Leiden et al.: Brill, 115–132. —— (2012a): Anerkennung, Wirklichkeit und praktische Vernunft im Neukantianismus. In: Christian Graf (Hg.): Das Wirklichkeitsproblem in Metaphysik und Transzendental­ philosophie. Basel: Schwabe, forthcoming. —— (2012b): Metaphysik in der Realphilosophie Hegels? Hegels Lehre vom freien Geist und das axiotische Grundverhältnis kantianisierender Transzendentalphilosophie. In: Myriam Gerhard, Annette Sell und Lu de Vos (Hg.): Metaphysik und Metaphysikkritik in der Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie. Hamburg: Meiner, 171–210. —— (2013): Kants Kategorien der Freiheit und das Problem der Einheit der Vernunft. In: Stephan Zimmermann (Hg.): Kants Kategorien der Freiheit. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, forthcoming. Peperzak, Adriaan Th (1991): Hegels praktische Philosophie. Ein Kommentar zur enzyklopädischen Darstellung der menschlichen Freiheit und ihrer objektiven Verwirklichung. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. Pippin, Robert B. (2008): Hegel’s practical philosophy. Rational agency as ethical life. Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press. Quante, Michael (2011): Die Wirklichkeit des Geistes. Studien zu Hegel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Rickert, Heinrich (1911): Lebenswerte und Kulturwerte. In: Logos 4, 131–166. —— (1914): Über logische und ethische Geltung. In: Logos 19, 182–221. —— (1921): System der Philosophie. Erster Teil: Allgemeine Grundlegung der Philosophie. Tübingen: Mohr. —— (1924): Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch. Tübingen: Mohr. —— (1928): Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Einführung in die Transzendentalphilosophie. 6. verb. Aufl. Tübingen: Mohr. —— (1929): Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften. 5. verb. u. erw. Aufl. Tübingen: Mohr. —— (1934): Grundprobleme der Philosophie. Methodologie, Ontologie, Anthropologie. Tübingen: Mohr. Rózsa, Erzsébet (2005): Versöhnung und System. Zu Grundmotiven von Hegels praktischer Philosophie. München: Fink. Schäfer, Rainer (2002): Hegels Ideenlehre und die dialektische Methode. In: Anton Friedrich Koch und Friedrike Schick (Hg.): G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 243–264. Schmidt am Busch, Hans-Christoph/Zurn, Christopher (ed.) (2010): The Philosophy of Recognition. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Lanham et al.: Rowman & Littlefield. Schnädelbach, Herbert (1999): Hegel zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius. —— (2000): Der objektive Geist. In: Hermann Drüe et al. (Hg.): Hegels “Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften” (1830). Ein Kommentar zum Systemgrundriß. 1. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 289–316.



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Siep, Ludwig (1979): Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes. Freiburg/München: Alber. —— (2000): Der Weg der “Phänomenologie des Geistes”. Ein einführender Kommentar zu Hegels “Differenzschrift des Geistes”. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. —— (2010a): Aktualität und Grenzen der praktischen Philosophie Hegels. München: Fink. —— (2010b): Einleitung. In: Ludwig Siep: Aktualität und Grenzen, 11–22. —— (2010c): Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Contemporary Practical Philosophy. In: Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch und Christopher Zurn (ed.): The Philosophy of Recognition, 107–127. Stederoth, Dirk (2001): Hegels Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes. Ein komparatorischer Kommentar. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin (2005): Philosophie des Selbstbewusstseins. Hegels System als Formanalyse von Wissen und Autonomie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Vieweg, Klaus: Das Denken der Freiheit. Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. München: Fink. Vos, Lu de (2010): Selbstbewusstsein ist kein Geist. In: Wolfgang Neuser und Wolfgang Lenski (Hg.): Bewusstsein zwischen Natur und Geist. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 93–104. Zurn, Christopher (2010): Introduction. In: Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch und Christopher Zurn (ed.): The Philosophy of Recognition, 1–19.

Chapter Seven

THE TRAGEDY OF MISRECOGNITION—THE DESIRE FOR A CATHOLIC SHAKESPEARE AND HEGEL’S HAMLET Simon Critchley One version of the post-Kantian settlement in philosophy is that the critical dismantling of the claims of dogmatic metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason has the consequence that questions concerning the ultimate value of human life pass from the domain of religion to that of art. Kant’s critique of metaphysics achieves the remarkable feat of showing both the cognitive meaninglessness of the claims of traditional philosophy to know the supersensible, while establishing the moral necessity for the primacy of practical reason, that is, freedom. Yet, the question that this raises is how can freedom take hold or manifest itself in the world of nature if that world is governed by causality and mechanistically determined by scientifically established natural laws? Doesn’t Kant leave human beings in what Hegel would call the amphibious position of being both freely subject to the moral law and determined by an objective world of nature that has been stripped of any value and which stands over against me as a world of alienation? The philosophical task after Kant was how to achieve a reconciliation of the dualisms of nature and freedom or pure and practical reason. The view that is adumbrated in Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment and announced with increasing conviction in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man and incipient romantic and idealist trends in the Germanophone 1790s, is that the artwork is the vehicle for such reconciliation. The artwork provides a sensuous image of freedom and brings into harmony the domains of pure and practical reason. In the breathtaking 1796 single folio fragment, ‘The Oldest System-Programme of German Idealism’, the authors (the text is variously attributed to the erstwhile college chums, Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling, although it usually thought to best represent the ideas of the latter, who was in his early 20s at the time) write, ‘The highest act of reason, which embraces all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are brothers only in beauty’. As Schelling declares in 1800, ‘art is the organon of philosophy’ or ‘the keystone in the

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entire arch’ that will span the regions of nature and freedom that Kant had divorced. But what is meant by ‘art’ here? For Schelling, the highest exemplar of art is drama and the highest manifestation of drama is tragedy, in particular Sophoclean tragedy. As Peter Szondi has convincingly shown, what begins with Schelling is a philosophy of the tragic (das Tragische), which has an almost uncanny persistence in the Germanophone intellectual tradition. In his 1802–3 lectures, Philosophy of Art, Schelling writes, and the Kantian echoes in this formulation resound, The essence of tragedy is thus an actual and objective conflict between freedom in the subject on the one hand and necessity on the other, a conflict that does not end such that one or the other succumbs, but rather such that both are manifested in perfect indifference as simultaneously victorious and vanquished.1

For Schelling, it was precisely this sort of equilibrium between freedom and necessity that the Greeks—by which he means Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, where this play weirdly but not untypically figures as a synecdoche for an entire culture—achieved in tragedy. The Greeks sought in their tragedies this kind of equilibrium between justice and humanity, necessity and freedom, a balance without which they could not satisfy their moral sensibility, just as the highest morality itself is expressed in this balance. Precisely this equilibrium is the ultimate concern of tragedy. It is not tragic that a premeditated, free transgression is punished. That a guiltless person unavoidably becomes increasingly guilty through fate itself, as remarked earlier, is the greatest conceivable misfortune. But that this guiltless guilty person (dieser schuldloser Schuldige) accepts punishment voluntarily—this is the sublimity of tragedy (das Erhabene in der Tragödie); thereby alone does freedom transfigure itself into the highest identity with necessity.2

Tragedy is the keystone in the arch that unites freedom and necessity, practical reason and pure reason. In other words, the tragic is the completion of philosophy after Kant. And it is philosophy’s completion in a sublime act. Namely, that Schelling’s claim above is that what the Greeks sought in their tragedies was an equilibrium between ‘justice and humanity, freedom and necessity’, and this equilibrium is what finds expression

1  Schelling 1989, 251. 2 Schelling 1989, 255.



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in tragedy. The sublimity of tragedy is the free acceptance of punishment by this guiltless guilty one. If art is the completion of philosophy and tragedy is the pinnacle of art, as the identity of freedom and necessity, and if this was somehow the case for the tragic Greeks, then the vast question that this raises, and which Schelling spends the remaining pages of the Philosophy of Art groping towards, is to what extent tragedy is realizable in modernity. The problem here can framed by Schelling’s assertion that ‘modernity lacks fate’, namely that it has no sense of the movement of necessity as that against which the activity of the free subject collides.3 Otherwise said, modernity is the experience of contingency. Ancient tragedy is defined by an experience of fate that imposes an error, or what Aristotle called hamartia, in the subject. This is not possible in the modern world. Schelling writes that ‘the element of character takes the place formerly occupied by fate’. 1. We Need a Sophocles of the Differentiated World This is where we can turn to Shakespeare and Hamlet. Schelling compares English commentators on Shakespeare to a bunch of drunken farmers quarreling in front a country pub wholly ignorant of the beautiful theatrical landscape that surrounds them. In other words, Shakespeare requires a more sober and systematic Germanic interpretation. This is the key to Schelling’s interpretation of Shakespeare, and I quote at length, If we now summarize our findings and express succinctly Shakespeare’s relationship to the sublimity of the tragedy of antiquity, we must call him the greatest creator of character. He cannot portray that sublime, purified and transfigured beauty that proves itself in the face of fate, a beauty that coincides with moral goodness. [. . .] He knows that highest beauty only as individual character. He was not able to subordinate everything to it, because as a modern—as one who comprehends the eternal not within limitation, but rather within boundlessness—he is too widely involved in universality. Antiquity possessed a concentrated universality, and viewed allness (die Allheit) not in multiplicity but rather in unity. There is nothing human that Shakespeare did not touch upon; yet he touches it only individually, whereas antiquity touched it in totality. The elements of human nature from the lowest to the highest lie dispersed within him. He knows it all, every passion, every disposition, youth as well as age, the king and the shepherd. If our world were ever lost, one could recreate

3 Schelling 1989, 257.

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simon critchley it from the series of his works. Whereas that ancient lyre enticed the whole world with four strings, the new instrument has a thousand strings; it splits the harmony of the universe in order to create it, and for that reason it is always less calming for the soul. That austere, all-soothing beauty can exist only in simplicity.4

If Shakespeare’s genius lies in his creation of character, then the freedom of character plays itself out in a world without fate, a world where the four-stringed ancient lyre has been replaced with a thousand-stringed beast. That is to say, with the emergence of the differentiated world of modernity, what disappears is the possibility of tragic sublimity. Schelling’s seemingly hopeful question—the question with which the Philosophy of Art ends, or rather, fades out—is whether there can be a modern Sophocles. Or, as he puts it, ‘We must, however, be allowed to hope for a Sophocles of the differentiated world [. . .].’5 As the long quotation above makes clear, despite his genius, this new Sophocles cannot be Shakespeare. He was, in the final analysis, too Protestant to allow for this possibility. Schelling writes, ‘Shakespeare was a Protestant, and for him this (i.e. the Fatum of antiquity) was not a possibility’. What, or rather who, is required in order to recover the sublimity of ancient tragedy, is a ‘[. . .] southern, perhaps Catholic, Shakespeare’.6 That is to say, someone who can allow for the public, institutional reconciliation between the fact of error or, in Christianity, sin, and the possibility of redemptive grace. This leads Schelling to a closing, and rather desperate, reading of Calderón, where Schelling discusses just one play by the Spanish dramatist, read in A. W. Schlegel’s German translation. Regardless of the undoubted virtues of Calderón, what interests us here is the desperation on Schelling’s part to discover a Catholic Shakespeare, a Sophocles of modernity. I think it is the same desperation that leads the young Nietzsche initially towards the possibility of a rebirth of tragedy through the music or more properly the opera of Wagner, and which leads the later Nietzsche in his last writings on music, towards Bizet’s Carmen. In The Case of Wagner, a very late text, after seeing Carmen for the twentieth time, Nietzsche writes, ‘so patient do I become, so happy, so Indian, so settled—To sit five hours: the first stage of holiness’.7 And again, ‘this music is cheerful, but not in a French or German way. It’s cheerfulness

4 Schelling 1989, 270 f. 5 Schelling 1989, 273. 6 Schelling 1989, 273. 7 Nietzsche 1967, 157.



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is African; fate hangs over it [. . .] il faut méditerraniser la musique’.8 So deep is the Wagnerian sickness in Nietzsche, that he’ll accept anything— Mediterranean, Indian, African, that might allow him to recover his health. Sadly, it didn’t work. Schelling’s Philosophy of Art concludes with a quasi-Nietzschean pathos of mourning at the passing of great art in modernity. The final words of the lectures read like a premonition of the later arguments of The Birth of Tragedy, I will remark only that the most perfect composition of all the arts, the unification of poesy (Poesie) and music through song, of poesy and painting through dance, both in turn synthesized together, is the most complex theater manifestation, such as was the drama of antiquity. Only a caricature has remained for us: the opera, which in a higher and nobler style both from the side of poesy as well as from that of the other competing arts, might sooner guide us back to the performance that ancient drama combined with music and song. Music, song and dance, as well as all the various types of drama, live only in public life (öffentlichen Leben), and form an alliance in such life. Wherever public life disappears, instead of that real, external drama in which, in all its forms, an entire people participates as a political and moral totality, only an inward, ideal drama can unite the people. This ideal drama is the worship service (Gottesdienst), the only kind of truly public action that has remained for the contemporary age, and even so only in an extremely diminished and reduced form.9

With the disappearance of public life in modernity—what Hegel would call Sittlichkeit, ethical life—the possibility of tragic sublimity, understood as a genuinely political artwork, i.e. an artwork that legislates for the community, has evaporated. We are left with a caricature of ancient tragedy in the form of the opera, on the one hand, and the empty, idealized ritual of the church service, on the other hand. Modern art, on this view, is nothing else but the expression of the absence of the public realm. It is with this nostalgic northern longing for a southern Catholicism that Schelling’s Philosophy of Art ends. 2. Unbearable Contingency—Hegel’s HAMLET It is here, as an antidote to the desire for a Catholic Shakespeare that I’d like to turn to Hegel. For us, Hegel is the philosopher of the tragic. 8 Nietzsche 1967, 158 f. 9 Schelling 1989, 280.

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He is the philosopher with the deepest understanding of the nature of tragedy: its internal movement, contradictions and collisions, indeed what we might call the collisional character of tragedy. If that manner of conceiving experience that Hegel calls ‘dialectics’ can be understood as thinking in movement, then it is arguable that dialectics has its genesis in tragedy, or at least in a certain understanding of tragedy. Although it might be said that Schelling also sees tragedy dialectically in terms of the collision between freedom and necessity, the vital difference between them turns on the question of history. Schelling, like so many literary critics that follow him, offers a philosophical idealization of tragedy that lacks a historical understanding of art’s unfolding. As Benjamin notes, what he calls ‘the philosophy of tragedy’ is, “a theory of the moral order of the world, without any reference to historical content, in a system of generalized sentiments.”10 What is misguided in the multiple iterations of ‘the philosophy of tragedy’ from Romanticism onwards is its universalistic a-historicism usually based on a series of metaphysical assumptions about a purported human nature.11 For Hegel, and this is already clear from his reading of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit onwards, tragedy is the aesthetic articulation of the historical disintegration of ethical life or Sittlichkeit through the strife of civil war and the life and death struggle between the essential elements of the political life of the city-state. In tragedy, the substance of ethical life divides against itself, dissolving in war and splitting into a multitude of separate individual atoms. This passes over into the impotent Stoicism of the solitary self in a world defined by law, i.e. Rome, and the experience of modern self-alienation that Hegel associates with the word ‘Kultur’. History must form an essential part of any account of tragedy. This is where we can shed some light on the Danish gloom of Hamlet. Moving (not unproblematically, it must be acknowledged) from the early Hegel of the Phenomenology to the late Hegel of the Aesthetics—and indeed the 1237 pages of the Aesthetics conclude and culminate with a stunning interpretation of Hamlet—in modern tragedy individuals do not act for the sake of the substance of ethical life. What presses for satisfaction, rather, is the subjectivity of their private character. In ancient tragedy, the conflict at the heart of the substance of ethical life finds expression in opposed but equally justified characters, each of whom embodies a clear

10 Benjamin 1989, 101. 11  See Williams 1966.



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‘pathos’: Antigone versus Creon, or Orestes versus Clytaemnestra. However, if conflict in ancient tragedy finds articulation in the externality of substance, then in modern tragedy the conflict is internal to subjectivity. Hegel and Schelling seem initially very similar on this point. Hegel asserts that in the portrayal of individual characters Shakespeare stands ‘at an almost unapproachable height’, making his creations ‘free artists of their own selves’.12 As such, Shakespeare’s tragic characters are ‘real, directly living, extremely varied’ and possessing a ‘sublimity and striking power of expression’. Yet—and here comes the dialectical underside of this claim—creatures like Hamlet lack any resolution and capacity for decision. They are dithering figures in the grip of ‘a twofold passion which drives them from one decision or one deed to another simultaneously’. In other words, thinking of Schmitt, they are Hamletized, vacillating characters inwardly divided against themselves. Upheld only by the force of their conflicted subjectivity, characters like Hamlet or Lear either plunge blindly onwards or allow themselves to be lured to their avenging deed by external circumstances, led along, that is, by contingency. In the vast sweep of an ancient dramatic trilogy, like the Oresteia, what is at stake in the agon or dramatic conflict is eternal justice shaped by the power of fate, which saves the substance of the ethical life of the city against individuals, like Orestes and Clytaemnestra, who were becoming too independent and colliding violently with each other.13 Hegel insists, and I think he is right, that if a similar justice appears in modern tragedy, then it is more like criminal justice, where—as with Macbeth or with Lear’s daughters—a wrong has been committed and the protagonists deserve the nasty demise that’s coming to them. Tragic denouement in Shakespearean tragedy is not the rigorous working out of fate, but ‘purely the effect of unfortunate circumstances and external accidents which might have turned out otherwise and produced a happy ending’.14 Hegel enjoyed a happy ending, as we will see presently, but the point is that the modern individual must endure the contingency and fragility of ‘all that is mundane and must endure the fate of finitude’. Yet—and this is where Hegel’s remarks on Hamlet begin to cut much deeper—the problem is that we cannot bear this contingency. Hegel argues that, ‘[. . .] we feel a pressing demand for a necessary correspondence

12 Hegel 1975, 1217 f. 13 Ref. Hegel’s essay on Natural Law. 14 Hegel 1975, 1231.

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between the external circumstances and what the inner nature of those fine characters really is.’15 Thus, we want Hamlet’s death not simply to be the effect of chance, owing to the accidental switch of poisoned rapiers. The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke affects its audience profoundly and it seems that there is a deep need—at once aesthetic and moral—for something greater than mere accident. It is as if there is something unbearable about the contingency of life that finds articulation in Hamlet and elsewhere in Shakespeare. This is what leads, I think, to the longing for a Catholic Shakespeare in Schelling, to Benjamin’s claim that Hamlet is a Christian tragedy of Providence or indeed the nostalgic memory of that Christian longing in Schmitt. It is the yearning for a redemptive artwork that would both reveal our modern, alienated condition and heal it. It is a nostalgic yearning for reconciliation between the individual and the cosmic order that one finds all over Shakespeare criticism. Such nostalgia is indeed one way of interpreting the character of Hamlet, bound by a longing that is his very paralysis. From his warped idealization of his father as a lost hyperion who offers one assurance of a man, to his dream of a perfected act that does not overstep the modesty of nature and strikes at the exactly right time, to his overblown rage centered on the thought of multifarious villains—‘O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!’ ‘That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain’—Hamlet might be seen as a conservative rebellion against the contingency and atomized anomie of the new social order. And, not to belabor the Freudian points, his chief complaints center on the figures of his Oedipal triangle—himself, his mother, and Claudius—with the dead father propped up as all that is right in a world gone to hell. Perhaps it is this yearning for a Catholic Shakespeare which must be given up in order to see Hamlet aright and see ourselves in its light. Perhaps we will have to dispense with the Ghost’s Purgatorial prayer for an unadulterated life, for Catholic absolution, for an absolute. In a deep sense, that I try to explain in a forthcoming book, Hamlet is a tragi-comic melodrama, at times a farce. 2.1 Hegel Likes a Happy Ending Hegel doesn’t put it as strongly as this, and, in any case, he has a dialectical trump card up his sleeve: tragedy is overcome by comedy and both

15 Hegel 1975, 1231.



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are overcome by philosophy. The failure of aesthetic reconciliation leads to the requirement for philosophical reconciliation. From a Hegelian perspective, Schelling is wrong because his philosophical idealization of tragedy lacks a historical understanding of art’s unfolding. For Schelling, the structure of art in its highest expression, i.e. drama, is deduced from tragedy. The history of art since Greek tragedy is a falling away from that ideal. For Hegel, by contrast, not without some nostalgia for the loss of Greek ethical life and his deep admiration for Sophocles, comedy supplants tragedy, and comedy is the very element in which art dissolves and prepares the passage for conceptual elaboration, namely philosophy. Comedy—and one thinks both of Aristophanes, whom Hegel constantly praises, as well as Shakespeare’s comedies and also of Hegel’s wonderful reading of Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew in the Phenomenology of Spirit—is the raising of art to the level of cognition where it then dissolves. Hegel’s system is a comedy and has to be a comedy, insofar as history culminates with the institutional expression of freedom in the form of the modern state. Funny. This is where we could begin a meta-critique of Hegel, along the lines one can find in the very young Marx.16 But the aesthetic point is that perhaps Hegel will always have the last laugh, that comedy stands higher than tragedy, and that the true comédie humaine is philosophy. This is why Hegel likes a happy ending. He makes the brilliant remark, that might echo in the ears of contemporary partisans of trauma, loss and generalized aesthetic miserabilism, I must admit that for my part a happy denouement is to be preferred. And why not? To prefer misfortune just because it is misfortune, instead of a happy resolution, has no other basis but a superior sentimentality which indulges in grief and suffering and finds more interest in them than in the painless situations that it regards as commonplace.17

The tragedy of suffering, such as we find in Sophocles, is only ethically justified when it serves some higher outlook, such as fate, otherwise it is simply an Eeyore-esque wallowing in misery (which, incidentally, makes Hegel closer to Winnie the Pooh). A happy ending would be better. If art—and Hegel is thinking in particular of Greek statuary—is the unity of the idea and appearance in sensuous ideality, then comedy can only present this unity as self-destruction. For Hegel, the absolute can no longer be 16 I am thinking of Marx’s ‘Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State’, from 1843, when Marx was in his mid-twenties. See Marx 1975, pp. 57–198. 17 Hegel 1975, 1232.

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contained within aesthetic form. Comedy is art’s dissolution and its passage beyond itself. This is why comedy is the entrance into philosophy. And of course the turn from comedy towards philosophy out from one’s being-as-misery-guts is already foreshadowed by Hamlet. After the encounter with the Ghost, Hamlet cautions Horatio, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’, and then promptly (and weirdly, one might add) tells him that his plan is to put on an antic disposition. The next time we hear from Hamlet, he is the clownish provocateur in the fishmonger scene with Polonius, followed by the Hamlet of satirical philosophical sparring with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The oscillation between tragi-comedy and philosophy, is an imbroglio best summed up by Hamlet himself as he hurtles towards the limits of rationality, Hamlet O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams Guildenstern Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. Hamlet A dream itself is but a shadow Rosencrantz Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow Hamlet Then are our beggars bodies and our monarchs and outstretched heroes but the beggars’ shadows—Shall we to court? For, by my fay, I cannot reason.

Who else other than Hegel could follow Hamlet’s reasoning here, where substance dialectically reverses into shadow, infinite space is a bad dream, ambition is a ghost that takes flight in sleep, and a monarch is found only in the shade of a beggar’s body. Hamlet’s self-consciousness is the Hegelian prowess of the tautological infinity of a nutshell—an identity that is its own undoing. What aesthetic reconciliation can there be? Perhaps this helps explain T. S. Eliot’s statement that Hamlet is an artistic failure, along with his scathing critique that the longing for creative power in the mind of a critic has led to a particular weakness where instead of studying a work of art they find only their semblable. Goethe sees Hamlet as Goethe and Coleridge sees Hamlet as Coleridge. 3. Hamlet is a Lost Man What finds expression in Schelling and the shoals of philosophers and literary critics who swim in his wake, beginning with Coleridge, is an aesthetic absolutism. This is the conviction that the antinomies of modernity



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can be reconciled in a dramatic total artwork that would restore the substantiality of ethical life in a tragically sublime act. Having seen the old order dissolve into suspicion, surveillance and political violence, we get it all back in a new and reconciled form with God in his heaven and a true king on his throne. Against this, what I think Hegel’s reading of Hamlet adumbrates, is that reconciliation in modern tragedy is a fake reconciliation. It shows how the desire for an absolute unravels into an experience of self-dissolution and non-identity. The final scene of Hamlet, like the final scene of King Lear, is not the triumph of some Christian idea of providence nor is any rebirth of Attic tragedy. It is simply a stage full of corpses, what Adorno perspicuously sees as a crowd of puppets on a string, what James Joyce sees, in an eerily prophetic remark, ‘The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp’.18 In other words, Hamlet is a Trauerspiel whose force is tragi-comic and whose macabre ending verges on the melodramatic. As Melville writes of Hamlet in Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, he falls ‘dabbling in the vomit of his loathed identity’. But there is one further and fascinating twist in the tail of Hegel’s reading of Hamlet. Looked at from the outside, it might seem that Hamlet’s death is accidentally caused by the unfortunate switcheroo of swords. But, on two occasions, Hegel advances a brief but perspicuous psychological profile of the Danish prince. What he finds inside Hamlet is morbidity, melancholy, worry, weakness and most of all, in a word repeated three times in these passages, disgust. Hegel writes, But death lay from the beginning in the background of Hamlet’s mind. The sands of time do not content him. In his melancholy and weakness, his worry, his disgust at all the affairs of life, we sense from the start that in all his terrible surroundings he is a lost man, almost consumed by inner disgust before death comes to him from outside.19

Hamlet is a lost man. He is the wrong man. He should never have been commanded by the Ghost to avenge his murder. His disgust with the world induces not action but acedia, a slothful lethargy. Hamlet just lacks the energy. As Hegel writes, His noble soul was not made for this kind of energetic activity; and, full of disgust with the world and life what with decision, proof, arrangements for carrying out his resolve, and being bandied from pillar to post, 18 Joyce 1986, 154. 19 Hegel 1975, 1231 f.

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It is my contention that will be elaborated below that what is caught sight of by Hegel is a Hamlet Doctrine that turns on the corrosive dialectic of knowledge and action, where the former disables the latter and insight into the truth induces a disgust with existence. Rubbernecking the chaos and wreckage of the world that surrounds him while chattering and punning endlessly, he finally finds himself fatally struck and strikes out impetuously, asking Horatio to sing him a lullaby.21 Do we even like Hamlet? Is he a nice guy? I don’t think so. 3.1 Hamlet’s Multiple Misrecognitions Let me conclude with some remarks on the tragedy of misrecognition in Hamlet. The melancholic Danish prince misrecognizes Polonius for the King when he kills the former thinking it was the latter. He misrecognizes Ophelia for his mother, saying to her all the nasty things he wanted to say to Gertrude, ‘Get thy way to a nunnery’, ‘God gave you one face and you make yourselves another’, and so on. Hamlet calls Ophelia the whore that he suspects his mother to be. Hamlet confuses Gertrude with Claudius and Claudius wit Gertrude. In one amazing moment, he even calls Claudius his mother. When the King protests, Hamlet’s reasoning is as follows, ‘Father and mother is man and wife. Man and wife is one flesh—and so: my mother’. Hamlet cannot strike out at the one he hates—namely, Claudius— and whom he cannot kill. He can only kill the one he idealizes, namely Laertes, who is a kind of double for Hamlet. He says of Laertes, ‘By the image of my cause I see the portraiture of his’. Laertes is a mirror that Hamlet holds up to himself and, as we’ve known since Lacan, all that we experience in the mirror is misrecognition or méconnaissance, not ourselves but some imaginary other that fascinates us and holds us in thrall to our self-deception. It is not myself that I see in the mirror, but some sickly, captivating reflection that I am not. But Hamlet’s most fundamental misrecognition is in his relation to his own desire. He cannot recognize his own desire because he always lives through the desire of the other, doing the other’s bidding. Even if they

20 Hegel 1975, 1226. 21  Some of this formulations are borrowed from Elizabeth Bryant.



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share the same name (which was an innovation that, somewhat mysteriously, Shakespeare added to the source texts for the Hamlet story), the desire to revenge his father’s murder is the Ghost’s desire, not his own. Hamlet Senior commands Hamlet Junior. He is also in lockstep with his mother’s desire throughout the play. It is not a question of Hamlet’s own desire that perplexes and punishes him. It is the enigma of her desire. What does Gertrude want? Was will das Weib? At either end of the play, when Hamlet suspends his wish to return to Wittenberg (good old protestant Lutherstadt), it is the desire of Claudius. Similarly, the whole conceit that leads up to the final, fatal, foil fight is not Hamlet’s plan; it is Claudius’s. Hamlet dies wearing his enemy’s colors. Hamlet does not live in his own time or at his own hour, but at the time and hour of the other. Hamlet’s desire is deeply inhibited and inhibition turns inward into a narcissistic melancholy that is unable to sustain any love for the living. Hamlet only loves what is dead: his idealized ghostly phallic father; the old court fool whose skull he idly toys with, Yorick; and poor Ophelia. His narcissistic desire is only unleashed in relation to the other qua dead, i.e. qua impossibility. It is only when Ophelia is dead that Hamlet can declare his love for her, screaming in the grave in a life and death struggle with his double, Laertes, I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.

Hamlet’s dazzling linguistic brilliance—his ceaseless punning, antic disposition and manic ratiocination—flows directly from his narcissistic inhibition of desire. Dostoevsky famously wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that hell is the incapacity to love. The Ghost of his father might well spend his days in painful, purgatorial fire, but Hamlet is in hell. This is why Denmark is a prison. This is why the world is a prison. To make things even worse, Hamlet is a very bad Aristotelian. He undergoes no reversal or peripeteia, nor does he experience any recognition or anagnoreisis. This is why Hegel is right to insist that Hamlet is a lost man. Furthermore, in my view, Hamlet—the play, not the persona—permits no katharsis, no release or sublimation or purification of desire (however we understand that fuzzy and hard-to-define Aristotelian concept). Hamlet—the persona and not the play—exhibits a relentless intelligence, a melancholy inwardness that occasionally flips over into manic energy and exuberance. But we feel no release at the end of the play, which, of

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course, is Shakespeare’s longest (Hamlet in its entirety sometimes feels like Hamlet in its eternity). From beginning to end, the sheer violence and percussive power of Shakespeare’s language has us rolling around on the floor or biting the carpet. And nor should Hamlet permit us any katharsis. If Hamlet is the quintessentially modern tragedy, this is because it enacts the tragedy of modernity, which also allows us no relief, release or the satisfaction of desire. Hamlet is a wonderful, proto-Beckettian tragicomedy, a Trauerspiel without redemption, a mournful, melancholic and melodramatic farce. And so is our world. Literature Benjamin, Walter (1989), The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. J. Osborne. London: Verso. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1975): Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Vol. 2. Trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Joyce, James (1986): Ulysses. Ed. H. W. Gabler et al. London : Bodely Head. Marx, Karl (1975): Early Writings. Ed. L. Coletti. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967): The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner. Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1989): The Philosophy of Art. Ed., trans., and introd. by Douglas W. Scott. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Williams, Raymond (1966): Modern Tragedy. London: Chatto and Windus.

Chapter Eight

Recognition and Dissent Schelling’s conception of recognition and its contribution to contemporary political philosophY Emiliano Acosta In the present chapter I offer an alternative notion of recognition consisting in understanding it in terms of fundamental and foundational dissent. By dissent I primarily mean the action of not-accepting the (universal) validity of a proposition or a system of propositions (e.g. a law, a request, a right, a duty, a set of moral or ethical values or a particular vision of the world) without necessarily offering at the same time an alternative to what has been refused. Dissent is fundamental when it consists in not-accepting the principles supporting a determinate request. Dissent is foundational, when the discrepancy between the parts necessarily leads to the establishment of a new framework (set of values, set of rules for a rational discussion, etc.), in which the subjectivities involved in this act can be integrated as well as freely express and defend their positions without declining their original demands nor losing their original identities. My thesis is that thinking of recognition in terms of dissent makes visible some problems in the usual understanding of recognition in contemporary debates on ethics, politics and right, such as the one about the conditions for a fair dialogue between cultures and/or religions. In doing so, this alternative to the broadly used concept of recognition opens up the possibility for reconsidering the way how the theoretic framework in such debates uses to be built up. This alternative comprehension of recognition is based on Schelling’s New Deduction of Natural Right (1795/96). I will firstly examine the widespread notion of recognition, according to which recognition basically consists in social inclusion of individuals in an already established social order or system of values and meanings. I will analyze two cases of the modern struggle for recognition and very briefly refer to Kant’s and Fichte’s accounts on recognition in order to illustrate this way of conceiving and materializing recognition and to identify its critical points. Then I will offer a reconstruction of Schelling’s concept of recognition and show at what extent his account on recognition can be

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employed to solve the critical points in the traditional understanding of recognition and of some of its related concepts. Introduction Without a doubt the concept of recognition is one of the most significant contributions of German Idealism to the history of philosophy. Unlike other concepts and methodological tools developed by German Idealism, which also have been treated in other periods of the history of Western Thought (such as the deduction of the categories or the conflict between morality and law), the question of recognition belongs originally to German Idealism. Indeed, German Idealists have been the first philosophers who have made of this question a philosophical problem and who have conceived it as fundamental part of a philosophical system. Furthermore, the concept of recognition enjoys in our present a remarkable potential to question some presuppositions in the fields of politics, morals, ethics and philosophy of right as well as to philosophically open up the phenomenon of inter-subjectivity in its own complexity. This is why recognition— unlike other concepts of German Idealism, which in our days can only be a subject for a historiography of the philosophy—is present and at work in fundamental contemporary political philosophical debates such as the debate on distribution and recognition.1 Nevertheless, the diversity of conceptions of recognition in German Idealism remains still almost unexplored. On the one hand, in current political philosophy, for example, it is taken for granted that Hegel’s concept of recognition is the only one forged by German Idealism or it is the only one that deserves to be examined or criticized. The first claim can be traced back to a certain lack of information or to a narrow concept of recognition. The second claim is supported by the conviction that Hegel’s account is the only one that has been consistently and completely developed. Accordingly, other conceptions of recognition are considered as uncompleted or deficient variations of the same idea and as such they can and must, for that reason, be subsumed in Hegel’s account. However, a first exploration in the conceptions of recognition in the German Idealism (Schiller’s, Schelling’s, Fichte’s and Hegel’s perspectives on this topic) let see that the differences between them lie in fundamental points such

1 See i.a. Fraser/Honneth 2003; Fowler 2009; and Jerlinder/Danermark/Gill 2009.



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as the method, the way of considering the relationship between identity and difference and between unity, duality, particularity and totality, and the manner how rationality, destination of man and moral individual are conceived. So, a classification of these conceptions of recognition as mere variations of the same concept or idea actually obscures the originality of the contributions of these philosophers. Therefore, only lack of information or the denial of the relevance of each of these accounts, makes possible the usual identification of “Hegel’s concept of recognition” with “recognition in German Idealism”.2 On the other hand, philosophical research on recognition in German Idealism has been hitherto almost exclusively concentrated on Hegel’s concept of recognition, be it focusing on topics such as the differences and similarities between the concepts of recognition Hegel has elaborated in his Jena period, in his Phenomenology of Spirit and in his philosophy of right,3 be it privileging one of this versions over the others.4 Although Fichte’s theory on recognition uses to be mentioned as well, it is very often described as a previous (unsatisfactory, incomplete?) step to Hegel.5 I do not ignore that scholars recently have directed their attention to philosophers like Schiller, Schelling and Fichte in order to reconstruct their particular views on recognition within German Idealism6 as well as to other 18th Century thinkers, such as Rousseau, who have influenced the political and moral thinking of German Idealists.7 Some of these new contributions attempt at showing the specific character recognition embodies in each case. Nevertheless, concerning Schelling’s concept of recognition 2 See Honneth 1996; Fraser 1995 & 2000; Fraser/Honneth 2003; Deranty/Petherbridge/ Rundell/Sinnerbrink 2007. 3 See Williams 1997. 4 Among the scholars that privilege Hegel’s understanding of recognition during his Jena period over the later systematization of recognition in the horizon of a history of self-consciousness, we would like to mention Siep (1974, 155–207), Habermas (1973, 161 f.; 1988, 43 and 94) and Honneth (1996, 5, 18, 29 and 107). About the significance that the displacement of the focus from the Phenomenology of Spirit to Hegel’s Jena writings had for the studies on recognition, see Williams 1997, 13 ff. and Sherman 1999, 206–207. For criticisms against Honneth’s and Habermas’ interpretations see: De la Maza 2009, 227–251 and Williams 1997, 14. Among the scholars who on the contrary give more importance to the concept of recognition as it has been developed in Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, we can mention A. Kojève (1980), maybe one of the most influential representatives of this current. For most recent contributions see i.a. Cobben 2002 and Josifovich 2008. 5 See Siep 1998, 113 and 122; 2010, 98; Habermas 1973, 162; Honneth 1996, 12, 16–17; Williams 1992, 63 f. 6 See Acosta 2012; Rockmore/Breazeale 2006 and Conde/Maraguat 2011. 7 See Neuhouser 2008.

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there has still not been an examination of the particularity of his account, namely his proposal of thinking recognition in terms of dissent. On the contrary, scholars seem to overlook the fact that, as I will show, for Schelling the foundational conflict between the individuals described in his New Deduction of Natural Right is a condition of possibility for the establishment of what Schelling calls the moral world and, consequently, for the constitution of subjectivities as moral individuals. Some of them consider Schelling’s systematization of the act of dissenting as a threat for morality;8 other scholars see in Schelling’s view of recognition only a “resilient individualism” opposed to Fichte’s “social or intersubjective account”;9 other, finally, focus on the difference between Fichte and Schelling concerning the legitimation of right by each philosopher, without wondering if these differences are to be related to the difference between Schelling’s and Fichte’s concepts of recognition.10 Hence, it seems that the problem in recovering Schelling’s own concept of recognition is not the use of Hegel’s concept of recognition as interpretative criterion, but the decision of the interpreters of examining Schelling’s concept of recognition from a Fichtean perspective. 1. Recognition as Inclusion in an Already Established Status Quo The concept of recognition basically refers to an act by means of which the parts involved in this action acknowledge each other as equals. This act can consist in recognizing the dignity, the rights and the liberties of the other as a human being, as a citizen or as a worthy member of a particular social body in a broad sense. Normally the act of recognition brings together individuals that already have been included in a certain class (the humanity, a particular social and/or political body, etc.) and others that until then were not recognized as equals and therefore have been hitherto excluded from the benefits of belonging to the concerned group. Hence, recognizing each other as equals implies for both parts a certain change in the manner of thinking of humanity, rationality and/ or citizenship and, consequently, of considering oneself as a human and rational being and as a citizen. So, recognition is an inter-subjective

8 Cf. Conde 2011, 41. 9 Vater 2006, 207–209. 10 See Hoeltzel 2006, 212–226.



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action by means of which subjectivities re-constitute their identities reciprocally. Accordingly, identity is always a process where the other(s) essentially take(s) part. Recognition, then, implies a modification of both parts involved in this act. Furthermore, if we pay attention to the modern struggle for recognition as well as to the appliance of this concept in contemporary political philosophy, then we will see that recognition is always conceived in terms of inclusion in an already established order and that the argumentation in every claim for recognition is based on the acceptance of the legitimacy of this order and on an agreement about the basic principles of the discussion. However, this situation let arise an asymmetry between the excluding actors (who are required to include the others) and the excluded (and therefore to be integrated) individuals. For on the one hand the status quo, the legitimacy of which is recognized by both parts, has been unilaterally established, namely only by the part required to recognize the other; on the other hand the principles for “rationally” discussing, the set of moral values and the meaning of the words that are at work in the respective struggle are provided exclusively by the same part. As a consequence, excluding actors, the authority or social body, enjoy a position in the discussion higher than the position of the excluded. And such an asymmetry happens even if the respective discourse is articulated by the excluded individuals, since what it has to be recognized in their discourses is the belonging of the hitherto excluded individuals to the group or class, which one of the parts, the including one, belongs to. In other words: even when the demand for recognition comes from the excluded part, the argument is based on the set of values and the vision of the world of the excluding part. In order to illustrate these initial considerations, I will now refer to two cases of the modern struggle for recognition: the emancipative discourse of B. De Las Casas arguing for recognition of the humanity of Amerindians, and the emancipative discourse of M. Astell arguing for recognition of the equality between men and women. 1.1 B. De Las Casas and M. Astell’s Struggle For Recognition As Laclau and Mouffe affirm, every struggle for recognition of rights and liberties or of gender, social, religious, economic or cultural equality begins with the emergence or rise of a particular idea concerning equality, freedom or brotherhood (a democratic discourse). This idea transforms the sense people give to a certain relation of subordination, commonly accepted or tolerated until that moment, letting it then appear

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as a situation of domination or oppression. This displacement of meaning opens up the possibility for subverting or simply transforming the mentioned relation by means of a determined emancipative praxis.11 In the case of Bartolome De Las Casas (1484–1566) the discourse is articulated by a member of the excluding and oppressing part. De Las Casas was a Dominican friar who beside of having been the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, was the first subject of the Spanish monarchy who openly denounced the atrocities committed by the Spanish colonizers against the indigenous peoples. Now, the idea that let De Las Casas see these atrocities as such is that we all are God’s children and, consequently, everyone deserves to be treated equally. A crime against an aboriginal is a crime against humanity and therefore against its creator, God. The argument of De Las Casas is based on the same principles of the authorities. His strategy to convince the Spanish authorities of the rightness and fairness of his claim basically consists in making them aware that they are not acting upon the (moral, religious, scientific) principles they recognize as true and, consequently, their acts contradict the Divine Will. So, De Las Casas’ emancipative discourse is not against the principles of the oppressors, but he is requiring them to act consistently. In his A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), addressed to prince Philip II (later king of Spain), De Las Casas claims that the Amerindians must be recognized, firstly, as human beings and, secondly, as subjects of the Spanish Crown. The dispute initiated by De Las Casas is based on the implicit agreement between him and the Spanish authorities in following two points: firstly, the Christian religion is the true one and, secondly, the Spanish occupation and annexation of the “New World” is not an act against any kind of justice or natural or positive right. Indeed, for De Las Casas there is no difference between human being and God’s child. Moreover, he did not recognize the sovereignty of the Amerindian authorities nor their institutions. Consequently, the aboriginals are not actually recognized as what they really are, but as children of a foreign god, the Christian God, and subjects of a foreign king, the Spanish monarch. So, the recognition of the humanity of Amerindians begins with or is only possible by means of neglecting the particularity of Amerindians. B. De las Casas identifies rationality with the 16th Century Spanish common way of thinking, judging reality, and private and publicly behaving. Indeed, one of the arguments of De Las Casas for the recognition of the 11 Cf. Laclau/Mouffe 1987, 173.



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humanity of the Amerindians (which implies that they have souls, which also have to be saved for the glory of God) consists in demonstrating that Amerindians can and want to learn the truth revealed in the Holy Scriptures and that they would very easily be integrated in civil life according to the laws and customs of the Spanish Kingdom.12 Let us now consider an emancipative discourse articulated by the other part in the modern struggle for recognition, namely by the excluded/disrespected or disregarded individual or group. At the end of the well-known Querelle des Dames, a philosophical and theological debate initiated actually by male theologians and philosophers, where the main questions were whether women are human beings and whether they have a soul, and where the arguments for the equality between man and woman were principally based on the Christian conception of man and woman as created in God’s own image, we find Mary Astell (1666–1731) advocating for equality between man and woman with arguments deduced from the Christian Beliefs too. She said for example: “If God had not intended that Women shou’d use their Reason, He wou’d not have given them any, ‘for He does nothing in vain’ ”.13 Like De Las Casas, her strategy consists in radicalizing the moral and religious values and the interpretation of reality of the excluding part in order to show their inconsistency. Like De Las Casas, Astell is saying to the authorities: if what you say is true, namely if God is almighty, you have to recognize that we, women and men, are equals. As one can see, her attack is not directed against the principles of the world-view of the authorities, but against the misapplication of them. Put in her own words: “If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?”14 Despite her challenging spirit, her discourse cannot emancipate from the ideology of the excluding authority. Indeed, this subjectivity (M. Astell) does not introduce itself as a woman but, as the title of one of his pamphlets reads, as Daughter of the Church of England. She is, consequently, not recognized as a women, but as what the other part consider a worthy human being. She is then recognized as an equal, only because she shares the same religious and political convictions of the authority. Let us say it again: this strategy of radicalization did not mean a criticism of the principles supported by the authorities, but of the way they interpret and 12 Cf. De Las Casas 2009, 15–16. 13 Astell 1705, 6 (quoted from Sutherland 2005, 97). 14 Astell, M.: Some Reflections on Marriage. 4th ed. with additions. London: Printed for W. Parker, 1730, p. 150.

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apply them. Thus, her criticism departs from her acceptation of the moral values and world-view of her oppressors. This explains why for M. Astell there is nothing wrong in the identification, implied in her emancipative discourse, between “member of the Church of England” with human being. This also clarifies why for M. Astell her struggle for equality does not enter in contradiction with her support of a theocratic government form, which is a political system based on the idea of an original inequality between the members of the royal family and the plebs in a kingdom. If we do not understand this discursive strategy and its unavoidable undesirable effects, then we will not understand why she, despite the emancipative and egalitarian character of her claim, was a monarchist and then we will believe of having found contradictions in her thinking.15 In both mentioned cases recognition is attempted by means of radicalizing the principles sustaining the discourse of the respective oppressor/ excluding part. This radicalization process presupposes that both parts share the same principles and world-view. But this is only possible if one of both parts, the disregarded/excluded one, succeeds in becoming the other (the Amerindians become Christians, women become members of the Church of England). This process of becoming an Other is always positively regarded as a practice of ‘purification’ or progress in the development of the rationality and freedom of the concerned individuals. Hence, this particular mode of recognition, consisting in inclusion of individuals in an already established social order, is based on a process of identification of both parts that implies the necessity of a purification of the individual identities belonging to the excluded part in the struggle. 1.2 Kant and Fichte If we take a look to pre-Hegelian philosophical accounts on recognition we will find the same logic of inclusion by means of identification and purification. Kant’s appeal for the recognition of the dignity of all men without distinctions, for example, consists in the inclusion of all individuals under a concept of humanity that presupposes among other elements a particular concept of freedom, duty and rationality, and as a consequence

15 An example of this kind of misinterpretation of Astell’s way of thinking can be found in R. Perry article on Mary Astell: “All the contradictions of the period we call ‘The Enlightenment’ were embodied in the life and writings of Mary Astell, a feminist intellectual who lived from 1666 to 1731. She argued for the rights of women yet she upheld absolute monarchy in the state” (Perry 1984, 13).



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of these premises, also a particular emancipative program for the humankind inserted in a teleological view of history in terms of a secularized History of Salvation.16 Every individual (the others) is, according to Kant, worth to be treated as a rational being. This is for Kant a duty for every rational being, and neglecting this duty is a crime against humanity.17 But this generous and charitable gesture presupposes a certain act of the excluded individuals consisting in really becoming a rational (free) being, namely, in emancipating from “its self-incurred immaturity, primarily in terms of religious matters”.18 Kant’s enlightened emancipative discourse requires the individual to change his or her identity in order to be recognize/ include in the big family of humanity. The same way of arguing can be found in Fichte’s concept of recognition. Not without reason one of its core concepts is the summon (Aufforderung) to freely act in the world.19 The other element of Fichte’s theory of recognition which is common with the two analyzed cases is the appeal to an epistemological or argumentative objective instance in order to show the inconsistency of the discourse and pretensions of the part that does not want to recognize the other.20 1.3 Problems Inherent to this Manner of Conceiving Recognition The radicalizing process in both analyzed discourses is not a criticism of the intension of the concept of human being defended by the excluding part, but a critical revision of the extension of the same concept. So, the struggle and the later inclusion of certain individuals does not produce any substantial change in the conception of human being inherent to the respective oppressive discourse, but merely a growth of its extension. The meaning horizon that served to justify the exclusion or misrecognition of some individuals or social groups does not suffer any change. The discourse of the oppressor certainly no longer neglect the fact that, for example, women and Aboriginals are rational and human beings as well, but keeps neglecting a different (broader) idea of equality, which would make visible, for example, that also non-catholic people do not deserve to be treated as slaves or “beings without soul” (no-rational beings or things) and that there is no ontological difference between kings and plebs and

16  See Kant 2006a, 2006b. 17  Kant 2006b, 21. 18  Kant 2006b, 22. 19  Cf. Fichte 2000, 37–39. 20 Fichte 2000, 46–47.

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that therefore a monarchy based on theological arguments is as contrary to reason as women discrimination. Hence, in the two described cases the struggle for recognition based on radicalizing the principles of the excluded part certainly enables excluded people to consider his or her situation as unfair, but it reaffirms the excluding potential of the concept of humanity the excluded wanted to be part of. In this sense, it can be said that the illustrated emancipative discourses are progressive and conservative at the same time. Recognition implies a reciprocal influence between the parts involved in this action. This reciprocity naturally leads to a transformation of the implicated subjectivities. But in the analyzed cases the transformation of each of both parts is different. Indeed, the including agent changes merely quantitatively his or her concepts, which his or her way of considering and treating the hitherto excluded individual(s) was based on. What on the side of the including actor changes is only the extension of the concept of humanity. On this side of the struggle it is said: “X is also worth to be treated as a rational being”, “(s)he is one of us”. But, the meaning of “rational being” or of this “us” is not put under discussion. Quite different is the kind of transformation the act of recognition demands to the excluded individual(s): they effectively suffer a qualitative change, since they cease to be what they were in order to adopt a new identity. So, we see that in the analyzed cases the reciprocity of the act of recognition implies an asymmetrical relationship between the involved parts. Recognizing the dignity, the humanity, the rights or the freedom of the Other(s) means in these cases recognizing that the Other is actually not an Other, but an individual with the same predicates belonging to the including group. This is what I would like to call recognition according to a logic of identity. The inclusion of the other(s) occurs through identification of the excluded with the set of values and ideas of the including group. As a consequence, the otherness of the other(s) is not recognized as such, but exclusively as something that hinders the demanded recognition. The real problem arises, as soon as we realize that this neglected otherness is always the conflictive point in the struggle. The struggle is actually never solved, but repressed. The inclusion implied in the described manner of understanding and realizing recognition results in a transformation of the identity of the individuals that were until then excluded. Excluded individuals cease to be or to have the predicate(s) that hindered the demanded recognition: in order to be recognized as equals, Amerindians become God’s Children, women become members of the Church



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of England. In both cases the difference that originated the conflict is neutralized by neglecting it. The real source of the problem, namely the conflictive point in each case that contradicted the established social order and could contribute for a revision and transformation of this order, is never identified nor treated. In these cases the struggle can certainly lead to the integration in the social body of hitherto excluded individuals, but cannot guarantee the ceasing of the mechanisms of exclusion inherent to the respective social order nor the repetition of these mechanisms by the new integrated members. So, we can now see how this kind of recognition functions: only those individuals who accept the rules and the principles, on which the respective universality (citizenship, humanity, etc.) is built, are recognized as equals. Consequently, excluded individuals can only be recognized (be respected, heard and understood), if they adapt their individuality to the criteria of the respective universality, namely, if they are able, like Shakespeare’s Caliban, to articulate their demands in the language of the oppressor. The inclusion of new groups is exerted by means of a logic of identification. Inclusion by means of identification and transformation of the identity is inherent to the usual concept of recognition. Identification consists here in a transformation of the identity of the excluded subjectivities. This transformation appears as a process of purification of the individuals. Accordingly, the particularity of the individuals, their otherness, is considered as a contaminating element, which everyone must emancipate from, in order to be accepted as a worthy member of the community. In the model of recognition according to a logic of identity the conflict that originated the struggle, remains always outside of the discussion, since the rational discussion about whether the respective individuals deserve to be recognize as equals is only possible if the excluded individuals adapt their discourse to the principles of the other part. As a consequence, the real problem is never visible, namely, the challenge of accepting, tolerating and valuing this singularity, this otherness, that disagrees with and questions the established social order. 2. Schelling’s Concept of Recognition But, how must recognition be conceived in order to solve the mentioned problems? I have suggested that Schelling’s account on recognition in his

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New Deduction of Natural Right (1796/97)21 can serve as a model for such a conception of recognition. I will now examine his concept of recognition in this early essay paying special attention to how subjectivity and intersubjectivity (principally understood as a community of moral beings or the moral world) are constituted, how new social actors are integrated in this community, how a fair framework for discussion is established, and, finally, what rationality and tolerance do mean within this theory of recognition. 2.1 Dissenting and Resisting the Will of the Other Recognition happens for Schelling essentially and initially by means of dissenting, i.e. individuals can be recognized as rational and free beings only in and through the act of dissenting. This is precisely what Schelling in the footnote to the § 15 of his Natural Right states: That a being similar to myself on outward appearance can be modified by my purposive intention is no proof that it is human; it could be a teachable animal. This is confirmed by the observation that those whose demands never meet the resistance of another human will eventually lose respect for the docile human species, and finally for human dignity itself. Only when I address the will of another and when he rejects my demands with his categorical “I will not! ” or else when he is willing to give up his freedom for the price of mine, do I recognize that behind his face there dwells humanity, and in his breast freedom.22

The described encounter of rational beings by means of which reciprocal recognition happens, materializes in the form and dynamic of dissent. The categorical “I will not” or its correlative expressed in the will of, if needed, clashing against the other, are two ways of resisting the overwhelming pretensions of the other individual. Resistance against a determined particular will is for Schelling the original manifestation of rationality. On the contrary, agreeing with or simply following the will of the other(s), does not necessarily proof for Schelling that the concerned individual is rational. So, in resisting what the other pursues or in experiencing a resistance to the own purpose, individuals constitute as rational beings and recognize each other as such. One could argue that this inherence between recognition and dissent is for Schelling contingent, but according to his deduction this conflictive scenario of dissent is necessary, since it is i) a 21  Schelling 1980. From now on quoted as NDNR. 22 NDNR 223.



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condition of possibility for the realization of the supreme demand each individual manifestation of reason in time and space necessarily follows; ii) it is as such a consequence necessarily deduced from Schelling’s conception of individual subjectivity; and iii) it is condition of possibility for conceiving ethics and right as necessary moments in the establishment of a fair society. 2.2 Subjectivity and Subjectivities (Unarticulated Multiplicity) Schelling conceives the individual rational being essentially as a power, a force, whose destination (Bestimmung) consists in striving at accomplishing the supreme imperative of universal reason. This imperative says: “Be! In the highest sense of the word; cease to be yourself as a phenomenon; endeavour to be a noumenon as such!”23 For Schelling being and acting are—applied to the case of the rational being—two ways of referring to the very same thing. Individuals are nothing but actions directed to let absolute freedom appear on earth. By absolute freedom Schelling means becoming a force without any resistance at all: “[e]ndeavour to subject every heteronomous power to your own autonomy, endeavour by freedom to extend your freedom to an absolute, illimitable power.”24 Hence, a rational being is originally nothing but a dynamic process of acting in and transforming the world. This is why the principle is enunciated in the form of a practical postulate or imperative. In order to become a “noumenon as such”, i.e. to make real the absolute (unconditional) freedom of reason, the individualized reason must impose its will in the world. Nevertheless, this individualized reason is not alone in the world. According to the presupposition that the empirical realm is the realm of multiplicity,25 the manifestation of reason in the world cannot materialize in one subject, but in a multiplicity of rational individuals. As a result, the phenomenalization of universal reason adopts the form of an unarticulated plurality of rational beings, namely of forces striving at realizing a goal, which idealiter is the same, but materialiter is different, since their actions occur in time.26 Differences among the particular perspectives and pursued goals of the individuals are, consequently, necessary. 23 NDNR 221 (§ 3). 24 NDNR 222 (§ 4). 25 NDNR 224 (§ 20). 26 “§ 17: Its ultimate goal [sc. of the individual as free causality]l is not objective and therefore not empirical. But because the free causality strives for it only in an infinite sequence of time, its striving is empirical. § 18: Although the ultimate goal of all moral

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Therefore, they would not have to be considered as wrong or irrational nor they should be overcome or annihilated. Rational individuality is for Schelling not reducible to a higher instance, be it the “right” world-vision or set of values supported by an individual; a group or a class and then accepted or radicalized by the other(s), be it the “right” world-vision or set of values resulting from a consensus among the parts. Because of its pretension of being right, namely of universal validity of its perspective and actions, individual power can certainly always be a threat to every community. Nevertheless, according to the premises of Schelling’s deduction of right, this conflictive potential should not be excluded from social life nor transformed or “purified”. This is why the solutions Schelling offers for this problem, namely the realms of ethics and rights, are merely strategies to administrate these powers in the less harmful and more productive way for the community and at the same time without committing an outrage against the sacred autonomy of each individual.27 2.3 Intersubjectivity, the Moral World as a Complex of Antagonistic Forces But, how does this unarticulated multiplicity become an articulated one or an organic unity? How does Schelling explain the transit from subjectivity to intersubjectivity? In other words: how do individuals become moral individuals? How do the moral world emerge? Reason, understood as an illimitable power empirically individualized, is for Schelling life (Leben). By life Schelling means “autonomy in the world of phenomena” (Autonomie in der Erscheinung, § 9, my translation), “scheme of freedom”.28 Life is a force directed or destined to impose its power everywhere, to subjugate every heteronomic power to its autonomy. In this sense, life is causality. In its unceasing striving, this causality experiences two different kinds of constraints, which can be classified according to Kant’s distinction between “boundary (Grenze)” and “limit (Schranke)”.29 The former refers to a constraint that can be overcome, the latter refers to a constraint impossible to overcome.

beings is intellectual and therefore identical, their striving, as an empirical striving (§ 17), is not identical.” (NDNR 224, §§ 17–18) 27 Cf. NDNR 226 (§ 33) and 232 (§§ 71–72). 28 NDNR 222 (§ 9). 29 Cf. Kant 2004, 102–115 (§§ 57–60).



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Schelling distinguishes in rational individualized life two kinds of causalities: a physical, directed to nature, and a moral one, directed to other moral beings.30 The physical causality experiences a limit. In striving at transforming nature rational life experiences soon or later an absolute impediment. On this side of the limit rational life can transform the reality of nature, however there are limits imposed to rational life that as such are impossible to overcome. The moral causality experiences, on the contrary, boundaries, which means that the possibility of overcoming them is always present. As Schelling affirms in the quoted footnote of § 15, only when moral causality cannot beat this boundary, namely when this causality experiences moral resistance, recognition happens. The moral world is constituted by a series of such experiences: When I feel that my freedom is limited, I recognize that I am not alone in the moral world, and the manifold experiences of my limited freedom teach me that I am in a realm of moral beings, all of whom have the same unlimited freedom.31

The moral resistance that cannot be overcome let experience morality. This resistance articulates in the already quoted “I will not”. This demand is a manner of saying “here is humanity”.32 But contrary to the cases analyzed in (2) and to Fichte’s interpretation of this sentence in his System of Ethics (1798),33 this voice becomes audible and comprehensible not because it has been adapted to the ear of the other, but because the other has been obliged to hear it, since ignoring or overcoming it was not achievable at all. This voice of dissent is expression of a freedom that, like the freedom experiencing the moral constraint, considers itself as an unrestricted force. The clash of forces described by Schelling is a fundamental dissent. For the divergence is about the principles, since each of the forces involved in the struggle is convinced of being the only or the right manifestation of universal reason on earth. For Schelling the fundamental divergence about the supreme goal of reason is inherent to the nature of rational life, because it is necessary deduced from the indeterminacy and the objective

30 Cf. NDNR 222 f. (§§ 8–12). 31  NDNR 223 (§ 15). 32 NDNR 223 (§ 13). 33 Fichte quotes this passage of Schelling’s New Deduction of Natural Right, but only in order to justify the need of a Doctrine of Ethics in a system of philosophical sciences (cf. Fichte SSL, GA I/5, 204 f.).

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incomprehensibility of the imperative.34 Furthermore, on both predicates of the imperative is based the thesis of the infinitude of the strive of individual reason: because of its absolute character, the goal cannot be objectified; because it cannot be objectified (theoretically conceived), its realization is only conceivable in the form of a praxis guided by the regulative idea of an “nonfinite act”.35 According to Schelling’s deduction of natural right, rational individuals are originally related to each other through the clash of their purposes. The original liaison is the divergence in the principle, i.e. they disagree in the definition of the goal every rational being ought to pursue. Therefore the unconditional causality of moral beings becomes antagonistic in the empirical striving and I begin to oppose my freedom to the freedom of all others.36

The co-constitution of individuals as moral individuals does not result of establishing a higher instance, where conflicts cease. On the contrary, conflicts creates the links that brings all individuals together articulating the diversity of goals. The moral world is for Schelling essentially a complex of antagonistic interrelations. Now as I conceive of my freedom as being in opposition to the causality of others who are like me, it becomes my causality, that is, a causality which is not the causality of moral beings as such (the causality of the entire moral world). I become a moral individual.37

2.4 Mechanism of Inclusion, Establishment of a Fair Framework for Discussion, and Rationality The individualized powers constituting the moral world can only be related to each other under the form of reciprocal resistance. In the moral world all individuals are recognized as equals, because they all are moral. But becoming and being recognized as a moral individual does not imply to renounce to the own singularity, which is actually the origin of intersubjective conflict. The differences expressed in the conflict of will and goals are constitutive for the moral world. Only individuals who do not let be purified are worth to be integrated in the community. As a result,

34 Cf. NDNR 223 (§ 16). 35 Ibid. 36 NDNR 224 (§ 21). 37 NDNR 224 (§ 22).



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the community is a plurality of antagonistic world-visions. Inclusion is not accomplished by means of identification, but, on the contrary, by means of self-differentiation. Equality is based on the fundamental differences between the individuals. Everyone is equal, as far as the unrestricted freedom of each one is recognized as such. Understanding the moral world as a complex of antagonistic forces guarantees the constitution of a fair framework in order to discuss how to solve the conflicts inherent to the establishment of every society and its institutions. For, unlike the analyzed cases, there is no pre-established status quo regulating or conditioning the act of recognition. The conflictive character of the encounter is for Schelling necessary, since the recognition needed to established rational communication between the individuals, happens exclusively through dissent. The moral world is not the neutralization of the original conflict between individuals by means of introducing a universal normative instance (ethics and right), but the complete realization of it. The instances of basic social agreements corresponds with the realms of ethics and right, which are a product of the antagonistic interaction of individuals who have already recognized each other as equals. This realm of conflictivity functions in Schelling’s deduction of natural right as condition of possibility for the establishment of the spheres of right and ethics as necessary normative frameworks for the realization of a fair community of rational and free individuals. Hence, for Schelling the further conflicts between the individual will and the universal will (subject of ethics), and between the individual will and the will of all individuals (subject of right), must be solved without neglecting the conflictive nature of the moral world. Following Schelling’s essay, a fair socially and politically organized community results of recognizing that dissent does not represent an obstacle, but the soil, which rules and institutions must be based on. Hence, dissent or differences inherent to each individuality essentially belong to rationality. Accordingly, the moral world does not represent for Schelling a normative instance or an instance of mediation in or solution of the conflicts, but the effective reality of the controversial nature of reason. Thus, a rational claim for recognition is not the one that can adapt itself to the set of values and the grammars of the dominant group, but the one that does not recognize the universal validity of the status quo and resituates the conflict in a sphere where the only solution presupposes the creation of a new framework capable to integrate all the differences as a solution for the conflict. Hence, thinking rationality in terms of dissenting

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and resisting force, as Schelling proposes, offers a broader concept of rational discussion. Furthermore, it let think of tolerance in political terms, namely as a condition of possibility for a fair discussion aimed at guaranteeing the design of fair institutions. Conclusion Schelling’s New Deduction of Natural Right offers a model of recognition according to a logic of difference: only dissenting powers (free causalities) are recognized as moral individuals, i.e. as worthy individuals deserving to be respected and heard. No transformation, no identification, are needed in order to include individuals in the community. This community, the moral world, results of the interaction of the subjectivities which develops in the dynamic of dissent. Each subjectivity or each group is integrated in this new social framework that has emerged from reciprocal dissent. Considering the reception of this essay and some dominant positions in current debates on political philosophy, I would like to very briefly share some reflections as a conclusion. It is not truth that, Schelling’s “resilient individualism”38 is a threat to the community, but precisely the opposite: a factor that makes possible a fair community, where every individuality is respected in his or her otherness. Nevertheless, his deduction of natural right is certainly a threat, but only for the pretensions of universality of the principles and ideology sustained by the established social order. In this sense, Schelling’s view of the transforming potential of dissent can be seen in our present as a critical contribution to discourses proposing an antagonistic (radical) democracy, since his account on recognition shows that a theory of antagonistic intersubjectivity must not necessarily be non-essentialist, as it is commonly affirmed.39 The critical potential of his conception of recognition by means of dissenting can also be seen in the prevalence of fundamental and foundational dissent above fundamental and foundational consensus, which clashes against current theories of consensus and communicative praxis. Indeed, the basic consensus postulated by these theories as a condition of possibility for a fair discussion, insists in the necessity of a transformation of individuals (becoming an Other) in order to be heard and presents the same critical points identified in (2). This can be seen for 38 Vater 2006, 207. 39 Cf. Mouffe 2005, 71.



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example in Habermas’ proposal for integrating religions in the framework of a rational discussion.40 As already said, the relevance of Schelling’s account on recognition lies principally in the fact that it is developed without presupposing an already established social order or a determined set of values still not institutionalized. Moreover, for Schelling the act of recognition does not necessarily require a previous transformation of both parts or of one of them in order to integrate both parts in the same community. These ideas can serve today for thinking a practice of bracketing the validity of the established status quo as an instrument to guarantee the productivity and fairness of a rational discussion about social and political conflicts. They open up a different meaning horizon as well, where not only rationality, but also tolerance and multiculturalism can be thought in a new manner. Firstly, Schelling gives us elements to broaden our usual understanding of rationality, which could serve to integrate in current debates discourses today labeled for example as fundamentalist or anti-democratic. According to Schelling’s account on recognition, this kind of discourses, which challenge the dominant definition of what is rational and what not, are precisely the positions that should be integrated in the discussion in order to conform the dissent needed to justify the necessity of a creation of a new framework for a rational discussion. A framework that can guarantee a free exchange of world-visions with these discourses could avoid that these positions seek other ways to be heard. Secondly, Schelling’s account on recognition permits to think of tolerance in political terms in opposition to the usual moral connotation of tolerance and its implicit identification with a kind of indifference. Whereas tolerance is used to be considered on the level of relationships between private persons, be it as an undesirable effect or as a practice we are obliged to exert, so the other tolerate us; according to Schelling tolerance is a tool for securing and enriching the social and political debates. Concerning multiculturalism, finally, Schelling’s understanding of recognition in terms of dissent let us consider cultural and religious differences as something constitutive of each human being. This surely questions the common way to assuring pluralism in our societies consisting in reducing the cultural or religious expressions of the individuals to the private sphere of life, under the pretext of being protecting the neutrality or laicism every democratic system

40 Cf. Habermas 2001, 41 and 52 f.; 2005, 13.

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needs. In this sense, Schelling’s conception of dissent shows the necessity of redefining the public space. It has been shown that an attempt at recovering Schelling’s concept of recognition in its own element is relevant, not only because it contributes to fill up the lack of information mentioned in the introduction about the diversity of perspectives within German Idealism, but also because it offers a totally different way to think of recognition not only in comparison with other German Idealists, but also in comparison with the current way to consider it. Schelling’s recognition offers a different way to conceive the co-constitution of subjectivities in terms of inter-subjectivity, the foundation of a fair and rational community, the mechanisms for including new social actors and establishing a fair framework for discussion and, finally, a different way to understand rationality, tolerance and multiculturalism. All these elements forms a conceptual constellation based in the comprehension of recognition in terms of dissent, namely that individuals can be recognized as rational and free beings only in and through the act of dissenting. Literature Acosta, E. (2012): Schiller and the recognition of the Other in his or her Otherness: The Challenge of Thinking Intersubjectivity According to a Logic of the Difference, in: Pensamiento, 68/256, 225–247. Astell, M. (1705): The Christian Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England, London. —— (1730): Some Reflections on Marriage, 4th ed. with additions, London. Cobben, P. (2002): Das Gesetz der multikulturellen Gesellschaft. Eine Aktualisierung von Hegels ‘Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts’, Würzburg. Conde, A. C./Maraguat, E. (eds.) (2011): Revista de Estudios sobre Fichte, 3, Summer, Special Issue: Fichte and Schelling. Conde, A. C. (2011): ‘Aptly puts Mr. Schelling [. . .] Here is humanity!’ The Conscious Discovery of the Other in the New Deduction of Natural Law or the Other Element of Schelling’s Distancing from Fichte, in: Conde, A.C./Maraguat, E. (eds.), Revista de Estudios sobre Fichte, 3, Summer, 36–73. De la Maza, M. (2009): El sentido del reconocimiento en Hegel, in: Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, 32, 2, 227–251. De Las Casas, B. (2009): Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552), Barcelona. Deranty, J. P./Petherbridge, D./Rundell, J./Sinnerbrink, R. (eds.) (2007): Recognition, work, politics: new directions in French critical theory, Leiden. Fichte, J. G. (1798): Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Pincipien der Wissenschaftslehre (SSL), in: J. G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (GA), ed. by R. Lauth e.a., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1962 ff., series I, vol. 5, 20–317. —— (2000): Foundations of natural right: according to the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1796/1797), ed. by F. Neuhouser, Cambridge.



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Fowler, B. (2009): The Recognition/Redistribution Debate and Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice Problems of Interpretation, in: Theory, Culture & Society, 26, 144–156. Fraser, N. (1995): From Redistribution To Recognition? Dilemmas Of Justice In A ‘PostSocialist’ Age, in: New Left Review, 212, 68–93. —— (2000): Rethinking Recognition, in: New Left Review, 3, 107–120. Fraser, N./Honneth, A. (2003): Redistribution or Recognition? A Political Philosophical Exchange, London. Habermas, J. (1973): Labor and Interaction, in: Habermas, J., Theory and Practice, Boston, 142–169. —— (1988): Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Zwölf Vorlesungen, Frankfurt a. M. —— (2001): Glauben und Wissen, Frankfurt a. M. —— (2005): Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, Frankfurt a. M. Hoeltzel, S. (2006): Transcendental Conditions and the Transcendence of Conditions: Fichte and Schelling on the Foundations of Natural Right, in: Rockmore, T./Breazeale, D. (eds.), Rights, Bodies and Recognition. New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, 212–226. Honneth, A. (1996): The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge. Jerlinder, K./Danermark, B./Gill, P. (2009): Normative approaches to justice in physical education for pupils with physical disabilities—dilemmas of recognition and redistribution, in: Disability & Society, 24, 3, 331–342. Josifovich, S. (2008): Hegels Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins in der Phänomenologie des Geistes, Würzburg. Kant, I. (2004): Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science (1783), in: Kant, I. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason, ed. by G. Hatfield, Cambridge, 3–135. —— (2006a): Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective (1784), in: Kant, I., Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, ed. by P. Kleingeld, New Heaven/London, 3–16. —— (2006b): An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment (1784), in: Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History, 17–23. Kojève, A. (1980): Introduction to the reading of Hegel. Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Ithaca. Laclau, E./Mouffe, Ch. (1987): Hegemonía y estrategia socialista. Hacia una radicalización de la democracia, Madrid. Mouffe, Ch. (2005): The Return of the Political, London (1st ed. 1991). Neuhouser, F. (2008): Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition, Oxford. Perry, R. (1984): Mary Astell’s Response to the Enlightenment, in: Hunt, L/Jacob, M./ Perry, R. (eds.), Women and the Enlightenment, 13–40. Rockmore, T./Breazeale, D. (eds.) (2006): Rights, Bodies and Recognition. New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, Hampshire. Schelling, F. W. J. (1980): New Deduction of Natural Right (NDNR), in: Schelling, F. W. J., The Unconditional in Human Knowledge. Four Early Essays (1794–1796), Lewisburg, PA, 221–252. Sherman, D. (1999): Habermas and Honneth, in: Rauch, L./Sherman, D., Hegel’s phenomenology of self-consciousness: text and commentary, Albany, 205–221. Siep, L. (1974): Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur Auseinandersetzung Hegels mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften, in: Hegel-Studien 9, 155–207. —— (1998): Die Bewegung des Anerkennens in der Phänomenologie des Geistes, in: Köhler, D./Pöggeler, O. (eds.), G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Berlin.

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—— (2010): Recognition of individuals and cultures, in: Cobben, P. (ed.), Institution of Education: Then and Today. The Legacy of German Idealism, Leiden. Sutherland, Ch. M. (2005): The Eloquence of Mary Astell, Calgary. Vater, M. G. (2006): Schelling’s Aphorisms on Natural Right (1796/97): A comparison with Fichte’s Grundlage des Naturrechts, in: Rockmore, T./Breazeale, D. (eds.), Rights, Bodies and Recognition. New Essays on Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right, 195–211. Williams, R. R. (1992): Recognition. Fichte and Hegel on the Other, Albany. —— (1997): Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition, Berkeley.

Chapter Nine

KANTIAN VERSION OF RECOGNITION THE BOTTOM–LINE OF AXEL HONNETH’s PROJECT Donald Loose When dealing with an architectonic of concepts, ruled by a notion of the final end of the whole system and the cohesion of the concepts involved, the fundamental distinction between an a priori deduction, implying a transcendental foundation, and a genealogy of the empirical conditions of the realization of those concepts should be kept in mind. In the Kantian version, any form of recognition will be grounded on the noumenal idea of freedom and its implications, whereas the conditions of its empirical representation will be normatively evaluated in terms of that idea. Conversely, the normative validity of the a priori idea will not be considered to be generated by or dependent upon its possible ways of realization, although contingent historical conditions will, of course, influence in a pragmatic and technical way the modus of its possible realization. There will indeed be a factual and historical evolutionary interaction between the noumenal and the empirical. Although Honneth disagrees with Kant as to the possibility and the validity of such a purely a priori deduction, he implicitly subscribes to Hegel’s notion of the normative validity of the concept of freedom, and applies it as a criterion for authentic moral, affective, juridical and social recognition, or for the disregarding of this recognition. In order to conceive of the forms of the disregarding of recognition or the pathological forms of its cultivation, a normative concept of true recognition must be presupposed. However, this results in a shattered complex of unclearly related, mutually irreducible forms of recognition, including emotional self-confidence, juridical respect and social esteem, all three of which are equally constitutive of an integral recognition of the moral dignity of the human person. Contrary to the Kantian project, it appears that the disregarding of the constitutive distinction between the absolute norm of the noumenal and the realm of the phenomenal—or the moral a priori and its implications—results in a diffuse collection of concepts of practical reason, which lacks the constitutive foundational element of their unity.

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The reduction of everything to the same pragmatic level results in the shattering of practical reason into unconnected fragments of morality, right and the social struggle for recognition. This article does not intend to offer an alternative to the Hegelian analysis of recognition that Honneth refers to exclusively. Rather, it points to the moral dimension as a precondition for a correct understanding of the reasonable foundation of the project. From a Kantian perspective, I would firstly like to emphasise the absolute priority of morality and the objective constitutive rational ground which is its basic founding principle, and then to sketch the consequences of this for a coherent understanding of moral and juridical recognition. Secondly, I respond to some criticisms of the Kantian paradigm. Finally, I sketch a route towards a critical horizon of the factual ethical life and its already implemented forms of recognition. 1. Morality, Reason and Recognition In ‘Recognition and moral obligation’ the author wants to stress that it is the internal link to particular duties or rights—the relations of recognition— that makes it possible to speak of a morality of recognition at all (Honneth 1997, 16 f.). A similar idea is expressed by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right, which holds that three levels of ethical life can be distinguished by reference to the kind of underlying obligations in each particular case. According to Honneth, the three forms of recognition analyzed in A Struggle for Recognition develop, on a more abstract level, an equivalent conditional relation between personal integrity, social interaction and moral obligation. From the outset, an ambiguity arises with regard to the foundational element of the entire argument. On the one hand, three forms of recognition—the form of recognition through which the value of individual needs is affirmed (duties of care and friendship), the form of recognition through which the moral autonomy of the individual has to be respected in his equal treatment, and the form of recognition through which the value of individual capabilities has to be recognized—all seem to be respected on an equally basic level. These three modes of recognition, taken together, are to constitute the moral perspective, insofar as they possess an obligatory character solely within the framework of disparate forms of social relationships. These three moral attitudes cannot be ranked from the perspective of some superior vantage point. On the other hand, Honneth agrees that there is a normative restriction with regard to the requirement that recognition should be accorded via a mode that



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follows from the relevant type of social relationship. This follows from the universal character of the mode of recognition by respect, because we have to recognize all human beings who enjoy equal rights to autonomy. For moral reasons, we may not choose social relationships whose realization would require a violation of those rights. In this sense, Honneth explicitly agrees that a morality of recognition follows from the intuitions that have always prevailed in the Kantian tradition as to the absolute priority of the rights of all subjects to equal respect for their individual autonomy. It is explicitly emphasised that the developmental logic of the struggle for recognition can only be discovered via an analysis that attempts to explain social struggles on the basis of the dynamics of moral experiences (Honneth 1995, 139). Further, the question must be answered as to what it can mean to say that, under the conditions set by modern legal relations, subjects reciprocally recognize each other with regard to their status as morally responsible persons. Moreover, that trait, which is supposed to be shared by all subjects, cannot be taken to refer to human abilities whose scope or content is determined once and for all. It will rather turn out to be an essential indeterminacy as to what constitutes the status of a responsible person.1 However, in opposition to Kant, it is not duty and inclination that normally confront one another, but rather various obligations, which without exception possess moral character because they express a different relation of recognition in each case (Honneth 1997, 33). Nevertheless, the moral character of recognition is linked to the limitation of egocentrism, including a reference to the Kantian idea of respect and the conviction that any representation of worth thwarts our self-love.2 The subject, motivated by respect for the law, forbids himself from performing all sorts of actions that would simply be the effect of his egocentric impulsion. In the act of recognition, a similar decentralization is at stake: one recognizes in the other something of value which is the source of legitimized claims that refute self-love (Honneth 2004, 41 f.; 1992, 332). Honneth clearly presupposes, in agreement with Hegel, a concept of normative truth as the basis of the plea for recognition, and the criterion for its being disregarded or for its pathological forms. That which can be called ‘rational’ with reference to social reality is a function of the fulfilment of moral rather

1  Honneth 1995, 110; see also Honneth 1992, 305–341. 2 GMM, 4:401 note; DoV, § 25, 6:450.

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than cognitive requirements (Honneth 2000, 30, note 15). However, he also develops the pathologies of moral freedom and juridical freedom as equally relevant for a reconstruction of a true conceptualization of freedom and recognition (Honneth 2000 and 2001). It is clear that in the Kantian version, moral autonomy is the uncontested precondition for any possible true realization of freedom and any form of recognition. Any form of inter-subjective recognition between persons is based upon the a priori personal recognition of the validity of lawfulness (moral obligation) in a practical sense—what Kant calls the unique factum of practical reason. This is in fact a practical variation of the recognition of lawfulness in nature (natural laws), which is the representational typos of moral law. The categorical imperative of moral law obliges by means of the recognition of its lawfulness as such (the irrefutable universality of its obligation). From a Kantian perspective, it is the way in which a rational being is aware of itself as a reasonable essence that implies an unconditional and unconditioned claim of recognition (Girndt 1990). The pure apperception of the self has its foundation in the consciousness of being an intelligible object to oneself, and this understanding refers to the capacity of being a rational subject of self-determination—the ability to determine oneself as a self different from the subject regulated by empirical laws (CPR, B 574). Agents deliberating about possible maxims of action are guided by reason. They ask themselves how to act and why. Implicitly or explicitly, their deliberation cannot be reduced to pragmatic or technical prudence—their reflection ultimately always implies questions regarding final ends and general principles. Asking whether the end of an action itself is worth pursuing amounts to asking whether and how to act upon one’s inclinations. A general principle of reasonable action presupposes a subject conceiving of his or her will as a form of causality on the basis of reason, and not dependent upon inclination, in the sense that agents regard themselves as being able to choose to act in a way that runs counter to inclination if they see reason to do so. The subject is aware of its own capacity for self-determination in the praxis of selfdetermination. This praxis is the recognition of a fact of practical reason: it is reason’s activity in producing the consciousness of reason’s (moral) obligation (Willaschek 1992; Metzler 1992; Kleingeld 2010). Practical reason proves itself practical (CPrR, 5:42). It proves its reality and that of its concepts through the deed of self-recognition. The analysis is not infected by intuitionist claims to have moral insights that are not properly available in Kant’s own terms. The fact of reason is



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inseparably connected with, and indeed identical with, consciousness of freedom of the will, whereby the will of a rational being that, as belonging to the sensible world, cognizes itself as, like other efficient causes, necessarily subject to laws of causality, yet in the practical is also conscious of its existence as determinable in an intelligent order of things—conscious of this not, indeed, by a special intuition of itself but according to certain dynamic laws that can determine its causality in the sensible world (CPrR, 5:42).

As Kleingeld argues, the entire argument can be cast in the presumably non-moral terms of a theory of action, and can be regarded as the articulation of the self-understanding of agents who take themselves to be reasoning about which maxims to adopt and why. The fundamental law of reasonable action is what we call moral law (Kleingeld 2010, 70). The consciousness of being capable of reasonable action, which is to be ruled by a universal law in one’s self determining praxis, is human self-obligation. To not be determined by heteronomous obligation but rather to be oneself the determining principle of the universal determining ground of one’s actions means to be free. It is indeed consciousness of being summoned (aufgefordert) to determine oneself freely which is intrinsically given in any reflection—including the auto-reflection of a subject on itself— while any reflection has to respect the appeal of reason aiming at universal validity, just as truly free determination of the self can only be understood as satisfying universality (Girndt 1990, 80). “He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he is aware that he ought to do it and cognizes freedom within him, which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him” (CPrR, 5:30). This double belonging of the subject to the world of inclinations and the world of reason implies that a reasonable subject, as soon as it reflects on itself as sensible, understands itself as also belonging to an intelligible world—a moral kingdom (Reich der Sitten). It involves the idea of an order and a system of laws different from that of the mechanism of nature which belongs to the sensible world. It ultimately implies the conception of a whole system of rational beings as ends in themselves (GMM, 4:458). Therefore, “pure apperception of the self ” appears to be mediated by the idea of practical lawfulness and the implied idea of an intelligible whole ruled by it, implying the exhortation to its realization.3 3 “Der Gedanke meiner selbst als eines vernünftigen Wesens ist also nach Kants Auffassung untrennbar vom Gedanken einer intelligiblen Verstandes-Welt und eines diese Welt bestimmenden Gesetzes, zu dessen Verwirklichung in der Sinnenwelt sich ein vernünftiges

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Kant therefore grounds the obligation towards any form of recognition in the a priori obligation of recognizing the self and any other human being as a self-determining self and an end in itself. This implies a form of asymmetry between the person respecting the other, and the person so respected (Prauss, 2008, 95 f.). However, the asymmetry can already be detected in the person’s ability to afford respect, as this presupposes the self-respect afforded by the phenomenal person towards his own noumenal identity. Authority and responsibility constitute intra-personal self-obligation. This fundamental form of self-esteem cannot be grounded in a process of mutual communication, with each ascribing rights to the other. Every person as an end in itself demands unconditional respect of his noumenal person from any other person, just as he is obliged to respect himself and any other person. If we are not self-conscious of the fact that moral and juridical obligations are grounded in our personal selfobligation to respect the noumenal character of any person, including that of ourselves, morality and right could only be grounded in external obligation and force. Only a normative concept, which is considered to be a normative standard for every rational being capable of self determination, can lead to inner obligation. It is absolute even if its application is dependent on all sorts of contingent contextual conditions. The fundamental basis of reciprocal recognition can be formulated as “I will on a rational universal ground that you will in a rational universal way in the same way as I will”. The moral as well as the juridical claim of recognition—normative authority—is based on an argument that is not dependent upon empirical or contextual conditions of reciprocal recognition as such. Every person capable of being self-conscious of his or her being an end in itself has the self-obligation to respect himself and to be respected as an end in itself. This obligation is a universal obligation, and includes a self obligation of the self towards itself. In the Kantian version, the normative obligation of recognition cannot ultimately be generated out of factual symmetrical relations. Its normative character is presupposed and its reciprocal obligation is implied in the normative concept of human dignity (the awareness of the noumenal self, i.e. the universal character of the self ) which generates the obligation

Wesen aufgefordert weiss. Das anscheinend unmittelbare vernünftige Selbstverständnis ist also, wie die Reflektion auf dieses Selbstbewusstsein zeigt, an sich oder in Wahrheit vermittelt durch den Gedanken einer ideellen Ordnung, ohne deren Konzeption die eines vernünftigen Selbst unmöglich wäre” (Girndt 1990, 81).



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of recognition of any other self as a noumenal free subject. A human being has duties only to human beings (himself and others) since his duty to any subject entails moral constraint by that subject’s will (DoV, § 16, 6:442). To be conscious of oneself as an empirically contingent subject, ruled by needs and desires, already presupposes the immediate consciousness of the obligation of an unconditioned self-determination, which is itself mediated by the universal rule of practical reason’s obligation. Without reason’s notion of the unconditioned, even knowledge of the conditioned would be impossible. Such knowledge presupposes the ability to distance oneself from the limited and contingent empirical identity from a theoretical and practical perspective. It implies the capacity to consider oneself as another and to be able to judge oneself as another and from the perspective of another. Every human being has a conscience and finds himself observed, threatened, and in general, kept in awe (respect coupled with fear) by an internal judge, and this authority watching over the law in him, is not something that he himself voluntarily (willkürlich) makes, but something incorporated in his being. [. . .] One constrained by his reason sees himself constrained to carry it on as at the bidding of another person. For all duties a human being’s conscience will have to think of someone other than himself (it is other than the human being as such) as the judge of his actions. A human being who [. . .] judges himself in conscience must think of a dual personality in himself (DoV, § 13, 6:438).

The human being as the subject of the lawgiving which proceeds from the concept of freedom and in which he is subject to the law that he gives himself (homo noumenon), is to be regarded as someone other than the human being as a sensible being endowed with reason. To be able to distance oneself from the physical or psychological empirical conditions of the self, and from the social contextual conditions of its self-consciousness, is the necessary precondition to be able to recognize any other person as being equally free and to be able to recognize the contingent conditions of the freedom of the other and the particularity of his own contextual perspective on his or her freedom. Common human understanding not only presupposes the ability to think for oneself, but also to think from the perspective of everyone else, and always to think in accordance with oneself. The first obligation is that of an unprejudiced way of thinking, the second is that of the broad-minded way of thinking, and the third is that of consistence. (GMM, 4:438; CPJ, § 40, 5:294). To be with oneself in the other (Im Anderen bei sich Selbst sein) presupposes that everyone is able to be with the other while being a proper self, and

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this implies the ability to recognize the splitting up of the self into an empirically singular self and the noumenal dimension of humanity (homo noumenon). To be with oneself in the other therefore presupposes the awareness of being united with the other dimension of the other too—a dimension other than his or her contingent singularity.4 Therefore, Kant underlines that when he bows before a humble common man, in whom he perceives uprightness of character to a higher degree than he is aware of in himself, he in fact bows to the example that displays to him a law that strikes down his self-conceit (CPrR, 5:77). As self critical awareness of our own psychological, social and cultural specificity is thus mediated by the idea of an ideal order, mankind has to realize unconditionally. No reasonable self-knowledge in psychological or social respect is possible without the idea of a reasonable universal order, transcending our particular ends. To understand one’s own reasonable motives for action would be as unconceivable as the idea of acting responsibly.5 The moral law obliges one primarily to limit one’s own choice of will (Willkür), but it also implies the positive unconditional obligation to respect the free choice of other free rational beings. Primarily negative rules of limitation, formulated in a system of rights, ultimately refer to the positive moral obligation to respect the other being as an end in itself. One of the formulae of the categorical imperative is “so act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only”, while a reasonable being not only understands himself as an end in itself but also every other reasonable being as an end in itself (GMM, 4:428 f.). This unconditional moral obligation to recognize the worth of any other person is not conditioned by empirical reciprocity, or by any other social or physical

4 According to Stern, Hegelian recognition differs from Kantian ‘respect’ as “each selfconsciousness must also realize and accept that its well-being and identity as a subject is bound up with how it is seen by the other self-consciousness” (Stern 2002, 74). However, the famous passage in Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Mind on ‘Lordship and Bondage’ can be read in a Kantian way: “It has no power to do anything for its own behalf if that object does not per se do what the first does to it. The process then is absolutely the double process of both self-consciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as itself; each itself does what it demands on the part of the other, and for that reason does what it does, only so far as the other does the same.” 5 “Ohne den Gedanken einer das Individuum und seine Zwecke übersteigende universalen Vernunftordnung ist also kein vernünftiges, soziales wie individuelles, Selbstverständnis möglich, und der Gedanke eines auf vernünftige Einsicht und rationale Begründung angelegten Wesens so undenkbar wie die Konzeption verantwortbaren Handelns” (Girndt 1990, 82–83).



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particularity. It is asymmetrical, but functions reciprocally, as it is universal and categorical. Although unconditional recognition requires reciprocity, no one can be forced to undertake such reciprocity, as unconditional recognition can only be granted freely when the other’s will is as free as one’s own will. The logic of unconditional recognition cannot aim at anything extrinsic to unconditional recognition: its final end is the universal, reciprocal, unconditional realization of a reasonable universal order of recognition. Universal recognition implies the recognition of recognition as reciprocal and universal. Self-consciousness understood as reasonable understanding of the self is identical to the recognition of any other as self-conscious, and any unconditional recognition of the other as an end in itself is identical to the reasonable self-understanding of the self as an end to be respected in itself, by oneself as well as by another. From the Critique of pure Reason onwards, Kant refers to ‘a moral world’ insofar as it may be in accordance with all the ethical laws, which, by virtue of the freedom of reasonable beings, it can be, and which, in accordance with the necessary laws of nature, it ought to be. Although he warns us that this world must be conceived of only as an intelligible world, inasmuch as an abstraction is made of all conditions (ends), and even of all impediments to morality (the weakness or depravity of human nature), and that we have to consider it merely as an idea, we should nevertheless understand it as a practical idea, which may have and ought to have an influence on the sensory world, so as to bring it as far as possible into conformity with itself. The idea of a moral world therefore has objective reality, not by referring to an object of intelligible intuition—for of such an object we can form no conception whatsoever—but by referring to the world of sense (conceived, however, as an object of pure reason in its practical use) and to a corpus mysticum of rational beings in it, insofar as the liberum arbitrium of the individual is placed, under and by virtue of moral laws, in complete systematic unity with itself and with the freedom of all others (CPR, B 836). The moral law transfers us in idea into a nature in which pure reason, if it were accompanied with suitable physical power, would produce the highest good, and it determines our will to confer on the sensible world the form of a whole of rational beings (CPrR 5:43). The realm of ends (Das Reich der Zwecke) (GMM, 4:433; CPJ, § 86, 5:444) or corpus mysticum will have to become the ‘highest good in the world’ (CPJ, § 87 5:450). It is a fundamental principle to which even the most basic human reason is compelled to give immediate assent, that if reason is to provide a final end a priori at all, this can be nothing other than the human being (each rational being in the world) acting in accordance with

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moral laws (CPrR, 5:109 f.; CPJ, 5:447), and this idea always already has its historical and cultural, juridical form of realization. To be a self-determining rational being means to be a historically situated citizen, living in a constitutional juridical state, ruled by the ideal of a realm of ends (Reich der Zwecke) which has its implication in historical forms of reciprocal recognition, not only between persons, but also between cultural differences, and autonomous peaceful states. 2. Kantian Pathologies of Right and Morality? In Suffering from Indeterminacy, Honneth seems to underline to a greater extent than in Struggle for Recognition the indispensable character of morality, as well as of right, for an authentic development of recognition. He considers the idea of general free will to be the basic principle of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Honneth 2000, 23). Hegel has cleverly pursued the aim of conceiving of both abstract right and morality as socially influential complexes of ideas that, once assigned to their proper places in society, would reveal themselves as necessary components of the institutional relations of communicative freedom (Honneth, 2000, 34). Nevertheless, Honneth is convinced of the fact that ‘if we do accept the circumstance that the social world already always offers points of orientation to our moral deliberation, then the categorical imperative itself ceases to function as a form of self-justification’ (Honneth 2000, 54).6 He refers exclusively to Hegel’s critique of Kant in his Philosophy of Right. The normative concept of freedom proposed by Kantian thinking seems to be obliterated by two conceptions of freedom in themselves equally incomplete: the purely negative concept of freedom of choice, conceived of as deciding in a way that is completely free from and excluding any natural inclination on the one hand, and freedom of positive option on the other hand, which is a reflective choice between two given positive options or determinate contents. Hegel considers the latter version to be equally deficient insofar as it is also determined by negativity. One has to choose between the heteronomy of inclinations and the external obligation of moral law that has no ground in any natural disposition (Honneth 2000, 24–25).

6 The French version (Honneth 2008, 74) incorrectly—although not erroneously— even translates this as: l’impératif catégorique perd sa fonction fondatrice.



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Honneth then elaborates upon Hegel’s synthesis of the positive determination of the act, based upon the option model and the awareness of not being limited by inclination as the truth of the doubly negative concept of freedom. In order for the will to be able to will itself as free it must limit itself to those of its needs, desires and drives of which the realization can be understood as an expression or confirmation of its own freedom; but this is only possible if the object of the need or inclination itself possesses the quality of being free, because only this kind of ‘other’ can actually enable the will to enjoy an experience of freedom (Honneth 2000, 26).

He rectifies the double pathology of moral indeterminacy as a result of the emptiness of the formal categorical imperative and the unlimited character of negative juridical freedom. 2.1 Moral Indeterminacy? I do not understand the Hegelian analysis as an alternative to the Kantian version, in the way it is presented by Honneth in opposition to socalled Kantian exteriority. Honneth presents Kantian freedom as an act of self-determination which is a reflective choice between inclinations or motives for action, the existence of which one unfortunately has no control over. It leads to the Kantian dualism of duty and inclination, between an ideal moral law and completely external natural inclination. However, in the Kantian analysis of true freedom, a combination of the objective determining ground (objectiver Bestimmungsgrund), which is lawfulness that functions as the primary principle of self-determination, has to be combined with the possibility of freeing oneself from naturally disposed inclinations, based on positive subjective self determination, through the principle of choice, manifested in respect for the law. A complete version of the Kantian doctrine of free choice cannot be reduced to the distinction between that which is done from duty (aus Pflicht) and that which is done from inclination (aus Neigung—GMM, 4:397). That which is done from inclination cannot be understood in a parallel way to that which is done from duty as it cannot be conceived of as equally freely motivated. That which is done from inclination does not refer to practical reason and freedom of the will in the same way as that which is done from duty. As far as it belongs to sensibility, the incentive of inclination belongs to a heteronomous causality of nature, and acts performed out of inclination must be understood as acting by natural causes. To act from inclination means to act in accordance with one’s satisfaction (GMM, 4:399).

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Inclination, then, is a determining ground (Bestimmungsgrund) or motivating ground (Bewegungsgrund) (GMM, 4:401). Therefore, Kant explicitly asserts what he himself underlines as being a morally important observation that freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any incentive (Triebfeder) except so far as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it into a universal rule for himself, according to which he wills to conduct himself ); only in this way can an incentive, whatever it may be, coexist with the absolute spontaneity of the power of choice (of freedom). (Religion, 6:24).

According to Kant, moral law is itself an incentive in the judgement of reason. Contrary to Honneth’s reading of Kant, this means, first of all, that from the perspective of freedom, nothing can yet be, in any external or heteronomous sense, an incentive or a motive as such. It has to be judged as an incentive, while freedom itself always has to constitute any heteronomous inclination as an incentive to free choice. Conversely, a motive seems always to be based upon an inclination which can lead to an incentive for the choice of the will. Moral law does not exclude all inclinations but only excludes all immediate influence on the will (CPrR, 5:80). The lawgiving form, insofar as this is contained in the maxim (in der Maxime enthalten), is therefore the only thing that can constitute a determining ground of the will (CPrR, 5:29). The determining ground is regarded as the supreme condition of all maxims (CPrR, 5:31). Reason requires the form of universality as the condition of giving to a maxim the objective validity of a law (CPrR, 5:34). The categorical imperative is this specific form of self-legislation and self-execution of the law (sic volo sic jubeo) which originates as a form of law by isolating it from all determination as to the content of the maxims. The self-critical reflection on the particularity of the incentive is the only way to attain a universalizable ground of determination of the will. Practical reason is confronted with a purposiveness of all kinds of pragmatic maxims, technical and hypothetic imperatives, with respect to which it is required to apply an a priori determined lawfulness. The intellectual or moral sensus communis is not an empirical or constructivistic generality, but the individual recognition of the necessity of thinking of one’s own feeling of being oriented towards a common cause as a faculty that every other reasonable being is also endowed with autonomously, and which is therefore also to be respected in every other as an end in itself.



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Although receptivity for the law is characterized by opposition and resistance to natural predispositions, the transcendental analysis of the subjective ground for the determination of morality raises the question concerning the natural conditions for the possibility of this resistance. Kant outlines these in the analysis of the feelings of pleasure and displeasure (Lust—Unlust) in § 60–69 of the 2nd book of Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Pleasure and displeasure, enjoyment and pain are not opposed merely as opposites (Gegenteil, contradictory) but also as counterparts (Widerspiel, contrary). To be absolutely contented in life would entail idle rest and the coming to a standstill of all incentives, or the dulling of sensations and the activity connected with them. Life would not even be experienced at all, since the feeling of life is nothing other than the changing perception of pleasure and pain. We are very well aware of the fact that we can also relate the expression ‘what pleases’ and ‘displeases’ to the intellect, in which case these will not simple coincide with pleasure and pain. The intellectual sublation of direct sensuous pleasure and of the agreeable and disagreeable in enjoyment involves them in the dialectics of the pleasurable experience of the stimulus to leave a certain state, which in itself is a feeling of displeasure. Conversely, we understand the intellectual boredom of invariability and remaining in one and the same state, which is primarily recognized as pleasurable. These dialectics of the ultimately intellectually pleasant feeling, which presented itself in the natural order as unpleasant, constitutes the ambiguity that characterizes the intellectual feeling of moral resistance. The experience of one’s own power to develop a counterforce as counterincentive is a pleasurable feeling that is entirely in a class of its own. The mind finds itself moved in the representation of the sublime confrontation with nature, including its own natural incentives, and freedom. Sensible feeling, which underlies all our inclinations, is indeed the condition of that feeling we call respect, but the cause determining it lies in purely practical reason and this feeling, on account of its origin, must be called practically affected (CPrR, 5:75). From the concept of incentive (Triebfeder) to compliance with the law arises the concept of interest (Interesse) which can only be attributed to beings gifted with reason and which signifies an incentive of the will insofar as it is represented by reason (CPrR, 5:79). In that sense, for Kant as well as for Hegel, culture constitutes the development of this creative antagonism of pleasure and displeasure. Nature appears in culture not only as a heteronomous force which must be resisted, but also as an ally that, by means of its antagonisms and forms of violence, occasions progress. Conversely, culture manifests itself

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as a force promoting nature and the teleology of nature’s ultimate end (Endzweck der Natur). The enhancement of our skills—the creativity that manifests itself in the dissatisfaction with the existing circumstances of civil society—leads precisely to ever newer and higher forms of civilization. Life as such, with regard to our enjoyment of it, which depends on fortunate circumstances, has no intrinsic value of its own at all. Life has value only with regards to the use it is put to, and the ends at which it is directed. It is not luck, but only wisdom that can secure human dignity and the value of life for the human being (Anthr., 7: 239; cf. Loose 2011, 53–78). The culture of human dignity is the culture of the value of the life of the human being as such. In a reflective judgement, the reign of ends, wherein every member can be recognized as an end in itself, can be seen as the end of nature itself and as the sublation of our natural inclinations. 2.2 External Juridical Obligation? A similar abstraction is at stake in the pathologic concept of right, qualified as the guarantee of unlimited negative freedom, freed from any dependence, and capable of contracting freely. The dichotomy of right and morality implies an equally empty concept of right. Just as morality has been sketched as an external determination without real selfdetermination, right is conceived of as unlimited, without freely chosen self-limitation. One could consider it as already symptomatic of this that Hegel and Honneth start their analyses with the concept of abstract right and reconsider morality only in a second movement to correct the double heteronomy by the always already given content of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) and its obligations.7 Honneth considers juridical law as an exclusively external obligation, identifying the discourse of right with the liberal right of private possession and the unlimited right to enter freely into a multitude of contract relations and to do for its own interest everything which is not forbidden by a conventional legal system. Such a concept of right cannot prevent us from considering any other person simply as a means for one’s own ends. When we consider the fundamental right to be the advantage that allows me to withdraw from all concrete relations and social roles in order to persist in unlimited openness, it is of course clear that such a concept of right will need corrections so as to enable 7 Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts § 148–149: Pflicht as Sittliche Notwendigkeit.



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real juridical recognition of persons in the civil society. The negative idea of undetermined rights and legal isolation requires the compensation of its positive converse: the right to engage in common free enterprises of juridical revendications—claims to legal rights and demands (Honneth 2000, 51; 2011, 155). Note that the Kantian definition of right is as follows: “Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (DoR, 6:230). In Perpetual Peace he explicitly underlines that Rightful (i.e.) external freedom cannot, as is usually thought, be defined as a warrant to do whatever one wishes unless it means doing injustice to others [. . . as] the definition is an empty tautology [. . .]. In fact, my external and rightful freedom should be defined as a warrant to obey no external laws except those to which I have been able to give my own consent (Peace, 8:350 note).

The relation between right and morality cannot be exclusively reduced to the dichotomy of internal or external motivation. Morality and right do not imply an exclusive distinction: “Ethical duties involve a constraint for which only internal lawgiving is possible, whereas duties of right involve a constraint for which external lawgiving is also possible” (DoV, 6:394). Honneth stresses, with Hegel, a correction of the so-called pathology of abstract right, that a moral dimension will always be implied in the full concept of a right. True acceptance of any legal obligation will presuppose a freely reflecting commitment and adherence to the obligation. In his discussion with Kant, he should not even exclusively reintroduce that inner moral motive and he should not conceive of it as an equally external obligation of the categorical imperative. As Honneth himself argues, in agreement with Wildt (1982), the only valid objection made by Hegel against the empty character of the categorical imperative might be the blindness to context. Honneth erroneously believes that one can compensate for this lack of context by reference to already institutionalized practices, even concluding that the categorical imperative then loses its function of self-justification (Honneth 2000, 57). This can only hold when we consider those practices as already reasonable and evaluated by a moral criterion, a conviction that Honneth, as well as Hegel, would accept. However, even in the Kantian version, that moral criterion is no more reduced to the motive of purely inner self-obligation than in the post-Kantian criticism. Unfortunately, it is this distinction between

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external and internal obligations that Fichte as well as Hegel and Honneth maintain.8 The vicissitudes of the Kantian distinction between internal and external obligations obliterated another fundamental aspect of the Kantian relation between morality and right. It is only by reintroducing the object of the public act and the distinction between means and ends that one can produce a more adequate conception of inter-subjective and public recognition. Kant defines the human being as one who has the end of its existence in itself, who determines his ends himself through reason, or, where he must derive them from external perceptions, can nevertheless compare them to essential and universal ends (CRJ, 5:233). While everyone is confronted with the universal, noumenal dimension of his existence, everyone has to consider everyone as an end in itself. Disregarding the fundamental human condition—in a moral as well as in a juridical sense—must then be defined as denying this human a priori; i.e. by using someone only as a means. The first level of recognition can be defined as not simply using somebody merely as a means but respecting him or her also as an end in itself. The ultimate reciprocal respect of humans would then be to consider the other only as an end in itself. We can reconsider this fundamental Kantian distinction as the distinction and inner connection between right and morality (Prauss, 2008). If we reintroduce the idea of an end, and of man’s status as an end in itself in the concept of right, we are immediately involved in inter-subjective relations and are not trapped in a morally external mode of coercion or obligation in the juridical recognition of the other. As an implication of this correction, based on Kantian criteria, we are obliged to recognize the autonomy of any person who is independently able to competently take up responsibility. This is what right demands, and its claim is intrinsically defined by interpersonal relations between subjects who are to be considered as free, which implies being respected as being free. Only when we must consider a person as 8 Hegel and Fichte develop the Kantian distinction between the definition of right and morality exclusively as internal or external obligations. Hegel Grundlinien § 106: Zusatz. Moreover, they consider both concepts of obligation as hierarchically ordered. Right increasingly becomes a primary level, objectively compelling everyone in modern times towards becoming a person. In his earlier Jenaer System, Hegel then considers the state as the institution that does not need to consider the individual inner motivations of the citizen. However, he is also convinced that the state needs the mental adherence of its citizens in order to be able to realize its ends. Religion can support such adherence, but legal obligation is a more objective guarantee than such a purely subjective motivation for adherence. In the Enzyklopädie § 552, the relation is even reversed. The state is grounded on moral adherence, with religion behind it as its basic support. (Prauss 2008, 45 f. Further discussion in: Kersting 1993; Höffe 1979; Steigleder 2002).



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being unable to take up responsibility, we are still morally obliged to consider him or her too as an end in itself, even if we can no longer consider him or her also as a means for our ends. A person who is unable to consider him or herself as an end in itself or to determine freely his or her own will, cannot be considered to be willing him or herself to be treated as a mere object and as a means for someone else’s ends.9 There is no fundamental distinction between the external and internal aspect of actions. Every action is internal and external. Disrespect or to consider someone as only a means is a juridical as well as a moral evil. A complication of this reading is that we are then only specifically obliged in a moral sense towards those who are unable to defend their rights for themselves. Prauss seems to accept this only in its negative form. Specifically moral evil, moral disregard or a lack of moral recognition could be defined as the treatment of one who is unable to determine his or her ends, as only a means. Juridical disrespect arises when we do not also consider one as an end in itself, although we behave correctly towards the other who is able to stand up for his or her own rights. In both cases, we disregard the other’s status as an end in itself, and therefore juridical disrespect is in itself a lack of moral recognition. Only the natural situation of the other—his empirical context or social condition—defines my juridical or moral obligation. This empirical aspect is what Kant explicitly deals with in his doctrine of virtue. There, we cannot make an abstraction of the obligation to the end of the action (DoV, 6:382). Therefore the moral obligation is imperfect, subject to the personal synthetic judgement of the actor himself as well as to the empirical conditions of the other. It is thus an open-ended obligation. It depends on my own contingent empirical capabilities and the empirical context of the other person as to what I may be obliged to do. In this sense the distinction between external and internal obligations is secondary. Both moral and juridical obligations are objectively and contextually determined. The fundamental distinction between an external obligation in a system of right and the inner motivation of moral self-obligation should not be seen as the ultimate criterion of right versus morality, and

9 Prauss acknowledges that Kant himself never characterizes our morally obligatory relation to others as constituting a specific obligation to recognize him or her as only an end in itself (Prauss 2008, 73). On the contrary, one of the formulations of the categorical imperative reads “so act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.” To consider one as only an end in itself, the formula of the moral maximum, would rather be a definition of love: “the duty to make others’ ends my own” (DoV, 6:450; Prauss 2008, 74).

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there is an intrinsic moral obligation at the basis of a system of rights insofar as we have always to respect every other person also as an end in itself. Moreover, another fundamental aspect of the external (äusserlich) character of obligation is its publicity (Prauss 2008, 44). It is external while it intrinsically has the potential of communicability, to be externalized as a rule for all. This changes the perspective on the rule of the state, as will be further developed in my final remarks. 3. A Critical Perspective on the State Honneth reads Hegel’s analysis of the ethical life as a normative reconstruction. In the final remarks on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he concludes: Given conditions of social life are to be scrutinized from well-established, habitual practices, which possess an inner normativity in the sense that they can be reproduced only when certain duties and rights are customarily accepted, it would be better and more fitting to speak of practices and institutions that owe their entire facticity solely to their following certain moral rules (Honneth 2000, 59).

That would be the reason why those practices and institutions would always be able to regenerate new instances of morally justifiable claims of reciprocal recognition, and capable of successful institutional selfreproduction in the future. Kant warned, with regard to the history of philosophy and its future, that even successful results in the past do not guarantee any success in the future. It is only the critical way of thinking that is still open. The critical movement of the Enlightenment does not establish an enlightened time, but merely a time of never-ending critical self-enlightenment. Deceit, violence, and envy will always surround man, even though he is himself honest, peaceable, and benevolent; and the righteous ones besides himself that he will still encounter will, in spite of all their worthiness to be happy, nevertheless be subject by nature, which pays no attention to that, to all the evils of poverty, illness and ultimately death (CPJ, § 87).

Man is an animal which, if it lives among others of its kind, requires a master. His selfish animal impulses tempt him, where possible, to exempt himself from the law he wishes to have in order to limit the freedom of all. He thus requires a master who will force him to obey. But where does he get this master ? The master is himself an animal (Idea, VI). A threefold original predisposition to the good in human nature can always be perverted into a form of evil. The predisposition to the animality



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of the human being as a living being will not only generate a love for which reason is not required (self-love, propagation of the species through the sexual drive, and community with other human beings) but it can develop into savagery, and bestial vices of gluttony, lust and wild lawlessness as well. The humanity in us that simultaneously involves our rationality is indeed the predisposition to culture. It grounds the inclination to gain equal value in the consideration of others—to be recognized—but it also generates jealously and rivalry. Malignancies, such as envy, ingratitude, and joy in other’s misfortune, are vices of culture. Finally, man is a personality, as a rational and simultaneously a morally responsible being. Its predisposition is to respect moral law as a sufficient incentive to the power of choice (Religion, 6:26–28). Notwithstanding Honneth’s reading of Hegel’s triptych of the ethical life, Kant stresses that only the third dimension can ever be responsible for any free decision in the other (natural or cultural) spheres, and this makes the urgency of individual moral responsibility all the more required as it is always able to transform into radical evil. Hegel would criticize such a vision of mankind, where the good always seems to be conquered by evil, where purity is never attained and should never be considered as acceptable and where there is no inner or outer satisfaction. For Kant, the critical way implies an infinitely open future but no presence of the infinite in the finite. Finite reasonable beings remain eternally incapable of incarnating the infinite, as God has not revealed himself nor descended to earth, while man never becomes divine (Weil 1990, 167). We can and must of course refer to the historical development towards the universal recognition of all individuals, people and states in a cosmopolitan world-order, but post-modern history also warns us that a backsliding into tyranny, the corruption of civil society, individual as well as institutional greed, such as in the world of finances, and disrespect of labour conditions by multinationals is at least an equally recognizable logic of history. The question remains as to whether the highest good in the world is achievable, and as it should be promoted, insofar as it is in our estimation a final end, whether we are able to do so (CPJ, 5:450; CPrP, 5:125). The principle of the formal purposiveness of nature to human freedom is not only a transcendental principle of the power of judgment, but also a metaphysical one. A transcendental principle is one through which the universal a priori condition under which things can become objects of our cognition at all is represented. By contrast, a principle is called metaphysical if it represents the a priori condition under which singular objects,

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whose concept must be given empirically, can be further determined a priori. The principle of practical purposiveness of nature which must be conceived of in the idea of the determination of a free desire as a will is, besides a transcendental principle, also a metaphysical principle, as such a will must still be given empirically (CPJ, 5:181–182). Although the determining grounds of causality in accordance with the concept of freedom (and the practical rules that it contains) are not found in nature, and the sensible cannot determine the supersensible in subjects, nevertheless the reverse is possible (not in regard to the cognition of nature of course, but in regard of the consequences of the supersensible to the sensible). Reason is causality through freedom, whose effect in accordance with its formal laws is to take place in the world. The effect in accordance with the concept of freedom is a final end (or its appearance in the sensible world), which should exist, for which the conditions of its possibility in nature, in the nature of a subject as a sensible being (that is, as a human being) is presupposed (CPJ, 5:196). Our real hope is the noumenal dimension of the judging individual. The noumenal and the phenomenal are linked in the power of judgement and the perspective of hope it necessarily implies. It implies a subjective practical belief in a creator of the world, a moral lawgiver and a final judge of history, transcendent to the contingent march of history. The foundation of the pure principles of morality—a foundation of the metaphysics of morals—is not yet dealing with morality of human beings or their ethical life. It develops what is absolutely valid in practice for rational beings as such. However, when it comes to the moral life of real existing human beings—when the ground has to be defended in the real human anthropology—metaphysics of morals itself has to be developed on the basis of its principles. The finite rational being, who is not practical reason as such, then proves to be depraved, wicked and radically evil, precisely because he is a being of free choice (Willkür) and can deny freedom, although never lose consciousness of the moral law, the indication of his free will (Wille). Therefore, the human being is this struggle. The ultimate struggle is the struggle against himself—not the struggle of everyone against everyone else in the external state of nature, but the struggle inside his own heart.10 Neither civil society nor the state can wage

10 Hobbes’ statement on the state of nature should not only be read as relevant for the obligation to leave the political state of nature, but also for it to leave the ethical state of nature where a bellum omnium in omnes is still to be overcome. Religion, 6:97.



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this struggle on his behalf. Honneth has no reserves as to Hegel’s conviction that the modern concept of right supposes itself to have a justified claim sanctioned by the state and the extension of the individual sphere to that of social realizations or institutions in general. According to Hegel’s usage of the concept of ‘right’ in his Philosophy of Right, primarily it is not individuals who are entitled to general rights, but rather those social forms of existence, that in fostering the self-organization of the ‘free will’, have shown themselves to be the ‘basic goods’ of society’. The bearers of rights are the social spheres and practices that lay a justified claim on society to be preserved and fostered in their entirety (Honneth 2000, 29–30).

For Kant, too, morality is submerged in the world. The thing in itself, knowable as such only by the Thing in itself which is God, must become phenomenal, and is only receivable as phenomenon. Pure will, known unto the human being as moral law, must be united not only in an invisible church of purely morally intentioned beings but also in an institutionally ruled external community, based on external as well as internal experiences of empirical testimonies of human reason. Human community is constituted by positive laws, which are reasonably defendable as obligatory in nature, although always subject to judgement by pure practical reason and the community of freely and responsibly deciding citizens: “Obey the authority who has power over you (in whatever does not conflict with inner morality)” (DoR, 6:371). A moral community aiming at the reign of ends but already representing—as a scheme—this transcendent reign in a reign of terrestrial peace can be understood as a reign of universal mutual recognition of all (Weill 1990). One can, of course, opt for logic as such and make an abstraction of its possible ontological implementation ( fiat logica et pereat mundus) or accept the tragic dimension of human existence as unavoidable ( fiat mundus et pereat iustitia). The Kantian adagium fiat iustitia et pereat mundus considers every human being from the perspective of respect for his worth.11

11 Kant at least reminds us that nobody should ever be forgotten as a final human being, and as an end in itself. Prauss mentions Hegel’s cynical remarks in the Introduction of his Philosphy of History, referring to the heroes of history and the importance of their deeds, to which the small fry have to be sacrificed, although he mentions that he does recall having read someone—he doesn’t even mention Kant by name—who considers each of those small individuals to be a subject and an end in itself lest the heroes treat them as mere means. (Prauss 2008, 95).

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Therefore, even Honneth concludes his critical actualization of the Hegelian project as a deconstruction of what he calls “the over-institutionalization of the ethical life” in the state.12 The notion of a public, political space or the representation of a democratic formation of the collective will of the people is essential. People should be represented in the role of the sovereign. Kant considers the head of the state (Oberhaupt) as an entity of thought that represents the entire people (ein das gesammte Volk vorstellendes Gedankending), which then requires a physical entity to represent the supreme authority of the state and to impose this idea effectively on the people’s will. The citizen can, through his freedom of choice (Willkür), accept that law as the determining ground for his actions, either out of duty (as a moral obligation and a duty of virtue) or on the basis of any other incentive (as a mere duty of right); or he can, of course, reject it. The distinction between universal Wille and personal Willkür in every agent implies that the personal struggle is never overcome. On many occasions, the power of choice of an agent will be determined by an externally legislating Wille, the political legislating assembly, and one does not in this case will the law as a law for oneself. The universal obligation of the rule of right is not related to the maxims of the citizens; in other words, to the motives for obedience to the law. The law of right prescribes the necessary actions. The obligation of the law as such is what Kant calls a strictly juridical obligation or a duty of law (Rechtsplicht). It is obligatory by virtue of the lawful character of the obligation itself. In this sense, its obligatory character can be experienced as external, due to consciousness of the irrefutable character of the obligation as constraint of the law (Zwang des Gesetzes) in contrast to one’s own maxims. It is based on the definition of the will as such (Wille) and not on the character of the personal choice of the will (Willkür) and its own maxims (DoR, 6:232). The grounds of the necessity to obey are located not in the inner consciousness of moral law but in the universal claim of freedom (Flikschuh 2010, 51–70). Therefore, right is not a transaction between conflicting claims, or a struggle of reciprocal recognition, to be arranged by reciprocal agreement, but is rather based upon a coercive law which applies to everyone. No unilateral or bilateral will can ever serve as a coercive law for everyone, since that would infringe upon freedom, in accordance with 12 Honneth 2008, 127 (this passage is not included in the English translation). See also Honneth 2011, 471 f., and the critique of Habermas 1999, 186–229, although Habermas does not intend to return to Kant. On the contrary, he considers Hegel’s trust in the Spirit of History to be an undesirable backsliding to Kantian subjective mentalism.



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universal laws. Only a will which imposes an obligation upon everyone; in other words, only a collective, general (common) and powerful will—a general, external or public lawgiving that is accompanied by power—can guarantee public freedom (DoR, 6:256). The fundamental unity of universal practical reason and right cannot lead to a dualism between the moral world and a purely external world of coercion. Although Kant demonstrates his concept of strict right by analogy with the mechanics of heteronomous natural determination, he ultimately reinterprets the dynamics of natural coercion, force and juridical obligation as means from the perspective of the ultimate end of nature: culture. They can even be judged reflectively as means for the final end: human freedom. The possibility of not considering that which is constitutive for the realization of the human dignity of man merely as an external means to an equally external end but, on the contrary, also as a symbolic representation of that end in itself, implies that we may consider the obligation of juridical reciprocal recognition as the representation of the final end of mankind itself: human freedom as the final end of creation. Moreover the mechanic model of external force is superseded by the organic model of life where everything is to be seen as reciprocal means and ends, although here again the political relevance is only symbolic: i.e. interpreted as ‘organization’ from the perspective of the only possible final end which is human freedom (CPJ, 5:375 note). Finally, we cannot very well make obligation (moral constraint) intuitive for ourselves without thereby thinking another will. And although the representation of our duty with regard to a God—as pure will—is properly speaking a duty of a human being to himself, reason in giving universal laws, can be seen in a symbolic way as a the spokesman of another’s will (DoV, 6:487). In a note in Perpetual Peace Kant writes what could be read as flattery, but rather appears to be a warning to those who hold political power and its institutions: Many have criticized the high sounding appellations which are often bestowed on a ruler (such as ‘the divine anointed’, or ‘the executor and representative of the divine will on earth’) as gross and extravagant flatteries, but it seems to me without reason. Far from making the ruler of the land arrogant, they ought rather to fill his soul with humility. For if he is a man of understanding (which we must certainly assume), he will reflect that he has taken over an office which is too great for a human being, namely that of administering God’s most sacred institution on earth, the rights of man. He will always live in fear of having in any way injured God’s most valued possession (Peace, 8:352–353).

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To judge ourselves as being judged from a perspective not only transcendent to nature but also to history and institutions, which at the same time allows us to come to a reflective judgement about the possible synthesis of nature and history with freedom, appears to be the indispensable metaphysical background of our faith in the politics of recognition. Literature Flikschuh, Katrin (2010): Justice without Virtue. In: Lara Denis (Ed.), Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. A critical Guide. Cambridge, 51–70. Girndt, Helmut (1990): Unbedingte Anerkennung als Grundlage vernünftigen Selbstbewusstseins und vernünftiger Selbstbehauptung nach Kant. In: Selbstbehauptung und Anerkennung. Sankt Augustin, 79–93. Habermas, Jürgen (1999): Wege der Detranszendentalisierung. Von Kant zu Hegel und zurück. In: Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Frankfurt, 186–229. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1989): Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Frankfurt. Honneth, Axel (1992): Kampf um Anerkennung. Frankfurt. —— (1995): The Struggle for Recognition. Cambridge. —— (1997): Recognition and Moral Obligation. In: Social Research 64, 16–35. —— (2000a): Zwischen Aristoteles und Kant. Skizze einer Moral der Anerkennung. In: Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit. Frankfurt, 171–192. —— (2001): Leiden an Unbestimmtheit, Leipzig. (2002b): Suffering from Indeterminacy, Assen. (2008): Les Pathologies de la Liberté. Une réactualisation de la philosophie du droit de Hegel. Paris 2008. —— (2004): Anerkennung als Ideologie. In: West End. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1, 1–70. —— (2007): Disrespect. The normative Foundations of Critcal Theory. Cambridge. —— (2011): Das Recht der Freiheit. Frankfurt. Höffe, Otfried (1979): Recht und Moral: ein Kantischer Problemaufriss. In: Neue Hefte für Philosophie, 17, 1–36. Kant, Immanuel (Anthr.): Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VIII. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. In: G. Zöller and R. B. Louden (Eds.), Anthropology, History and Education, Cambridge 2007. —— (GMM): Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. IV. Trans. H. J. Patton: Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. New York 1964. —— (CPrR): Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Akademie Ausgabe Bd. IV. Trans. M. Gregor: Critique of Practical Reason. Cambridge 1997. —— (CPJ): Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Akademie Ausgabe Bd. V. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews: Critique of the Power of Judgement. Cambridge 2000. —— (DoR): Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VI. Trans. M. Gregor: The Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge 1996. —— (DoV): Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Tugendlehre. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VI. Trans. M. Gregor: The Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge 1996. —— (Idea): Idee zu einer allgemeine Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VIII. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. In: H. Reiss (Ed.) Political Writings, Cambridge 1970, 41–53. —— (Peace): Zum ewigen Frieden. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VIII. Perpetual Peace. In: H. Reiss (Ed.) Political Writings, Cambridge 1970, 93–130. —— (Religion): Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft. Akademie Ausgabe Bd. VI. Trans. A. Wood and G. di Giovanni: Religion within the Bounderies of Mere Reason. Cambridge 1998.



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Kersting, Wolfgang (1993): Wohlgeordnete Freiheit. Immanuel Kant’s Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie. Frankfurt. Kleingeld, Paulien (2010): Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’, in: A. Reath and J. Timmermann (Eds.), Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. A Critical Guide. Cambridge, 55–72. Loose, Donald (2011): The dynamic sublime as the pivoting point between nature and freedom in Kant. In: The Sublime and Its Teleology, Leiden-Boston 2011, 53–78. Prauss, Gerald (2008): Moral und Recht im Staat nach Kant und Hegel, Freiburg-München. Steigleder, Klaus (2002): Kants Moralphilosophie, Stuttgart-Weimar. Stern, Robert (2002): Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit, London-New York. Weil, Eric (1990): Le mal radical, la religion, et la morale, in : Problèmes Kantiens. Paris, 143–174. Wildt, Andreas (1982): Autonomie und Anerkennung. Stuttgart. Willaschek, Marcus, (1992): Praktische Vernunft. Handlungstheorie und Moralbegründung bei Kant. Stuttgart.

Chapter Ten

Anerkennung – Ein Ausweg aus einer Verlegenheit? Kurt Walter Zeidler Das Stichwort ‚Anerkennung‘ fand erst in den letzten Jahrzehnten Eingang in philosophische Lexika, denn die Konjunktur des Begriffs fällt nicht zufällig in eine Gegenwart, die ihr philosophisches Profil als post-modern, post-metaphysisch, post-analytisch, post-marxistisch oder post-strukturalistisch kennzeichnet. Diese Kennzeichnungen sollen die Verabschiedung überlebter Theorieansprüche und den Aufbruch zu neuen Ufern signalisieren, verraten aber zugleich, dass neue Gewissheiten nicht gefunden sind. Das Präfix ‚post‘ ist Ausdruck einer Verlegenheit, denn es verrät, dass die Überwindung des zu Verabschiedenden noch nicht gelungen oder, positiver formuliert, dass sie noch im Gange ist oder dass, dies wäre die post-moderne Lesart, die Überwindung des zu Verabschiedenden in der Verabschiedung aller Gewissheiten besteht und somit gar nicht zu erwarten ist, dass wir an neuen Ufern ankommen und dort festen Boden gewinnen könnten. Die Konjunktur des Begriffs ‚Anerkennung‘ verdankt sich solcher Verlegenheit und ‚Anerkennung‘ ist insoweit tatsächlich ein neues Paradigma der Philosophie. Präziser formuliert: Nachdem die Leitbegriffe der Moderne: Vernunft, Menschheit, Geschichte, Kultur, Wissenschaft fragwürdig und die ihnen zugehörigen Theoriekomplexe nach und nach immer brüchiger geworden sind, ist inmitten der Trümmer vormaliger Erklärungsmodelle und Orientierungsangebote immerhin das elementare Bedürfnis nach Verständigung aufrecht geblieben und Anerkennung zum Schlüssel­begriff avanciert. Denn ‚Anerkennung‘ changiert im Knotenpunkt der genannten Leitbegriffe der Moderne und könnte darum der Schlüssel sein, der den Zugang zu allen Arten der Verständigung öffnet. Die Anerkennungs­diskurse der Gegenwart decken dement­sprechend ein breites und facettenreiches Spektrum ab: sie reichen von Versuchen der Verständigung darüber, was ein zur Verständigung über sich selbst und zur Kommunikation mit anderen befähigtes Selbst überhaupt ist, über die sozial-ontologische Frage nach den Konstitutions­bedingungen sozialer Entitäten und Identitäten, bis zu aktuellen politischen Diskursen – von der Genderdebatte bis hin zu Fragen der Verteilungs­gerechtigkeit. Der

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Begriff Anerkennung bedient verschiedenste Interessen und gerade dort, wo von einer ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘ ist, trifft man vor allem auf eines – auf Interessen. Auch die historische Spurensuche, auch der Blick über zwei Jahrhunderte zurück auf die erste kurzlebige Konjunktur, die der Begriff ‚Anerkennung‘ um 1800 erfahren hat, liefert vielerlei Anregendes, aber wenig Erhellendes, das zu einer ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘ beitragen könnte. Hegel, bei dem eine solche Theorie am ehesten zu suchen ist, da er mit dem Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitel in der Phänomenologie des Geistes den Anstoß und die Vorlage für die Anerkennungsdiskurse der Gegenwart geliefert hat, entfacht auf wenigen Seiten ein Feuerwerk an Gedankenblitzen, das denn auch unterschiedlichste Interpretationen provoziert, das aber allenfalls Bruchstücke für eine ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘, wenn nicht gar deren Dementi liefert, konstruiert Hegel doch eine gleichermaßen zirkuläre wie gegenläufige „Bewegung des Anerkennens“. Die Bewegung verläuft zirkulär und gegenläufig, weil sie im Ausgang vom „Begriff des Selbstbewußtseins“ einerseits die reziproke Anerkennung des einen durch ein anderes Selbstbewusstsein voraussetzt, andererseits aber vorgibt, die Reziprozität der Anerkennung aus dem Antagonismus vereinzelter für sich seiender Selbstbewusstseine entwickeln zu können oder sie vielmehr „für das Selbstbewußtsein“ dieser angeblich zunächst nur Fürsichseienden allererst entwickeln zu müssen. Mit anderen Worten: die „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ kommt als Bewegung nur in Gang, wenn ihre Voraussetzung, die zugleich ihr Ziel ist, außer Kraft gesetzt wird. Die Brüchigkeit dieser Konstruktion ist Hegel sehr wohl bewusst, sie ist aber – wie er gleich am Beginn des Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitels ausführt – kein Fehler der Konstruktion, sondern „liegt in dem Wesen des Selbstbewußtseins“: sie liegt in seiner „Doppelsinnigkeit [. . .] unendlich oder unmittelbar das Gegenteil der Bestimmtheit, in der es gesetzt ist, zu sein. Die Auseinanderlegung des Begriffs dieser geistigen Einheit in ihrer Verdopplung stellt uns die Bewegung des Anerkennens dar.“ Diese „Auseinanderlegung“ der „geistigen Einheit in [. . .] die Bewegung des Anerkennens“ soll demnach das, was das „Selbstbewußtsein [. . .] an und für sich“ ist, nämlich „ein Anerkanntes“ (PhG, 145 f.),1 für uns zur Darstellung bringen.

1 PhG = G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in: E. Moldenhauer u. K. M. Michel (Hrsg.), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in 20 Bdn., Bd. 3, Fft/M. 1970.



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Hegel bringt damit sowohl vorgreifend den ‚Begriff des Geistes‘,2 das Grundthema der Phänomenologie, wie auch ihr Darstellungsprinzip zur Sprache, das ihren gesamten Aufbau beherrscht; man könnte daher die gesamte Phänomenologie des Geistes als Hegels ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘ interpretieren. Der (selbst-)bewusstseinstheoretische Vorgriff auf den ‚Begriff des Geistes‘ und seine phänomenologische Darstellung ‚für uns‘ ist allerdings nicht seine adäquate Explikation. Auch wenn man gutwillig unterstellt, die Phänomenologie sei die rundum gelungene Darstellung des Bildungsprozesses, in dem das Bewusstsein nach und nach für sich erfährt, was es an sich ist, bleibt sie doch Darstellung von Gestalten und Gestaltungen des Bewusstseins, bleibt also bewusstseinstheoretische Analyse und reflexionslogische Darstellung auch der Gehalte, die zureichend nur vernunfttheoretisch oder – in der Terminologie von Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik – nur „begriffslogisch“ zu explizieren sind. Diese Einsicht, die den wesentlichen Punkt der Differenz zwischen dem Hegel der Phänomenologie und dem Hegel der Wissenschaft der Logik bezeichnet und in der Folge und bis heute maßgeblich die Divergenz der unterschiedlichen Hegel-Interpretationen und Schulen bestimmt, klingt auch im Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitel an: Hegel deutet die Differenz zwischen phänomenologischer Darstellung und logischer Explikation an, wenn er den „reine[n] Begriff des Anerkennens“ begriffslogisch als Schluss expliziert, in dem „Jedes [. . .] dem Anderen die Mitte [ist], durch welche jedes sich mit sich selbst vermittelt und zusammenschließt, und jedes sich und dem Anderen unmittelbares für sich seiendes Wesen, welches zugleich nur durch diese Vermittlung so für sich ist. Sie anerkennen sich als gegenseitig sich anerkennend “ (PhG, 147). So sehr zeitgenössische Anerkennungstheorien auf die Reziprozität und Symmetrie der Anerkennung setzen und daraus ihre Motivation für die ‚Reaktualisierung‘ Hegelscher Theoriestücke schöpfen, so wenig ist der „reine Begriff des Anerkennens“ ihr Thema: Hegels Geistphilosophie und spekulative Logik sind für den soziologisch-sozialphilosophischen Diskurs nicht ‚anschlussfähig‘, bedauert man doch ausdrücklich, dass in der Phänomenologie eine „bewußtseinsphilosophische Programmatik [. . .] die Vorherrschaft über alle intersubjektivitätstheoretischen Einsichten“ Hegels gewinne, da er sein früheres, „noch unfertige[s] Modell des 2 „Das Bewußtsein hat erst in dem Selbstbewußtsein, als dem Begriffe des Geistes, seinen Wendungspunkt, auf dem es aus dem farbigen Scheine des sinnlichen Diesseits und aus der leeren Nacht des übersinnlichen Jenseits in den geistigen Tag der Gegenwart einschreitet“ (PhG, 143 f.).

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‚Kampfes um Anerkennung‘ “, der „bislang die moralische Bewegungskraft gewesen war“, nunmehr auf die „Funktion der Bildung des Selbstbewußtseins“ beschränke (Honneth 1992, 103 f.; vgl. Habermas 1969). Ein soziologisches Denken, dem es keine Schwierigkeit bereitet, die ‚moralische Bewegungskraft‘ von der ‚Bildung des Selbstbewusstseins‘ zu isolieren, weil es seinen philosophischen Impetus ausschließlich einer ‚moralischen Bewegungskraft‘ verdankt, die von der Konfrontation von monologischer (Selbst-) Bewusstseinstheorie und intersubjektiver Sozialtheorie zehrt, hat weder Raum noch Muße für die Logik des „Begriffs“ und versichert denn auch freimütig, dass die Hegelsche Logik „uns aufgrund ihres ontologischen Begriffs des Geistes inzwischen vollkommen unverständlich geworden ist“ (Honneth 2001, 13). Bemerkenswert an dieser Versicherung ist immerhin das ‚inzwischen‘, das einen Lernprozess unterstellt, über den man gern Näheres erfahren hätte, weil ‚unser‘ Unverständnis dann nicht bloß konstatiert, sondern womöglich erklärt werden könnte. Der ­angedeutete Lernprozess hat jedoch nie stattgefunden; ‚unser‘ Unverständnis beruht schlicht darauf, dass die sogenannte ‚Kritische Theorie‘, der Honneth verpflichtet ist, den Geist (Hegel) bzw. den Begriff der Vernunft durch ein Ideal ersetzt hat,3 womit sie freilich nicht allein steht, hat doch die gesamte nachidealistische Philosophie die ‚Ideen‘ kurzerhand durch ‚Ideale‘ ersetzt: durch hybride Vorstellungen, wie die Menschheit, die Geschichte, der Fortschritt, die Kultur, die Gesellschaft, die Wissenschaft, die Sprache usf., die allesamt zugleich Gegenstände und Normen sein sollen. Die nach-idealistische Philosophie hat den Himmel leergefegt und ihn sogleich mit Ideen bevölkert, die sie selbstredend nicht als Ideen, sondern als konkrete Wesenheiten verstanden wissen wollte. Sie ist darum eine Menagerie allgemeiner Wesenheiten, mit Arten und Unterarten und Bastarden und Varietäten sonder Zahl, und ihr im Bewusstsein ihrer Modernität vor ihr selbst verborgener Begriffsrealismus gedeiht umso üppiger, je selbstbewusster sie wähnt, sich von allen Mythen befreit und die ‚traditionelle‘ Philosophie überwunden und hinter sich gelassen zu haben. Der uneingestandene Begriffsrealismus der Moderne erklärt, warum ihre Leitbegriffe sich so rasch abgenutzt haben und an Stelle der von ihnen

3 Unmissverständlich ausgesprochen hat dies Max Horkheimer in seinem für die gesamte Richtung programmatischen Aufsatz Traditionelle und kritische Theorie: „Die kritische Theorie hat [. . .] keine spezifische Instanz für sich als das mit ihr selbst verknüpfte Interesse an der Aufhebung der Klassenherrschaft. Diese negative Formulierung ist, auf einen abstrakten Ausdruck gebracht, der materialistische Inhalt des idealistischen Begriffs der Vernunft“ (Horkheimer 1937, 292).



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angebotenen Erklärungsmodelle und Orientierungshilfen in der postmodernen Philosophie allein das elementare Bedürfnis nach Verständigung übrig geblieben ist. Auf die eingangs gestellte Frage, ob das neue Paradigma Anerkennung oder gar eine ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘ einen Ausweg aus den post-modernen, post-metaphysischen und sonstigen Verlegenheiten der Gegenwarts­philosophie zu bahnen vermöge, kann mithin – im Lichte der angesprochenen Verlegenheiten – eine zunächst nur kryptische Antwort gegeben werden: Anerkennung könnte der Schlüssel sein, der den Zugang zu allen Arten der Verständigung öffnet, wenn man den Schritt von der ‚Anerkennung‘ zum ‚reinen Begriff des Anerkennens‘ und zum Bedenken der Vermittlung wagte, die das ‚Phänomenologie‘ und ‚Logik‘ übergreifende Generalthema Hegels ist, nämlich der Begriff, der nicht bloß bewusstseinsimmanente Vorstellung oder Zeichen für ein Bezeichnetes ist, sondern „das Subjekt [. . .], welches [. . .] die wahrhafte Substanz ist, [. . .] welche nicht die Vermittlung außer ihr hat, sondern diese selbst ist“ (PhG, 36). Die Antwort klingt kryptisch, weil sie ein Logikkonzept ins Spiel bringt, das in der Gegenwart nicht nur den Proponenten einer soziologischen Anerkennungstheorie „vollkommen unverständlich“ geworden ist. Nachdem man sich angewöhnt hat, unter dem Titel ‚Logik‘ nur noch Kalküle zu verstehen und ‚Philosophie‘ zum schillernden Oberbegriff für diverseste Forschungen, Meta-Theorien und Programme geworden ist, muss die Erinnerung an das Konzept einer spekulativen Logik massives Unverständnis oder – das Unverständnis perpetuierendes – bloß historisches Interesse provozieren. Dass dem so ist und dem Unverständnis auch ein gut und redlich gemeintes systematisches Interesse nicht abhelfen kann, demonstriert die Geschichte des Hegelianismus, der trotz angestrengter und vielfältiger Bemühungen im besten Falle Schlaglichter auf Hegels Denken wirft, mit seiner Logik des Begriffs aber so gut wie nichts anzufangen weiß und daher in systematischer Hinsicht völlig unfruchtbar geblieben ist. Dieser Vorwurf ist nicht zu verwechseln mit der von zeitgenössischen Theoretikern des Bewusstseins (den Antipoden der Theoretiker der Intersubjektivität) formulierten Kritik, wonach „der gesamte Hegelianismus in der Bewußtseinstheorie dogmatisch und unproduktiv geblieben“ sei, da „er das Selbstbewußtsein [. . .] nach dem Reflexionsmodell [beschreibt], das bereits alles voraussetzt“ (Henrich 1970, 281). Hegel setzt kein ‚Reflexionsmodell‘ voraus, das als Modell für irgendwelche Beschreibungen dienen könnte; hätte er irgendein ‚Modell‘ anzubieten, wäre ja erst recht unverständlich, warum der Hegelianismus „in der Bewußtseinstheorie [. . .] unproduktiv geblieben“ ist. Die notorischen Schwierigkeiten, die Hegel

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seinen Schülern und Interpreten bereitet, resultieren vielmehr aus dem Umstand, dass er keine Modelle voraussetzt, sondern nach den Bedingungen allen Setzens und Voraussetzens fragt und damit alle bloße Beschreibung und alles Reden, Reflektieren und Urteilen über Gegenstände oder Phänomene oder Tatsachen zu unterlaufen sucht. Diese Intention, die in Hegels Verständnis nicht subjektive Absicht, sondern Aufgabe jeder Philosophie ist, die ihren Namen verdient, ist einer an Beschreibungen, an Phänomenanalysen und szientifischen oder politischen oder sonstigen Idealvorstellungen orientierten ‚Moderne‘ und ‚Post-Moderne‘ kaum zu vermitteln: der Versuch, den ursprünglichen lebendigen Logos zur Sprache zu bringen, in dem jegliches Sprechen über Gegenstände, Phänomene oder Tatsachen gründet, wird leichtfertig als Repristination eines – horribile dictu – ‚metaphysischen‘ oder ‚ontologischen‘ Denkens oder schlicht als ‚Logos-Mystik‘ abgetan. Denkverbote und das Bei-Seite-Schieben von Fragen haben freilich noch nie irgendwelche Probleme gelöst, weshalb ‚offiziell‘ verbotene und verdrängte Fragen gleichsam durch die Hintertür und in neuer Kostümierung in den offiziellen Diskurs drängen: darum wird das Schweigegebot, das sich ‚Moderne‘ und ‚Post-Moderne‘ in Sachen Metaphysik und Ontologie auferlegt haben, durch die Anerkennungsdiskurse – in ihrem Zusammenhang könnte allein schon der Neologismus ‚Sozialontologie‘ hellhörig machen – indirekt in Frage gestellt, steht hinter den Diskursen über Intersubjektivität, Gerechtigkeit, Selbstbestimmung und dergleichen doch das ungestillte Bedürfnis nach einem adäquaten Begriff des Menschen. Genau davon ist in der Phänomenologie unter dem Titel ‚Selbstbewusstsein‘ die Rede. Vom Begriff des Menschen ist die Rede, wenn Hegel von der „sich im Selbstbewußtsein realisierenden Unendlichkeit“ spricht: von seiner „Doppelsinnigkeit [. . .], unendlich oder unmittelbar das Gegenteil der Bestimmtheit, in der es gesetzt ist, zu sein“ (PhG, 145). Vom Begriff des Menschen ist auch die Rede, wenn Hegel feststellt, dass die im „Begriff des Selbstbewußtseins“ immer schon vorausgesetzte Reziprozität der Anerkennung, gar nicht der als Kampf inszenierten „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ bedarf, da auch das „Individuum, welches das Leben nicht gewagt hat, [. . .] als Person anerkannt werden“ kann (PhG, 149). Hegel bekräftigt damit die Einsicht, dass das „Selbstbewußtsein [. . .] an und für sich [. . .] nur als ein Anerkanntes [ist]“ (PhG, 145), was allerdings bedeutet, dass die durch die „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ für uns dargestellte „Auseinanderlegung des Begriffs dieser geistigen Einheit“ nicht die Explikation des Begriffs „dieser geistigen Einheit“, sondern nur die im Einzelnen jeweils unvollständige und zwangsläufig einseitige Darstellung



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ihrer „Momente“ sein kann, die „teils genau auseinandergehalten, teils in dieser Unterscheidung zugleich auch als nicht unterschieden oder immer in ihrer entgegengesetzten Bedeutung genommen und erkannt werden müssen“ (PhG, 145 f.). Mit diesen einleitenden Überlegungen zum Herrschaft-KnechtschaftKapitel4 bringt Hegel unüberhörbar die Darstellungs- und Methodenprobleme zur Sprache, die aus dem bewusstseinstheoretischen Vorgriff auf den Begriff des Geistes bzw. aus der Differenz zwischen der logischen Explikation der „geistigen Einheit“ und ihrer phänomenologischen Darstellung und (zum Zwecke dieser Darstellung vorzunehmenden) „Auseinanderlegung“ resultieren. Diese Überlegungen können freilich weder verhindern, dass eine Hegel-Rezeption, die an der „sich im Selbstbewußtsein realisierenden Unendlichkeit“ und deren logischer Explikation kein Interesse hat, das Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitel ihren aktuellen und spezifischeren Interessen dienstbar macht, noch können sie verhindern, dass auch die Konsistenz und Verständlichkeit von Hegels eigenen Ausführungen unter den Darstellungs- und Methodenproblemen leiden, die aus dem bewusstseinstheoretischen Vorgriff auf den Begriff des Geistes resultieren. Das zeigt sich am augenfälligsten an der vordergründig die gesamte Argumentation beherrschenden Intersubjektivitätsthematik, kommt die als interpersonaler Kampf inszenierte „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ doch zum einen für das Bewusstsein erst am Ende des Geist-Kapitels, in dem „gegenseitige[n] Anerkennen, welches der absolute Geist ist“ (PhG, 493) an ihr Ziel, zum anderen „in der Form des Ansichseins“ (PhG, 579), d.i. als „im allgemeinen Selbstbewußtsein gesetzt“, erst im religiösen Geist der „Gemeinde“ (PhG, 568; vgl. 574), und zuletzt – in der Form des Ansichund Fürsichseins – erst im „absoluten Wissen“ (PhG, 582 f.). Die Darstellungs- und Methodenprobleme zeigen sich ebenso daran, dass die dem interpersonalen Kampf eingeschriebene intrapersonale „Bewegung des Selbstbewußtseins“ im Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitel nur implizit zur 4 Ihrer zentralen Bedeutung wegen, sei die angeführte Stelle im Zusammenhang zitiert: „Das Selbstbewußtsein ist an und für sich, indem und dadurch, daß es für ein Anderes an und für sich ist; d. h. es ist nur als ein Anerkanntes. Der Begriff dieser seiner Einheit in seiner Verdopplung, der sich im Selbstbewußtsein realisierenden Unendlichkeit, ist eine vielseitige und vieldeutige Verschränkung, so daß die Momente derselben teils genau auseinandergehalten, teils in dieser Unterscheidung zugleich auch als nicht unterschieden oder immer in ihrer entgegengesetzten Bedeutung genommen und erkannt werden müssen. Die Doppelsinnigkeit des Unterschiedenen liegt in dem Wesen des Selbstbewußtseins, unendlich oder unmittelbar das Gegenteil der Bestimmtheit, in der es gesetzt ist, zu sein. Die Auseinanderlegung des Begriffs dieser geistigen Einheit in ihrer Verdopplung stellt uns die Bewegung des Anerkennens dar“ (PhG, 145 f.).

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Darstellung kommt: Weil die Momente der Anerkennungsbewegung „auch als nicht unterschieden oder immer in ihrer entgegengesetzten Bedeutung genommen und erkannt werden müssen“, hat das Tun des einen, wie das des anderen Selbstbewusstseins zwar „die gedoppelte Bedeutung, ebenso wohl sein Tun als das Tun des Anderen zu sein“ (PhG, 145 f.), doch kommt die „gedoppelte Bedeutung“ seines Tuns dem Selbstbewusstsein an dieser Stelle nicht zum Bewusstsein: da für das Selbstbewusstsein nur das „gedoppelte Tun“ thematisch wird, in dem „jeder auf den Tod des Anderen“ geht (PhG, 148), wird die intrapersonale Anerkennungsbewegung überlagert und verdeckt durch die phänomenologische Darstellung des interpersonalen Kampfes. Der intrapersonale Aspekt kommt zwar zur Sprache, wenn Hegel mit Blick auf den Begriff des Menschen feststellt, dass auch das „Individuum, welches das Leben nicht gewagt hat, [. . .] als Person anerkannt werden“ kann und einschränkend hinzu fügt: „aber es hat die Wahrheit dieses Anerkanntseins als eines selbständigen Selbstbewußtseins nicht erreicht“ (PhG, 149). Diese Einschränkung kann sicherlich nicht im Sinne der vordergründigen interpersonalen Konnotationen des Themas „Herrschaft und Knechtschaft“ verstanden und einfach dahingehend interpretiert werden, dass das „Individuum, welches das Leben nicht gewagt hat“ nicht Herr eines Knechtes sei: Verstünde man die Aussage als Beschreibung sozialer Tatsachen, wäre sie nachweislich falsch. Sie ist daher im Sinn einer intrapersonalen „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ zu verstehen: als Hinweis darauf, dass die „Selbständigkeit [. . .] des Selbstbewußtseins“ die Herrschaft über sich selbst, d.i. über seine bloß animalische Existenz und (Trieb-)Natur und gegebenenfalls auch die Bereitschaft verlangt, mit seinem Leben für sich und seine Sache einzustehen. Der intrapersonale Aspekt der Anerkennungsbewegung – die Bewegung, verstanden als Emanzipation vom Zwang der Natur und zumal als Emanzipation vom Zwang der eigenen Natur, der „Begierde“ – ist in Hegels Überlegungen zweifelsohne präsent, steht er doch unübersehbar sowohl im Fokus der im Selbstbewusstseins-Kapitel zuvor erfolgten Exposition des Begriffs des Selbstbewusstseins (PhG, 137 ff.), wie auch der nachfolgenden Überlegungen zur ‚Freiheit des Selbstbewusstseins‘ (PhG, 155 ff.); der intrapersonale Aspekt trägt aber nicht die Terminologie und den Argumentationsgang des Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitels. Terminologie und Argumentationsgang des Herrschaft-KnechtschaftKapitels erklären sich aus den Beweisabsichten und den literarischen Vorlagen Hegels. Seine literarischen Vorlagen und Anspielungen sind



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vielfältig: Hegel bemüht die biblische „Furcht des Herrn“ ebenso, wie die Topoi der zeitgenössischen bürgerlichen Kritik an den Privilegien des Adels. Entsprechend vielfältig sind Hegels Beweisabsichten. Fasst man die Terminologie und Argumentation des Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitels tragenden Beweisabsichten im Telegrammstil zusammen, dann steht in ihrem Zentrum der Versuch, über die „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ aus der Hobbesschen Lehre vom Naturzustand die Rousseausche volonté générale zu entwickeln und damit zugleich den Formalismus der Kantischen und Fichteschen Philosophie, wie auch aller Vertragstheorien zu überwinden, wobei systematisch im Hintergrund seiner Überlegungen – weniger bekannt, aber maßgebend sowohl für die Namengebung des Kapitels und die ursprüngliche Asymmetrie des Anerkennungs­verhältnisses, wie auch für das Beweisziel und die Methode der Phänomenologie – die Erinnerung an Platons ‚Ideenkritik‘ im ersten Teil des Parmenides steht (Platon, Parm. 133). Mit der Erinnerung an dieses, wie Hegel in der Vorrede sich ausdrückt, „wohl [. . .] größte Kunstwerk der alten Dialektik“ (PhG, 65), wären wir beim eigent­lichen, dem ideenkritischen und vernunfttheoretischen Thema Hegels (vgl. PhG, 567 f.; 583), dem die „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ im Ausgang vom Naturalismus und Nominalismus des Hobbes den Durchbruch verschaffen soll: bei dem „Subjekt [. . .], welches [. . .] die wahrhafte Substanz ist, [. . .] welche nicht die Vermittlung außer ihr hat, sondern diese selbst ist“ (PhG, 36) oder, in aller Kürze gesagt, beim ‚Geist‘ oder, in Kantischer Terminologie, bei der ‚Vernunft‘, die jedoch – so Hegels Kritik – bei Kant und Fichte zwar zur Sprache, aber nicht zur Realität komme. Verortet man Hegels Kritik in Kants Systematik, dann ist vor allem die Triebfedern-Lehre angesprochen (KpV A 127 ff.), d.i. die Lehre von dem intellektuellen Gefühl der ‚Achtung‘ vor dem Sittengesetz, das als Triebfeder zur Befolgung des Gesetzes motivieren und solcherart die Realisierung des Vernünftigen befördern soll. Und in genau diesem systematischen Zusammenhang spricht denn auch schon Kant beiläufig von ‚Anerkennung‘, wenn er in der Metaphysik der Sitten, im § 37 der Tugendlehre, mit Bezug auf die „Tugendpflichten gegen andere Menschen aus der ihnen gebührenden Achtung“ näher ausführt: Achtung, die ich für andere trage, oder die ein Anderer von mir fordern kann (observantia aliis praestanda), ist also die Anerkennung einer Würde (dignitas) an anderen Menschen, d.i. eines Werths, der keinen Preis hat, kein Äquivalent, wogegen das Object der Werthschätzung (aestimii) ausgetauscht werden könnte (AA VI, 462).

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Der Terminus ‚Anerkennung‘ steht an dieser Stelle für die ‚Achtung‘, die ich dem anderen schulde, da er als vernünftiges Wesen ein ‚Zweck an sich selbst‘ ist bzw. in seiner Person die Menschheit und mithin das Sittengesetz repräsentiert. Folglich ist schon in Kants beiläufigem Gebrauch des Begriffs ‚Anerkennung‘ das Bündel an logischen, ontologischen, anthropologischen, soziologischen und rechts- und moralphilosophischen Problemen angesprochen, das die Anerkennungsdiskurse bis heute an- und umtreibt: Inwieweit kann man im Horizont des logischen Nominalismus und ontologischen Singularismus der Neuzeit überhaupt davon sprechen, dass ein Einzelnes seine Gattung repräsentiert? Gibt es spezifische Eigenschaften, die den einzelnen Menschen zum Repräsentanten der Menschheit qualifizieren? Welche Bedingungen führen zur Vergesellschaftung der Individuen? Wie sind individuelle Bedürfnisse und Freiheitsrechte in einer Gesellschaft miteinander zu vereinbaren? Und wie – so wird man Kant angesichts der ‚kritischen‘ Unterscheidung von Sinnes- und Verstandeswelt fragen müssen – sind die aus der Verstandeswelt ergehenden Forderungen in dieser unserer Welt zu realisieren? Johann Gottlieb Fichte hat diese Fragen – und damit beginnt die Karriere des Anerkennungsbegriffs – insoweit aufgenommen, als er die meta‑ physische Vorstellung, die Kants gesamte praktische Philosophie ­motiviert, nämlich die Vorstellung eines moralischen commercium substantiarum, d.i. einer Gemeinschaft reiner Verstandeswesen, in der die Freiheit jedes Einzelnen mit der Freiheit Aller zusammenstimmt (vgl. KrV A 316/B 372; A 808/B 836), in seiner Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796) als Verhältnis der reziproken Anerkennung „freier Wesen“ bestimmt und dieses Verhältnis kurzerhand zur Grundlage des Rechtsverhältnisses erklärt. Da das „Verhältniss freier Wesen zu einander [. . .] das Verhältniss einer Wechselwirkung durch Intelligenz und Freiheit“ ist, kann keines „das andere anerkennen, wenn nicht beide sich gegenseitig anerkennen: und keines kann das andere behandeln als ein freies Wesen, wenn nicht beide sich gegenseitig so behandeln“ (Fichte 1796, 44). Das solcherart „deducirte Verhältniss zwischen vernünftigen Wesen, dass jedes seine Freiheit durch den Begriff der Möglichkeit der Freiheit des anderen beschränke, unter der Bedingung, dass das erstere die seinige gleichfalls durch die des anderen beschränke”, nennt Fichte „das Rechtsverhältniss; und die jetzt aufgestellte Formel ist der Rechtssatz“ (Fichte 1796, 52). Die ‚Deduktion‘ des Rechtsverhältnisses durch die Vernunft garantiert jedoch – die konkreten Rechtsverhältnisse in Deutschland um 1800 demonstrieren dies überdeutlich – keineswegs seine Realisierung. Hegel sucht darum in seiner Jenenser Zeit nach Mitteln und Wegen um die



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Realität des als vernünftig erkannten Rechtsverhältnisses sicher zu stellen. Er will die realen Bedingungen der Formierung des vernünftigen Rechtsverhält­nisses rekonstruieren und, damit einher- und schließlich darüber hinausgehend, die Geschichte des zu sich selbst kommenden Geistes darstellen. In diesem Zusammenhang grundlegend und wegweisend ist die im Aufsatz Über die wissen­schaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts (1802/03) formulierte Kritik an der praktischen Philosophie Kants und Fichtes, die mit „dem, was praktische Vernunft heißt, [. . .] allein die formelle Idee der Identität des Ideellen und Reellen zu erkennen“ geben, mit dieser Idee aber nicht aus der Differenz heraus und zur Realität kommen, da sie „die praktische Vernunft [. . .] als ein Kausalitätsverhältnis zum Vielen“ begreifen (Hegel 1802, 455), indem sie, wie Hegel wenige Seiten später erläuternd ausführt, dieses Viele oder „Reelle unter den Namen von Sinnlichkeit, Neigungen, unterem Begehrungsvermögen usw.“ als das mit der Vernunft nicht Übereinstimmende bestimmen, wohingegen „die Vernunft darin bestehe, aus eigener absoluter Selbsttätigkeit und Autonomie zu wollen und jene Sinnlichkeit einzuschränken und zu beherrschen“ (Hegel 1802, 457). Die der praktischen Philosophie Kants und Fichtes zugrundeliegende „Vorstellung“, sei zwar durchaus real und „auf das empirische Bewußtsein und die allgemeine Erfahrung eines jeden“ gegründet (ebda.), sie werde aber nur der „Seite der relativen Identität, des Seins des Unendlichen im Endlichen“ gerecht, nicht jedoch dem absoluten „Standpunkt der Sittlichkeit“ (Hegel 1802, 458), der die „absolute Identität des Ideellen und Reellen“ verlange (Hegel 1802, 455). Nachdem er den absoluten „Standpunkt der Sittlichkeit“ zunächst – im System der Sittlichkeit (1802/03) – am antiken Polis-Modell orientiert, wobei er inhaltlich Platon und Aristoteles, sowie methodisch Schellingschen Vorgaben folgt, setzt Hegel in den Jenenser Realphilosophien bzw. Systementwürfen der Jahre 1803–1806 anhand des Fichteschen Begriffs der Anerkennung eine Dynamik in Gang, die den absoluten „Standpunkt der Sittlichkeit“ als Resultat der Selbstaufhebung des Naturzustandes und zugleich als Überwindung aller Vertragstheorien darstellt, die nolens volens von einen (fiktiven) Naturzustand ausgehen. In der ‚Geistesphilosophie‘ der Jenaer Systementwürfe I (1803/04) stellt Hegel den Konflikt als eine Kollision zwischen einzelnen „Totalitäten des Bewußtseins“ dar, so dass bereits „das gegenseitige Anerkennen überhaupt, [. . .] bloß als solches, als Setzen seiner als einer einzelnen Totalität des Bewußtseins in eine andere einzelne Totalität des Bewußtseins“, einen „Kampf um das Ganze“ provoziert (Hegel 1803/04, 217), in dem jeder „gegen den andern seine ganze erscheinende Totalität, sein Leben, an die Erhaltung

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irgendeiner Einzelnheit setzt, und [. . .] jeder auf den Tod des andern geh[t]“ (Hegel 1803/04, 219 f.). Der um die „Erhaltung irgendeiner Einzelheit“, d.i. um Besitz, geführte Kampf um das Ganze, erweist jedoch: „Dies Anerkennen der einzelnen ist [. . .] absoluter Widerspruch in ihm selbst“, denn dies Anerkennen „realisiert sich nicht, sondern hört vielmehr auf zu sein, indem es ist“ (Hegel 1803/04, 221). Indem aber das Bewusstsein „diese Reflexion seiner selbst in sich selbst [macht], daß die einzelne Totalität, indem sie als solche sich erhalten, sein will, sich selbst absolut aufopfert, sich aufhebt und damit das Gegenteil dessen tut, worauf sie geht“, ist diese einzelne Totalität „eine sich selbst aufhebende, und sie ist eine anerkannte, die im andern Bewußtsein als sie selbst ist; sie ist hiemit absolut allgemeines Bewußtsein. Dies Sein des Aufgehobenseins der einzelnen Totalität ist die Totalität als absolut allgemeine, als absoluter Geist“ (Hegel 1803/04, 221 f.). Die Voraussetzung, von der die Anerkennungsbewegung ausgeht: die Annahme vereinzelter „Totalitäten des Bewußtseins“, hebt sich mithin ob ihrer Selbstwidersprüchlichkeit selbst auf. Und Hegel bestätigt und spitzt diesen Grundgedanken in den Jenaer Systementwürfen III (1805/06) zu, wenn er lapidar feststellt, dass das „Verhältnis [. . .] was der Naturzustand genannt wird; das freie gleichgültige Sein von Individuen gegeneinander“, einzig darin besteht, „eben dies Verhältnis aufzuheben, exeundum e statu naturae“ (Hegel 1805/06, 196 f.). Der kursorische Blick in Hegels Jenenser Werkstatt demonstriert, welche Grundüberlegung die „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ im HerrschaftKnechtschaft-Kapitel antreibt: Es geht um den Ausgang aus dem fiktiven Naturzustand oder – mit dem Kant der Friedensschrift (1795) zu sprechen – um das „Problem der Staatserrichtung“, das freilich unschwer und folglich „selbst für ein Volk von Teufeln (wenn sie nur Verstand haben) auflösbar“ ist (AA VIII, 366). Hegels „konflikttheoretische Dynamisierung des Anerkennungsmodells Fichtes“ (Honneth 1992, 31) beruht somit auf genau dem schlichten Interessenkalkül, der bereits die naturwüchsigen Egoisten des Thomas Hobbes dazu bewegt, den Naturzustand zu verlassen, ihren selbst­mörderischen Kampf5 zu beenden und den Gesellschaftsvertrag abzuschließen, durch den sie ihr je individuelles ‚Recht auf Alles (ius in omnia)‘ auf den Souverän übertragen. Die über Hobbes hinausgehenden ‚Zutaten‘ Hegels bestehen im Wesentlichen darin, dass er 1) die

5 „Ihm als Bewußtsein erscheint dies, daß es auf den Tod eines Anderen geht, es geht aber auf seinen eigenen, Selbstmord, – indem er sich der Gefahr aussetzt“ (Hegel 1805/06, 203).



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immanente Selbstwider­sprüchlichkeit des Naturzustandes akzentuiert, 2) durch die Anerkennungs­terminologie den der „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ zugrundeliegenden Interessen­kalkül verschleiert und 3) darin, dass er die Vertragskonzeption von vornherein unterläuft, indem er an die Stelle des Souveräns den „Geist“ setzt. Dieser Schritt ist entscheidend, denn der Vorgriff auf den „Geist“ erlaubt, die interpersonale „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ und die intrapersonale „Bewegung des Selbstbewußtseins“ miteinander zu verschränken. Somit kann Hegel im Rahmen seiner Geistphilosophie und seiner Konzeption einer substantialen Sittlichkeit den der Anerkennungsbewegung zugrundeliegenden Interessenkalkül erheblich anreichern; insbesondere kann er der Anerkennungsbewegung die schon im Naturrechtsaufsatz geforderte Konkretisierung der Vernunft einschreiben, indem er unter den Titeln ‚Herrschaft‘ und ‚Knechtschaft‘ auch das intrapersonale Verhältnis von ‚Vernunft‘ und ‚Sinnlichkeit‘ begreift und im Bilde des interpersonalen Kampfes implizit zur Darstellung bringt, wie „die Vernunft [. . .] jene Sinnlichkeit einzuschränken und zu beherrschen“ vermag (Hegel 1802, 457). Die intrapersonale Interpretation bleibt jedoch auf die interpersonale Argumentation angewiesen, weil sie die Asymmetrie von Herr und Knecht aus eigenen Stücken nicht begreiflich machen kann: sowenig sich die ‚Vernunft‘ aus der ‚Sinnlichkeit‘ entwickeln oder herleiten lässt, sowenig ist zu begründen, warum die ‚Sinnlichkeit‘ der ‚Knecht‘ sein soll, der aus Todesfurcht vor der ‚Vernunft‘ kapituliert. Die ebenso beziehungsreichen wie verklausulierten Anreicherungen und Zusatzüberlegungen tragen denn auch, wie sich an der Rezeptionsgeschichte zeigt, nicht gerade zur Verständlichkeit des Herrschaft-Knechtschaft-Kapitels bei und können vor allem die in sich widersprüchliche Grundüberlegung nicht sanieren: Die Fiktion fürsichseiender Selbstbewusstseine im Naturzustand wird nicht dadurch real, dass man einen wirklichen Kampf unterstellt, der sich im Nachhinein seinerseits als Fiktion erweist. Versucht man zu verstehen, warum Hegel diese in sich widersprüchliche Grundüberlegung bemüht, dann ist zu betonen, dass er sich der Fiktion genauestens bewusst ist, macht er doch nicht erst an dieser Stelle, sondern schon am Beginn der Phänomenologie bewussten strategischen Gebrauch von Fiktionen: Das vereinzelte Selbstbewusstsein und der Naturzustand sind ebenso fiktiv, wie das einzelne ‚Dieses‘ und der einzelne ‚Dieser‘ mit denen Hegel im Eingangskapitel über „Die sinnliche Gewißheit“ (PhG, 82 ff.) operiert. Beidemale greift Hegel dankbar die Fiktionen des neuzeitlichen logischen Nominalismus und ontologischen Singularismus auf, um ihn von seinen eigenen Voraussetzungen her aus den Angeln zu heben. Beidemale macht Hegel diese Fiktionen stark um

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die Phänomenologie in Gang und das „natürliche Bewußtsein“ auf den „Weg der Verzweiflung“ zu bringen, der „die bewußte Einsicht“ vermitteln soll „in die Unwahrheit des erscheinenden Wissens, dem dasjenige das Reellste ist, was in Wahrheit vielmehr nur der nicht realisierte Begriff ist.“ (PhG, 72). Höchst problematisch an der in der Phänomenologie angewandten Methode eines ‚sich vollbringenden Skeptizismus‘ ist freilich der Umstand, dass es sich beidemale nicht um Fiktionen des ‚natürlichen Bewusstseins‘ handelt, sondern um literarische Fiktionen unserer neuzeitlichen Verstandeskultur. Problematisch an dieser Methode ist zudem, dass „der nicht realisierte Begriff “ nur thematisiert werden kann im Vorgriff auf den ‚realisierten Begriff ‘, der als solcher aber nicht mehr Thema der phänomenologischen Darstellung sein kann. Wie wir feststellen mussten, krankt die – gleichviel ob interpersonale oder intrapersonale – „Bewegung des Anerkennens“ an beiden Methodenproblemen. Darum ist die vorläufige Antwort auf die Frage nach der Tragfähigkeit des Paradigmas ‚Anerkennung‘ oder einer ‚Theorie der Anerkennung‘ zu bekräftigen: ‚Anerkennung‘ könnte der Schlüssel sein, der den Zugang zu allen Arten der Verständigung öffnet, wenn man den Schritt zum ‚reinen Begriff des Anerkennens‘ und mithin zum Bedenken der Vermittlung wagte, die das ‚Phänomenologie‘ und ‚Logik‘ übergreifende Generalthema Hegels ist, nämlich zu dem Begriff, der nicht bloß bewusstseinsimmanente Vorstellung oder ein Name oder Zeichen für ein Bezeichnetes ist, sondern „das Subjekt [. . .], welches [. . .] die wahrhafte Substanz ist, [. . .] welche nicht die Vermittlung außer ihr hat, sondern diese selbst ist“ (PhG, 36). Literatur Fichte, J. G. (1796): Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre. In: Johann Gottlieb Fichte‘s sämmtliche Werke. Hrsg. von I. H. Fichte, III. Bd. Berlin: Veit und Comp. 1845, 1–385. Habermas, J. (1969): Arbeit und Interaktion. Bemerkungen zu Hegels ‚Jenenser Philosophie des Geistes‘. In: ders.: Technik und Wissenschaft als ‚Ideologie‘. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 9–47. Hegel, G. W. F. (1802): Über die wissen­schaftlichen Behandlungsarten des Naturrechts, seine Stelle in der praktischen Philosophie und sein Verhältnis zu den positiven Rechtswissenschaften. In: ders.: Werke in 20 Bänden. Hrsg. von E. Moldenhauer u. K. M. Michel. Bd. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970, 434–530. —— (1803/04): Jenaer Systementwürfe I. In: ders.: Gesammelte Werke (Akademieausgabe), Bd. 6. Hrsg. von K. Düsing und H. Kimmerle, Hamburg: Meiner, 1975. —— (1805/06): Jenaer Systementwürfe III. In: ders.: Gesammelte Werke (Akademieausgabe), Bd. 8. Hrsg. von R. P. Horstmann, Hamburg: Meiner, 1976. —— (PhG): Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: ders., Werke in 20 Bänden. Hrsg. von E. Moldenhauer u. K. M. Michel. Bd. 3. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970.



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Henrich, D. (1970): Selbstbewußtsein. Kritische Einleitung in eine Theorie, in: F. Bubner, K. Cramer, R. Wiehl (Hrsg.), Hermeneutik und Dialektik, FS für Hans-Georg Gadamer, Bd. 1, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 257–284. Honneth, A. (1992): Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. —— (2001): Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Eine Reaktualisierung der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, Stuttgart: Reclam. Horkheimer, M. (1937): Traditionelle und kritische Theorie, in: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6, 245–294. Kant, I. (AA): Kants gesammelte Schriften. Hg. Kgl.-Preuß. (Dt.) Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1900 ff. —— (KpV): Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Riga: J. F. Hartknoch, 1788. —— (KrV): Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Riga: J. F. Hartknoch, 1781 (KrV A), 1787 (KrV B). Platon (Parm.): Parmenides. Gr./Dt. Hrsg. und übers. von E. Martens. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1977.

Chapter Eleven

Recognition of norms and recognition of persons Practical acknowledgment in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer Introduction: From Desire to Self-Governance “Be a person and recognize others as persons.” As such, it is a kind of gnomon or oracle, a short formula for a deep, i.e., comprehensive thought. It is nevertheless, in a sense, Hegel’s categorical imperative. It is made explicit in his Philosophy of Right. The imperative obviously has two parts, or better, two moments: the subjective—or as I would like to already call it—absolute moment of becoming and being a person, and the objective or relational moment of acknowledging (all) other human individuals as persons. But the question is still open concerning how the moments relate to each other, the aspect of being a person and acknowledging others as persons and the aspect of being recognized by others as a person. This is indeed one of the central questions for any systematic interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy altogether, and of his Phenomenology of Spirit in particular. The usual reading of the passages on the so-called struggle for recognition in the 4th chapter of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which are obviously relevant for our question, goes back to Karl Marx, Georg Lukács1 and Alexandre Kojève.2 The majority of readers support this reading, including Jean Hyppolite, Jürgen Habermas, Terry Pinkard and Robert B. Brandom, just to name a few. It says roughly the follo­wing. The difference between mere consciousness (whatever this might be—in most interpretations this is not at all clear) and self-consciousness of a self-standing (selbständig) person is a result of an ominous struggle for recognition—the title of a

1  G. Lukács, Der junge Hegel und die Probleme der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft, Berlin(O.) 1986, 377 ff., 558 ff. 2 A. Kojève, Hegel, Frankfurt/M. 1975, chpt. V, 217 ff.

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well-known book by Axel Honneth.3 The idea seems to be this: Only an individual who is recognized, i.e., sufficiently lauded and praised and not always criticized and sanctioned, can develop self-conscious personhood. But such a view goes back to George Herbert Mead rather than Hegel.4 Mead had reminded us of the fact that only children who are loved by their parents develop some robust self-consciousness in the strongly positive sense of the German word Selbstbewusstsein, which, in some contrast to the English word, conceptually includes autonomy or self-determination (Selbstbestimmung) in such a way that the person is neither overcritical with her own doings nor overly self-indulgent nor in some other way self-centered. Hegel allegedly says that the human individual has to fight for recognition in order to become a full autonomous person. But a moment of reflection shows that any such fight, for example, against one’s father or mother, would more likely result in insecurity and self-doubt rather than self-reliant self-certainty; that is, it would have the opposite effect from the good one that is expected. Another story about what Hegel says here seems convincing at first sight: People become servants if they fear death more than submission under their lords. This is indeed one of Hegel’s insights into the social structure of freedom and serfdom: people turn themselves freely into servants (or even slaves) when they prefer saving their lives, health or relative well-being over the dangers of fighting for freedom and independence. Even in the darkest tyranny, the authority of the tyrants still must be freely recognized by the subjects in some way or another. The very power of the lords consists in the fear of their repression and sanctions in the case of disobedience. The subjects comply with the will of the masters because of this fear. This holds good even for persons who carry out the sanctions against others, starting with state administration or police in the wide sense of the old German term Polizey. Hegel’s central point is this: Any obedience to the commands of a lord is already free recognition, even in cases of complying because of fears for one’s own safety or wellbeing. Hence, the power of any ruler is a result of our free action. We are therefore responsible for the very power of the ruler. This shows, moreover, that the logical contrast and the conceptual inter-dependence

3 Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt/M. (Suhrkamp) 2003. 4 G. H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviourist (1934, ed. Charles Morris).



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between what I do and what we do are much more complicated than most seemingly harmless theories of collective action say or admit. In any case, it seems plausible to assume that precisely those who freely refuse to risk their lives for fear of death or repression are prone to become the subjects of their masters. They obey those who threaten them by their willingness to fight. Hence, the ones who are willing to fight for life and death tend to become the lords. The ones who fear the fight tend to turn into servants or slaves like the lower castes in India. It would, however, be absolutely unconvincing if Hegel or his interpreters would claim that the menace of war by the (future) lords and the fear of death by their (future) subjects really were the historical and systematic basis of all normative authority and its recognition. In fact, Hegel explicitly denies this interpretation. And even if he had not, it would remain unclear how individual commands of individual persons (which as such belong to the logical level of singularity, Einzelheit) could turn into general norms (on the logical level of generality, Allgemeinheit), addressing all of us at least in a generic way. How could individual obedience turn into the satisfaction of fulfillment conditions of generic normative forms? In fact, to be able to act freely and to obey commands already presupposes the rational capacity to follow instruction, and the conceptual norms of correct thinking, speaking, distinguishing, inferring and acting properly in response to recognizing the authority of such a normative structure. Hence, the normative structure of such proprieties, the notions of what is true, proper, correct, or right in all different dimensions of these words cannot be introduced at all on the basis of a fear directed against some real or, in the case of God, some fictitious lord. It is also unclear why—as Hegel seems to claim—the servants should ultimately become the true lords. It certainly is true that the lords would not survive without their subjects, just as a queen bee cannot survive without the working bees. Only the servants seem to interact with the world; and they appear to be doing all the real work and are, therefore, the backbone of the economy and welfare of society. But this fact—or rather, this way of looking at these things—does not prove the case. I think it is not even clear what the case is. Thus we certainly need a more detailed and more convincing story than the one told by most interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology, especially of its most famous 4th chapter. The basic problem of interpretation concerns Hegel’s structural analysis and dialectical method. It has to be reconstructed as a complex argumentation with significant tensions. Most interpreters find only a series of claims, which they attribute to Hegel supported by some citations and

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paraphrases taken out of context. In contrast, I believe that such narrative interpretations of philosophy are not adequate. We need reconstructions of the arguments in the philosophical texts or, if this is not possible, arguments for the claim that the argumentation fails. How does Hegel, for example, lead us to the alleged insights of the roles played by a possible struggle for recognition of authority (rather than of persons!) in a possible fight for life and death? And how does this story fit into the context of becoming a self-conscious and autonomous person? Instead of arguments, one often finds praise of Hegel’s genius (for example, in Hyppolite’s interpretation). But it remains unclear what this genius should consist in. Brandom reads the connection of desire and self-consciousness as a kind of move from erotic bonds to mutual recognition of persons. But then, again, the whole idea of struggling for recognition loses all plausibility. Why should sexual desire, which pervades the whole animal kingdom in some sense, be a sufficient moment in developing the authority of reason and reasons? And what is it to recognize persons as persons? Is it not rather the recognition of the authority of norms and the very concept of normativity that is at issue here? My contention is, in fact, that Hegel’s arguments amount to the following: Real or true recognition of normativity consists in the actual performances according to the relevant generic (forms of ) action; and this consists not merely in assurances or verbal declarations of recognition, but rather in actually following the norms and rules in appropriate actions. Nonetheless, a motivational structure is involved, which ultimately rests on the bodily structure of desire and its satisfaction. We have to see how that desire in the form of general animal appetite contrasts and relates to already conceptually formed intentions. The fulfillment conditions of a wish must already be conceptually determined in some way or another. Unfortunately, the conceptual contrast among intentions, wishes and desires is usually underestimated, especially in their relations to the logically most complex and most important aspects of perfective verbs. A standard example is the act of killing someone. In the course of events, we might be forced to change aspects or even words, as the following example clearly shows: Someone might have the intention and might already be in the process of killing someone. But if the person survives (even only by chance) the action will count only as a mere attempt at killing. Similarly, we might (assume of ourselves that we) intend to do something, but if we do not seriously attempt to fulfill the success conditions of the intention, we might be forced to downgrade our intention: what seemed to be an intention turns out to be a mere wish. On the other hand, desires and



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their satisfactions play a parallel logical role in (our subjective control of ) fulfillments of intentional conditions, in the same way that sensations do in conceptually informed perceptions, apperceptions and intuitions. Notice that Hegel’s word Wahrnehmung already refers to apperceptive intuition (Anschauung), i.e., to conceptually informed perception5 of things that are posited in some spatial and temporal “place” with respect to us, and not merely with respect to me. Mere sensation (Empfindung) is not located in this way. As Kant had explained, the content of any perception or idea (Vorstellung) must be such that its content can be made explicit. It does not matter if we only use labels or title words to mark some of the conceptual differences or whole propositions. In every case, conceptual content is either implicitly or explicitly dependent on possible linguistic acts or judgments. But notice that we need not actually accompany our perceptions, ideas or doings with whole sentences or whole descriptions. Being able to name some differences with holophrastic labels or titles is often more than enough. But it is true: If we were not at all able to say what we are doing in contrast to what we are not doing or not willing or intending to do, our doings would not be actions. In fact, Hegel radicalizes Spinoza’s insight that any conceptual determination is conceptual differentiation. And he adds the role of language in making the conceptual contrasts explicit. In contrast to mere animal perception, intuition is already participation in a joint practice of deictically referring to one and the same thing in a joint spatial order of present states of affairs and events. Presence (Gegenwart) is already spatially and temporally extended; it lasts as long as the relevant process of comparison lasts, for example, the burning of a match, a walk to town or a whole life. In other words, presence is never just a temporal point; and the words “here” and “now” always refer to temporally extended events that are actualized at spatially extended places, in contrast to “there” and “then.” One of the deepest insights of Kant’s transcendental aesthetics is that any empirical assertion or (ap)perceptual reference to the actual empirical world in intuition (Anschauung) presupposes some subjective stance and perspective of a real speaker to the events and things: What is here from my perspective is there from yours; what is left from my perspective is right from yours (or in the mirror).

5 The expression “conceptually informed perception” goes back to Terry Pinkard and is also used by John McDowell. I read it as a translation of the traditional word “apperception.”

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Altogether, I want to show here that Hegel’s topic is recognition of norms as forms of joint practices rather than recognition of individuals as persons. Recognizing an individual as a person consists at first in recognizing practically the normative forms of personal interactions. It consists in accepting the other as one of us, as a participant in our practices. Without this context, it would be totally unclear what it means to recognize others as persons. We obviously must first become persons by learning and self-formation, i.e., by acquiring the competence to act as a person, i.e., to take proper part in personal interactions and transpersonal practices before we can recognize other persons as persons. This personal competence consists in recognizing, in actual practice, the norms of the relevant generic actions, especially of the actions that involve speech acts. We must learn the difference between correct and incorrect actions. We must also learn the difference between mere subjective satisfaction of conditions for correctness and sufficient fulfillments. But how do we evaluate this sufficiency? The conditions of truth in the case of informative speech acts or claims of knowledge are a most important but special case, fulfillments of intentions and promises are another, fulfillments of conditions of ethics and morality are a third and subjective prudence and practical reason belong to a fourth case. In all these cases, we evaluate proprieties or fulfillment conditions of individual and joint actions as individual or collective performances of certain forms to act. We have to look for the appropriate generic actions, which are usually already aspects of or, as Hegel says, moments of more comprehensive joint practices. Even though the result of my reading seems in some respects the same as that of the popular interpretation, the structure of argumentation is quite different. The point in common is the insight into the sociality of reason6 and the analysis of human spirit as a joint form of human life and practice. The differences concern the overall argument, and the deciphering of Hegel’s use of metaphors, analogies, even allegorical images as structural models in his logical and conceptual arguments. Such models are theoretical pictures in structural arguments and not just genial stories about some alleged genesis of authority.

6 Cf. Terry Pinkard Hegel’s Phenomenology. The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge (Univ. Pr.) 1994.



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1. Self-certainties in Knowledge 1.1 Why Do We Need Self-Consciousness in Knowledge? Hegel starts chapter four of his Phenomenology of Spirit with a reflection on the results of the previous chapters: “In the previous modes of certainty, that what is true for consciousness” (i.e., what I would judge as true, for example, on the ground of my own perception) “is something other than itself.”7 This is so because I always perceive something else and not just myself, as we would say even in cases when I perceive some parts of my body. The same holds for other forms of knowing or knowledge claims. “But the Notion of this truth vanishes in the experience of it.” It is certainly not clear what this oracle means. I believe that Hegel wants to say that we must get rid of the idea that what we know about the world can be neatly separated from what we know about ourselves and vice versa: All we know concerns relations and relational processes of ourselves to the world and to ourselves (which includes our relations to the world). The first mode of certainty (the German word is Gewissheit and stands for subjectively certain knowledge claims) had been sense certainty, i.e., the idea that we relate to the world by mediation of our senses and that the most immediate objects in our epistemic relation to the world are sense data (sensations, Empfindungen) that we find in our own body, so to speak. However, we cannot talk about such data as sortal objects. They cannot be individuated; they cannot be distinguished or re-cognized as individual objects in the outer world, that is, of real intuition; nor can they be interpreted as being caused by objective things or events in the real world. That is, there is no immediacy in our cognitive relations to “real and actual” things or events (“in themselves and for themselves”) in the real and actual world, neither with respect to alleged sense data or sensual phenomena (in or of our body) nor with respect to the appearing things or events and their causal efficacy. Moreover, any talk about causes and causing involves and presupposes some talk about causing forces and causal rules or laws—which obviously belong to our (system of ) understanding (Verstand) rather than to a merely bodily (animal) faculty of sense-perception: No law or rule or force or cause can be perceived as such. The fact that forces and laws are a

7 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 166, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120.

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matter of thought was the insight of Berkeley. This insight came via Hume down to Kant and Hegel. What we can perceive are at best the effects of objective things and their dispositional forces. They are results that already presuppose knowledge of regular correlations between distinct (different and differentiated) events or affairs and our perceptions of them, e.g., of relative movements and inner changes of things with respect to us and to other things. It does not make any sense to doubt these fundamental facts of our relations to the world. They are, so to speak, material and conceptual truths. When skeptical doubt wants proofs for such basic truths it turns into subjectivist idealism with its autistic attitude towards the world. This is the attitude of an animal or even plant, as Aristotle saw and Hegel has seen again. It is a trivial, but often underestimated, logical fact that there is no immediate knowledge of forces and causes. Hence, there is also no immediate knowledge of things that allegedly cause this or that effect in our perceptive system—as, for example W. V. Quine still believes and thus falls prey to Hegel’s logical criticism of all kinds of empiricism, and idealistic and dogmatic scientism (which is unfortunately frequently called “naturalism”). Hegel reveals these versions of belief philosophy to be dogmatic and even inconsistent commentaries on the real process of apperceptive intuition (Wahrnehmung in Hegel’s sense) and already conceptually articulated joint experience (Erfahrung). In fact, (joint) experience is always already far more complex than the empiricist reduction of the word to sensual experience (merely an autistic version of “experience”) suggests. We make experience in using our linguistic, theoretical and practical techniques by evaluating their general success and by being aware generically of dangers of failures. In doing so, we normally expect and usually (normally, regularly) have sufficient success. In the case of failure, we must correct our errors. In fact, failures are the motor of technical development, including the dialectical development of norms and forms of rational judgment (distinctions) and the corresponding generic or default inferences for normal (paradigmatic, standard or canonical) cases. Default rules canonize conditions of normality. Idealizations are articulations of such norms, detached from the special problems of singular applications. They articulate what holds as such, in itself, an sich, i.e., for us, according to our ideal conceptual postulates. These postulates are set (gesetzt) by us in our conceptual system, in which we—taken as a collective subject of general and generic episteme, so to speak—attach default inferences to standard differentiations that are labeled with words or systematically defined by the truth or classification conditions that belong to



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the sense and meaning of our (descriptive, empirical) sentences. Depending on the situation we use them in all kinds of “assertions,” that is, in all possible speech acts, not merely in informative claims. The inferences appear implicitly as normal expectations or orientations in practical contexts. And they appear as allowances for deriving other sentences or “propositions” in language games, in which we make some of these inferential orientations explicit. Default inferences are the backbone of all knowledge; they turn our verbalized differentiations into thick concepts, which all have two moments, a moment of contrast or distinction and a moment of dispositional content. The very task of scientia (which is much more than the scope of the English word “science”) is improving the (generic, default) harmony between the conditions of distinctions or classifications on one side, the corresponding default inferences and normal, canonized, expectations on the other. In other words, scientia is not empirical historia, which tells narrative stories about what has empirically happened. Rather, it entails elaborating the concept (Arbeit am Begriff ) by developing theories. Scientia is thus a joint praxis that includes the development of conceptual differentiations and inferences in the social sciences and Geisteswissenschaften (including jurisprudence) that go far beyond mere narrative and historical humanities and cultural studies. In these disciplines, causal explanations play a major role only in connection with rational choice and free action. Of course, we also need some logic for applying ideal theoretical concepts and their generic differences and default inferences expressing standard dispositions: There is no relation to the world that only remains in the merely theoretical domain of things as such. This domain is a merely intellectual world in itself (a mundus intelligibilis). We have to take into account what the singular things and events are for themselves. The word “for” refers back to the Latin word “pro” which stands for any relation. In fact, Hegel’s category of being for itself stands for any relation R for which the rule holds: if xRy than x=y, where the equality sign “=” expresses the relevant identity of the object we refer to (which may be a purely abstract or an empirical object of discourse). That is, being for itself is the category that defines the very identity of the object. As a result, any worldly object of our knowledge has the logical form of a being in-andfor-itself. The category of being in itself refers to the generic type, genus or species and the generic level of conceptual or theoretical truths. It is thus narrowly related to the category of generality. The category being for itself refers to the relevant notion of singular cases and is thus narrowly related to the category of singularity. The categories of particularity and

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of being in-and-for-itself thus correspond to reasonable applications of generic knowledge in actual, empirical, singular cases. All in all, (joint) experience is always already holistically situated in joint practices. This insight leaves the empiricist myth of the given far behind, as well as the myth of some alleged stimulus meanings, as Quine wants to have it. The logical form of perceiving things and “making experience” must be understood differently from the way the empiricist tradition does—and even from the English connotations in the use of the word “experience.” There is no immediate foundation of experience, in contrast to mere autistic sensations—especially because there is no immediacy in the notions of causes and causing, forces and powers, possibilities and dispositions. In this context, Hegel’s crucial insight is that reality (Wirklichkeit) refers not merely to what we actually perceive by our senses. Rather, reality is a modal notion. Any event or state of affairs that deserves the label “real” is a positively evaluated possibility. This is a logically profound, and a fairly complex, thesis. I mention it here only to make clear that we should be aware of the difficulty of the notions of possibility, disposition and reality. In a second round of reflection, Hegel asks what we mean when we speak of an object that is allegedly directly perceived. “What the object immediately was in itself—mere being in sense-certainty, the concrete thing of perception, and for the Understanding, a Force—proves to be in truth, not this at all (. . .).”8 That is, we realize that what we take as the object perceived is not just a bundle of sense data. What we perceive is always already conceptually formed. In a sense, this was a basic insight of Kant’s. Hegel’s main achievement consists in getting rid of Kant’s unhappy talk of a thing in itself, which is, by Kant’s own definition, transcendent with respect to our knowledge and, as such, at least for us incomprehensible. It is even inconsistent: Any thought about a possible thing in itself is already a cognitive access to it and must be evaluated as meaningful or meaningless. Hegel therefore sees that we have to give a better sense to the phrases “as such,” “in itself ” or an sich. For this, we should go back to Plato’s use of the phrase kath’auto, which means something like “ideally” or “in principle,” that is, “in normal and standard cases.” This “in-itself turns out to be a mode in which the object is only for others (. . .)”9—namely, for us.

8 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 166, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120. 9 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 166, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120.



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Unfortunately Plato’s kath’auto has been misread by a whole philosophical tradition. This explains why Kant, like Hume, wants to get rid of its metaphysical misunderstandings. He does so by declaring that we cannot know anything about the thing in itself. Rather, all knowledge must refer to appearances. Hegel sees, however, that the traditional use of the phrase “in itself ” or per se must be understood differently. When we use the phrase we are referring to generic things or theoretical and ideal things of thought in a realm of things produced by mere thinking. These things are merely intelligible, hence, at first sight, merely abstract entities. Or rather, when we use the phrase “in itself ” (“as such,” an sich, per se, kath’auto) we refer to some theoretical moment or aspect in our language use. Such things in themselves, which we separate from the context by focusing on their generic features, exist, in a sense, only for us, not for themselves. Only we have theories and theoretical concepts. Only we refer to generic forms and ideals. Ideal forms or theoretical entities are never self-standing things. Therefore it is semantic nonsense to assume that things in them­selves could produce sensations causally. It is nonsensical to say that pure concepts, like pure numbers, could produce thoughts causally. What we do here is this: We talk about generic types and say that they apply to some singular case. We attach, so to speak, our concepts to specific, singular, cases. Thereby, we turn them from being mere objects of reflective thinking into conceptually determined objects of possible perception, in Hegel’s demanding sense of Wahrnehmung that already is apperceptive intuition, that is, perceptual reference to things or events in a spatial and temporal order relative to me as the observing speaker together with a generic, but often implicitly presupposed, characterization of what I refer to. What empiricists and materialists or physicalists claim to be a causal relation between the object and our perception is now understood as a logical relation: We conceptually attribute to the object the inferential disposition, force or power of regularly producing corresponding reactions, e.g., sensations, by which we can or could perceptively identify the object in sufficiently good conditions of our apperceptive access to it. Now, Hegel introduces the difference between con­sciousness and self-consciousness in the following way: “With self-consciousness, then, we have . . . entered the native realm of truth.”10 The emphasis rests on “native” or einheimisch. The immanent domain of truth belongs to selfconsciousness insofar as the topic is knowledge about the very concept of 10 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 167, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120.

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knowledge and truth: “It is a kind of knowledge of itself in contradistinction to knowledge of other things.”11 Hegel says further: “Let us look now how the form or gestalt of self-knowledge appears.”12 Consciousness is knowledge in the subjective form “I claim/know that p.” But in this form, I can express, as such, only subjective assurance and certainty (Gewissheit). Even though there is a difference between “I am just of the opinion that p” and my expressive claim that p, we cannot simply deduce the truth of p from the claim. We must always respect, and take into consideration, the logical scope of the speaker, the hidden “I” in any speech act. This shows why it is crucial to see this difference between “I know,” “he knows,” “one knows” and “we know.” In the latter phrases, too, there is a hidden speaker, such that they cannot express joint knowledge in an immediate way. This is the reason there is no knowledge sideways on, as John McDowell and Thomas Nagel have put it. “I know that p” is basically only a declaration of a knowledge claim. An assessment in a generic we-mode13 can turn such a subjective declaration into objective knowledge. In doing so, we propose to canonize the claim, make it general. We say that it can be recognized as (sufficiently) true. This says that the claim can be recognized by us. Notice that in such a case we appeal to a generic sense of “us.” This generic “us” or “we” somehow corresponds to “one.” We say something like: “one could or should accept it.” Kant’s transcendental “I” is, in fact, a generic “we,” and any real claim in which “I say that we know that p” reduces somehow to the claim “I say that p.” In precisely this logical sense, the category of the I is a we and the we is always an I, as Hegel famously says. The truth of any knowledgeclaim therefore presupposes self-conscious knowledge of the fact that we always have to start with subjective claims on the side of the performing speech acts, and with some presupposed trans-subjective fulfillment conditions that usually surpass what a speaker can control immediately and totally from his limited and finite perspective. This insight is crucial for the very logic of the difference between belief and knowledge, between seeming to be true and being true. Hegel now characterizes self-knowledge as a “return from being something else to itself.”14 In fact, the very word “self-consciousness” expresses 11  Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 167, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120. 12 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 167, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 120. 13 Cf. Raimo Tuomela, The Importance of Us: A Philosophical Study of Basic Social Notions. Stanford (Univ. Pr.) 1995. 14 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 167, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 121.



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this return in an act of reflection in the sense of the Latin reflectere animum. In any self-knowledge, I have to identify somehow the content of what I say about myself with my being myself. That is, a claim about myself is true if and only if I am such as the claim says. This formula can be read in a very general way, such that it includes all performative speech acts as well. If I say, for example, that I promise to help you tomorrow, I have to make the speech act fully true by helping you tomorrow, that is, by making myself into the person I promise today that I shall be tomorrow. If I do not keep my promise, then I am acting against a personal faculty and my reliability as a person in personal relations. In the same way, Kant saw that lying deprives me of my personal stance, at least in part: A liar, if he is known as one, cannot properly interact with other persons. By not complying to the norms of truth, he loses some of his personal attributes and faculties, turns himself into a merely rational animal. Hegel’s ironic label for a merely intelligent animal or homo rationalis oeconomicus is geistige Tierheit: If there could be a merely rational animal it would not be a personal subject. But any merely rational subject is just abusing her personal powers, i.e. our personal morality and ethos, just as any liar or merely rational egotistic human is simply abusing personal norms of good interaction for the sake of her own desires and private interests. 1.2 The Principle of Apperception in Intuitions and Representations Any identification of myself with what I say or think about myself is only relatively immediate, for example when I am actually not aware about the form of my reaction. It is nevertheless always mediated by some norm or form of correct identification. In self-knowledge, I somehow turn myself (together with my own knowledge) into an object or topic of my selfreflecting knowledge. This follows from the very meaning or concept of self-knowledge, which must be knowledge of knowledge or consciousness of consciousness. Hegel’s famous attack on all philosophy of subjective reflection of some mystical or “intuitive” introspection (Reflexionsphilosophie) thus addresses only the fact that one does not usually know what self-reflection logically is. And it is crucial to see that Hegel asks what it is to know something about one’s own knowledge, or to be conscious of one’s own consciousness. Hegel’s word Bewusstsein is a categorical title which stands for knowing something in the full sense of a conceptually determined epistemic relation to the real world. It greatly surpasses mere vigilance, awareness, or attention, which we share as such with animals. Hegel does not tell us

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stories about an alleged immediate self-consciousness. He shows why the very notions of self, knowledge and self-knowledge are logically complex, especially when we refer to ourselves in the future or in merely possible future or past situations. When Oedipus finds out that he himself has killed his father or when I find out that I myself have spoiled the milk, we still have comparably easy examples. Just like the Cartesian insight into the presuppositional or transcendental relation between any act of doubt as a version of thinking and the performative way of being a thinker, Kant’s principle of apperception also points to the presupposition of “I think” in any act of re-presentation of some possible or real thing in the world. Hegel’s insight is, in this context, that no representation can be immediate. This is so because it is always already mediated by thinking and understanding (Verstand) as the competence of following rules and fulfilling law-like conditions of correctness in judgments or actions. In other words, no thinking and no speaking, no judgment and no assessment of a judgment can be immediate, especially because the correctness and truth conditions always transcend the mere feeling of satisfaction of the merely individual subject here and now. They are all always already mediated by the normativity of general, common criteria, norms, laws or rules of correctness in the dimension of truth in the case of assertions, of moral or aesthetic perfection in the case of other actions and speech acts. Hegel asks what the word “self-consciousness” could mean, i.e., he asks for the conceptual conditions of possibility of talking about selfconsciousness in the usually intended sense. This sense goes far beyond mere self-awareness and self-attention. And I repeat: Self-consciousness in the sense of self-knowledge is formally a difficult notion, for it entails knowing something about oneself that usually surpass by far any mere knowledge about my body (here and now). Hence, I am at the same time the subject and the object of the knowledge. How can this be? Our first remark is this: The first term “subject” often stands for what I am, the term “object” for the topic (subject-matter) of my judgments. Hegel’s observation is, in a sense, Fichtean. I have to split myself up into two moments, the subject and the object, and I must look at me as if I were some other thing. When it comes to the status of self-knowledge with respect to truth or epistemic normativity or authority, I have to acknowledge the opinion of myself about myself as true. This means that I represent myself in a kind of self-model and acknowledge the model as fitting to who or what I am. But then, Hegel sees beyond Fichte that acknowledgement is always a performative attitude towards judgments



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and action. The judgments might be about me or about other things. In such cases, the question must be answered whether a self-model or judgment about my self really is true or should instead be contrasted with a case in which it is recognized only because it seems to be true (to me). 1.3 Desire and Satisfaction as Performative Self-relations Now we can come back to the passages in which Hegel talks about the structure of desire (Begierde). He sees that feelings of satisfaction somehow make things true merely by being satisfied. We have seen, moreover, how we make self-models and judgments about ourselves true by acting in a certain way—and by being content with the results. In such cases, self-knowledge turns into active and practical self-determination. But at first, the question of self-knowledge tends to be answered by an “unmoving” (bewe­gungslos) tautology, as in Fichte’s formula “I am I.” But such a formula does not help us. It does not re­present a judgment that has content. It is in a sense no meaningful speech act, no move or action in our language game that can be understood as having a definite and well-determined meaning. In a sense, practical self-determination in intentional actions can be understood more easily than self-knowledge since it is not merely a verbal self-commentary. In other words, being in the sense of performing forms of life includes being the personal subject or actor of my actions and speech acts. This is the very topic of Hegel’s talk about Gestalten des Seins. The topic is the form of our performances in the actualization of our competence to live a human life. Here self-knowledge or self-consciousness turns into a practical reality. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is in total a conceptual analysis of the notion of self-consciousness in its broadest sense. The explication of the concept of self-knowledge finds in this practice and action the corresponding Fürsichsein or being for itself. In the case of performing a personal life, this being for itself consists in the actual realization of the concept of self-knowledge. As such, it is different from mere Ansichsein, being as such, which is an abstract moment of what we as humans and persons generically or ideally are. As a result, self-consciousness is in and for itself conceptually determined self-knowledge and is not at all immediate. It is mediated by generic knowledge and generic concepts that I and we apply to my and our own life. The only feature of immediacy we can find here is the immediacy of the performance itself: In judgments about myself and ourselves, I myself and we ourselves must judge accordingly. In a case of full-fledged self-knowledge, I should have an awareness, or knowledge,

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of what self-knowledge is conceptually, and how the very concept—the content of our talk about self-knowledge and self-consciousness—relates to sensitivity and understanding, rationality and reason, mind, soul, and spirit, i.e., to the corresponding concepts and what they are concepts of and for. When Hegel talks about object and subject, he speaks in a generic way, similar to when we say that “the lion is a wild animal” or “the American loves freedom.” If we talk about the lion, the Germans, or about the self or self-consciousness, we are not talking about one single lion or many or all lions, all individual Germans or all persons. We are talking about what it is to be a self or what self-consciousness is. In precisely this sense Hegel says that the generic object of consciousness is the world in its whole extension. The generic subject of being is the unity of the (implicit, practical) self, which is, in a way, already self-consciousness. Nevertheless, we may or must distinguish the self which I am from self-consciousness or selfknowledge, which takes the self, at least formally or grammatically, as the object or topic of its reflections and explications. This gives rise to the following questions: What does the unity of the self consist in? How should we understand the unity of the subject’s selfconsciousness? And how should we grasp the relation between the self (of me in the sense of whoever speaks) and the world at large? Hegel’s initial surprising answer, as I have already indicated, is this: This unity is desire altogether (Begierde überhaupt). Its surprising formulation helps us to see the connection between desire and life: Consciousness, as self-consciousness, henceforth has a double object: one is the immediate object, that of sense-certainty and perception, which however for self-consciousness has the character of a negative; and the second, viz. itself which is the true essence15 and (it) is present in the first instance only as opposed to the first object. In this sphere, self-consciousness exhibits itself as the movement in which this antithesis is removed, and the identity of itself with itself becomes explicit for it. But for us [who analyze the concept, PSW] or in itself, the object which for self-consciousness is the negative element has, on its side, returned into itself, just as on the other side consciousness has done. Through this reflection into itself the object has become Life. What self-consciousness distinguishes from itself as having being, also has in it, in so far as it is posited as being, not merely the character

15 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 167, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) pp. 121 f. Hegel uses the German word Wesen here in the sense of the Greek ousia, i.e. he talks here about being myself as I am, not as I picture myself; this being is being already in the sense of Heidegger: it is the process of actualizing a form of life.



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of sense-certainty and perception, but it is being that is reflected into itself, and the object of immediate desire is a living thing.16

Some of Hegel’s sentences are too long for our modern, impatient taste, and they want to achieve too much even for the readers of his time. But the thought is fairly straightforward: The unity of the subject or person is not actual memory, as Lockeans such as Derek Parfit claim even today, but the actual and real life. Any individuality of higher animals, hence of persons, is defined by life: The living being cannot be split into two parts. This is a universally generic truism, a material but conceptual and not just empirical (statistical) truth. The unity of merely actual self-certainty is, however, not enough, even though desire already shows a basic temporal structure of animal life. In it, actual life relates to future life. The desire of a subject is to live a good life according to the possibilities and faculties of the genus or species. The individual wants, so to speak, to continue its life as well as possible. This observation could be called “naturalism” with respect to the notion of the good and one could talk about natural goodness, had these labels not been sometimes abused. The object of desire of a living being is, in the end, her life itself. Most readers think that Hegel is talking of some other living being here. But we see this cannot be correct once we have some understanding of the arguments. The other life, to which an animal or person stands in a relation if she herself is in the status of desire, is the life she desires in contradistinction to the life she is just actually performing.17 In other words, it is the living being itself that satisfies in its further life its desire—but not without the means of the surrounding world. Satisfaction as such consists in the good way in which the life goes on. This good way is not arbitrary. Usually satisfaction of desire consists in a life that corresponds to the form 16 ‘Der Gegenstand, welcher für das Selbstbewusstsein das Negative ist, ist [. . .] für uns oder an sich ebenso in sich zurückgegangen als (= wie, PSW) das Bewusstsein andererseits. Er ist durch diese Reflexion in sich Leben geworden. Was das Selbstbewusstsein als seiend von sich unterscheidet, [. . .] ist in sich reflektiertes Sein, und der Gegenstand der unmittelbaren Begierde ist ein Lebendiges’. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 168, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) pp. 122. 17 ‘An dem Leben, welches der Gegenstand der Begierde ist, ist die Negation ent­we­ der an einem Andern, nämlich an der Begierde, oder als Bestimmtheit ge­gen eine andere gleichgültige Gestalt, oder als seine unorganische allgemeine Natur. Diese allgemeine selbständige Natur aber, an der die Negation das Absolute ist, ist die Gattung als solche, oder als Selbstbewusstsein. Das Selbstbewußtsein erreicht seine Befriedigung nur in einem andern Selbstbewusstsein’. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 175, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 126.

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of life of the living being, just as satisfaction of hunger consists in eating, not in getting blows to the stomach, which might too stop the sensation of hunger as a naturally felt desire to eat. Similarly, the right satisfaction of thirst consists in drinking etc. Hegel now explicitly turns from the (generic) individual to the species or genus. This should not surprise us any more. Hegel explains that the unity of human life consists in the unity of living a human form of life, to which a certain form of reflection on life is an essential part. One aspect or moment of this reflection is merely subjective self-certainty and actual self-awareness; another is more complicated and detached self-knowledge that must include at least some knowledge of the genus (our species) and its generic form of a good life in all its possible varieties, in contrast to a bad, deprived, sick, or failed life. In the end we find a unity: the unity of life as the real on-going process, its generic form, which is actualized in a particular way in the very process, and some awareness or better consciousness of this process. Hence we must distinguish and identify the process and its form, the process and reflection, the subject of the process and reflection. I—as the object I talk about—stand in a relation to the category being-for-itself to me as the subject who is leading my life.18 In other words, in the process of living I stand in a relation to something other than myself. In an implicit way I relate to forms of a good life given by our species; in an explicit way they are forms as objects of my conscious reflections. Life always exists as a unity of genus in itself and individuation for-itself.19 But the irreducible

18 ‘Thus the simple substance of Life is the splitting-up of itself into shapes and at the same time the dissolution of these existent differences; and the dissolution of the splittingup is just as much a splitting-up and a forming of members. With this, the two sides of the whole movement which before were distinguished, viz. the passive separatedness of the shapes in the general medium of independence, and the process of Life, collapse into one another.’ Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 171, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) pp. 123 ff. 19 ‘Sie (also die Einheit) ist die einfache Gattung, welche in der Bewegung des Lebens selbst nicht für sich als dieses Einfache existiert; sondern in diesem Resultate verweist das Leben auf ein Anderes, als es ist, nämlich auf das Bewusstsein, für welches es als diese Einheit, oder als Gattung ist. Dies andere Leben aber, für welches die Gattung als solche und welches für sich selbst Gattung ist, das Selbst­bewusst­sein, ist sich zunächst nur als dieses einfache Wesen, und hat sich als reines Ich zum Gegenstande [. . .]. Das einfache Ich ist diese Gattung oder das einfache Allgemeine, für welches die Unterschiede keine sind, nur, indem es negatives Wesen der gestalteten selbständigen Momente ist; und das Selbstbewusstsein hiermit seiner selbst nur gewiss, durch das Aufheben dieses Andern, das sich ihm als selbständiges Leben darstellt; es ist Begierde.’ Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 172, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) pp. 125 f.



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subjectivity of us (as higher animals) always already consists in the unity of performing (my) life in the process of (my) life. This is accompanied by present (actual, immediate) reflective self-awareness or attentive reference to myself in the surroundings where I am. In this sense, we, like all animals, are at the same time the “origins and results of our behavior” in the “practical world of our life,” as Kambartel aptly says.20 And we know this at least implicitly, in the mode of more or less immediate self-awareness. This unity of myself as a living being with the object of my immediate selfawareness and reflective subjectivity is, according to Hegel, the simple species or genus of the living being in question, it belongs to the form of life of the higher animals in question with their subjectivity. The species, genus or life form of the species (of humans or lions, for example) does not exist as such in the singular process of life (“der Bewegung des Lebens selbst”), for a singular animal can be sick, mutilated, a monster or only a bad exemplar of the species. In actual reality, however, there are only the individual animals. But the life of each of them refers implicitly to the limited possibilities of living a good life as a member of the species in contradistinction to the possibilities of a bad life, of mishaps and monsters. In this regard, we should not forget that my own life refers in a sense to “something else than what I immediately am,” namely, as I read this passage, to a good life. 2. The Dependencies in Self-consciousness: Governance and Serfdom 2.1 Immediate Satisfactions in Actual Awareness and Self-controlled Truths But what does it mean when Hegel talks about the “other life, which as such is the species.”?21 And what does it mean to say that its being for itself (or Fürsichsein) is the species or genus? In what sense is this other life self-consciousness? And what does it mean to say that as such it is “at first only as this simple being (Wesen),” which has itself as a pure “I” as its object (“sich als reines Ich zum Gegenstande”)?22 In order to understand this passage, we should remember that “species” (Art) and genus (Gattung) both translate Plato’s term eidos which 20 Friedrich Kambartel, “Geist und Natur. Bemerkungen zu ihren normativen Grund­la­ gen”, in Gereon Wolters u.a. (Eds). Homo Sapiens und Homo Faber. Berlin (de Gruyter) 2005, pp. 253–265. 21  Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 173, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 125. 22 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 173, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 125.

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refers not only to the extension or class of individuals but to their form of being as well. In our case, we talk about the general, personal, form of a human life. In a sense, we share immediate self-knowledge, namely selfawareness of mere subjectivity, with some higher animals. But we humans apply always already some self-control of the normality condition concerning whether the relevant satisfaction-conditions of a sufficiently good human life are fulfilled or not; in doing so, we as members of our species refer to the form or eidos of the species. Frequently, we realize that such fulfillment conditions are not properly fulfilled; but we often know also that they are in relevant ways sufficiently fulfilled. Controlling fulfillments always surpasses mere feelings of satisfactions or non-satisfactions as mere bodily answers to subjective desires in the sense of animal appetites in their present immediacy. Such a desire or appetite includes, negatively speaking, the avoidance of painful sensations (Schmerzempfindungen). The immediate motives for my behavior often lie in an attempt to avoid pain and to satisfy my desires. The desire structures are given as such by the merely natural life form of the animal species. In other words, desire and pain show the very core of subjectivity and pre-reflective self-awareness in a quite fundamental way. So we see that Hegel’s “desire” is a title for the life-supporting animal appetite of sub­jectivity. Only higher animals have it; plants do not, as far as we know. (And we should never just ascribe mystical properties arbitrarily, for example, desire to plants or thinking to animals). Plants are no subjects, not because they are not individuated as higher animals, but because the form of their life, their kinesis, is totally different. They do not show the same form of movements in pursuing goals and desires and avoiding pain as animals do. In short, Hegel uses the title-word “desire” as a label for the actual unity of life performances of living beings that have and show what I call subjectivity. Humans have what I call personal subjectivity. We are born as natural subjects. But we have to develop our personality or personal subjectivity. And we do this by developing our personal relations to other personal subjects, by learning to act properly and to cooperate. The fundamental self-certainty can now be seen as a merely subjective one: It is realized in immediate states of pain and desire and in merely subjective feelings of satis­faction or, in the case of pain, of feeling its end. On the face of it, it might have been unclear what the expression “this other life” refers to. The standard reading assumes that Hegel is already talking about two persons. However, thinking and comprehending,



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intention and action are possible only in a we-mode, as I would like to call it, borrowing a phrase from Raimo Tuomela, but not precisely in his sense. Such a we-mode is, in a complex way, generic. Hegel is, in fact, always already talking about us. He does not want to claim that the I is a we and the we is an I. He rather wants to show us that in any situation in which I use the word “we” it is trivially I who appeal to us. And in any case where I refer to myself by the use of the word “I,” I say that we can acknowledge the truth of the assertion about me (at least in the end). Hegel’s secret method is not to follow Fichte’s dogmatic claims; rather, it is a method of naming and showing logical forms. The difficult task of interpreting is, therefore, to read the sentence, “Self-knowledge achieves its satis­faction by another self-consciousness,”23 in its context appropriately, namely as showing and making explicit what happens when we are satisfied. I add a short reflection on the nature of an immediate desire in the sense of an animal appetite—in contradistinction to the nature of an intention, which is always already mediated by a conceptual determination of what is intended and which governs the action in my pursuit of its fulfillment: Desire as such is only an immediate, present state of desiring. If it is already directed to an object; it presupposes some awareness and attention. This is still a rather meager concept of mere protoconsciousness. It is, so to speak, animal consciousness or mere vigilance with awareness and attention. As such it is a present directedness to objects in the actual world around oneself. The faculties of awareness, attention and vigilance do not differentiate between (higher) animals and men. In contrast, true intentions are always already embedded in actions by which we pursue the goal of fulfilling some conceptual conditions. This fulfillment is often inhibited, however, by our desires and their relatively immediate demand for immediate satisfaction. As a result, we learn about the contrast between immediate satisfactions of mere desires and sustainable fulfillments of intentions. We learn, moreover, that intentions can collapse into mere wishes if I do not comply with the norms that tell me what to do in order to fulfill the intentions actively. Hegel’s word for this compliance is “work” or “labor,” (Arbeit). It refers to the action that fulfills an intention. Hegel aptly calls such an action or work “inhibited desire,” (gehemmte Begierde). 23 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 175, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) p. 126.

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Animals and sometimes humans too have a desire for something that they want to incor­porate directly. Ownership is a kind of institutionally extended incorporation. I want something, meaning I want to make it into something that is my own. In both cases, Hegel says, the goal is to deny and “sublate” the difference between being something other and being my own. I make other things into my own. This is the basic form of recognition: I take general norms as guidance for my own action. Only this reading brings the case of animal desire (in eating and drinking, hence of the mysteries of bread and wine) into contact with recognizing the authority of general norms. In any attempt to perform a certain action properly, that is to fulfill the normative conditions that define the form of the (generic) action as such (an sich), I make the form and norm of the action into my own. This is recognition of its form. The norm (to do this or that) in a performance or actualization of this or that generic action (to say the truth for example instead of lying or erring) thus turns, in the end, into my own authority. This and only this is recognition of normativity and acknowledgement of the authority of norms. But of course, in singular cases we still have to distinguish between the sincere wish and accurate will to follow a norm correctly and the (joint) judgment if an action—for example, a speech act of affirmation or claiming—really fulfills the objective (i.e., trans-subjective) conditions of accurate and correct rule-following or the corresponding norms. 2.2 From Immediate Desires to Sustainable Intentions Any relation to the world has its roots in practical attitudes. A relatively immediate relation is governed by the structure of appetitive desire and its satisfaction, which we share with animals. Since the content or fulfillment condition of a wish is—in contrast to a mere desire—animal appetite or pro-attitude, wishes and intentions that are already conceptually pre-determined are already mediated by (possible) linguistic representations of fulfillment conditions. An appetite ceases by disappearing. Intentions, like commands or orders, are fulfilled by proper actions. Wishes already demand correct fulfillments. So we have, on the subjective and performative level, a structure of immediate satisfaction of desires, on the conceptual level the normativity of proper fulfillment of conditions that can be generically shown or verbally articulated, for example, as criteria for correct fulfillments in contradistinction to incorrect ones or mere apparent fulfillments. Hence, if I am only satisfied, it is possible that the relevant conditions are still not



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really or truly fulfilled. What I recognize might not be the same as what one ought to recognize. This holds for any knowledge claim, also for those that belong to my self-knowledge or Selbstbewusstsein. Nevertheless, any fulfillment is still rooted in satisfactions. As such, they are subjective. In this sense, they are ideal. Animals are idealists, as Hegel says in a deeply ironical way; for animals, fulfillments are always only satisfactions. Humans transcend this subjective idealism (and any form of naïve empiricism) by addressing the difference between merely subjective satisfaction and objective fulfillment. But it is clear that we cannot totally abstract from the ideal sub-structure of subjective satisfaction in any actual recognition. There is no view from nowhere, or everywhere, not even from sideways-on. The only objectivity we can arrive at is trans-subjectivity or a kind of joint knowledge in a generic we-mode, which is the same as what one can know. Struggles of recognition may appear now in the form of a fight to acknowledge the differences between subjective feelings of satisfaction and trans-subjective (or objective) fulfillments of conceptual conditions. In order to understand this difference, we must understand the differences between actual joint satisfaction, whereby each of us is actually somehow satisfied, and normative fulfillment, whereby each of us should be satisfied if the joint practice is understood correctly. As a result, actual score-keeping attitudes are not enough to define success. The conceptual content must be given generically. We must start with generic fulfillment conditions in conceptual differentiations and default inferences. The corresponding rules or norms of material but generic differences and inferences exist in a public domain of canonized normality. Notice that any desire, and any fulfillment, is not only a relation to an object but a self-relation. In this sense, the object of immediate desire or appetite is the “living thing itself.” But any object of a desire is self-standing for itself; and there may be some hindrance for immediate appropriation. In some cases, we need planned action and joint work in order to overcome possible obstacles. In this sense, the structures of care (Heidegger’s Sorge) in wishes, intentions, plans and self-consciously controlled actions are in the form of inhibited desire or conceptually transformed appetite: conceptual fulfillments replace immediate satisfactions. We arrive at the higher level of satisfaction with claims of fulfillment. For any immediate satisfaction of inhibited appetite, we do not need the additional structure of conceptually determined intentions. Intention is

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thus conceptually inhibited, transformed and “sublated” (aufgehoben) desire or appetite. It mediates between me (as I am now, perhaps before the fulfillment) and me who has arrived at the right place or achieved the goal. This content of an intention (Absicht)—which is always already more than a wish because it is a normative relation to my own future action, as Brandom rightly sees and says—is at first only given by some re-presentation of a possible state of affairs, namely my seeing to it that p, whereby I do and must play a certain active role. Animals live in merely presently given orientations. In contrast, human orientations are given by thought, hence by the concept(s). As we have already seen, the very notion of self-consciousness involves two different aspects of consciousness or even a double consciousness, the one which knows something and the other that is the object of this knowledge or controlled by it, for example when a mere (self )certainty should be evaluated as (self )knowledge or a mere feeling of satisfaction as a real and true fulfillment of some objective condition. In intentional actions in which I actively see to it that p, we logically have two parts of me: There is the part of me who actually lives and actually performs something right now; and then there is a description of who I will or should be if I will or should have fulfilled the (truth conditions of the) intention. If we bring an intention into an analogy of a self-command, which is structurally plausible—any objections with regard to the differences notwithstanding—an obvious question arises. Who, in such a selfrelation, is the master that commands and who is the servant that has to act accordingly? The structural analogy shows what a whole philosophical tradition has articulated in famous allegories: The thinking soul is the master and the performing body is the servant; or rather, this is the way things should be according to the traditional picture. The soul has to subdue the bodily impulses of immediate desires, or rather, to transform them into a power that supports the will or intention of the master, just as the charioteer (thought) and the good horse (the will) together keep the bad horse (the desire who wants to back out into the woods of immediate satisfaction) on the right path in Plato’s famous simile.24 Plato’s simile represents a relation between two moments or aspects of (self )consciousness. The chapter on lordship and bondage in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit thus analyzes some intra-personal relation using social, political or inter-personal relations as a model for structural, i.e., 24 Plato, Phaidros 246 a b.



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analogical explication. Hegel thus proceeds just like Plato does in his Republic—which is a book not merely on the state but also on the constitution of the soul. 2.3 A Struggle of Life and Death between Desire and Intention If I want to fulfill my intentions by my deeds, I must do what the intentions say has to be done and achieved. Often I do not do it when I follow instead my immediate desires. In such a case, the former intention collapses into an empty wish. Hence, there is, in our analogical simile, a struggle of life and death between intention and desire, the thinking and willing soul and the sensing body, the hopeful master and the servant. It is the deed itself that decides who wins. But since the deed is the actual performance of the servant, it is the body—i.e., the whole bodily person and not just an abstract soul—that decides in the end who wins. This is the reason why the master or the willing soul has to take into account the bodily desires as leading motives and moments in any active realization of goals.25 If this is how we should read Hegel, then he is not talking here about a struggle for recognition between persons. Nor is he referring to a real fight for life and death. The topic is instead an allego­rical struggle between desire and intention, body and soul, and the problem of the soul to get the appropriate recognition of the body. Perhaps we always have to force and lure ourselves into a practical recognition of what we should do—according to our own intentions and according to our general knowledge about what is good and right to do. When Hegel talks about work or labor of the servant, he is talking about the difficulty of performing actions by actualizing complex intentions defined by the generic action and its norms of proper fulfillment. But why should the servant, if it is the body, fear the master? What is the power of the master? In which sense is the master fearless with respect to the menace of death, whereas the servant fears death? 25 ‘In diesen drei Momenten ist erst der Begriff des Selbstbewusstseins vollendet; a) reines ununterscheidbares Ich ist sein erster unmittelbarer Gegenstand. b) Diese Unmittelbarkeit ist aber selbst absolute Vermittlung, . . . sie ist Begierde. Die Befriedigung der Begierde ist zwar die Reflexion des Selbstbewusstseins in sich selbst, oder die zur Wahrheit gewordene Gewissheit; c) aber die Wahrheit derselben ist vielmehr die gedoppelte Reflexion, die Verdoppelung des Selbst­bewusstseins. Es ist ein Gegenstand für das Bewusstsein, welcher an sich selbst sein Anderssein oder den Unterschied als einen nichtigen setzt und darin selbständig ist. [. . .] Hiemit ist schon der Begriff des Geistes für uns vorhanden.‘ Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, § 176, ed. Wessels / Clairmont (Meiner) pp. 126 f.

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This part of the simile does not seem to fit to our story. It therefore seems more plausible to proceed, just like in the standard interpretations of the text, from a general structure of appropriation to a fight between persons for power, property and recognition of authority. Insofar as property is a substructure of power, we would immediately arrive at an analysis of the lord’s power over slaves and servants. This power seems to rest on a menace of sanctions if the servants and knights do not comply. The fear of the lord would be, somewhat ironically, the beginning of wisdom. Man would turn into a creature, as Kant has said, who is always in need of a master. But how should a merely abstract object of reflection, the soul, menace the body and bring the body by some fear of death to act in a certain way, according to the content of intentions and other demands of duty? However this may be, it would be a far-fetched idea if Hegel started with a differentiation between animal desire or appetite and human intentions and jumped immediately to an analysis of personal, even political relations between lords and servants. It is much more plausible that Hegel uses the social structures here, just like Plato does in his Republic and in other dialogues, in order to explicate inner or mental structures or relations in a kind of society of mind.26 But perhaps this is only a first step, followed by a criticism of the whole picture with respect to features that it cannot properly depict. And this is precisely how I would like to read Hegel’s considerations. Literature Brandom, Robert (1994): Making It Explicit. Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. —— (2000): Articulating Reasons, Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. Cobben, Paul (2012): The Paradigm of Recognition. Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death. Leiden: Brill. Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm (1807): Phänomenologie des Geistes. Neu herausg. von Hans-Friedrich Wessels und Heinrich Clairmont, mit einer Einleitung von Wolfgang Bonsiepen, Hamburg: Meiner, 1988. —— (1801): Jenaer Schriften 1801–1807. In: ders., Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Bd. 2. Hg. v. Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Honneth, Axel (2003): Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Hume, David (1739): A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Univ. Pr., 1978.

26 Cf. for example Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.



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Hyppolite, Jean (1946): Genèse et structure de la Phénoménolgie de l’esprit de Hegel. Paris, 5. Aufl. 2000. Kambartel, Friedrich (2005): “Geist und Natur. Bemerkungen zu ihren normativen Grund­ la­gen”. In: Gereon Wolters u.a. (Eds): Homo Sapiens und Homo Faber. Berlin: de Gruyter, 253–265. Kojève, Alexandre (1975): Hegel, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. McDowell, John (1996): Mind and World. Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. —— (2009b): Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars. Cambridge/ Mass.: Harvard University Press. —— (2009c): The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self: Towards a Hereodox Reading of “Lordship and Bondage”. In: McDowell (2009b), 147–165. —— (2009d): Towards a Reading of Hegel on Action in the “Reason” Chapter of the Phenomenology. In: McDowell (2009b), 166–184. Mead, George Herbert (1968): Geist, Identität und Gesellschaft aus der Sicht des Sozial­ behaviorismus. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Minsky, Marvin (1988): The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. Pinkard, Terry (1994): Hegel’s Phenomenology. The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge: Univ. Press. —— (2002): German Philosophy 1760–1860. The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Pippin, Robert B. (1989): Hegel’s Idealism. The Satis­fa­ction of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Univ. Press. —— (2008): Hegels Practical Philosophy, Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge: Univ. Press. Quante, Michael (2011): Die Wirklichkeit des Geistes. Studien zu Hegel. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Quine, Willard Van Orman (1960): Word and Object. Cambridge/Mass: MIT Press. Rockmore, Tom (1997): Cognition. An Introduction to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Berkeley & Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. —— (2005): Hegel, Idealism and Analytic Philosophy. Yale: Univ. Press. Rödl, Sebastian (2007): Self-Consciousness. Cambridge/Mass: Harvard University Press. Rödl, Sebastian/Tegtmeyer, Henning (Eds), (2012): Sinnkritisches Philosophieren. Berlin: de Gruyter. Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin (1992): Hegels Analytische Philosophie. Die Wissenschaft der Logik als kritische Theorie der Bedeutung. Paderborn: Schöningh. —— (2005): Philosophie des Selbstbewußtseins. Hegels System als Formanalyse von Wissen und Autonomie, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. —— (2013): Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein Kommentar. Vol I. Gewissheit und Vernunft, Hamburg: Meiner. Taylor, Charles (1975): Hegel. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. Thompson, Michael (2008): Life and Action. Cambridge/Mass: Harvard Univ. Press. Tugendhat, Ernst (1979): Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung. Sprachanalytische Interpretationen. Frank­furt/M: Suhrkamp. Vieweg, Klaus/Welsch, Wolfgang (2008): Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu einem Schlüsselwerk der Moderne. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Westphal, Kenneth R. (2003): Hegel’s Epistemology, A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing.

Chapter Twelve

Finitude, Rational Justification & Mutual Recognition Kenneth R. Westphal Introduction Individual rational judgment, of the kind required for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains—i.e., in both empirical knowledge and in morals—is in fundamental part socially and historically based, although these social and historical bases of rational justification are consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about basic moral principles. Indeed, to judge fully rationally that one judges—in ways which provide rational justification of one’s judgment about any substantive matter—requires recognising one’s inherent fallibility and consequently also recognising our mutual interdependence for assessing our own and each other’s judgments and their justification. Despite growing attention to Hegel’s account of mutual recognition, its most fundamental significance and role in rational justification—and in Hegel’s account of rational justification—has been widely neglected. Only a few facets of Hegel’s analysis can be examined here, though I make this a virtue by arguing that very minimal premises regarding our cognitive finitude suffice to justify Hegel’s two key theses (above), and indeed, transcendentally. Please note two caveats. First, I argue that in fundamental part rational justification in substantive domains is social and historical. With Hegel, I argue against strong individualism, whilst affirming the mutual interdependence of social and individual aspects of, or factors in, rational justification.1 Second, my topic is rational justification. Neither I nor Hegel equate or reduce truth to warranted assertability. Truth in the non-formal domain of empirical knowledge involves proper classification or description, in short ‘correspondence’.2 Hence the social 1 This accords with Hegel’s moderate collectivist social ontology; Westphal (2003), §§ 29–37. 2 On Hegel’s affirmation of the correspondence account of the nature (not the criteria) of truth, see Westphal (1989), 17, 63, 67, 87, 111–14, 162. The counterpart issues in matters moral are more complex; see Westphal (2013).

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and historical aspects of rational justification in non-formal domains do not entail that truth is merely a social or historical (i.e., historicist or conversationalist) phenomenon.3 1. Deduction, Scientia and Infallibilism 1.1 Hegel adopted from Kant the legal sense of ‘deduction’ as the justification or proof of an entitlement, of a rightful claim.4 What form(s) of proof or justification can we attain in our inquiries? ‘Infallibilism’ is the thesis that justification sufficient for knowledge entails the truth of what is known. Though some substantive claims are infallible—for example, Descartes infallibly knew he existed each and every time he considered whether he did—typically infallibility is achieved by stripping candidate claims of any further implications. Perhaps one cannot at any moment be mistaken about what one at that moment seems to experience. However, such self-evidence is a function of the logic of ‘seems’, not of any apparent content, nor of any special infallibility or reliability, of apparent experience. Such self-evidence is evidence for nothing else; only thus can it be infallible. When more substantive claims are made, however, appeals to self-evidence face a challenge Hegel repeatedly highlighted, to distinguish reliably in principle and in practice between these two cognitively very different scenarios: (i) Grasping a truth, and only on that basis having, and recognizing one has, infallible knowledge of it. (ii) Being utterly, even incorrigibly convinced one has grasped a truth, and solely on that basis claiming (mistakenly) to have infallible knowledge of that purported truth.

This distinction holds regardless of the truth or falsehood of the claim in question; it is a cognitive distinction marking a crucial justificatory difference. No advocate of self-evidence has devised plausible criteria for distinguishing reliably between them, in connection with claims substantive enough to contribute to justifying further substantive claims (see Westphal 2007–08, § 5).

3 On Hegel’s rejection of historicism, see Beiser (1993). 4 KdrV B116–121; WdL, GW 11:20.5–18, 20.37–21.11, 33.5–13; 21:32.23–33.4, 33.20–34.1, 54.28–55.5, cf. Rph § 2 & R.



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1.2 Infallibilism is ill-suited to substantive domains. The alternative is fallibilism, according to which justification sufficient for knowledge strongly indicates the truth of what is known, but does not entail it. Infallibilists have condemned fallibilism as capitulating to scepticism. Clarifying why fallibilism is not a sceptical capitulation requires distinguishing between formal and non-formal domains. Strictly speaking, formal domains are those which involve no existence postulates; only thus can sentences be true solely due to their form. Strictly speaking, the one purely formal domain is a careful reconstruction of Aristotle’s Square of Opposition (Wolff 1995, 2000, 2009). All further logical or mathematical domains involve various sorts of existence postulates, including semantic postulates. We may define ‘formal domains’ more broadly to include all formally defined logistic systems (Lewis 1970, 10). The relevance of any such logistic system to any non-formal, substantive domain rests, however, not upon formal considerations alone, but also upon substantive considerations of how useful a specific logistic system may be within a non-formal, substantive domain (Lewis 1929, 298; cf. Carnap 1950). Within any specified logistic system, deduction suffices for justification only within that system; the use of that system within any non-formal domain of its application requires further justificatory resources, not limited to formal deduction. This holds too for the use of that system in justifying any particular claim within its domain of application. Within any substantive domain, fallibilism is no sceptical capitulation, not because infallibilist standards of justification are too stringent, but because in principle they are inappropriate to any and to all substantive domains. Within any substantive domain, a merely logical possibility has no cognitive status and so cannot serve to ‘defeat’ or to undermine (refute) an otherwise well-grounded line of justificatory reasoning within that domain.5 2. Fallibilism and the Social Dimensions of Rational Justification Rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains is fallible. Consequently, to judge substantive matters rationally is to judge them thus:

5 Westphal (2011b). Only in formal domains is truth a matter of provability; this is an important reason to distinguish between justification and truth in non-formal domains.

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kenneth r. westphal To the best of my present abilities, understanding and information, this conclusion is justified for the following reasons and in the following regards— what do you think?

Because rational judgment is fallible, and because it involves one’s own, as it were, ‘perspectival’ assessment of the relevant evidence, principles and the interrelations among these, rational judgment in substantive domains is also fundamentally social. Constructive mutual criticism facilitates constructive self-criticism and renders it a social phenomenon by facilitating the identification of discrepancies between our conceptions of our knowledge and of the objects of our knowledge, and our experience of the objects we know and our experience of our own cognitive constitution and activities in knowing those objects; and analogously in regard to action, regarding either intended and actual consequences or intended and actual justifying reasons of our actions.6 The essential social dimensions of constructive self-criticism are highlighted by the following considerations. 2.1 First, the norms, principles and objects or events involved in any judgment have implications far beyond one’s present context, and indeed far beyond the purview of any individual person, even in commonsense judgments such as ‘This is a physical object’, or ‘That is a goldfinch’ (Austin 1965, 354). The indefinite scope of these implications is, in part, a feature of the ‘open texture’ of our empirical concepts: our empirical judgments cannot rule out that objects may behave very differently than we expect, based on how we conceive and thus classify them (Westphal 2005, § 2). Consequently, the scrutiny of the norms and principles one uses even in simple empirical judgments, as also the scrutiny of one’s own judgments, falls not only to oneself but also to others. 2.2 Second, these norms, principles, classifications and judgments have the content they do and are justified to whatever extent they are through their critical scrutiny by all concerned parties, presently, historically and in the future. Even the most ordinary and commonsense concepts, norms and classifications have this kind of social history. Commonsense was at one time thoroughly animistic; for a millennium in the Occident it was broadly Aristotelian. Only with great difficulty did Occidental commonsense 6 This point rests upon Hegel’s analysis of the possibility of constructive self-criticism; see Westphal (1998), (2011a).



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become Newtonian, and in some regions of the Occident today commonsense is still struggling with (or against) Darwinism. 2.3 This point can be illustrated with an example from Gerd Buchdahl.7 Buchdahl invites us to assess Hume’s view that possibility is a function of conceivability by asking whether it is possible to conceive of flowers growing on the moon. Of course we can picture flower-like cartoon images protruding from a picture of lunar soil and increasing in size, or even passing through the externally visible aspects of morphological development from a shoot to a mature plant. However, these are only images, even if they were drawn, say, by a Blumenbach, a Buffon or an Audubon. Plants as we actually know and conceive them (starting no later than early elementary school science classes) are biological organisms which require nutrients, water, sufficient carbon dioxide in the surrounding atmosphere and indeed sufficient atmosphere to maintain a suitably temperate environment, where the relevant ‘suitability’ is a function of the plant’s physiology. None of these conditions is satisfied by the moon; hence plants cannot grow on the moon. This is true, not as a matter of conceptual stipulation, but of conceptual understanding of some aspects of the natural causality involved in plant physiology, developed historically by a large collective of pioneering biologists, some of whose results have now rightly become commonsense and part of elementary science education. Analogous points can be made across the spectrum of our commonsense conceptions and beliefs. To factor out the social and historical bases of our plethora of commonsense conceptions and beliefs by appealing to notions of ‘narrow content’, according to which the core content of our beliefs or concepts is strictly and entirely introspectable, would render us bereft of commonsense conceptions and beliefs, including those required to understand the very point of defining or appealing to (alleged) ‘narrow content’. 2.4 Third, the very terms in which we formulate our views and investigate whatever issues we do are acquired, that is, learned, in various ways from various groups (Westphal 2012). This is especially plain in any kinds of expertise—the so-called ‘division of cognitive labour’—though it behoves us to recall that ‘cognitive labour’ includes both experts and commoners,

7 Buchdahl (1969), 368–71; I have modified and abbreviated his example to suit the present context.

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and both intellectual as well as manual labour. Where and when we do innovate by devising new conceptions, methods, procedures, techniques, materials etc., we human beings can do so only by exploiting inherited, socially acquired conceptual, methodological and often technical as well as material resources. We initially adopt these resources by being taught them as the best-available and best justified resources for the domain at issue (cf. Burge 1989, 2003). Through our use of these resources, we may augment their justification, extend their use or further refine their character and also, on the basis of our grounds for such modifications, justify these successors. Yet also in cases where we identify the limits, defects or inadequacies of these resources, or confront novel circumstances which require refashioning our resources, we human beings do so only in and through using those resources in ways which substantially inform and indeed make possible our development of improved successors. In these ways, individual innovation, and the justification individuals develop for their innovations, are socially based. The idea that human creation must be ex nihilo, which is required for creation to be a strictly individualist phenomenon, even on that lesser scale called ‘innovation’, has had far more credence in our intellectual and cultural history than it deserves, though it lives on in contemporary philosophical appeals to ‘Crusoe cases’, in which internalists characteristically neglect Robinson Crusoe’s having been raised by others to adulthood prior to his unfortunate voyage.8 2.5 As mentioned (§ 3.1), the judgments each of us make and the principles we use to make them have implications which far transcend one’s present situation and indeed one’s entire purview. Among these are implications for domains, issues and examples one might never attend to, or ever be able to attend to. This indicates a fourth important social dimension of the rational justification of individual judgment: We require the critical assessment of others who are engaged in other activities and concerns, both directly and indirectly related to our own, because they can identify implications of our judgments and the justifying grounds of our judgments which we cannot. None of us can simulate for ourselves the confrontation of our rational judgments with the loyal opposition by also playing for oneself the role of the loyal opponent. While important, being one’s own devil’s advocate is inherently limited and, of course, fallible.

8 This is one indicator of why mere ‘acceptance’ as such is a poor indicator of justificatory status.



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Each of us can do our best to try to determine what those who disagree with us may say about our own judgments, and we may do fairly well at this, though only if we are sufficiently broad-minded and well-informed to be intimately familiar with opposing analyses of and positions on the matter at hand. However, even this cannot substitute for the actual critical assessment of one’s judgments by knowledgeable, skilled interlocutors who actually hold differing or opposed views, or views only tangentially related to our own. Inevitably and ineluctably we have our own reasons for selectively gaining expertise in some domains rather than others, for focussing on some issues rather than others and for favouring some kinds of accounts rather than others. However extensive our knowledge and assessment may be, we cannot, so to speak, see around our own corners. Our own fallibility, limited knowledge and finite skills and abilities, together with the complexities inherent in forming informed, well-reasoned judgments, require us to seek out and take seriously the critical assessment of any and all competent others. Failing to do so renders our judgments less than maximally informed, less than maximally reliable and so less than fully rationally justified. Therefore, due to our fallibility and limited knowledge, both factual and inferential, any particular judgment anyone makes about any substantive matter is justified to no greater extent than that to which the judge does his or her utmost to exercise informed judgment on that occasion, which due to our fallibility requires us to submit our judgments to critical scrutiny by all concerned parties and to respond constructively to their considered assessments of our judgment. Hence in non-formal, substantive domains rational justification is socially based. We are each responsible for the critical assessment of our own and of others’ rational judgments. Genuine and fully rational judgment requires constructive self-critical and mutually critical assessment of each and everyone’s judgment. Any consensus thereby reached is and remains justified—and remains justificatory of conclusions based upon it—because it identifies the very best available principles, evidence and conclusions, and because it always remains open to continuing and to future critical re-assessment.9

9 At this point, my account converges in many regards with those of Longino (1990, 1994, 2001), Solomon (1994) and Haack (1998), chapter 6. However, my aim to prove my key thesis transcendentally requires abstracting from the empirical features of collective scientific research to which they rightly draw attention.

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3.1 The typical rejoinder to these considerations takes the form, ‘yet couldn’t we in principle assess our own judgments fully for ourselves, without relying on others?’ This appeal to what we allegedly could do ‘in principle’ is an open invitation to Cartesian pipe-dreams of rational selfsufficiency, because the only constraints on such possibilities ‘in principle’ are the law of non-contradiction, the logically contingent premise ‘I think, I am’, whatever one can introspectively identify as one’s ‘own’ (putative) thoughts or experiences and the uncharted expanses of one’s imagination. If mere logical possibilities are relevant to justification, the only possible form of justification is infallibilist, the only possible kinds of mental contents are ‘narrowly’ (if deceptively) non-social (recall the point from Buchdahl; above, § 3.3), whilst the so-called logical gap between one’s apparent experiences and their putative objects (namely, that the former could be as they are, whilst also being false) condemns one directly to the infallibilist internalism so familiar from the Cartesian ego-centric predicament.10 If such views may avoid precisely that ego-centric predicament by rejecting representationalist accounts of perception, they construct an equally pernicious one by mistaking rational justification for defending one’s view come what may against critics and dissenters. 3.2 Internalism about mental content or about justification may be consistent with realism about ordinary objects and events, but strict internalism of either variety precludes justifying such realism. This complex issue may only be considered briefly here, by noting a revealing example of social influences on apparently basic features of human visual perception. The Müller-Lyer illusion is familiar, as is the fact that, even after comprehending its character, those who experience it cannot make themselves simply and literally see two equal length lines, conjoined to either converging or diverging ‘arrow-heads’. The Müller-Lyer illusion results from inappropriate correction of visual information by our visual system’s constancy mechanisms.11 Perceptual ‘constancy’ systems allow us to perceive objects in our environment as maintaining their size through changes in distance and angle of view, despite vast changes in the arc which any object subtends within one’s

10 All of this is entailed by the project of defeating Descartes’ evil deceiver. 11  Gregory (1963), (1967), (1968), (1970), (1973), (1974).



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Fig. 1. The Müller-Lyer Illusion

visual field as the distance between the perceiver and the object changes. In this regard, it is very fortunate—indeed, it is vital—for our abilities to identify and re-identify physical objects that our visual systems do not follow the laws of geometrical optics. Cross-cultural research shows that there is a decided social influence upon human perception at this basic level. This level is ‘basic’ because it affects visual appearances, regardless of our judgments or beliefs about what we sense. Groups which do not build rectilinear structures suffer either very little or not at all from the Müller-Lyer Illusion (Deregowski 1973, 1980). This perceptual example is germane to my explication of rational judgment insofar as it undermines both strong individualism and strict internalism about mental content: it belies glib distinctions between ‘narrow’ and ‘broad’ perceptual content because it shows that social factors enter into what would otherwise be considered to be ‘narrow’ perceptual content and it shows that ‘narrow’ cannot be distinguished from ‘broad’ perceptual content on the basis of purported ‘narrow’ content.12 The only way internalists can salvage ‘narrow’ mental content is to repeat Descartes’ (2nd Med., ¶9, AT 7:29) fiat of defining sensing strictly speaking in terms solely of what one seems to sense. So doing may be ‘irrefutable’ to the satisfaction of egocentrically entranced internalists, but such fiat reinstates insoluble global perceptual scepticism because it reinstates infallibilism, about rational justification, though in a substantive domain (putative empirical knowledge) to which in principle it does not pertain.

12 ‘Broad’ perceptual (or mental or conceptual) content is in part specified by environmental or organic features of a perceiver.

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As I hope we have already recognized, much more is required to justify one’s view in any substantive philosophical domain than merely to escape overt self-contradiction. Views which aspire to no more than that can well be expected to be useless for anything more than arguing amongst the like-minded of that otherwise hermetic cultural circle. To devise a theory of rational justification on the slender basis of individualism and internalism about mental content, in order, in effect, to comply with the dictates of Descartes’ evil deceiver, is to devise a theory for some merely logically possible cognizant subject, not for human beings. Satisfying oneself by one’s own best lights is no substitute for justifying one’s claims rationally and it makes error far more incorrigible than it need be. Descartes is instructive in this regard, too: his argumentation in the Meditations suffers five distinct, vicious circularities (Westphal 1989, 18–34). Our concern must be the rational justification, so far as we can obtain it, of our best judgments, using the best of our actual—rather than our imagined, feigned—rational capacities, abilities, skills and information. For reasons reviewed above (§ 3), our rational capacities are finite: we lack omniscience, we lack omni-competence, we can only base our judgments upon information, principles, evidence, examples and reasonings we in fact have and use. Our legitimate and ineluctable predilections to focus on some activities, issues or inquires rather than others, the division of cognitive labour this naturally generates, and the manifold implications of our own judgments for domains and issues beyond our cognizance, entail that others have information which bears upon, and can provide for rational assessment and justification—or revision—of our own judgments, no matter how ordinary or expert our judgments may be. The present account aims to understand the kind of rational justification we can and often do have in substantive domains, not the kinds we might have if we were ‘in principle’ some other kind of utterly self-sufficient, though merely logically possible rational being. 4. Rational Justification Requires Mutual Recognition All of these considerations and measures (§§ 2–4) are required, and understanding all of them is required, in order rationally to judge that ‘I judge’, and not merely to utter the words ‘I judge’, thereby merely feigning rationality. The central significance of Hegel’s account of mutual recognition (Anerkennung) for rational justification is this:



finitude, rational justification & mutual recognition 245 For anyone accurately and justifiedly to judge that she or he is a rationally competent judge requires: (1) Recognising one’s own rational fallibility, (2) Judging that others are likewise rationally competent judges, (3) Recognising that we are equally capable of and responsible for assessing rationally our own and each other’s judgments, and (4) Recognising that we each require each other’s assessment of our own judgments, in order to scrutinise and thereby maximally to refine and to justify rationally our own judgments.

This rich and philosophically crucial form of rational self-consciousness requires our correlative consciousness of others, that we are all mutually interdependent for our capacity of rational judgment, our abilities to judge rationally and our exercise of rational judgment. Moreover, this requirement is transcendental: unless we recognise our critical interdependence as fallible rational judges, we cannot judge fully rationally, because unless we acknowledge and affirm our judgmental interdependence, we will seriously misunderstand, misuse and overestimate our own individual rational, though fallible and limited powers of judgment. Thus recognising our own fallibility and our mutual interdependence as rational judges is a key constitutive factor in our being fully rational, fully autonomous rational judges, so far as is humanly— or individually—possible. Only by recognising our judgmental interdependence can we each link our human fallibility and limited knowledge constructively with our equally human corrigibility, with our ability to learn—especially from constructive criticism. This form of mutual recognition involves mutually achieved recognition of our shared, fallible and fortunately also corrigible rational competence. This recognition involves recognising the crucial roles of charity, tolerance, patience and literal forgiveness in our mutual assessment of our rational judgments and those of others, to acknowledge that oversights, whether our own or others’, are endemic to the human condition, and not as such grounds for blame or condemnation of anyone’s errors.13 Therefore, fully rational justification in substantive domains requires us to seek out and to actively engage with those who critically assess our judgments. 13 Hegel, PhdG, GW 9:359.9–23, 360.31–361.4, 361.22–25, 362.21–29/¶¶666, 669–71; cf. Westphal (1989), 160–4, 181–3; (2009).

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The present account implies, of course, indeed in many ways, that rational justification comes in degrees or extents. My main aim is to identify the social dimensions of rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains by explicating the character of fully rational judgment. It is a further question to consider the extent to which any individual or any group exercises rational judgment on any particular occasion, though considering this question, too, requires exercising rational judgment to our utmost—and hence collective—abilities. In any particular case, who is competent to assess which judgments, in which regards and to what extent, can vary significantly; this is part of the cognitive division of labour. These points can be clairified by considering briefly how these social dimensions of rational justification entail that rational justification in substantive domains is also an historical phenomenon. 5. Mutual Critical Assessment and the Historicity of Rational Justification 5.1 Obviously, assessing any piece of important reasoning requires substantive training in the relevant issues. Yet such training does not suffice to assess the reasoning in question. Assessment requires autonomous judgment about the merits of the case made in and by that piece of reasoning. To resolve the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion, the justification of any substantive view in a non-formal domain requires and must be based upon the thorough, constructive internal critique of all relevant opposed views so far as we can determine them, whether historical, contemporary or possible. This is built into Hegel’s concept of ‘determinate negation’.14 Because the list of relevant alternative views can always be extended, in part by devising new variants on previous accounts, and in part doing so when confronting new kinds of circumstances, rational justification is fallible and inherently provisional. Consequently, rational justification in substantive domains is fundamentally historical, because it is based on the current state of knowledge, because it is fallible and thus provisional and because the list of relevant alternatives and information typically expands historically. Recall that the fallibility, revisability and consequent provisionality at issue here centrally concerns cognitive justification, though when we find some claims or judgments to be unjustified in some regard(s), this typically involves reconsidering or revising their contents, too, which bears upon 14 PhdG, GW 9:57.1–17, 58.12–22/¶¶80, 81; Westphal (1989), 14–15, 99–128; (1998).



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their truth and (in)accuracy, and upon the truth and accuracy of our new information and understanding. Both kinds of revision occur in first-order domains of inquiry, at the theoretical level in the sciences and in philosophy, though they take different forms and occur to different extents and in different ways at each of these levels. Here some brief observations about science and engineering history must suffice. 5.2 Reviewing the development of the empirical sciences (and likewise developments within any empirical science) in view of the present account reveals many concrete examples of discoveries and innovations being made in just the ways highlighted by the present explication of rational judgment and its social and also natural bases. For example, in 1938 Hahn and Strassmann bombarded uranium salts with neutrons. Yet even after exacting re-examination of their procedures, theories and explanations, they could not resolve their equivocal results. Their chemical tests indicated that their experiment produced Barium, which contradicted everything they knew about nuclear physics. Shortly after learning of their results, Lise Meitner devised an alternative interpretation of their results which achieved both consistency and showed that they had succeeded at producing—for the first time—nuclear fission. To achieve her pioneering result, Meitner had to draw upon what she had learned from others (including Hahn and Strassmann) about both chemistry and nuclear physics, yet her innovative re-thinking of these conceptual and experimental resources enabled her to produce a revolutionary (and sound) explanation of Hahn and Strassmann’s otherwise deeply puzzling results. This example nicely illustrates how individuals can contribute to social institutions (in this case, scientific institutions, including disciplinary methods and theories), though only by drawing upon conceptual and material resources which are socially and historically developed and communicated.15 5.3 The case is similar across engineering. To devise a solution to an assigned problem, engineers as a matter of course use established kinds of devices and designs, tailoring them to the specific parameters of the current problem, in order to plan and assemble the required works. Significant engineering problems arise when available designs and devices

15 This example, and this interpretation of it, were brought to my attention by Will (1997), 102.

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cannot readily be adapted to the present, and hence problematic situation. Such situations call for genuine innovation. The parameters of the specific problem can be determined, in many important regards, by determining the reasons why available designs and devices are insufficient. This kind of specification affords a focussed search for the required innovation. There are no algorithms for innovation; innovation is required precisely where standard procedures are insufficient. Yet the history of engineering repeatedly shows how innovative engineers can be. Of course, prior innovation—beginning in ancient and indeed pre-historic times with the simple machines—is what produced today’s stock of available designs and techniques—for any ‘day’ we may select. The same phenomenon is found across the trades and in all kinds of production, economic or otherwise. 5.4 Individual innovation relies upon unappreciated resources and upon unappreciated possibilities of modification found within established, ‘traditional’ practices, in response to unfulfilled aims and aspirations found in those practices or in unexpected circumstances or turns of event; typically, in a combination of all of these. In these ways ‘tradition’ and ‘reason’ are deeply intertwined, because the traditions we now have (for any relevant ‘now’) generally are the product of intelligent, rational activities guided by our manifold efforts to cope with ourselves, our neighbours, our societies and the natural and social world we inhabit. Current practices and procedures may not, of course, have been devised by particularly sound or splendid reasoning, yet it is reasoning none the less, and indeed such cases are precisely those which most benefit from critical scrutiny of their current and on-going effectiveness. Conclusion These broad, central insights into the character and requirements of rational judgment are very far from philosophical commonplaces, as is the present explication of the social and historical aspects of rational justification in substantive domains. That we often engage in constructive mutual criticism is nothing new. Neither is it news that we often thwart it instead. What we achieve by constructive mutual criticism and how we achieve it are far from obvious, nor is much notice taken of it by most theories of cognitive justification.16 If the present account is correct, we can 16 There are some notable recent exceptions, e.g., Longino (1990, 1994, 2001), Haack (2003), chapter 6. Readers familiar with the original American pragmatists will recognize



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and ought to engage in constructive self- and mutual criticism because only in this way can we achieve genuine, fully rational justification, to the extent humanly and individually possible, and thus only in this way can we aspire to achieve it in any substantive domain. Hegel was the first to understand and to argue that these social and historical aspects of rational justification in substantive domains are consistent with—indeed ultimately they require—realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and strict objectivity about basic moral norms. It is still widely supposed that ‘pragmatic realism’ is oxymoron­ic. This supposition, Hegel rightly argued, rests on a series of false dichotomies (Westphal 2003). In non-formal domains cultural and intellectual history—including all forms of empirical inquiry—play central, ineliminable roles within rational, cognitive justification. Philosophy itself, as a rational examination of substantive issues within substantive domains, is essentially historical and social. Hegel elevated the history of philosophy to a specifically philosophical discipline because he recognized (already in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit)17 that comprehensive, critical, philosophical history of philosophy is essential to rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains of philosophical inquiry.18 Literature Austin, J. L. (1965): ‘Other Minds’. Rpt. In: A. Flew, ed., Logic and Language: First and Second Series (New York, Anchor), 342–80. Beiser, Frederick (1993): ‘Hegel’s Historicism’. In: idem., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 270–300. Buchdahl, Gerd (1969): Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: The Classical Origins Descartes to Kant. Oxford, Blackwell. Carnap, Rudolf (1950a, rev. 1956): ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’. Revue International de Philosophie 4. Revised version in: idem., Meaning and Necessity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 205–221. Deregowski, Jan (1973): ‘Illusion and Culture’. In: R. L. Gregory and E. H. Gombrich, eds., Illusion in Nature and Art (London, Duckworth; New York, Scribner’s), 161–191.

the pragmatic realism advanced here, which has too long been obscured by semantic ascent and vapid conversationalism. 17 Harris (1997) argues in detail—and convincingly—that Hegel’s history in the Phenomenology is far better than has been recognized, and that the Phenomenology contains Hegel’s genuine philosophy of history; his surprising finding merits and rewards close study. 18 I extend my sincere gratitude to Paul Cobben and Christian Krijnen, whose kind invitation to address their conference on recognition (Tilburg, September 2012) prompted these further reflections; I warmly thank them and all the participants for their lively and helpful discussions of the draft presented, and throughout the conference.

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—— (1980): Illusions, Patterns and Pictures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York, Academic Press. Descartes, René (1964–76): Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, eds., Oevres de Descartes, rev. ed.; cited as ‘AT’, by volume: page number. Gregory, R. L. (1963): ‘Distortion of visual space as Inappropriate Constancy Scaling’. Nature 199: 678–680. Rpt. in: Gregory (1974), 342–379. —— (1967): ‘Comments on the Inappropriate Constancy Scaling Theory of Illusions and its Implications’. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 19.3:350–356. Rpt. in: Gregory (1974), 350–356. —— (1968): ‘Perceptual Illusions and Brain Models’. Proceedings of the Royal Society 171:279–296. Rpt in: Gregory (1974), 357–379. —— (1970): The Intelligent Eye. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. —— and E. H. Gombrich, eds. (1973): Illusion in Nature and Art. London, Duckworth; New York, Scribner’s. —— (1974): Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Haack, Susan, 1993. Evidence and Inquiry. Oxford, Blackwell. —— (1998): ‘Reply to Bonjour’. Synthese 112:25–35. —— (1998): Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. —— (2002): ‘A Foundherentist Theory of Empirical Justification’. In: M. Huemer, ed., Epistemology: Contemporary Readings (New York, Routledge), 417–31. Harris, H. S., 1997. Hegel’s Ladder, 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., Hackett Publishing Co. Hegel, G. W. F. (1968–): H. Buchner and O. Pöggeler, eds., Gesammelte Werke. Published by the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften in association with the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft. Hamburg, Meiner. Cited as ‘GW ’, by volume:page. line numbers. —— (1807): Phänomenologie des Geistes. Bamberg and Würzburg, Goebhardt; critical ed.: W. Bonsiepen and R. Heede, eds., GW 9; cited as ‘PhdG’, ‘¶’ designates consecutive paragraph numbers, correctly provided by T. Pinkard in his draft translation, forthcoming (eventually) with Cambridge University Press. —— (1812, 1816, 1832): Wissenschaft der Logik (1st ed.: 1812, 1816, Nürnberg, Schrag; Bk. 1, 2nd ed: 1832, Stuttgart und Tübingen, Cotta); critical edition: F. Hogemann and W. Jaeschke, GW 11, 12, 21 (Bk. 1, 2nd ed.); cited as ‘WdL’. —— (1821): Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts; oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse. Berlin, Nicolin; critical ed.: K. Grotsch and E. Weisser-Lohmann, GW 14; cited as ‘Rph’ by § , ‘R’ designates Hegel’s published Anmerkungen; ‘Z’ designates lecture note material. —— (2010): G. diGiovanni, tr., Science of Logic. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; provides pagination from GW. Kant, Immanuel (1998): J. Timmerman, Hg., Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg, Meiner; cited as ‘KdrV’, ‘A’ and ‘B’ indicate the first (1781) and second (1786) editions, respectively. Lewis, Clarence Irving (1929): Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge. New York, Charles Scribners; rpt. New York: Dover, 1956. —— (1970): J. D. Goheen and J. L. Mothershead, Jr., eds., Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. Stanford, Stanford University Press. Longino, Helen (1990): Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Ojbectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. —— (1994): ‘The Fate of Knowledge in Social Theories of Science’. In: F. Schmitt, ed., Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge (Lanham, Md., Rowman & Little­field), 135–57. —— (2001): The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Solomon, Miriam (1994): ‘Social Empiricism’. Nous 28.3:325–43. Westphal, Kenneth R. (1989): Hegel’s Epistemological Realism: A Study of the Aim and Method of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Dor­drecht & Boston, Kluwer.



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—— (1998): ‘Hegel’s Solution to the Dilemma of the Criterion’. In: J. Stewart, ed., The Phenomenology of Spirit Reader: A Collection of Critical and Interpretive Essays (Albany, SUNY Press), 76–91. —— (2003): Hegel’s Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Cam­bridge, Mass., Hackett Publishing Co. —— (2005): ‘Kant, Wittgenstein, and Transcendental Chaos’. Philosophical Investigations 28.4:303–23. —— (2007–08): ‘Intelligenz and the Interpretation of Hegel’s Idealism: Some Hermeneutic Pointers’. The Owl of Minerva 38.1–2:95–134. —— (2009): ‘Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit’. Dialogue 48.4:1–47. —— (2011a): „Urteilskraft, gegenseitige Anerkennung und rationale Rechtfertigung‟. In: H.-D. Klein, Hg., Ethik als prima philosophia? (Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann), 171–193. —— (2011b): ‘Self-Consciousness, Anti-Cartesianism and Cognitive Semantics in Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology’. In: S. Houlgate and M. Baur, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Hegel (Oxford, Wiley-Black­well), 68–90. —— (2012): ‘Norm Acquisition, Rational Judgment and Moral Particularism’. Theory and Research in Education 10.1:3–25. —— (2013): ‘Objective Spirit: Right, Morality, Ethical Life & World History’. In: A. deLauren­ tiis and B. J. Edwards, eds., A Companion to Hegel (London, Continuum), 157–178. —— forthcoming: ‘Mutual Recognition and Rational Justification in Substantive Domains’. Dialogue: Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Will, Frederick L., 1997. K. R. Westphal, ed., Pragmatism and Realism. Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield. Wolff, Michael, 1995. „Was ist formale Logik?‟ In: C. Fricke, P. König and T. Petersen, Hgg., Das Recht der Vernunft. Kant und Hegel über Denken, Erkennen und Handeln (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog), 19–31. —— (2000): „Kantische Urteilstafel und vollständige Induktion: Nachtrag zu meiner Kontroverse mit Ulrich Nortmann‟. Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 54.1:86–94. —— (2009): Abhandlungen über die Prinzipien der Logik, 2nd rev. ed. Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann.

Chapter Thirteen

Inter-Personality and Wrong Klaus Vieweg Hegel’s innovative theory of personality testifies to the continuing and enduring modernity of his conception of Objective Spirit as a philosophy of the practical. The cornerstone of the entire building of this philosophy of freedom will be erected here. An array of problematics contained therein ranges from the concept of the person, personality and interpersonality, fundamental rights [Grundrechte], property, the formation of the natural as self-formation and formation of external nature, sustainability, appropriation, intellectual property to contract, wrong [Unrecht], ‘second coercion’ [zweiten Zwang] and punishment. In the following discussion the problematic of wrong and Hegel’s concept of ‘second coercion’ will take centre stage. 1. The Concept of the Person The beginning, the first determination, consists in immediacy and indeterminacy. Here we find a fundamental idea of Hegel’s, already made explicit in §§ 5 and 6 of the Rechtsphilosophie: this first indeterminacy itself represents a certainty, namely an abstract identity. Accordingly § 5 starts with the universal and abstract, the infinitely self-relating, simple self-reference of the will, the “I” as immediate relationship to itself.1 With this negative determination and the merely abstract, not yet determinate relationship to itself—“I can abstract from everything, but not from thinking, because abstracting is itself thinking”2—the will is now inherently individual will: “The will which is free in and for itself, as it is in its abstract concept, is in the determinate condition of immediacy [. . .] 1  § 34, A: The abstract—“Such a thing also exists—it is Being that doesn’t yet move or relate to what is different, is therefore immediate”. 2 “Abstraction is the determinateness of this standpoint.”—“Still lacking determination or opposition, in itself [in sich selbst]” (§ 34 A). I can behave ‘negatively’ to all further particular determinations (drives, needs, qualities), can disregard them. Therein lies the fundamental equality of persons.

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inherently individual will of a subject” (§ 34). “Spirit in the immediacy of its self-secured freedom is individual, but one which knows its individuality as absolutely free will” (Enc § 488). In this formal, self-conscious and otherwise empty, simple relation to itself, in its exclusive individuality, the subject is a person (§ 34, 35).3 Personality entails “that, as this person, I am completely determined in all respects [. . .] determinate and finite, yet simply pure self-reference, and thus I know myself in my finitude as infinite, universal, and free” (§ 35).4 With personality the concept as such is expressed; the person however gives the concept the determinacy of reality (§ 279). The beginning of Hegel’s practical philosophy, its foundation, is grounded with this new concept of the person, upon which the further development of the theory of freedom rests. As the first stage in the development of the concept of right in the Grundlinien abstract right and the determination of personality are logically underpinned by the doctrine of the concept and the transition to the doctrine of judgment, here in the form of qualitative judgment, as judgment of immediacy and abstract universality. The finite person can know themselves as universal, infinite, free (§ 35). Regardless of the abovementioned particularity of the will in the determination of the abstract person, it remains for the personality at first something indifferent: “my universality—the absolute justification, from which all else follows” (§ 35, A). The first chapter turns on the logical principle of individuality (Individuality—I) that is immediate universality (Universality—U). The (free) will is at first immediate and its concept therefore abstract—simply personality. It is “first immediate, and hence as a single being” (Enc § 487), as the abstract formal universality of willing. The concept of the person (personality) demands a knowledge of oneself as abstract I, a thinking knowledge of oneself, the I (re)cognizes itself.5 Every self-reflecting and willing I which (re)cognizes itself as such, is a person: the individual is the universal. As this pure being-for-myself I am simply related to myself, I attribute this to myself and recognize myself. My will, my right, the right of the individual, thereby count as universal, infinite. “Indeed law [Recht] and all of its articles [Bestimmungen] are based on free personality alone, 3 “Spirit as free, self-conscious being is the self-same I, which in its absolute negative relation is first of all exclusively the I of a free being or Person” (PEO, 59). 4 “The ‘pure relation to myself ’ of personality is therefore the purely cogitative and position-taking (thus voluntative) relation of a self-conscious and embodied individual to itself ” (Siep 1992, 101). Cf. Quante 1997, 73–94. 5 Cf. Siep 1992, 98–115.



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on self-determination, which is the very contrary of determination by nature” (Enc § 502). In the Rechtsphilosophie the following has a central place: “The universality of this will which is free for itself is formal universality, i.e. the will’s self-conscious (but otherwise contentless) and simple reference to itself in its individuality; to this extent, the subject is a person” (§ 35). In terms of § 5 this formal, abstract will counts as the determinateness of the beginning: my will is respected and legitimated independently of its particularity and independent of all further determination, it is therefore ‘justified’. The particularity, the determinateness of the will, is initially disregarded, which is why one can speak of abstract right (§ 37). It will be shown, however, that in the last instance nothing at all can be abstracted from particularity (P): the relation individual-particular (I—P) must finally be taken into account, which then marks the boundary of abstract right. In personality we find the absolute justification of the free will, my universality is this absolute justification, my will counts as universal, without other props or grounds (§ 35). Law [Recht] and all its articles [Bestimmungen] are grounded alone on the free personality, on the concept of the person, which Hegel describes expressly as the fundament of selfdetermination (§ 502). 2. Personality and Inter-Personality—Recognition of the Person and Legal Capacity The way out of the simple ‘I want’ in the talk of the I, this I which wills itself as I, is what Hegel denotes with the concept of legal capacity [Rechtsfähigkeit]. It entails ‘be a person’, the summons to be a subject, someone who knows their universality (exactly the justification mentioned above), a subject to whom this characteristic can be applied. Insofar as they knows themselves as person, every subject ascribes themselves this legal capacity, recognises themselves thus. With this central term of recognition comes a further indispensable element: the idea of the development of self-consciousness towards universal self-consciousness—mutually respecting absolute independence now has the status of an absolute justification for every individual person. Here we have the general as universal, simply what is generally valid, the absolute equality of individuals standing in the relation of recognition, who are equal precisely insofar as they are taken exclusively to be persons. Relations such as servitude, slavery or despotism fail a priori to count as forms of freedom: neither the master

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nor servant count as free; they ‘are in the same relationship’ of unfreedom. Here we abstract from non-equivalent, non-symmetrical forms of recognition, though; these have the condition of their possibility in the absolute or universal character of personality. In the reciprocal being-recognised of persons as persons we have an intrinsic moment of Hegel’s concept of freedom. Against the interpretation of Hegel’s departure-point as ‘individualism’ or ‘liberalism’, against the thesis of ‘repressed inter-subjectivity’ (M. Theunissen) or Hösle’s view that Hegel ‘thought of the person in a way wholly detached from intersubjectivity’,6 it can be countered that a moment of recognition is implied in Hegel’s starting point. “That the fundamental equality of all legal subjects in Hegel’s philosophy of right is indisputable is due to the fact that in the universality of self-knowing knowledge a relation of mutual recognition is already implicit.”7 On this Hegel remarks in his Encyclopedia: “I, the infinite self-relation, am as a person the repulsion of me from myself, and have the existence of my personality in the being of other persons, in my relation to them and in my recognition by them, which is mutual” (Enc § 490). The second part of the precept of abstract right includes intersubjectivity in the form of inter-personality as an under-defined form of inter-subjectivity. It runs: ‘respect every other individual I as a person, as a subject with legal capacity [rechtsfähige Subjekte]’. “As person you have existence, being for others, you are free for yourself, you are, you should exist as free, as person for yourself, and everyone should be thus” (Hegel 1974a, 174). Upon this inter-personality Hegel then builds the various forms of inter-subjectivity which are further developed in the Grundlinien, those which can be identified in moral contexts (in the family, in civil society, in corporative-associations which become a ‘second family’ or ‘miniature states’) and finally also in the State itself. Fundamentally therefore we can identify three main stages in of inter-subjectivty in the Grundlinien: a) inter-personality, b) moral inter-subjectivity, and c) ethical inter-subjectivity. Hegel’s philosophy of subjectivity proves itself from the outset to be a theory of inter-subjectivity.

6 Hösle 1988, 491. 7 Siep 1982, 258.



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3. Wrong and the Theory of ‘Second Coercion’ Contract lies at the basis of formal-abstract recognition, the mutual recognition of contracting partners as persons and proprietors, whose particular characteristics remain unimportant. Inter-personality proves to be the first form of inter-subjectivity, as formal-abstract inter-subjectivity. The second stage of inter-subjectivity, moral inter-subjectivity, places § 112 centre stage, in the setting of the moral sphere. Here, on the level of abstract right, my will exists objectively through the externalisation of property; the externalisation is thus objectification, a form of the universal. This identity consists solely in the similarity of formal willing and the mutual respecting of personality. Contract is posited purely through the person as contracting partner, thus it is not about an in- and for-itself general will but about a still deficient form of universality. This unity or identity of different wills constitutes inter-personality, which combines two moments: I am and remain a proprietor and my existence remains likewise as property, my objectivity counts as ‘free self-consciousness of another’ (§ 72, A). Hegel’s critique addresses all modern contract theories, which built their theorems on the indeterminateness of the contract. Though the contractual represents a moment of relatedness, nevertheless ethical associations such as the family and the state cannot be attributed to mere contractual agreement and consensus. Such reductions to the contractual involve invalid extrapolations of regulations of property and of abstract law as such into other, more complex spheres of right and communality. The contractual-consensual—which a) proceeds from arbitrary free choice, where b) the identical will is merely common and thereby a still deficient form of universality, and where c) the objects of contracts are individual external things (§ 75)—represent a first form of inter-subjectivity, contractual inter-personality, which however proves insufficient on its own to ground a conception of the rational sociality of free subjects. Contract displays the difference between universal and particular wills and with it right as the commonality of particular wills and their accidental or arbitrary agreement; a difference that leads consequently to an opposition of universal and particular wills, to particular right as an illusion [Schein] (§ 82). In this sense Hegel introduces ‘wrong’ [das Un-Recht] as the third stage of abstract right; according to the Science of Logic, the truth of appearance consists in its invalidity or nothingness [Nichtigkeit].

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Abstract right, pushed to its conclusion, can pass over into wrong in the form of contravention. The will, in the form of its outer existence (the body and external property) can be infringed, afflicted, injured or suffer violence, and through such violence can suffer coercion (§ 90). Abstract right has “for its object only what is external in actions” (Kant 1902 ff., AA VI, 232). The will which is in-and-for-itself free cannot be coerced, the “free will in its concept will not be damaged” (Hegel, 1983, 52); only as a living being can a human be placed under coercion and “only he who wills to be coerced can be coerced into anything” (§ 91).8 Hegel then adds, Since it is only insofar as the will has an existence in something determinate that it is Idea or actually free, and since the existence in which it has embodied itself is the being of freedom, it follows that force or coercion is in its concept immediately self-destructive because it is an expression of a will which annuls the expression or determinate existence of a will” (§ 92).

This first coercion must always remain wrong [unrechtlich], the abstractly taken coercion destroys itself in its own concept, it is no free act (§§ 92 & 93). Here Hegel follows Kant’s considerations on law, where law is bound up with the authority to coerce, and Kant’s idea of second coercion.9 If a wrong, illegitimate coercion “is a hindrance or resistance that occurs to freedom” then an opposing coercion can be viewed as “hindering a hindrance to freedom”, thus generating the authority to coerce the first coercion. “Right and the authority to coerce therefore mean one and the same thing” (Kant 1902 ff., AA VI, 232). Against the coercion of heteronomy a second coercion appears justified. Thus Kant speaks of the law “of a reciprocal coercion necessarily in accord with the freedom of everyone under the principle of universal freedom” (ibid.). Hegel directly adds to this, that violence against a natural being in which a will resides also counts as coercion. Insofar as the affected will is only a particular will against the universal (thereby not a free will or will initself ), we must speak of ‘coercion in itself ’ or of first coercion. Against such a particular will, against the merely natural or the arbitrary, against heteronomy, a counter-coercion can be exerted, which according to Hegel

8 The “free will in and for itself cannot be coerced (see § 5), except in so far as it fails to withdraw itself from the external dimension in which it is caught up, or from its idea [Vorstellung] of the latter (see § 7). Only he who wills to be coerced can be coerced into anything” (§ 91). 9 “The person has, e.g. a right to property. The freedom of the will thereby receives an external existence. If this is attacked, so is my will attacked. That is violence, coercion. Herein lies immediately the authority of second coercion” (Hegel 1974b, 296 ff.).



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appears to be merely a first coercion but is nevertheless a second coercion— that coercion embodied in, say, teaching or raising taxes. But “the merely natural will is in itself a force directed against the Idea of freedom as that which has being in itself, which must be protected against this uncivilized [ungebildeten] will and given recognition within it” (§ 93 A). It a question of a second coercion, which follows the first as its sublation [Aufhebung]. Coercion is legal “only as the sublation of a first, immediate coercion” (Enc § 501). It is therefore a question of law or right [Recht] against injustice or wrong [Unrecht]. Again this situation of ‘coercion’ refers ahead to the State, where arbitrary free choice and the merely natural represent a first compulsion against common interests and concerns, and where the rational (in the form of the unity of I—P—U) must be invoked (for example, in the form of the levying of duties and taxes or demands for services from the State) against it. Coercion is thus justified exclusively as second coercion, as the authority to act against the heteronomic. Hegel then makes explicit that abstract right as coercive right can only be legitimated via the ‘detour’ of enacted coercion or wrong. In Hegel’s words: the second coercion, understood as sublation of the first or wrong coercion (overcoming coercion through coercion), can only be considered legitimate as a coercion against wrong [Un-Recht] and as the re-establishing of right [Recht].10 As a consequence this negation of the negation—“obstructing an obstacle to freedom” (Kant 1902 ff., AA VI, 231)—makes right into something valid and compelling—a real power. Punishment—expression of second coercion—must be seen as belonging to the deed of the criminal. Punishment reverses the first part (the wrong, contravening deed) and thereby completes the deed—punishment for a crime is “not an external but rather an essential result of the action, posited by the action itself [. . . .], flowing from the nature of the act, a manifestation of the same” (Hegel 1999, 15–16). Punishment is “only the manifestation of [the criminal’s] own criminal will” (Enc § 140). Herein lies the core idea of an action-theoretical legitimation of state punishment. A crime counts (and this forms the basis of the idea of punishment) as ‘an essentially invalid or nugatory [nichtige] act, a violation of free will 10 Punishment cannot be understood as mere coercion: “Punishment is the reestablishing of freedom, and the criminal remains free or is made free as well as the punishment being rationally or freely enacted” (Nat, 480). The heading mentioned in the Encyclopedia—“Right against Wrong” [Das Recht gegen das Unrecht] surely captures the matter better. But “considerable problems of understanding” associated with the Rechtsphilosophie, such as those claimed by Schnädelbach (2000, 298), are not present. The idea of ‘second coercion’ is also missing in Schnädelbach’s presentation.

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as will” (Hegel 1983, 52). The practical-logical core-thesis thus runs: crime contradicts the concept of free will and the concept of free action. In a legal context, wrong represents an unauthorized action—legal guilt—and thus demands a reversal in law, by means of punishment. The infringement of law as “positive external existence” (§ 97) is in itself void [nichtig], and this infringement is itself destroyed [vernichtet] in punishment (negation of the negation). The real evil is the infringement of right, of the universal. The criminal has, “according to the concept, done something against himself, which must be brought to reality” (PEO, 60, emphasis mine). In punishment the infringement of law as law is sublated—“one must focus on justice and reason—that is, freedom must preserve its existence; sensual drives etc. should not be venerated” (§ 99, Z). It can be maintained that a coercion against wrong has legitimacy exclusively in the sense of self-defense, certainly not as coercion and violence against substantial personal rights, such as assaults on integrity or property, upon religious views or artistic creation. The strict right of coercion cannot infringe the moral realm, neither can it distinguish here, e.g., between murder and manslaughter, between deed and action. The necessary transition to the sphere of morality is unmistakably anticipated. It must be possible explicitly to ascribe wrongdoing to the free deed of the actor: injury through free deeds. Free omissions belong explicitly to this class of free deeds too.11 Of course legal transgressions have effects upon a victim, but the law itself remains incapable of injury, the ‘positive’ transgression [Verletzung] is only that of the particular will of the perpetrator. In punishment we see manifesting itself the necessary annulment of illegitimacy [Vernichtung der Nichtigkeit], the sublation of the crime. In this brilliant and topical theory of punishment, so clearly grounded in a theory of action,12 the procedure of the understanding [Verstand ] proves insufficient; the theory essentially approaches the concept [Begriff ]. Punishment can be designated ‘just’ insofar as it constitutes the perpetrator’s will in itself, even as his demand and his right (!) as an accountable subject. In injuring the universal, injuring right as such, the perpetrator has just as much injured himself. Punishment thus constitutes “a right of the criminal himself, is posited in his very action” (§ 100). Punishment must therefore 11  In the Allgemeines Landrecht we find the passage: “Morality of the Crime” (§ 16). “Whoever is incapable of acting freely, with him no crime and therefore no punishment takes place” (Th. II, Tit. XX.; Th. II, Tit. XX, §§ 7 & 8). 12 Cf. Mohr 1997; Pawlik 2004.



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be added on to the criminal act, is already posited in the criminal act, must be conceived as an internal moment of the wrongdoing. Punishment can be taken to be the restoring of equilibrium, something in which the perpetrator himself has an objective interest (which of course would not be admitted or accepted by every law-breaker). In this way punishment can be viewed as a manifestation of the crime, as the ‘other half ’ of the criminal act, as the turning of the crime against the criminal. The Erinyes, Greek Goddesses of Revenge, Hegel notes, symbolize “man’s own deed and the consciousness which ails him, torments him, insofar as he knows this deed as evil” (Hegel PhRel, 127). These Goddesses are “the just and precisely therefore the well-intentioned”—the Eumenides, likewise, are “the criminal’s own deed, which claims him” (Hegel 1999, 4). The implicit reference to the exceeding of this eternal recurrence of revenge in a ‘third’ judgment as well as the explicit reference to the Science of Logic in § 95 and especially to §§ 497–500 of the Encyclopedia requires that we once more bring the underlying logic into view. In relation to law and judgment, it concerns the further-determined structure of judgment.13 3.1 The Logically Grounded Structure in Judgment Unintentional Wrong negative judgment

Deception Crime infinite-positive judgment infinite-negative judgment “the flower is not red” “this flower is this flower” “the flower is not a table” The criminal deed is an evil deed illusion [Schein] in itself law [Recht] as illusion law as void [Nichtiges] (truth of illusion) universality recognized universality as illusion negation of universality

3.2 The Simple-Negative Judgment The simple-negative judgment forms the transition to the infinite judgment.14 Unintentional wrong corresponds to this transitional form, which will be demonstrated with the example of civil litigation—a mere special right finds its negation, while law as such is affirmed. In the judgment ‘this flower is not red’ only the particular color, not color as such is 13 This logical anchoring is analysed by both Mohr (1997, 98 ff.) and Hösle (1987); cf. also Siep (1982, 269). 14 Cf. Enc §§ 173 & 497 and WdL 317–324.

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negated. In relation to a contract it might run: ‘this contract is not legal, it doesn’t conform to the law’, whereby this type of contract doesn’t infringe upon the legality of contracts per se, rather “something is negated only as the property of the other party, it being conceded that it should only be theirs if they had the right to it; and it is only the title of right that is in dispute; the universal sphere of right is therefore recognized and maintained in that negative judgment” (WdL 325). Hegel reveals that such judgments by no means contain truth, although they may be correct within a limited sphere of imagination and thinking. It may be true that I take a theft to be an action, but the theft is, according to Hegel, “an act which does not correspond to the notion of human activity” (Enc § 172, Z).15 3.3 The Infinite Judgment as Identical—Deception In deception, by contrast, the deceiver knows of his wrong, but gives the appearance of right, by striking an agreement which lacks the universality of law. The formal relationship is maintained, the other will is respected, personality recognized, but the body of the law regarding the disposal of a thing is injured [verletzt]. It has its validity within the contract (a voluntary agreement to exchange a thing), but the aspect of universality-initself is missing (§ 88). This wrong of deception is based on the infinite judgment as identical (Enc § 173 & § 498). 3.4 The Infinite-Negative Judgment—Crime Unlike the deceiver, the thief doesn’t give himself the appearance [Schein] of law, he respects neither the will of others nor the universal, respects neither the subjective nor the objective side of legality. In crime, by contrast, we have an infinite-negative judgment in the full sense “a judgment in which even the form of judgment is set aside [. . .] It is supposed to be a judgment, and consequently to contain a relation of subject and predicate; yet at the same time such a relation is supposed not to be in it” (WdL 324). Judgments in the form ‘Spirit is not yellow’ or ‘The rose is not an elephant’ are certainly true, but nonsensical nevertheless. This applies also to the judgment ‘Crime is an action’, because action (understood in its full, emphatic sense) and evil are mutually exclusive. Evil is not a sufficient predicate of free action. By negating the universality

15 Truth consists in the agreement [Übereinstimmung] of the object with itself, i.e. with its concept.



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of deeds, the universal side of the predicate of personhood (Hegel 2000, § 413), crime infringes the free personality of others per se. It destroys too the particular, the subsumption of a thing under my will, as well the universal, legal capacity itself, along with property, or the right to things as a right to bodily integrity, the right to life. In the case of ‘violent injury to life and limb’ my personality also loses its recognition. Therein we see the transition from private law (contract as a means of composition) to criminal law. It is necessary to distinguish whether the existing will in its entire scope (legal capacity as the infinite in the predicate of personhood) is infringed (death, slavery, religious coercion—an interesting list) or only a part thereof (theft). In theft (as distinguished from robbery), the criminal infringes subjective infinity, insofar as he uses personal violence against me (§ 96). Hegel refers in this context to the judgment-structure: “crime may be viewed as an objective instance of the negatively infinite judgment. The person committing a crime [. . .] does not, as in a suit about civil rights, merely negate the particular right of a person to some definite thing, but the right of that person in general”—he has “violated law as such, that is, law in general” (Enc § 173, Z).16 The criminal deprives me of something, negates my particular right (the right of the other) and thereby simultaneously violates right as such.17 He injures, me (the other), himself and the universal (PEO, 60). “Crime is, however, the infinite judgment, which negates not merely the particular right, but the universal sphere as well, negates right as right” (WdL, 325).18 Anticipating the stages of morality and ethical life (violently-evil will, evil action), Hegel attaches the characteristic of nonsensicality to such actions: the infinite judgment “does indeed possess correctness, since it is an actual deed, but it is nonsensical because it is related thoroughly negatively to ethical life which constitutes its universal sphere” (WdL 325).19 It becomes clear how necessary is the step beyond the sphere of abstract right, because implicitly the definition

16 The “negatively infinite judgment in which the genus [Gattung] and not merely the particular determination—here the apparent recognition—is negated [is] the violently malevolent will, which commits a crime” (Enc § 499). 17 “Whoever unlawfully damages someone by a free act, who commits a crime, makes himself not only responsible to the victim but also to the State whose protection he enjoys” (Allgemeines Landrecht, Th. II, Tit. XX, § 7). 18 In the negative-infinite judgment subject and predicate fall wholly apart. 19 “A bad [wrong] action has an existence which isn’t adequate to its concept. If an action is judged to be bad [wrong], still its unreason has an aspect which is in accordance with reason (similar to a badly-built house)” (PEO, 55).

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‘evil’ is already required: “A more realistic example of the infinite judgment is the evil action” (ibid. p. 324 ff.). “The positive moment of the infinite judgment [lies in the] reflection of individuality into itself, whereby it is posited for the first time as a determinate determinateness”, just as the subject “as individual is posited” (ibid. p. 325). The individual, like the universal, is no longer posited as merely immediate, but as reflected into itself. The judgment of existence has been sublated in the judgment of reflection (ibid. p. 325 ff.). * * * Hegel’s recognition-based philosophical theory of wrong [Unrecht] can be seen as something radically new, as a concept that is still highly relevant today. Its intellectual power and fascination derives from its logical grounding—this is an essential reason for its topicality. Literature Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (TWA): Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Hg. v. Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.  The following volumes are cited and abbreviated: —— (Enc) Enzyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (TWA, Bd. 8–10). —— (Nat) Naturrechtsaufsatz (TWA Bd. 2). —— (PEO) Philosophische Enzyklopädie für die Oberklasse (TWA, Bd. 4). —— (PhRel) Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (TWA, Bd. 17) —— (WdL) Wissenschaft der Logik (TWA, Bd. 6). —— otherwise all paragraph numbers (§) refer to Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (TWA, Bd. 7) —— (1974a) Philosophie des Rechts. Nach der Vorlesungsnachschrift K. G. v. Griesheims 1824/25. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzbook. —— (1974b) Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831, Bd. 3. Hg. v. Karl-Heinz Ilting. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974,. —— (1983) Vorlesungen über Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft Heidelberg 1817/18 mit Nachträgen aus der Vorlesung 1818/19. Nachgeschrieben von P. Wannemann. Hg. v. C. Becker et al. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. —— (1999) Philosophie des Rechts: Nachschrift der Vorlesung von 1822/23 von K. L. Heyse. Hg. v. E. Schilbach. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. —— (2000) Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse 1817, Gesammelte Werke Bd. 13. Hg. v. Wolfgang Bonsiepen et al. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Hösle, Vottorio (1987) Das abstrakte Recht. In: Christoph Jermann (Hg.): Anspruch und Leistung von Hegels Rechtsphilosophie. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987, 55–99. —— (1988): Hegels System, Vol. 2: Philosophie der Natur und des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Kant, Immanuel (1902 ff.) Die Metaphysik der Sitten. Berlin: Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Mohr, Georg (1997) Unrecht und Strafe (§§ 82–104). In: L. Siep (Hg.), G. W. F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 96–124.



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Pawlik, Michael (2004) Person, Subjekt, Büger: Zur Legitimation der Strafe. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Pippin, Robert (2007) Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Quante, Michael (1997): Die Persönlichkeit des Willens als Prinzip des abstrakten Rechts. Eine Analyse der begriffslogischen Struktur der §§ 34–40 von Hegel Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. In: L. Siep (Hg.): G. W. F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 73–94. Schnädelbach, Herbert (2000) Hegels Praktische Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Siep, Ludwig (1982) Intersubjektivität, Recht und Staat in Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. In: Dieter Henrich & Rolf Peter Horstmann (Hg.): Hegels Philosophie des Rechts. Die Theorie der Rechtsformen und ihre Logik. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 255–276. —— (1992) Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. —— (2005) G. W. F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Chapter Fourteen

The Dialectic of Normative Attitudes in Hegel’s Lordship and Bondage Sasa Josifovic 1. Outline of the Reception History Hegel spricht hier daher keineswegs über soziale Verhältnisse zwischen einem Herren als Arbeitgeber und einem Knecht als Arbeitnehmer, wie die zwar einfallsreiche, aber eben thematisch ganz großzügige, in diesem Sinn spekulative Lektüre von Marx über Lukács [. . .] über Kojève bis zu Axel Honneths [. . .] Kampf um Anerkennung im Grunde behauptet, und wie sie leider üblich geworden ist. (Stekeler-Weithofer 2004, 60)

Hegel’s famous chapter Lordship and Bondage has advanced to one of the most intensively discussed passages in the reception history of the Phenomenology of Spirit,1 both, in its original version from 1806/07 as well as the compact and modified version in the Encyclopedia. It inspired famous interpreters such as Lukács (Lukács 1938/1948) and Kojève (Kojève 1947), or later Siep (Siep 1979 and 2000) and Honneth to develop sophisticated theories of recognition, human interaction, and the “moral grammar of social conflicts” (Honneth 1998). It also provided the groundwork for influential theories of social and psychological2 aspects of mutual recognition, including elaborate theories of human desire and its importance for the development of human self-consciousness and personal identity.3 In the reverberation of Siep’s interpretation, the relation of the lord and bondsman has also been interpreted against the background of the natural law, while Lukács and Kojève initiated a Marxist tradition that focused on the reciprocal influence and co-constitution of class-identity and ­personal

1  I use Miller’s translation but I refer only to the original text. 2 Inspired by Kojève’s reading, especially Lacanian scholars including Zizek contributed to a psychoanalytic theory of recognition, most famously represented by Lacan’s “mirror stage”. 3 In the first place: Kojève, Lacan, and Zizek.

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identity, desire and the system of needs, and, of course, the relation of desire/needs and personal identity. Theunissen (Theunissen 1982) even argues that in Hegel’s concept of recognition, specifically in the ­Philosophy of Right, we find the prefiguration of Marx’s claim that the freedom of an individual is not limited by the freedom of the other individual in an interpersonal encounter: moreover, the encounter represents the offspring of an authentically human sort of freedom and practice. Edith Düsing (Düsing 1986 and 1990) identifies a specific difference between Fichte’s concept of mutual recognition and Hegel’s theory of recognition which she believes to be substantially rooted in spirit. She also emphasizes the fact that the whole sphere of interpersonal recognition represents only a transitory moment and that Hegel’s theory advances in favor of the recognition between the individual subject and the absolute spirit. But after all, most interpreters agree on the substantial importance of the mutual interpersonal recognition for the constitution of self-consciousness and spirit in Hegel’s philosophy. Even 200 years after the initial publication of the thematic passages we find substantial controversy concerning the relation of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in Hegel’s philosophy. Frank (Frank 1991, 31) argues that Hegel’s intellectual movement advances in favor of intersubjectivity. He even finds fault with Hegel’s “dissolution” of subjectivity in intersubjectivity, while Schulz (Schulz 1984) argues that Hegel’s consideration of intersubjectivity within the history of self-consciousness represents a merely transitory moment. Similarly, Habermas (Habermas 1968) criticizes that Hegel had given up the intersubjective approach which he had advocated in Jena and reduced it to a monological concept of spirit. Against this background and the strong consensus concerning the intersubjective importance of Hegel’s theory of recognition we notice a certain surprise reading Stekeler-Weithofer’s initially quoted statement that, at least in regard to Lordship and Bondage, this whole tradition of Hegel studies might be classified as “fancy (einfallsreich)” but remains rather “generous (großzügig)” in regard to the primary subject of the thematic chapter, and that Hegel “does not at all speak of social relations between a lord as employer and a bondsman as employee” in this passage. And what is even more surprising about his approach is not the provocation of a long and strong tradition but the fact that there is substantial truth in his interpretation. Inspired by Hubig (Hubig 1985) and Luckner (Luckner 1994) as well as McDowell, he argues that “Lordship and Bondage” represents an allegory on the interplay between the mind and



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body4 combined with the corresponding dialectic of self-determination and self-necessitation. He takes the relevant aspects of modern speechact-theory and theory of action into account and argues that the primary mode of recognition thematic in Lordship and Bondage concerns the practice of self-constitution. The Mind, the lord, raises the claim to determine the body but, according to Stekeler-Weithofer, it is the body, the bondsman, who, after all, realizes the plan. Thereby the body practically recognizes the plan which would remain a mere aim (Absicht) if it were not executed by the body. Stekeler-Weithofer’s most interesting point concerning recognition consists of the emphasis of the relevance of practice. Recognition is not only a verbal commitment but the concrete act that realizes an aim, plan, end, etc., and thereby contributes to the concrete practice of self-determination. Similarly, Cobben (Cobben 2009, cf. Cobben 2013) argues that the thematic chapter represents the interplay of the pure self and its living body or the real self. According to his interpretation, which I strongly support, the famous life-and-death-struggle primarily represents the attempt of the pure self to prove its independence from life. But the experience of the fear of death transforms its concept of pureness as well as its concept of life and the relation between its pureness and life, which leads to a higher form of intra-subjective recognition and evolution of self-consciousness. 2. The Systematic Structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit There is a specific set of Hegelian concepts that determines the structure of the Phenomenology. First of all, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is an exposition of “the appearance of knowledge”. In contrast to the Science of Logic, where knowledge is presented in the “pure mode of thinking”, the Phenomenology exposes it in the mode of difference between the subject and object as well as in a specific distance to the authentic mode of spirit, the pure thinking. It provides a “complete” (GW 9, 56) determination of the cognitive, normative and volitional structure of subjectivity, systematically organized as a series of cognitive faculties with gradually increasing achievement potentials and a gradual approximation to the 4 “Wie kann ich meiner selbst bewußt sein? Was ist das für eine Beziehung zwischen mir und mir, meinem Selbstbewusstsein und meinem Bewusstsein oder auch meinem ganzen Ich oder Selbst und meinem Leib?” (Stekeler-Weithofer 2004, 60)

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authentic performance of the absolute spirit. But, however, it consists of a series of cognitive faculties that are, without exemption, deficient in specific aspects and degrees. The complete outline of the Phenomenology of Spirit provides the complete insight into the structural determination of Subjectivity, the specific relations between the subject and object of cognition in every mode of thinking, the involved faculties, their specific cognitive claims, performances and achievement potentials as well as their deficits. Hegel argues that the ‘new spirit’ is “the whole which, having traversed its content in time and space5 [Hegel actually speaks of expansion instead of time and space],6 has returned into itself, and is the resultant simple notion of the whole” (GW 9, 15). Thus the new spirit, the concept of spirit that Hegel advocates, represents the result of a specific intellectual movement which is from one point of view a gradual progress of “education” or “path of the natural consciousness which presses forward to true knowledge” (GW 9, 55) and from the other, opposite point of view the return from the maximal expansion of spirit into its authentic and substantial mode—into itself. In retrospect, from the point of view of the complete Phenomenology, the beginning of the “series of configurations which consciousness goes through along this road” (GW 9, 56), the sense certainty, represents the maximal “expansion” of spirit, and every following moment represents a gradual return into itself. This whole “history of the education of consciousness itself to the standpoint of science” (GW 9, 56) represents a masterpiece of the idealistic “history of self-consciousness”, (Düsing 1993) a concept that was originally introduced by Fichte (1799)7 and Schelling (1800)8 and received its most impressive representation in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Basically, the idealistic “history of self-consciousness” is a systematic exposition of the human cognitive faculties organized in a very specific way. Inspired by de Condillac’s famous thought experiment of an

5 Miller’s translation is irritating at this point because it eliminates the most essential metaphor “expansion”. I must therefore refer to Hegel’s original text: “Er [der neue Geist] ist das aus der Sukzession wie aus seiner Ausdehnung in sich zurückgegangene Ganze, der gewordene einfache Begriff desselben” (GW 9, 15). 6 Hegel speaks of the “succession” as a form of the “expansion” of the spirit. 7 Claesges argues that Fichte presents the first history of self-consciousness in his Foundations of the Science of Knowledge from 1794. Cf. Claesges 1981 and Claesges 1974. 8 Düsing argues that Schelling did not have any knowledge of Fichte’s concept as he authored his “System of Transcendental Idealism”. I provided some evidence in support of this standpoint in: Josifovic 2008, 28.



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inanimate, insentient being (a statue) that acquires the senses one after another and thus gradually awakes to sentient life (de Condillac 1754) the German Idealists develop the concept of a systematic exposition of the human cognitive faculties in the form of a successive acquisition of these faculties. Not unlike de Condillac’s statue, the natural consciousness goes through a series of educational levels thus pressing forward to its actual substance, or, in other words, the actual substance of knowledge. Hegel’s history of the education of consciousness represents a specific form of the history of self-consciousness that emphasizes the return from the appearance of knowledge to the substance of spirit. But in general, the history of self-consciousness points out the successive acquisition of cognitive capacities. In all types of the idealistic history of self-consciousness, Fichte’s, Schelling’s, and Hegel’s, the whole process of the education of the natural consciousness is monitored by a specific instance to which in Düsings words we refer as “reflecting consciousness”.9 Thus the interpretation of the history of self-consciousness in general and the Phenomenology of Spirit in particular requires the awareness for the point of view from which a particular passage argues. On every level of the education of the natural consciousness we must distinguish the passages that expose the given state of education or the current process of its acquisition (the actual experience of education) from the passages that reflect upon the current state from the point of view of true science. Thus Hegel distinguishes between the way things appear for the natural consciousness, or “for itself (für es)” and “in itself (an sich)”. On every specific level of education the natural consciousness remains unable to perceive the content as it is given to us, the reflecting consciousness. The expressions “for us” and “in itself ” (“für uns” and “ansich” or “an sich”) normally refer to the same point of view while “for itself ” refers to the given state of the experience of education. If, for example, Hegel states that “we already have before us [Hegel: “für uns”] the notion of spirit”10 he clearly refers to the reflecting consciousness and not the natural consciousness. The latter will have to make the necessary experience, to acquire the necessary competence, before it becomes able to understand what it unknowingly encountered 9 I adapted this expression from Schelling (Josifovic 2008, 28) and Düsing who distinguishes between “reflektierendes Bewusstsein” and “natürliches Bewusstsein” and emphasizes that these two elements determine the fundamental structure of the idealistic history of self-consciousness. (Düsing 1993). 10 “Hiermit ist schon der Begriff des Geistes für uns vorhanden.” (GW 9, 108).

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on this level of ­education. But after all, the education of the natural consciousness to the standpoint of science represents a gradual acquisition of the faculties that are necessary in order to make the conscious experience of specific objects of cognition. On the educational level that is relevant for us reading the chapter on self-consciousness and pressing forward to concrete interpersonal recognition, the capacity that the natural consciousness needs to acquire consists of the ability to unify self-consciousness and alterity, identity and non-identity, “I” and “non-I” to the concept of “another I”, the “alter ego”.11 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit represents a specific and unique form of the history of self-consciousness and history of the education of consciousness to the standpoint of science because it is structurally determined according to the idea of self-performing skepticism (sich vollbringender Skeptizismus) (GW 9, 56).12 In contrast to the classical, especially Pyrrhonian skepticism which, according to Hegel, “only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results” Hegel’s skepticism is based upon the principle of a “determinate nothingness, one which has a content” and to which we refer by the concept of “determinate negation” (GW 9, 57). On every particular level of education, the natural consciousness undergoes a skeptical examination of its ability to assert its cognitive claim by its performance. The relation between the cognitive claim that it raises and the cognitive performance by which it attempts to assert it represents the “criterion (Maßstab)” (GW 9, 58 ff.) of this specific form of the self-performing skepticism. This systematic framework provides the background for the evolution of self-consciousness as presented in the relevant chapter including the passage on Lordship and Bondage, and against this background we are justified to argue that this chapter presents a process of gradual acquisition of all faculties and competences that are necessary for the performance of a cognitive act qualified as self-consciousness, or, in the spirit of de Condillac’s thought experiment: It presents the succession of faculties and competences that an imaginary statue must acquire in order to be able to 11  I presented a detailed analysis of the duplication of self-consciousness and the identity of self-consciousness in such duplication in: Josifovic. 2008, 98 ff. and Josifovic 2009, 122 ff. 12 Miller uses the expression “thoroughgoing skepticism” to translate “sich vollbringender Skeptizismus”, but I do not know what to think of this translation. Therefore I prefer the reference to the original concept.



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perform self-consciousness and furthermore to recognize other beings as intentional, self-conscious agents. Thus the analysis and discussion of the intra-subjective sphere of the genesis of self-consciousness must always precede the discussion of the intersubjective, social relations—and the allegedly unspectacular, simple encounter of two individuals along with the emerging process of recognition must not be imported as a tacit precondition of Hegel’s theory. Moreover, Hegel’s substantial contribution to the theory of recognition consists particularly of the systematic exposure of the involved cognitive faculties and competences. And from this point of view I will argue in favor of an intra-subjective interpretation of the dialectic of recognition as a precondition13 of the intersubjective interaction of empirical individuals. The concept of recognition that Hegel introduces in the chapter on self-consciousness refers primarily to the first-personal self-reference within specific acts of self-cognition and self-constitution. It is determined by the supersession of the fundamental structure of consciousness in self-consciousness. 3. The Evolution of Self-Consciousness and the Emergence of Intra-Subjective Recognition In contrast to consciousness to which an object is given as something other than the subject, self-consciousness is fundamentally determined by (specific forms of ) the identity of subject and object: The subject is now the object of its own cognition or self-constitution.14 Hegel outlines this structural difference at the beginning of the thematic chapter. But from the point of view of the natural consciousness the experience of this difference and moreover the ability to perform in a way that justifies the new cognitive claim has yet to be made. On the beginning of its evolution, the newly constituted faculty of self-consciousness consists only of the ability to abstract from the content of consciousness (the object of cognition) 13 “Precondition” in the systematic sense of the history of the education of consciousness to the standpoint of science. 14 This chapter actually represents the transition from mere cognition, which is typical for consciousness, to a series of specific types of self-consciousness of which some are predominantly determined by aspects of self-cognition and some, more advanced, by self-constitution. There is a broad agreement within the discourse community on the fact that this chapter represents the offspring of the practical sphere of self-constitution and the transition from a cognition determined by receptivity to cognition and constitution determined by spontaneity.

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and generate the certainty of its own identity. Thus it represents only the “return from otherness” and a “motionless tautology of: ‘I am I’ ” (GW 9, 104) which has lost the difference, the “otherness” in form of objectivity. This otherness is only negated here, neither preserved nor elevated, and “since for it the difference does not have the form of being” the newly constituted cognitive performance “is not self-consciousness”. (cf. Josifovic 2009, 110) The lack of otherness represents the fundamental deficit of this first type of self-certainty, and the intellectual movement, driven by the determinate negation, advances to a performance that countervails this deficit and generates a new form of self-certainty based upon desire. (Josifovic 2009, 112) It further proceeds to individuality, (Josifovic 2009, 116) the pure self (Josifovic 2009, 118 ff.), and, only for us, to genus (Gattung). (Josifovic 2009, 121 f.) This whole evolution is complete before the outline of the unity of self-consciousness in its duplication (Josifovic 2009, 125 ff.) and finally Lordship and Bondage. This sequence of specific types of self-certainty and self-consciousness represents the reason why I initially mentioned that Hegel outlines specific forms of identity in his theory of self-consciousness.15 To be more precise: Hegel begins this chapter with a structural description of self-consciousness in general: But now there has arisen what did not emerge in these previous relationships, viz. a certainty which is identical with its truth; for the certainty is to itself its own object, and consciousness it to itself its truth. In this there is indeed an otherness; that is to say, consciousness makes a distinction, but one which at the same time is for consciousness not a distinction (GW 9, 103).

The sublation16 of consciousness within self-consciousness consists of a specific kind of negation (negare), preservation (conservare), and elevation (elevare) of its fundamental structure. In reference to Reinhold’s so called “sentence of consciousness (Satz des Bewusstseins)”17 the German Idealists agree on a fundamental structure of consciousness (cf. Quante 2009, 96)

15 The exposition of this internal structure and its fundamental logic represents my major interest in my contributions from 2008 and 2009. 16 Hegel’s concept “Aufhebung”, of which I am not sure whether to translate it as “sublation” or “supersession”, implies the triad: negation, preservation and elevation (negare, conservare, elevare). 17 “Im Bewusstsein wird die Vorstellung durch das Subjekt vom Subjekt und Objekt unterschieden und auf beide bezogen”, in: Reinhold 1790, § 1.



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which consists of the subject, object, and representation. According to this structure, the subject distinguishes between itself and the object in every act of conscious cognition. It furthermore distinguishes between itself and the representation as well as the representation and the object, and it relates to both (itself and the object) by means of the representation. Thus a conscious act of any arbitrary object presupposes the consciousness of the difference between the performing subject, the representation, and the object combined with the consciousness that the representation relates to both. If self-consciousness raises the claim to supersede the fundamental structure of consciousness, it must first perform according to this fundamental structure. It must distinguish between itself as subject that performs the cognitive act, itself as object of its own cognition and the representation of itself by the means of which it refers to both. Every act of conscious awareness of oneself consists of three elements of which, in one sense, none is identical to the other two and, in another sense, all three refer to one and the same entity. Thus identity and difference become constitutive elements of self-consciousness as result of the supersession of the inherent structure of consciousness. The specific meanings of identity and difference in use are clearly defined. The performing subject has a representation of itself. It recognizes this representation to a certain extent as a legitimate expression or manifestation of itself. But at the same time it is aware of the fact that this particular representation does not embrace its total nature. Consequently, it refuses to identify fully with the given representation or, in other words, to recognize it as a fully adequate representation of itself.18 This is the broader context in which Hegel makes the ascertainment that self-consciousness “makes a distinction, but one which at the same time is for consciousness not a distinction” (GW 9, 103). But his own theory of the ideal evolution of self-consciousness in the context of the history of education is much more sophisticated because it exposes the dynamics of the detailed evolution and interaction of specific normative attitudes (elements of recognition) by the means of which the natural consciousness (de Condillac’s imaginary statue) acquires the capacity to perform the whole spectrum of subject-object-relations within self-consciousness.

18 Actually, in case of the self-referential consciousness the idealists tend to simplify the fundamental structure of consciousness and distinguish only between the subject and object. But what has been said above counts for this simplified version without as well.

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Because of the fact that the Phenomenology of Spirit is organized according to the principle of self-performing skepticism driven by the determinate negation, we can always identify the specific cognitive claim, the performance that is supposed to justify this claim and the deficit (Mangel) that emerges from this relation and provides the ground for the manifestation of the following cognitive claim, performance, deficit etc. Thus we reconstruct the dynamics of the evolution of self-consciousness in the chapter on self-certainty as follows: Self-consciousness first negates the object of consciousness and generates the “motionless tautology of: ‘I am I’ ”. It preserves it in the desirebased self-certainty and elevates it to a higher level in individuality. It negates the dependence on life which is constitutive for individuality as the natural consciousness advances to the educational level of the pure self which it strives to confirm in the life-and-death-struggle. What seeks to survive here is the pure self—and, ironically, it seeks its survival in the independence from “life”:19 This pure abstraction of self-consciousness consists of showing itself as the pure negation of its objective mode, or in showing that it is not attached to any specific existence, not to the individuality common to existence as such, that it is not attached to life (GW 9, 111).

The deficit (Mangel) of this claim consists of the fact that it is only an expression of abstract negation, not the negation coming from consciousness, which supersedes in such a way as to preserve and maintain what is superseded, and consequently survives its own supersession (GW 9, 112).

Not before the encounter of the fear of death20 will the natural consciousness make the experience that is essential for the further process of education: “In this experience, self-consciousness learns that life is as essential

19 The concept of “life” represents the totality of contents that an individualized selfconsciousness generates in the whole series of acts of desire. Thus it represents the totality of a specific form of content-determination. Consequently, a type of self-consciousness that seeks independence from “life” must accept the loss of concrete determination—and it will end up as lifeless and boring stoicism. 20 Cobben emphasizes the importance of the fear of death for the evolution of the pure self. He demonstrates the fundamental difference between the pure self that enters the life-and-death-struggle and the pure self that emerges from the productive encounter of the fear of death. According to his interpretation, the latter, in contrast to the former, is able “to ‘recognize’ itself in its body” (Cobben 2013, 162) and it acquires this ability by the encounter of the fear of death, the “absolute lord”.



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to it as pure self-consciousness” (GW 9, 112). These two elements of selfconsciousness, “purity” and “life”, determine the intra-subjective dialectic of recognition. They are both of substantial importance for the evolution of self-consciousness, but they articulate two opposite normative attitudes: on one hand autonomy and on the other hand the rational capacity to respond to the normative significance of the natural world, social world or autonomously generated norms and reasons: independence and dependence. Thus, similar to Stekeler-Weithofer and Cobben, I interpret the interplay of the lord and bondsman primarily as an allegory on the dialectic of these two elementary normative attitudes. 4. The Dialectic of Normative Attitudes: Independence and Dependence The pure self represents the given standpoint of the education of the natural consciousness at the beginning of Hegel’s exposition of the duplication of self-consciousness (GW 9, 109), the unity of itself within this duplication (cf. Josifovic 2009, 122 ff.), the struggle to manifest the pure self and prove its alleged independence from life (GW 9, 111), the encounter of its pure being-for-itself (“reines Fürsichsein”) in the face of the fear of death (GW 9, 114 f.) and the further progress of recognition and education in Reason and Spirit. As we have noticed, the pure self refuses to accept any kind of dependence. Thus its endeavor to “manifest what it is in itself ”,21 as Hegel formulates in the Encyclopedia, is governed by the ideal of the practical manifestation of pure independence. On the most elementary level, the independence that it strives to manifest concerns the relation of the subject of self-consciousness to the contents that determine its concrete empirical appearance—the contents or objects of consciousness. These contents are, on the most elementary level, representations. But every empirical determination is, from the point of view of the pure self, a contamination of its pureness. It inevitably embraces a specific form of irreducible otherness22 and every kind of 21  Hegel 1830, § 425: “das zu setzen, was es an sich ist”. 22 Jaspers presents an impressive exposition of such “aspects of the self ” in his chapter on the self in “Existenzerhellung” combined with the uneasiness that the subject experiences in the encounter with every particular aspect. He begins with the Kantian “I in itself (Ich überhaupt)” and advances to the physical appearance, the body, the social self, the self-constituted by our achievements, self-reflection etc. In regard to every aspect, he demonstrates our ability to identify with it, but at the same time we feel that we are more than

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otherness is a kind of non-I (nicht-Ich). Any arbitrary empirical content of determination or self-determination contains something inadequate from the point of view of the pure self, and this inadequacy is irritating. Thus, in Cobben’s words, the dialectic of normative attitudes concerns the relation between the “pure” and the “real” self (Cobben 2013, 161) and reflects the relation between the pure and empirical self in the Kantian sense. The concept “empirical apperception” refers to a self-reflexive act of cognition that embraces a concrete, empirical act of consciousness, to which a specific content (representation) is given by receptivity. This content determines the empirical act of consciousness as well as the empirical act of self-reference. In another empirical instant the same subject is confronted with another content of consciousness and, in reflection upon this particular cognitive act, it generates another empirical apperception. But on a higher level, the subject is able to reflect upon the series of given empirical apperceptions and distinguish between its pure nature and an arbitrary empirical representation. It claims its own identity independently from the series of arbitrary contents of consciousness. And this is the specific sense in which Kant defines the pure apperception: “I call it the pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from the empirical one” (Kant 1787, 132). Not unlike Kant’s pure apperception, Hegel’s pure self claims independence from particular empirical representations as well as the embodiment of their totality, namely “life”. But since life is as essential to self-consciousness as its pureness (GW 9, 112), the further process of the education of the natural consciousness must advance in form of a dialectical interplay of these two elements and not exclusively as a manifestation of the one-sidedly raised claim. The relevance of the dialectic of independence and dependence is indicated in the title of this particular subchapter: “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage”. Not only in the title but also in the current of the history of self-consciousness, the experience of these two elementary normative attitudes of self-cognition and self-constitution precedes the social implications and associations of lordship and bondage. Actually: independence and dependence represent the fundamental normative attitudes that determine all lordship-bondage-relations, or, in other words: De Condillac’s imaginary statue must remain unable to perform

this particular aspect. I identify with my body to a certain extent but I claim to be more than my body. The same is the case with my social roles, my achievements etc.



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even the most elementary act of recognition as long as it has not acquired the capacity to take the mentioned normative attitudes. Not before it has acquired the full competence to master the complex dialectic of independence and dependence will it become able to perform on higher levels of interpersonal recognition. The only question that remains when we contrast Stekeler’s and Cobben’s approach to Honneth’s, Siep’s or Quante’s is: Will it acquire these competences independently or in dependence from concrete, empirical social interaction. There are references in the primary text that can be interpreted in support of each of these standpoints.23 But however we answer this particular question: my interpretation remains untouched, because the claim that “independence and dependence” represent a major concern of a subchapter entitled “Independence and Dependence . . .” does not require any sophisticated justification. The whole figure of duplication and unity of self-consciousness (GW 9, 109 f.) consists of clearly distinguished elements. The pure self represents the standpoint of education as the natural consciousness begins to experience the “duplication” of self-consciousness and enters the process of recognition. It claims pure independence from “life”. Thus it enters the lifeand-death-struggle from which a new elementary normative attitude of self-consciousness emerges—dependence. As a result of the life-and-deathstruggle and the experience of the fear of death, the natural consciousness generates a twofold representation in form of lordship (independence) and bondage (dependence). These two roles represent two elementary normative attitudes as they specifically emerge from the life-and-death-struggle, namely as separately represented by individual agents. But there is a broad consensus within the discourse community that the process of the education of natural consciousness to the standpoint of science includes both positions as well as their interaction. Not only the bondsman, but

23 Quante (2009), for example, emphasizes the formula: “But the action of the one has itself the double significance of being both its own action and the action of the other as well. For the other is equally independent and self-contained, and there is nothing in it of which it is not itself the origin” (GW 9, 110). From an intra-subjective point of view this figure could refer to the otherness of self-representation, but from an inter-subjective point of view . . . However: This passage addresses the reflecting consciousness only and it does not provide any evidence for the theory that interpersonal recognition precedes the acquisition of the ability to experience independence and dependence. But if we take the passage on labor and especially the phrase “service and obedience (Zucht und Gehorsam)” (GW 9, 115) into account, we find some evidence for an intersubjective interpretation. The only question remains: Does this passage refer to the current state of education or does it represent a reflection from the point of view of the philosophizing spectator? I am not sure.

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also the lord represents a substantial level of the education of the natural consciousness determined by the successful manifestation of a deficient cognitive claim.24 In the meanwhile, the experience of the fear of death transforms the relation of the pure self to its body (cf. Cobben 2013, 162) and, what is more substantial: it generates a new normative attitude that enables the self to incorporate dependence into the performance of self-cognition and self-manifestation. The pure self was initially unable to do this. A more profound reading of Lordship and Bondage uncovers an even more sophisticated dialectic of independence and dependence between the lord and the bondsman, because it turns out that on a subtle level of interpretation the lord who has, from one point of view, successfully enforced the claim of pure independence from life is dependent from the bondsman, while the bondsman happens to be more independent than initially believed. And in regard to the relation between the lord and the object of desire, we notice that the lord has succeeded in overcoming the resistance of objectivity but he has not at all become independent from the necessitation that desire imposes upon his volition. Thus, in regard to independence and dependence, we have got the following situations:25 1. The pure self before the life-and-death-struggle 2. The ostensible representation of independence incorporated by the lord 3. The ostensible representation of dependence incorporated by the bondsman 4. The subtle representation of dependence incorporated by the lord 5. The subtle representation of independence incorporated by the bondsman Furthermore the dialectic of normative attitudes includes a sophisticated spectrum of interactions between: 6. The ostensible independence of the lord and the ostensible dependence of the bondsman

24 Cf. reference to GW 9, 111, above. 25 I focus only on the spectrum of relations between the specified roles of the lord and bondsman. But there is also a spectrum of normative relations between the self and life/ nature. I omit this aspect, not because it is irrelevant but only in order to keep things as simple as possible.



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7. The subtle independence of the bondsman and the subtle dependence of the lord 8. The ostensible independence of the lord and his subtle dependence from the bondsman 9. The ostensible dependence of the bondsman and his subtle independence from the lord 10. The internal dynamics of ostensible independence and subtle dependence of the lord 11. The internal dynamics of ostensible dependence and subtle independence of the bondsman The difference between the ostensible and subtle forms of every normative attitude reflects the two elementary standpoints of the history of self-consciousness; and the emerging opposition between the way things appear for the natural consciousness and the way they are for us, the philosophizing spectators, determines the further progress of the education of natural consciousness. The progress of recognition consists of the experience of the ostensible and subtle implications of normativity made by the natural consciousness. In every specified role, it first makes the ostensible experience and advances to the experience of the subtle otherness by recognition.26 Thus, as a totality, the natural consciousness gradually evolves to the standpoint of Spirit and this evolution takes place in form of a successive improvement of the cognitive, normative, and volitional performance. 5. Desire and Enjoyment: Chains and Diseases of the Feudal Mind A closer look at the relations between the self and “life” or nature, provides us with some additional, more sophisticated material for the interpretation of the role that the lord plays in this allegory. According to Hegel’s narrative, the lord has allegedly proven his independence from life in the life-and-death-struggle and he has become the master of the bondsman who still depends on life. He must maintain the claim to be independent 26 As a reference for the contrast between the way things appear in the first encounter and the way they become in the current of recognition compare: “But just as lordship showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into a truly independent consciousness” (GW 9, 14).

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from the bondsman because his power over him is based upon the maintenance of eminent dread and the avowal of dependence would eliminate this dread. After all, his concept of normativity consists primarily of the enforcement of power. But in regard to the major interest concerning the evolution of selfconsciousness, not only the relation between the lord and the bondsman but also the relation between the lord and life is of substantial relevance. And ironically, we notice that the lord who claims full independence from life—and even believes to have proven this independence –, is fully determined by desire and enjoyment (Genuss) (GW 9, 113). And here we find one of these implications that make Hegel such a powerful philosopher: In regard to the underlying concept of normativity we already noticed that the lord represents the claim of independence. (Sentence 2) Furthermore we know that he depends on the bondsman’s labor and therefore he is not as independent as he believes. (Sentence 4) But the determination by desire and enjoyment brings the most fundamental aspect of his dependence to light: The lord generates the contents of his volition in response to natural inclinations. He is dependent from life. Furthermore, we do not find any evidence in this allegory that the lord is capable of incorporating the commitment to principles into his concept of independence. But principles are the most elementary constituents of the concept of autonomy in the Classical German Philosophy. Thus e.g. Korsgaard states: According to the Kantian conception, to be rational just is to be autonomous. That is: to be governed by reason, and to govern yourself, are one and the same thing. The principles of practical reason are constitutive of autonomous action: they do not represent external restrictions on our actions, whose power to motivate us is therefore inexplicable, but instead describe the procedures involved in autonomous willing. But they also function as normative or guiding principles, because in following these procedures we are guiding ourselves (Korsgaard 2008, 31).

Since the lord’s concept of self-determination does not include the competence to generate principles, his practice of alleged self-determination is in fact external determination. He does not exercise volitional selfdetermination but mere volatile, arbitrary conduct. And from the point of view of the theory of freedom in Classical German Philosophy, this is scarcely more than arbitrium brutum (Cf. Kant 1787, 562, 830). Therewith we notice a twofold substantial deficit of the concept of independence represented by the lord in regard to the standards of Classical German Philosophy. On one hand, independence refers to the human



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faculty of free choice to which we classically refer by the concept liberum arbitrium or arbitrium liberum and which consists of the ability to overcome given natural inclinations (stimuli) by the force of reason (principles, reasons, etc.). Secondly, independence refers to the Kantian concept of autonomy: the ability to determine a specific kind of intelligible normativity which consists of principles. The lord fails to prove independence in both ways: he is neither independent from the necessitation that the force of desire imposes upon his conduct, nor does he prove the ability to determine reason-based principles that make rational choices possible. On the basis of what does the lord make his choices? According to the narrative, he is driven by desire and finds his satisfaction in the mere enjoyment of the fruits of the bondsman’s labor. Thus the natural consciousness must proceed in its education and develop a more substantial concept of independence before it becomes able to justify the claim which the lord believes to have justified. And in regard to the occasionally mentioned association of the lord to the Kantian concept of autonomy, we conclude that the lord does not at all represent the Kantian standpoint of autonomy in Hegel’s Phenomenology: He represents the standpoint that is naively conceived of as autonomy but deficient in regard to the underlying concept of independence. 6. Bondage: The “Truth of the Independent Consciousness” The truth of the independent consciousness is accordingly the [. . .] consciousness of the bondsman. [. . .] But just as lordship showed that its essential nature is the reverse of what it wants to be, so too servitude in its consummation will really turn into the opposite of what it immediately is; as a consciousness forced back into itself, it will withdraw into itself and be transformed into a truly independent consciousness (GW 9, 114).

The continuous experience of the fear of death in combination with the “discipline of service and obedience” (GW 9, 115) contributes to a substantial educational progress of the natural consciousness incorporated by the bondsman. The practice of labor as a form of “desire held in check” and “fleetingness staved off ”27 (GW 9, 115) enables the natural consciousness to attain the necessary distance from the necessitating force of inclination and desire and to prove his mastery over nature. What the lord

27 “Gehemmte Begierde, aufgehaltenes Verschwinden”.

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believes to have achieved in form of the abstract negation, the bondsman practically achieves in form of labor—he becomes independent from the natural determination by the force of desire and the appetite for enjoyment. His labor does not serve to satisfy his desire but another person’s desire. He therewith attends the subtle form of independence mentioned in Sentence 5. It is not a form of social independence from the lord but a more substantial form of independence from the determination by the natural force of desire. Thus the bondsman qualifies for the specifically human kind of freedom, liberum arbitrium: The ability to determine one’s own volition and actions independently from the necessitating power of nature. This experience of freedom will evolve to higher levels through Stoicism, Reason and Spirit with all corresponding benefits and crises. Conclusion The lord, who ostensibly believes to be independent from nature (Sentence 2), is in truth necessitated by the natural force of desire and enjoyment (Sentence 5). The bondsman, who ostensibly appeared to be dependent from the lord (3) proves to be independent (6) from nature. And since the whole dialectic of normative attitudes primarily concerns the relation between the pure self and life, we conclude that the whole interplay of Lordship and Bondage provides the natural consciousness with the necessary experience to develop an appropriate concept of freedom and self-determination and engage into its practical manifestation. As a consequence of the fear of death and labor, the natural consciousness has entered the realm of the noumenal world. Consequently, it will make the experience of a strictly noumenal kind of freedom on the next level of education—Stoicism. In de Condillac’s words: The statue has got a deficient concept of freedom/independence as the natural consciousness goes into the lifeand-death-struggle. It maintains this concept unless it experiences the fear of death and advances to a more substantial concept of freedom/ independence, which it seeks to confirm in the further progress of the education of the natural consciousness to the standpoint of science. In sum, Hegel’s theory of recognition represents a substantial contribution to the philosophical understanding of social interactions and the phenomena that emerge from these. His whole theory of Objective Spirit represents a masterpiece of social philosophy. But according to the



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specific structure of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the way the narrative is organized, there is a specific order of the appearance of topics. The history of the education of the natural consciousness to the standpoint of science is inspired by de Condillac’s famous thought experiment and thus it exposes the cognitive, normative, and volitional structure of subjectivity in form of an imaginary process of an imaginary successive acquisition of these faculties and competences. From this point of view, the experience of the ability to take the most elementary normative attitudes, such as independence and dependence or enforcement of and response to power, precedes the concrete performance of such highly sophisticated intersubjective relations as exposed in the chapter on Spirit. Literature Claesges, Ulrich (1981): Darstellung des erscheinenden Wissens. Systematische Einleitung in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 21. —— (1974): Geschichte des Selbstbewußtseins. Der Ursprung des spekulativen Problems in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre von 1794/95. Den Haag. Cobben, Paul (2009): The Nature of the Self. Recognition in the Form of Right and Morality. Berlin/New York. —— (2013): Recognition as Unity between Theoretical and Practical Reason. In: Guo Yi, S. Josifovic, A. Lätzer-Lasar (eds.): Metaphysical Foundations of Knowledge and Ethics in Chinese and European Philosophy. München. Düsing, Edith (1986): Intersubjektivität und Selbstbewußtsein. Behavioristische, phänomenologische und idealistische Begründungstheorien bei Mead, Schütz, Fichte und Hegel. Köln. —— (1990): Genesis des Selbstbewußtseins durch Anerkennung und Liebe. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Theorie der konkreten Subjektivität. In: L. Eley (Hrsg.): Hegels Theorie des subjektiven Geistes in der “Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse”. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 244–279. Düsing, Klaus (1993): Hegels “Phänomenologie” und die idealistische Geschichte des Selbstbewusstseins. In: Hegel-Studien 28, 103–126. Frank, Manfred (1991): Selbstbewußtsein und Selbsterkenntnis. Stuttgart. Habermas, Jürgen (1968): Arbeit und Interaktion. In: Habermas: Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’. Frankfurt, 9–47. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (GW 9): Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hg. von W. Bonsiepen und R. Heede. In: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 9. Hg. v. Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hamburg 1968 ff. —— (1806/07): Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford 1977. —— (1830): Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Hg. von F. Nicolin und O. Pöggeler, Hamburg 1991. Honneth, Axel (1998): Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte. Frankfurt am Main. Hubig, Christoph (1985): Handlung—Identität—Verstehen. Von der Handlungstheorie zur Geisteswissenschaft. Weinheim. Jaspers, Karl (1932): Philosophie II. Existenzerhellung. Berlin. Josifovic, Sasa (2008): Hegels Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins in der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Würzburg.

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—— (2009): Das Selbstbewußtsein. In: K. Appel, T. Auinger (Hrsg.): Eine Lektüre von Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Teil 1. Von der sinnlichen Gewissheit zur gesetzprüfenden Vernunft. Frankfurt am Main. Kant, I. 1781/1787: Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by P. Guyer and A. W. Wood, New York 1998. Kojève, Alexandre (1947): Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Leçons sur la Phénoménologie de l’esprit professées de 1933 à 1939 à l’École des Hautes Études, réunies et publiées par Raymond Queneau. Paris. Korsgaard, Christine M. (2008): The Constitution of Agency. Oxford. Luckner, Andreas (1994): Genealogie der Zeit. Zu Herkunft und Umfang eines Rätsels. Berlin. Lukács, Georg (1938/1948): Der junge Hegel. Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie. Zürich-Wien. Quante, Michael 2009: “Der reine Begriff des Anerkennens”. Überlegungen zur Grammatik der Anerkennungsrelation in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: H.-C. Schmidt am Busch, F. Zurn (Hrsg.): Anerkennung. Berlin, 91–106. Reinhold, Carl Leonhard (1790): Beyträge zur Berichtigung bisheriger Missverständnisse der Philosophen, 1. Band. Jena. Schulz, Walter (1984): Das Problem des Selbstbewußtseins in Hegels System. In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 91, 1–15. Siep, Ludwig (1979): Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes. Freiburg/München. —— (1992): Praktische Philosophie im Deutschen Idealismus. Frankfurt am Main. —— (2000): Der Weg der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein einführender Kommentar zu Hegels ‘Differenzschrift’ und ‘Phänomenologie des Geistes’. Frankfurt am Main. Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin (2004): Selbstbildung und Selbstunterdrückung. Zur Bedeutung der Passagen über Herrschaft und Knechtschaft in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: Dialektik. Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 2004/1, 49–68. Theunissen, Michael (1982): Die verdrängte Intersubjektivität in Hegels Philosophie des Rechts. In: D. Henrich, R. P. Horstmann (Hrsg.): Hegels Philosophie des Rechts. Die Theorie der Rechtsformen und ihre Logik. Stuttgart, 317–381.

Chapter Fifteen

From love to recognition Hegel’s conception of intersubjectivity in a developmental-historical perspective Erzsébet Rózsa Thus what must happen first is recognition.1

1. Problem Definition The objective of this study is to explicate the complex process of development through which Hegel’s highly esteemed theory of intersubjectivity achieves its systematically and thematically mature and varying forms in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and Philosophy of Right. In this process of development, Hegel places great significance on the concept of love. Love and recognition are forms of interpersonal and/or social relationship through which Hegel elaborates models of intersubjectivity. At the same time, these models demonstrate differences which also express conceptual changes in Hegel’s philosophy. In this study, strong emphasis is placed on the development of Hegel’s interpretation of love. My goal is to contribute to the further differentiation of Hegel’s theory of recognition and intersubjectivity. During Hegel’s years in Jena, love, which was without a doubt still his preferred basic shape of intersubjectivity in Frankfurt, and recognition, initially a derivative shape, gain a new, systematic classification.2 This development is accompanied by new meaning and additional conceptual dimensions closely connected to the different kind of systemic

1  Cf. Hegel and the Human Spirit. A translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805/06) with commentary by Leo Rauch. Wayne State University Press, Detroit 1983, 114.—Abbreviation: JLPS. 2 For a developmental history of recognition in Hegel’s works, see L. Siep’s path-breaking interpretation in: Id.: Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie. K. Alber Verlag, Freiburg 1979.

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formation in Jena.3 This development leads to the special significance of recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.4 Nevertheless, there is no linear development in Hegel’s concept of intersubjectivity. It is fascinating to see that these basic shapes of intersubjectivity are not regarded as forms of self-consciousness in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit, as they are in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but as forms of morality and ethical life. It is extremely interesting that recognition is derived immediately from love in the Philosophy of Spirit, written in Jena in 1805/06, but that this is not the case in the Phenomenology of Spirit, written in 1807. The most interesting thing, however, is that love is interpreted very similarly in 1805/06 to the way it is much later in the encyclopedic Philosophy of Spirit and Philosophy of Right, written in 1820. In 1805/06 as well as in his later, fully developed works, love is conceived as ethical love and is connected with the conception of an ethical life. It is precisely this conception of love which is the immediate, unmediated basis for the introduction or implementation of recognition as the basic shape for ethical and social life in 1805/06. In Hegel’s commentary from 1805/06, substantial differences become clear not only in the status and significance of love in comparison to his earlier conception of love in Frankfurt, but also in comparison to the remarks on love in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit that introduce ethical love. In particular, it is not ethical love in 1805/06 which is the first “determination” of love, but rather an additional determination within the framework 3 For the problematic of systemic formation in Jena, cf. R.-P. Horstmann: Introduction. In: Jenaer Systementwürfe. III. Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes. Note o. 1. IX– XXXVII.—For the effect of the systematic on significant aspects of Hegelian conceptions, cf. E. Rózsa: The Question of Modern Individuality on the Points of Intersection of System, Conceptuality, and Phenomenality. In: Id.: Modern Individuality in Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Brill, Leiden/Boston 2012, 3–12. 4 It is worth pointing out several contributions in recent comprehensive literature on the issue of recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as the key work in regard to this theme: A. Honneth: Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Reclam, Stuttgart 2001; id.: Von der Begierde zur Anerkennung. Hegels Begründung von Selbstbewusstsein. In: Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu einem Schlüsselwerk der Moderne. Edited by K. Vieweg/W. Welsch. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, 187–204; P. StekelerWeithofer: Wer ist der Herr, wer ist der Knecht? Der Kampf zwischen Denken und Handeln als Grundform jedes Selbstbewusstseins. Ibid. 205–234; K. Karásek: Das Andere seiner Selbst. Zur Logik der Anerkennungstheorie in der Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ibid. 253–269; M. Quante: “Der reine Begriff des Anerkennens”. Überlegungen zur Grammatik der Anerkennungsrelation in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: Anerkennung. Edited by H.-C. Schmidt am Busch/C. F. Zurn. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2009, 91–106; L. Siep: Anerkennung in der Phänomenologie des Geistes und in der heutigen praktischen Philosophie. Ibid. 107–124; A. Honneth: Arbeit und Anerkennung. Versuch einer Neubestimmung. Ibid. 213–228; P. Cobben: Anerkennung als moralische Freiheit. In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 116. Jahrgang/I/2009, 42–58.



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of ethics.5 In connection with “ethical love”, it is followed immediately by the introduction of recognition. This internal structure of love and its unmediated link to recognition in the text at hand is correlated primarily to the new and more prominent status of ethical life in Spirit. It is ethical life that also (re)characterizes conceptions of intersubjectivity in 1805/06. Accordingly, recognition comes to the fore, closely linked to the system of rights and economics as components of ethical life. These conceptual changes, whose decisive characteristic is social contextualization through ethical life in spirit, make recognition become a basic encompassing social structure which later becomes classified in Hegel’s practical philosophy. In this sense, the Philosophy of Spirit conceived in Jena is a significant transition to his later work, but not only and not at all directly to the Phenomenology of Spirit, where it is the structure of self-consciousness, and not ethical life that determines the conception of recognition. Within this framework of interpretation, the Philosophy of Spirit from Jena is the most significant document of a conceptual turning-point, one also characterized by additional developments. This work contains Hegel’s early motif of intersubjectivity, which can be recognized in love in Frankfurt. This work also points in a direction which leads to the conception of intersubjectivity in recognition through and in structures of self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. What is characteristic, however, is that the first version of ethics in 1805/06 is dominated by basic figures which represent love and recognition together in ethical life, i.e. not just one or the other. At the base of different interpretations or accentuations, Hegel’s stable position is that the subject is ab ovo intersubjective (the I as we, and we as the I, as written in the Phenomenology of Spirit). He holds this position from his early writings up to his final years in Berlin; it is one of the fundamental elements constituting the conceptual continuity of his complete works. Hegel’s basic position in regard to the communality, sociality, and sociability of humanity represents the fundamental idea of intersubjectivity, which can be seen in all the phenomena, structures, and relations in humanity. This fundamental and principal consideration is at the base of both love and recognition in all their differing variations. This is another reason why the principle of intersubjectivity cannot be reduced to practical-social relationships, as often happens in current discussions about recognition. Hegelian intersubjectivity encompasses natural, 5 For differentiation of these aspects of love, cf. JLPS, 106–110.

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inner-emotional, human-existential, epistemic, more or less institutionalized ethical, rightful, political, and economic dimensions of human life. Love and recognition are forms in which this complexity of the human condition is explicitly expressed—but in different ways. The undertaking at hand is aimed at recapitulating the status of Hegelian recognition in the history of its development, i.e. in the perspective of love as the basis for the development of recognition. In this sense, the following study should contribute to further differentiation of the significance of recognition. In order to elucidate the development of how Hegel addresses recognition in the perspective of love, this study’s first step focuses on the text on love written in Frankfurt, while the second step focuses on the Jena Philosophy of Spirit. The first text shows clearly how love represents the key concept of intersubjectivity in Hegel’s early works. In the second text, on the other hand, Hegel gradually edges recognition into the foreground of his conception of intersubjectivity, and he does so in relation to love. This text is an important document of change as a “becoming” in which recognition develops into the guiding, comprehensive socio-philosophical shape of intersubjectivity within ethical life: the shape in which it is the “opposition of the will” instead of love that the subject puts at center position.6 Parallel to this, love withdraws into the individual’s “inner world” and into the ethical order of the family’s life. On the one hand, love becomes an “ethical attitude”; on the other, it is institutionalized. In this way, it attains its highest status in modern marriage and in the family. At the same time, Hegel emphasizes that the loss of the central and comprehensive significance of love existing in works from Frankfurt does not simply mean constriction or reduction of the issue of love. This concept places new accents, such as responsibility, solidarity, charitableness, concern, and provision in a self-differentiating ethical life and in the extensive, partially institutionalized interpersonal relations associated with it. This reinterpretation of love is accompanied by enrichment of content for the overall concept of the human condition in shapes and phenomena of ethical life, and clearly expresses the formation of fundamental concepts of practical philosophy and their social contextualization.7 This 6 JLPS, 114. 7 The term ‘context’ is used in the sense given to it by D. Henrich. Cf. id.: Hegel im Kontext. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2010 (first edition 1971), Forward, 7.—The differentiation between two contexts does also have characteristics of the current use of the term ‘context’, but does not refute the primary endeavor to examine the work as a whole, even in the specific field of ‘love’ and also to be able to interpret it as a motif in the overall work from the developmental-historical perspective and in regard to recognition.



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is the practical philosophy which does not reach its fully developed form until much later, during Hegel’s time in Heidelberg. The following interpretation is based on Hegel’s early text Fragments on Religion and Love from 1797/98, which is his first important text on the theme of love from his time in Frankfurt, and on his Philosophy of Spirit from Jena in 1805/06, in which he first introduces recognition in connection with love, namely in the framework of ethical life. 2. Love as an Early Motif in ‘Fragments on Religion and Love’ in Frankfurt Love is one of the greatest and, even today, most inspiring themes in Hegel’s philosophy. In the multi-layered cultural horizon of Hegel’s time in Frankfurt, but also in the early years in Jena, Hegel granted love existential significance,8 not only in the individual, but also and especially in the interpersonal sense. In the “essence” of love, existence is expressed as opposition, along with a striving to transcend this opposition.9 Love is the form of unification which is suitable for overcoming opposition in the lives of those who love.10 This concept is found in the document written in Frankfurt named Fragments on Religion and Love. This kind of love also shows the first traces of Hegel’s intersubjective model of humanity and of 8 The existentialist Hegel was discovered by P. Tillich. Cf. id.: Vorlesung über Hegel. (Frankfurt 1931/32). Edited by E. Sturm. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/New York 1995. 9 G. W. F. Hegel: Love. In: Id., Early Theological Writings. Translated by T. M. Knox. With an Introduction, and Fragments translated by Richard Kroner. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago/Illinois 1948, 302–309. Here 303. Hegels juvenile fragments entitled Entwürfe über Religion und Liebe were edited for the first time by Herman Nohl in his collection of Hegels early “theological” writings: Hegels theologische Jugendschriften. Nach den Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek in Berlin hrsg. v. H. Nohl. Mohr, Tübingen 1907. These fragments are only partially translated in english—besides the translation of “Die Liebe” (Nohl, 378–382) by Knox “Two Fragments of 1797 on Love” (Nohl, 374–378) were translated by H. S. Harris and published in Clio 8,2 (1979), 257–265—and the pages entitled “Glauben und Sein” (Nohl, S. 382–385) still remain untranslated and are cited here as a part of the German edition: [Entwürfe über Religion und Liebe] (1797/98). In: Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Auf der Grundlage der Werke von 1832–1845 neu edierte Ausgabe. Ed. E. Moldenhauer/K. M. Michel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1986. Vol. 1, 239–254.—Abbreviation: ERL. 10 For the Hölderlinian-Hegelian theme of unification, cf. D. Henrich: Hegel im Kontext. Note o. 7, 9–41, and C. Jamme: “Ein ungelehrtes Buch”. Die philosophische Gemeinschaft zwischen Hölderlin und Hegel in Frankfurt 1797–1800. In: Hegel-Studien, supplement 23. Bonn 1983, especially 110–112.—Ch. Taylor points out the broad background of the development of ideas on unification as a fundamental intention in German culture. In: Ch. Taylor: Hegel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1993 (first edition: Cambridge 1975), 27.

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the essence of an individual, a model which Hegel would thematize a few years later and socially contextualize.11 In the existential philosophy of life and intersubjective context, love is also understood as a form of feeling and as physical love.12 Against a substantial cultural-historical background, physical love and the emotional state are interpreted as the “whole truth” in life within the framework of immediate, unmediated interpersonal relations and in connection with life and death. This whole is shown as the result of unification. Love understood in this complex way comprises a tension-filled fundamental structure of conflict as separation and opposition. Hegel places this conflict at the center of his own scientific methodology within just a few years, but he no longer accentuates love as much in Jena. In 1805/06, he mitigates the tensions in love, especially in comparison to recognition.13 In Frankfurt, he conceives love especially as a fundamental orientation in life whose essential characteristic is the mutual relationship between one’s own I and another person who is at first a stranger. Love is thus a fundamental relationship in life in several respects: 1. as the principle of the interpretation of humanity in the existential-ontological sense in the field of tension between one’s own I and the other person, 2. as an orienting norm, basic attitude, and fundamental disposition in mutual relationships, 3. as an orientation for expressions of terms and relationships in humanity in all their forms (speech, body language, activity as the ideal type of practices). The love that is characterized by separation and opposition in human life is inextricably connected with unification.14 Love as a higher form of

11  Siep provides a survey of the development of recognition in Hegel’s works as he reconstructs the “pre-forms” like love in the early fragments from Frankfurt, unification in the “spirit of Christianity”, and recognition as a synthesis of love and struggle in the documents from Jena. In the second step of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit, he points out gaining reconciliation between one’s self and substance. Cf. L. Siep: Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Note o. 2, 104–105.—Honneth updates recognition, namely from the individual perspective of modern freedom. Cf. A. Honneth: Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Note o. 4. 12 E. and K. Düsing have published a survey on the theme of love in Hegel’s documents from Frankfurt and focus on the ethical dimension of love. Cf. E. Düsing und K. Düsing: Gesetz und Liebe. Untersuchungen zur Kantkritik und zum Ethik-Entwurf in Hegels Frankfurter Jugendschriften. In: Subjektivität und Anerkennung. Edited by B. Merker/G. Mohr/ M. Quante. Mentis, Paderborn 2004, 1–14. The following interpretation aims at demonstrating the rather complex structure of love in the documents from Frankfurt. 13 JLPS, 114. 14 Cf.: J. Kotkavirta: Liebe und Vereinigung. In: Subjektivität und Anerkennung. Note o. 12, 15–31.



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unification is, in the end, a question of existence.15 It thus represents a constant challenge in an individual’s existence (one’s being and life) as he or she is confronted with opposition and division. In order to surmount this challenge in one’s existence and to overcome divisions, it is necessary for individuals to have conscious epistemic acts, such as ideas and conceptions of appropriate real-life intersubjectively understood attitudes, feelings, and dispositions. The “measuring-stick” for human relationships which should be used for this existential and, at the same time, pre-social challenge in one’s existence is the “whole”. Using the whole as the scale can be made valid through unification, which attains its highest form in love.16 The true whole and love in life meet in and through unification, which changes life itself. In this sense, Hegel expresses that it is in love that life finds itself, and not simply in being.17 In the name of the living being as the whole in life, Hegel criticizes the dispersion “in the manifold of feelings”, writing that “a single feeling is only a part and not the whole of life”.18 It is in the “manifold of feelings” that the whole of life develops and that life finds itself “without any further defect”.19 This diversity is not made up of random differences where the whole would simply be the result of an arithmetic sum of special, separate, manifold feelings qua heteronomy in the sense of Kant. That would lead to an “immature unity”20 in which the multiplicity, as well as the opposition would remain unchanged as essential characteristics of the human condition, which would lead to disjointedness in life. In contrast, “true” unification is based on the whole of “life itself ” as the decisive fundamental orientation, and has its realization in love as the “mature unity” in the “whole of life”. This unity can eliminate or at least lessen the lack of being as inner turmoil or dispersion. The integration of very differing forms of opposition and of the manifold feelings in which life finds the transforming power of love takes place through unifying acts and actions. This integrating function is soon taken by reason,21 15  Hegel states: “Vereinigung und Sein sind gleichbedeutend”. Cf. ERL, 251. 16  Hegel remarks: “Die Vereinigung ist der Maßstab, an welchem die Vergleichung geschieht, an welchem die Entgegengesetzten, als solche, als Unbefriedigte erscheinen”. ERL, ibid. 17  Cf. Love, 305 (ERL, 246). 18  Ibid. 19  Ibid. 20 Ibid. Hegel emphasizes: “Die verschiedenen Arten des Seins sind die vollständigeren oder unvollständigeren Vereinigungen.” ERL, 253. 21  Hegel criticizes reason but, a few years later, it is reason to which he attributes the purifying methodological function in speculation. Cf.: Love, 305 (ERL, 246).

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which has, from the outset, an epistemic as well as ontological-existential and practical nature.22 It is Hegel’s concept of multiplicity that distances him from Kant’s heteronomy, insofar as Hegel focuses on the diversity of shapes in highly differentiated steps, forms, and phenomena of life as a structural characteristic of life and the human condition.23 In contrast to Kant, Hegel is able to overcome the lack of humanity, namely through just this multiplicity, which represents “the whole of life” in its humanly structured form, letting this “whole” then be the standard that can be used for the respective, always manifold and opposing, concrete lifestyles. Even today, this concept is interesting for discussions of the diversity of shapes in life and of normative orientation for opposing, disrupted, and disjointed lifestyles. As such a complex relation, love, the attitude towards existence, the other person and oneself recommended by Hegel, is not ab ovo and can never be absolute. There are always differences in content and in the form of love for each individual and in the special relationship between lovers. Unifying love does not destroy multiplicity: that would mean destruction of love’s vitality. This also means that each individual can, should, and may love in his or her own way. This is why love can also be just one alternative and optional: an individual can even decide against love and for separation and opposition in interpersonal relationships and in life itself. This brings contingency to love. This also means that love offers a higher level of human life by overcoming separation and lack of humanity, but does not exclude the “lower” moments and levels in the human condition. For these reasons, love is of relative nature and includes as a possibility, as well as a structural characteristic, plurality in interpersonal relationships and lifestyles. “Absolute relativity” is an extraordinarily important concept that is also endorsed by the older Hegel. A human being never exists in the absolute sense; one’s forms of being, consciousness, and relationships are

22 R.-P. Horstmann and D. Emundts recapitulate Hegel’s conception of love in his time in Frankfurt solely as a speculative conception. In this one-sided perspective, they do not recognize at all the special significance of the introduction of the dimension of actuality for the issues of life and ethics. Pursuant to acceptance by the British economy, Hegel’s concept of life and actuality also had practical-philosophical significance, which also had an effect on the issue of love. Cf. D. Emundts/R.-P. Horstmann: G. W. F. Hegel. Eine Einführung. Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, 22–24. 23 Cf. E. Rózsa: Der Mensch als Mangelwesen und das Bedürfnis der Technik. In: Anthropologie und Technik. Ein deutsch-ungarischer Dialog. Edited by M. Quante/E. Rózsa. W. Fink, München 2012, 11–31.



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always relative and—according to existential, pre-social, and later social intersubjectivity—relational, and thus manifold-pluralistic.24 Love as a mutual relationship between one person and another links us in life relationally and relatively, but never absolutely. Relations between people change and are thus always conditional, relative, and dynamic. A human being is always in a relationship to himself or herself and to one or more others. According to Hegel, in this dynamic relationship one person is always influenced by the external power of the other person on himself and on the other person. The other person, the external being who has power and gives opposition, is an unavoidable experience and thus also a structural component in the human condition. A human being cannot comprehend his own existence as an immediate, unmediated identity, but rather always establishes it through the divisiveness and opposition which connects him or her to the other person, who likewise has his or her own experience in alienation and subservience. Otherness, alienation, subservience, and even power thus become constituents of love in life, just as they become the formative dimension of “true life” in a separate, opposing, insufficient, diversified existence. Without otherness, alienation, insufficiency, diversification, and power, the conception of the highest level of unification as surmounting separation and opposition in and through love in true, “vibrant” life is impossible. It is exactly these multiple forms of opposition in love that specify its true worth. Even in our times, it is this concept of Hegel’s, the perception of dynamic-relative relationality as an existential characteristic and, at the same time, as a pre-social, practical, and pluralistic intersubjectivity of love, whose significance for the interpretation of human life can be inspirational. This concept changes in Jena with the introduction of ethical love. Subsequent to this change, intersubjectivity, which was understood in love primarily in the existential sense in Frankfurt, was determined in Jena institutionally in and through marriage and family and linked with shapes and structures in the actuality of ethical life. The need for stability, 24 In regard to relationality as a Hegelian problem, it is interesting to look at Brandom’s reflection which attributes this to the “rationalistic expressivism” which is supposed to characterize Hegel’s own philosophic position. Brandom states: “Hegel’s version of expressivism is further attractive in that it is not only pragmatic and inferentialist about the conceptual but also relational, in the sense that the implicit and the explicit are each at least in part constituted by their expressive relation to each other.” Cf. R. Brandom: Articulating Reason. An Introduction to Inferentialism. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2001, 34–35.—The present contribution focuses on the internal-systematic nature of relationality in Hegel’s philosophy, which Brandom disregards.

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which Hegel interpreted in his early years as a need for religion and philosophy as cultural forms of consolidation for a disjointed life, arises from the motif of his own experiences in life, as Hegel writes in his Differenzschrift (a text on the differences between Fichte’s and Schelling’s systems of philosophy).25 From his years in Jena, he searches for stabilizing factors in life, not so much directly in individuals and their lifestyle, but rather in ethical norms, attitudes, and stances fortified through rightful and economic institutions. An important document of this conceptual change is the Philosophy of Spirit, written in Jena; there is nowhere else where Hegel links love with recognition as closely as here.26 The introduction of the socio-philosophic model of recognition within the framework of ethical life as a new conceptual focus gives love a different significance: it becomes an “ethical attitude” which keeps the existential contrariness in love and in life within limits. Ethical attitude is not identical with the “collective whole” of the “old times” which Hegel introduced as idealized collectivism in young years.27 The “ethical attitude” of love is a different kind of unification in human relationships and has new accents: it links the ethical-substantial contents of social institutions, norms, stances and attitudes, such as devotion, solidarity, responsibility, welfare, compassion, and the subjective components of individual freedom, such as the right to self-determination and distinctiveness, a right that can be invoked in a “particular existence” as the own lifeworld of each individual. Thus, love may lose its comprehensive significance for concepts of intersubjectivity, but it gains new determinations in responsibility, welfare, and solidarity. This new constellation of ethical love can serve as a “subjective-substantial”, i.e. ethical-communal and, at the same time, individual-evaluative 25 G. W. F. Hegel: The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. Translated by H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf. State University of New York Press, Albany 1977, 89–94.—Throughout his life, Hegel linked the vacillating attitude of people in modern times with a need for philosophy and its stabilizing function. In this point, he was influenced by various impulses. Schiller played an especially significant role in this: his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man influenced Hegel’s perception of the function of philosophy, as did the orientation of Kant’s philosophy and German idealism to represent philosophy in a system as the highest form of scholarship. Schiller characterized not only modern character as vacillating, as did Goethe, but also the “spirit of the times”. Cf. F. Schiller: Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. Edited by K. R. Berghahn. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, 17–20.—This problem also preoccupied Goethe, who describes Hamlet as a vacillating young man characterized by vacillating melancholy. Cf. J. W. Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Goethes Werke in zwölf Bänden. Aufbau, Berlin/Weimar 1966, Vol. 6, 309, 312. 26 Cf. JLPS, especially 106–108. 27 Ibid. 117.



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orientation and attitude, thus as a complementary-stabilizing factor for the respective particular lifestyle of the individual in modern times.28 3. From Love to Recognition in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit In the Philosophy of Spirit from 1805/06, love consistently plays a signal role as an early motif. In this text, strong existentialistic tones can still be found, similar to those in the texts from Frankfurt.29 At the same time, however, love is embedded in the developing Hegelian conception of social, rightful, and economic relations (ethical life) which is made explicit by terms such as possession, ownership, and recognition. It is recognition that becomes the main term in this development of new meaning, whereby indications that he has surmounted his earlier existentialist position become apparent: recognition focuses on the “opposition of the free individual’s will”, while it withdraws in “ethical love”. But even the later practice of philosophy cannot be explained without the re-interpretation of love dating from 1805/06. The decisive step is that the existentialist dimension of love gradually withdraws into the background, while its socio-philosophic re-interpretation gradually moves into the foreground. This development of recognition from ethical-social love takes place along the way toward recognition becoming the primary socio-philosophic model.30 All of this is implemented in a multi-stage process of thought which is recapitulated in the following. 3.1 Spirit as the Unity of Two Free Selves Qua Existential and Communicative Determination of Intersubjectivity According to Hegel it is through language that the true essence of the I, Self, and subject is shown in Spirit—both as “inwardness” and as “unity

28 Moyar emphasizes complementarity in Hegel’s works, though limited only to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Cf. D. Moyar: Die Verwirklichung meiner Autorität: Hegels komplementäre Modelle von Individuen und Institutionen. In: Hegels Erbe. Edited by C. Halbig/M. Quante/L. Siep. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2004, 209–253. 29 Cf. P. Tillich: Vorlesung über Hegel. Note o. 8. 30 For this reason, this text is also particularly significant for the explanation of a decisive phase in the development of Hegel’s practical philosophy. This development cannot be separated from the different variations of the system. The systematic formation, the respective status of the themes of practical philosophy, and recognition represent an enriching factor for the content that increases its relevance. Cf. E. Rózsa: Modern Individuality in Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Note o. 3, 41–62.

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of two free Selves”31 This also means that intersubjectivity is an inevitable component of being oneself in the existential sense, as Hegel held in Frankfurt, but, and this is the new concept, there is also an inevitable component of ethical-socio-cultural being characterized by “Spirit”. In this, not only is the fundamental existential determination of humanity apparent, but it also indicates that from now on human existence as Spirit is ab ovo also of socio-cultural nature, including the communicative nature and expressivity on which Hegel now focuses.32 Nowhere else is the emphasis on the communicative nature of human existence as strong as in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit, where Hegel first understands this as linguistic communication. Inwardness, as an individual’s own unmediated world, is the first place for the “union of two free Selves”.33 The relationship between “two free Selves” develops in inwardness through acts of theoretical “meaning” [Meinen], and this “meaning” is what dominates linguistic communication. This relation also has connections to actuality, namely through acts of practical “meaning”, in possession, ownership, and recognition. Accordingly, actual shapes of relations in love develop from “two free Selves” as worldy-actual interpersonal shapes of ethical-social contextualized life. What is meant by this? Inwardness is the immediate, unmediated place in intersubjective relations, the first room for expressions by signs and language, the means of expressiveness of intersubjectivity in the human condition.34 Through their expression, these media show inwardness as a common world (shared with one other individual or more) which is now also constituted by “theoretically” understood language, rather than by socio-practical acts. This is where the “concrete nature” of intersubjectivity manifests itself as the first form of the intersubjective Self. This means that the intersubjective nature of the human condition is first manifested in its linguistic-communicative character. In other words: language is a component of the formation of being and consciousness for the inter-subject as his or her human Self, 31  JLPS, 89. 32 For differentiation in the epistemic, existential-ontological, linguistic and sociocommunicative dimensions of spirit, cf. Hegel’s explanation in: JLPS, 88–89. 33 Hegel later calls this structure in humanity “inner world”, which represents an independent form of actuality which Charles Taylor then takes up again as inwardness. Cf. Ch. Taylor: Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 1989, 111–208. 34 This expressiveness has been emphasized by Ch. Taylor and R. Brandom, among others.



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and as Hegel emphasizes, this takes place first within the framework of the theoretical “meaning”. The Spirit is not first formed as absolute or objective, but rather as inwardness which is my world and which first expresses itself and exists in linguistic and then in practical-social forms of communication. Being becomes Self as a relation of “two free Selves” to each other qua intersubject, which expresses itself through linguistic and socio-practical communication of the shared, common, intersubjective world and in this manner first exists. It is this intersubjective-communicative, and not the individual-atomistic Self that is the first point of departure for the creation of subjects “from the Spirit”. This expressive shape of “two free Selves” makes explicit that no human being exists or can exist without linguistic communication as a basic “theoretical” form of intersubjectivity. It is in linguistic-communicative intersubjectivity that the origin of the human subject characterized by freedom as Self-liberation can be found. By speaking and giving things names, a human being makes the thing in-itself into his, his own, for-itself existing thing, whereby Self-liberation in humanity first becomes possible. This dimension of the human condition is also an explanation for social contextualization, the significance of which as a fundamental characteristic of Hegel’s philosophy as compared to Kant’s is emphasized again and again nowadays.35 It is in the practical will/meaning of the Spirit that Hegel represents the general structure of practices. The feeling of lacking something as a practically motivating drive first leads to rational processing of this situation of the Self and the world, i.e. to setting goals and taking action, whereby the confrontation of the Self and the world in the practical sense can be conveyed (overcome). This takes place through satisfaction.36 For Hegel, satisfaction is the first of the practices, clearly prior to labor, which differentiates Hegel’s ideas from the classic British concept of economy.37 Drives are the I as a whole.38 Not life as a whole, as in the theoretical “meaning”, but rather Self/the I as a whole represents the comprehensive 35 Cf. J. McDowell: Selbstbestimmende Subjektivität und externer Zwang. In: Hegels Erbe. Note o. 28, 184–208. 36 For the present discussion on satisfaction as an element of “erotic awareness” in respect to recognition, cf. R. Brandom: Selbstbewusstsein und Selbst-Konstitition. Die Struktur von Wünschen und Anerkennung. In: Hegels Erbe. Note o. 28, 46–77. 37 For the significance of Hegel’s notion of economy for his concept of recognition, cf. the very interesting contribution by P. Cobben in this volume. 38 The I as a whole makes the drive an object that is “not empty satiety, the simple feeling of Self ” that is lost in desire and restored in its satisfaction. Instead, what disappears

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horizon and scale for fulfilled existence. In the Self as a whole, it can be seen how “left without an other” and “without content”, the first characteristics found in the human condition in the practical field can be overcome through satisfaction of the individual’s drives as a prototype of intersubjectively mediated practices. In this “action”, the drive gets its own content and becomes “the quiescent drive, become itself, fulfilled in itself ”.39 This is “the work of the I: it knows its activity in this”. It is not in satisfaction per se, but rather in doing as the practice or result of an activity, that the work makes the Self to a whole and leads to its fulfilled being.40 Here, it is not a matter of fulfilled life that can be achieved in love as true unification in the existential sense, as in Frankfurt. That love, which was idealized in many respects, becomes differentiated in 1805/06 through social, economic, and practical contextualization, but also through an emphasis on linguistic communicativity. In the practical approach, which is what matters here, the focus is on “communication with the other”, but differently than in linguistic communication.41 “Communication with the other” means several different things. It is: 1. a form of being, 2. the communicative dimension of being, in the first place, for “communication with the other” is its being in the I as a distinctive feature, 3. action (“active character”) as practical dimension of the human condition in general. In these multi-layered relations between existential, communicative, and practical aspects, the other and alien becomes his own Self, he himself. “Communication with the other” in this multi-faceted sense means: the Self is no longer left without an other and without content in its communication and practical activities. The void in practical being characterized by drive and lacking disappears, and the Self becomes actively “appropriated”, “fulfilled” being. This is the decisive orientation in the practical “meaning”, whose shapes are satisfaction, activity, appropriation, and recognition. It is interesting to see how Hegel makes the transition from mainly theoretical-linguistic communication to the practical means for it. In this transition, practical-communicative activity precedes economic activity. The means as a medium of economic activity thereby integrates not only

is the pure form of indifference to the extremes of the drive. It is a question of “disappearance of the opposing—(thus it is) being, but a fulfilled being”. Cf.: JLPS, 101. 39 JLPS, 100, 101, 102. 40 This horizon disappears in Brandom’s interpretation of “erotic awareness”, which then also affects his interpretation of recognition in Hegel’s works. Cf. Note o. 36. 41  JLPS, 102.



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linguistic communication, but also actual-cooperative communication of practical shapes of the intersubject, which are formed and which are in movement in modern economy and society. This is why it is not labor in itself that is decisive in economic activity, but rather the production which is reflected, not just linguistically, but also as actual-cooperative, communicable, “universal” activity encompassing “all the details” and possibilities of its substance. Therefore, the means is also a component of communication in both senses, and, as such, has increased significance compared to satisfaction. In its purpose, satisfaction is only “one individual” activity and lacks any communicative activity which would extend beyond the limits of just one Self. The means, on the other hand, is the bearer of cooperative-communicative activities and thus also a multiplying potential of intersubjective activities: “the tool encompasses all such particularities”. The increased significance found in this medium through its ability to encompass all potential as well as all concrete details is brought to light in the meaning of cunning.42 Cunning leads immediately to love, for drives involve not just satisfaction, but also knowledge. This means that fundamental, practical motivation cannot be cut off from theoretical reflection. This internal linkage is an inevitable characteristic of the human condition in all its shapes, levels, and phenomena. As knowledge, drive knows its essence in the other. This kind of epistemically embedded linguistic and actual-cooperative-practical intersubjectivity in the knowledge of one’s own essence in the other is what is at the base of love and any other kind of human relationship. In this complex concept of knowledge, Hegel points out that not only relation to each other, but also independence is a structural component of love as a fundamental figure of intersubjectivity. Simply by being independent, the other is thus also the opposing shape as well as itself. Each person recognizes this kind of tension-packed intersubjectivity in love: each person knows himself in the other. This knowledge of equality, which originates in experiencing the opposition of independent Selves, results in gestures of renunciation of one’s own Self—in the existential, as well as in the practical sense. This renunciation of one’s Self is love. It has become evident that in 1805/06 love develops primarily from linguistic and actual-cooperative communicative (i.e., socially and econo­ mically informed) intersubjective relations.

42 For Hegel’s interpretation of cunning, see cf. JLPS, 103.

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3.2 From Love as “existing for the other” to Ethical Love. Institutionalization of Interpersonal Relationships The specific feature of love is renunciation of one’s Self, the withdrawal of the Self/being for oneself and emergence of the Self/being for the other.43 How then does this act of renunciation comply with the self-centered drive that is rooted in the insufficient human being and that cannot be cut off from love? Drive has become knowledge, as we have seen: a human, with the motivation force of drives, knows his/her essence in the other. It is exactly this tension that characterizes the Self, which is rooted in nature and Spirit and is also a double human Self in this sense; the intersubjective subject has its origin in this elementary tension in its insufficient being. That is what makes intersubjectivity the essence of love, too: “In itself there is the supersession of both: each [of the two “Selves”] is identical to the other precisely in that wherein it opposes it; the other, that whereby it is the “other” to it, is itself. In the very fact that each knows itself in the other, each has renounced itself—love.”44 This explanation reminds us of the conception in the Frankfurt text on love. In Frankfurt as in Jena, Hegel comprehends the differentiation between elementary human relationships “in immediate being” in and through the concept of love. In that text, the concept is set forth in the following way: “This self-negation is one’s being for another, into which one’s immediate being is transformed. Each one’s self-negation becomes, for each, the other’s being for the other. Thus the other is for me, i.e., it knows itself in me. There is only being for another, i.e., the other is outside itself.” He continues: “This recognition is love.”45 In love, each individual is in opposition and recognizes himself/herself in the other person. Each one is in this tension-packed relation, namely in a way that he/she is identical to the other one, whereby he/she also has and wants to have “autonomy”. Opposition (an individual’s autonomy) and equality (identification with the other person) are thus basic structure of love and intersubjectivity in the human condition in general. This fundamental relation in humanity explains the relation between egoistic and sacrificing-altruistic motivation

43 For self-structure in Hegel, cf. R. Brandom: Selbstbewusstsein und Selbst-Konstitution. In: Hegels Erbe. Note o. 36, 52–55.—See also: E. Rózsa: Personale und soziale Identitäten im Hinblick auf Strukturrelationen des Selbst bei Hegel. Before publication, in: Hegel-Jahrbuch. 44 JLPS, 106. 45 Ibid. 107.



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and acts, which are thus determined, first of all, by the human condition, and not the social one. In these remarks on love in the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel models the archetype of intersubjective relationships on the human condition, and he emphasizes the significance of linguistics and practical-cooperative communication, at times still in an existentialist tone, but also at times deviating from his existentialist-dominated Frankfurt conception. It is not until the second part of his remarks that he focuses on ethical love. With this, Hegel socially contextualizes, in existentialist tones, the text’s strongly epistemic-communicative first determinations of love, and also those based on cooperative-practical intersubjectivity. With this step, he prepares for the immediate transition from love to recognition and to the socio-philosophic model.46 The requirement emphasized in 1805/06 is recognition of all the relations between the Self and the other. Even love first understood as epistemic is to be comprehended as a whole, linking recognition not only with the neo-platonic, mystic union, but also with Hegel’s conception of practices and even with his theory of modernity. For this reason, recognition is not primarily understood here as a foundation in the sense of modern epistemology. Love as a whole directed at recognition means rather assessing all the connections between interpersonal relationships and making them an issue in order to be able to deal with them practically and in an appropriate manner. This kind of love as a whole is a model for the interpersonal relationships in modern society which are not identical with macro-structures of ethical life, such as politics or economy, but which are connected with these and can be just as institutionalized.47 “Collective nature” now means modern ethical life, and no longer the old one portrayed in the Phenomenology of Spirit from 1807, where Antigone and Creon represent different basic figures of ethical life. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel also addressed modern ethical life, for example, in the figure of Creon or in the framework of rights, but not as pronouncedly as in 1805/06. Here, it is the family that is understood as the appropriate institution for ethical love, which is inconceivable in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel sums up the aspects of the family in 1805/06 as follows: “The [idea of the] family is decided in these elements: a. love, as natural, 46 This leads to conceptional parallelisms between the concept of ethical love from 1805/06 and the theory of love in the Philosophy of Right from 1820, but this issue cannot be dealt with in this study. 47 JLPS, 109–110.

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begetting children; b. self-conscious love, conscious feeling, sentiment and language of the same; c. shared labor and acquisition, mutual service and care; d. education [of offspring]. No single function can be made the purpose [of the family].”48 Institutionalization is a decisive element in the new conception of love. These thoughts cannot be found in the Phenomenology of Spirit, but are, in contrast, in the Encyclopedia and the Philosophy of Right. Of Hegel’s concepts, institutionalization of interpersonal relationships is the one most closely connected with his developing theory of modernity. The mystic union, the strong demand for an epistemological, communicative, and practical foundation and Hegel’s first thoughts on the theory of modernity are linked to the conception of love from 1805/06, but probably not yet in a fully developed and systematic form. This multi-layered position cannot be separated from the special position of recognition as a sociophilosophic model and also belongs to the development of the concept of recognition. 3.3 From Ethical Love as “self-conscious love” to Recognition of “free individualities” in the “development of ethical being” Cognition as knowledge of the whole in relationships of ethical love leads immediately to recognition. This is a process of development which extends from the natural individual to the social context of ethical life. Each first becomes a “natural individual”, so that “his uncultivated natural Self is recognized”, as Hegel states.49 But the comprehensive horizon of recognition is ethical life. In its name, Hegel polemicizes on chivalric love and invokes the actuality and presentness of ethical life. This polemic tone is more familiar in his later works: “High chivalric love falls within mystic consciousness, which lives in a spiritual world regarded as the true one, a world which now approaches its actuality, and in this world such consciousness glimpses the other world as present. Friendship is only in shared work, and [the emphasis on it] occurs in the period of moral development”.50 An important characteristic of ethical love in modernity is that it is “self-conscious”. This also means that the members of the family can/

48 JLPS, 109–110.—This last remark by Hegel refers implicitly to the distribution of different social positions among family members. 49 JLPS, 107. 50 Ibid.



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should/want to retain their right to distinctiveness and self-determination. Renunciation of oneself is thus only one side of ethical love: modern individuals should not/do not want to/cannot renounce completely their self-consciousness and their autonomy in their interpersonal relationships, either. “Self-conscious love” is the appropriate form of love and intersubjectivity in a modern society. It is no coincidence that it is selfconscious love that sets the foundation for the transition from ethical love as an interpersonal community to recognition as a mutual socio-culturalpractical approach. Self-consciousness does not take center-stage in ethical love, however. Recognition becomes the social form in which self-consciousness becomes the dominant basic attitude of “free individualities” in the modern world. Free individualities experience their communality, for example, in marriage and the family or in fraternity, which is what they can and should do consciously. These institutions educate the individual in mutuality, as well as in autonomy. This double approach in ethical love is not dominant in recognition, however: self-conscious, free individuals in a relationship of recognition distance themselves from ethical love and its institutions. Hegel illuminates the difference: “Love has become its own object, and this is a being-for-itself. [. . .] Each [member] is the spiritual recognition itself, which knows itself. The family, as a totality, has confronted another self-enclosed totality, comprising individuals who are complete, free individualities for one another”.51 He continues: “At the same time, they are related to one another and are in a state of tension in regard to one another”.52 Modern individuals are active in both worlds. In interpersonal relationships, for example in the family, they understand themselves and determine themselves in a way with which they identify, while at the same time keeping distance through their right to self-determination and distinctiveness. Self-consciousness is thus one strong foundation for free individuals, with the other being and remaining “mutuality”, i.e. identification with others. Without any doubt, self-conscious free individuality, with its relationships of recognition, is a higher shape of the subject than the one attributed to the natural individual. It would be interesting to investigate how this conceptual thought links the Jena Philosophy of Spirit with the Phenomenology of Spirit. But it is also important to remember that

51 JLPS, 110. 52 Ibid.

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in 1805/06 the focus is on ethical love as a socio-culturally characterized form of intersubjectivity, and not on the structure of self-consciousness. Now it is ethical love that prepares and becomes the foundation for the introduction of the higher form of intersubjectivity as “true” recognition. Ethical love in its self-conscious form surmounts naturalness, which is also the first, immediate foundation of recognition, as shown above. The highest level of ethical love is one of “complete and free individualities for one another”. Accordingly, in ethical love, this experience is expressed as cognizance of a shared, common existence of self-conscious, free, and autonomous individuals in the modern world. It is this fundamental structure of tension that characterizes interpersonal relationships in modern society. Accordingly, ethical love is one basic shape of intersubjectivity, the one which is ethical-collective, as well as self-conscious. The other fundamental shape is socially contextualized, with recognition by free, self-conscious individuals. Ethical love represents a shared life “for one another”, whereby its subjects are and should also be self-conscious. Recognition, on the other hand, primarily denotes “true”, “known” “existence for oneself ”, and mutuality fades into the background. Rightful-economicsocial relations of recognition represent a different kind of social contextualization than ethical love in the family. In accordance with this difference, determination of the person who has rights in social relations of recognition arises. The person is not only a formally defined form of the subject with a purely for-oneself structure, as in natural right. The person is also shaped intersubjectively and socially; this is why a human being can “necessarily” be recognized and recognizing. This rightful-social embedding of a human being as a person for himself or herself is the characteristic without which the “true”, i.e. functional relation of recognition would be inconceivable. Hegel states: “Right is the relation of persons, in their behavior, to others. It is the universal element of their free being—the determination, the limitation of their empty freedom. [. . .] the object, in general, is itself this creation of right, i.e., the relation of recognition. In recognition, the Self ceases to be this individual; it exists by right in recognition, i.e., no longer [immersed] in its immediate existence. [. . .] Man is necessarily recognized and necessarily gives recognition. This necessity is his own [. . .]. As recognizing, man is himself the movement [of recognition], and this movements itself is what negates his natural state: he is recognition. The natural [. . .] is not spiritual.”53

53 JLPS, 111.



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It has become clear: recognition is a “becoming”, a process which begins with the natural individual and continues in ethical love. It may not, however, remain this way. “Their being for one another” in ethical love is “the beginning” of recognition, indeed the second beginning.54 “Actual being-for-himself ” is the key to “true recognition”.55 This actual being-for-oneself is one pole, the subjective one, in the basic structure of recognition. The other, the objective-actual pole, is: “Universal recognition” is “spiritual actuality”.56 In this context of ethical actuality, ethical love has been given only modest significance, however: it cannot liberate the individual’s autonomy. The members of the family are held back from complete liberation by the dominating mutuality in the family and by their binding, shared world. But the experience of community in ethical love also means reinforcement. This is why the person can become more conscious, and thus also more consolidated, not only in his/her rights, but also in his/her experiences through ethical love. These experiences can also be gained in relations of recognition in which primarily the autonomy and self-consciousness of free individuals apply. Gaining experience in ethical love through other social relations can strengthen “known”, reasonably manageable, cooperative, and “true” mutuality, which is also in the cooperating individuals’ own interest in stability. This idea can be found in the Philosophy of Right from 1820. The differences and the similarities between love and recognition are shown in the “will which is intelligence”, which is now fulfilled: 1. in love with the knowledge of the immediate unity of both—selfless—extremes, 2. with recognition and with each of them as a free Self.57 Each cognition thus becomes recognition. The corresponding practical movement is in the life-and-death struggle, as in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In 1805/06, the ethical character of actuality of “universal recognition” is emphasized and represents a deviation from the Phenomenology of Spirit.58 The positive result of this movement is “to know being as something not alien”.59 In this complex-dynamic way, being develops to actuality, the subject to the person—through the transformation of ethical love “for one another” to social recognition with actual “being for oneself ”. In this, 54 JLPS, 114. 55 The greater result of the development of recognition is: “as someone for whom his existence (which he had as property) no longer counts, but rather this: as his known beingfor-himself ”. JLPS, 117. 56 JLPS, 119. 57 JLPS, 118. 58 JLPS, 119. 59 JLPS, 118.

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the differentiated social structure of ethical life is developed, and its first shape is right. In this process, forms of subject, such as the person, arise whose intersubjectivity in ethical actuality is not directly given, but rather given up: it should be appropriated and practiced through the culture of rights.60 This has far-reaching consequences for recognition, which proves to be a multi-structured, increasingly more complex social relation that one constantly re-learns. Cognition and knowing are epistemic media in the socio-cultural field in which individuals become increasingly aware of their intersubjectivity and should/want to communicate all that theoretically and practically. The immediateness of the intersubjectivity of love has thus been lost. Ethical life is the form of actuality in the modern world in which reflection on wide-ranging relations is primarily demanded. It is this demand that links the concept of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit to the conception from 1805/06. The cognition in the love relationship—that the Self recognizes itself for itself in the other as being for one another and that, for exactly this reason, he or she can also recognize the true Self for itself in itself—can be a significant experience for social forms and relations and thus become productive for recognition. The experience of the Self in the other as the core of ethical love can offer cognition of relations of recognition for free, strongly self-conscious individuals in relations of recognition, cognition which they can use meaningfully in their linguistic and ­actual-cooperative communications and socio-relational activities. This experience in ethical love is sufficient in itself, but not for relations of recognition in modern times in which the differentiated opposition of the individual’s will dominates and thus keeps generating conflicts. This is one of Hegel’s decisive insights into the “development” of recognition in regard to love from 1805/06. 4. Outlook Developed individuality with its “being for itself ” in recognition expresses the withdrawal of the immediate intersubjectivity that was so prominent in love in Frankfurt. Symptoms of modernity, which focuses on the figure of the “developed Self ” (Brandom) in the person of rule of law, can be recognized in this. Some of Hegel’s insights into the complex structures of the modern world can already be recognized in the Jena Philosophy of Spirit. 60 For the culture of rights, cf. E. Rózsa: Modern Individuality in Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Note o. 3, 212–215.



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Correspondingly, considerable differences can be established between the early conception of love as the first basic shape of intersubjectivity in Frankfurt and the 1805/06 conceptions of ethical love and recognition. In the foreground of these thoughts, what Hegel wants to express in the formulation “the strength that each one has in his being-recognized” can be understood.61 The hero in modernity becomes the person who is based on rights and who thus can “objectivize”, functionalize, and even exploit human relationships. It is not the knight, but rather the citizen with his rights who is the “hero“ focused on by Hegel in later years and, at the same time, is characterized in a distanced and ironic manner. In the “modern world”, love is then also functionalized, which is clearly shown by the statement about begetting a child, the family’s property, and especially the denial of love by the child even in 1805/06. The new direction is also shown in Hegel’s demand for “satisfied love” as “mutual service”.62 One could say that this is different from what is written in the Phenomenology of Spirit, where he attributes the right to desire only to the man. But the expression “service” refers to a kind of instrumentalization of the other’s body, probably also through the mutuality of one’s own. This is a new element in Hegel’s interpretation of love, in the background of which his changing view of ethical life and the first basic outlines of his theory of modernity are recognizable. None of this is conceivable without the concept of recognition from 1805/06. This conception implies significant modifications in Hegel’s concept of love, and these modifications have also motivated his views on fundamental structural changes in modern times. This is an important step along the way, not only to the practical philosophy of the fully-developed system and to the conception of modern times,63 but also to Hegel’s still inspirational distance to the “modern world”.64 61 JLPS, 153. 62 Hegel writes: “Both parties realize their mutual love through their mutual service, mediated in a third which is a thing. It is the mean and the means of love. And indeed, just as the tool is the ongoing [objective] labor, so this third element is a universal as well; it is the permanent, ongoing possibility of their existence.” JLPS, 108. 63 For these decisive conceptional issues, cf. R. Pippin: Hegels praktischer Realismus. Rationales Handeln als Sittlichkeit. In: Hegels Erbe. Note o. 28, 295–323; id.: Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 2008; M. Quante: Die Wirklichkeit des Geistes. Studien zu Hegel. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 2011. 64 This essay originated within the framework of my Fellowship with the Research Center for Basic Theoretical Issues of Constituting Norms for Medical Ethics and BioPolitics (Kolleg-Forschergruppe “Theoretische Grundfragen der Normenbegründung in Medizinethik und Biopolitik”) at Westfalian Wilhelms-University in Münster. I am very grateful to Nancy Kühler for the translation, to Alexander Lückener and Dean Moyar for linguistic corrections and to Michael Quante for important advice.

Chapter Sixteen

Friendship in Hegel and its interpretation in theories of recognition1 Jean-Christophe Merle There is almost no controversy about the fact that we owe Fichte and Hegel the thesis of the intersubjective or interpersonal formation of selfconsciousness considered as recognition. However, the theories of recognition that rely upon Hegel claim much more than this thesis. According to them, recognition should apply not only to the universal dignity of selfconscious human beings, but also—to the same extent—to their particular and individual characters, that is, to their differences. In the following, using the example of love—and particularly the example of friendship— as it is treated by Hegel, I will attempt to show (i) that there are two different, and radically heterogeneous, processes of recognition, of which Hegel investigates only the first one—the interpersonal formation of selfconsciousness or the constitution of the self—and (ii) that this process of recognition not only does not include the recognition of particular or individual differences, but also that it expressly excludes it. 1. Love as Recognition of Individuality in Theories of Recognition In the following, I will focus on friendship as a kind of love. Since Hegel considers friendship as a kind of love in a comprehensive sense, as was widely the case in his time, what he says about love is valid ipso facto for friendship too. Unlike other kinds of love—especially marital love— friendship does not necessarily presuppose gender difference nor consanguinity; although gender difference and consanguinity are fully compatible with friendship (for instance, married couples ought to be friends, and brothers and sisters may—but must not necessarily—be friends too). By focusing on the specific kind of love that friendship is, I am intending to

1 I thank Roman Eisele and Konrad Utz for their useful comments on this paper.

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put aside for the purpose of this inquiry a few of the natural features of some love relationships. Ludwig Siep characterizes Hegel’s concept of love as follows: One must retain the following four main features of love. (a) It is a conscious unity of subjects. (b) It is a unity in which the members abandon their independence in this relationship (of love), i.e., it is a unity without any opposition. (c) It is a relationship between ‘uneducated’ natural individuals. And, finally, (d) it is [. . .] a unity of ‘being for oneself ’ and ‘being for something else’, of self and ‘objectness’ (Siep 1979, 56)2

Whereas the first two main features seem to me to be correct, I consider the third feature to be wrong. If I am right in finding it wrong, this is an important point not only for the interpretation of Hegel’s theory, but also for a majority of the theories of recognition, since most of the time they refer back to Hegel. Siep’s interpretation inspires, for instance, the theory of recognition of the Frankfurt School, such as that espoused by Axel Honneth and Rainer Forst. Referring to the same passages from Hegel’s Realphilosophie from his Jena period, on which Siep bases his interpretation, Honneth asserts in his famous book Struggle for Recognition: “As in the System of Ethical Life, Hegel conceives of love as a relationship of mutual recognition, in which natural individuality is first confirmed” (Honneth 1996, 37).3 Rainer Forst explicitly refers to Honneth’s Struggle for Recognition at the end of the following passage of his Contexts of Justice, a book in which he attempts to build a bridge between Habermas’ discourse ethics and communitarianism, particularly Charles Taylor’s theory of recognition. The closer and more stable the ethical community is, the more intensively persons recognize one another both as unsubstitutable members and as unique individuals. In love, the closest form of an identity-constitutive ethical community, the recognition of commonality is at the same time the recognition of the particularity of the other; and it is a joint task to keep

2 Die folgenden vier Grundzüge der Liebe in den Jenaer Schriften müssen festgehalten werden: a) sie ist eine bewußte Einheit von Subjekten, b) sie ist eine Einheit, deren Glieder ihre Selbständigkeit in dieser Beziehung (der Liebe) aufgeben, d.h. eine gegensatzlose Einheit; c) sie ist eine Beziehung zwischen ‘ungebildeten’ natürlichen Individuen—und schließlich d) sie ist [. . .] eine Einheit von Fürsichsein und Sein für Anderes, von Selbst und ‘Gegenständlichkeit’. 3 Nicht anders als im ‘System der Sittlichkeit’ begreift Hegel die Liebe als ein Verhältnis der wechselseitigen Anerkennung, in dem zunächst die natürliche Individualität der Subjekte Bestätigung findet [. . .] (Honneth 1992, 64).



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the balance between commonality and individuality (cf. Honneth 1995a, 95–107) (Forst 2002, 285)4

Whereas both Honneth and Forst see in love the recognition of the “natural individuality” or “peculiarity” of the other, at first sight, Siep’s position seems ambiguous. Siep’s formulation, according to which love is “a relationship between ‘uneducated’ natural individuals,” may be interpreted in two different ways. It can be said that either (1) those who enter into this love relationship are human beings who are “natural” individuals before entering into it, and this relationship is a recognition of both partners, without the partners remaining in this relationships the same “natural” individuals as they were before, or (2) the love relationship itself consists in a recognition of “natural” individuals. The first interpretation is uncontroversial, the second one is wrong. In his explanations to his aforementioned assertion, Siep precisely develops the second interpretation. Now, [Hegel] expressly says about love that in it the individuals are recognized ‘according to the totality, in which they belong to nature’ (VI, 302), i.e., as “uneducated natural self ” (VIII, 210). The features through which one individual differs from another obviously belong to this. Thus, the abandonment of independence in love cannot be a negation of the individual uniqueness [. . .]. But the fact that in love natural individuality is recognized means more: natural individuality itself is the object of love and makes the beloved deserve to be loved. In so far as, in love, everybody must be able to represent oneself as an ‘individuality that cannot be represented by anyone else’. In this respect, the self-intuition in the other means that one knows oneself as being taken up by this natural individuality of the other—and conversely to know one’s own individuality as being essential for the other. (Siep 1979, 58)5

4 Je ‘enger’ und fester die ethische Gemeinschaft, desto intensiver sind Personen als unvertretbare Mitglieder und zugleich als einzigartige Individuen anerkannt. In der Liebe, der engsten Form einer identitätskonstitutiven ethischen Gemeinschaft, ist die Anerkennung der Gemeinsamkeit zugleich die Anerkennung der Besonderheit des Anderen; und es ist eine gemeinsame Aufgabe, die Balance zwischen Gemeinsamkeit und Individualität zu halten (vgl. dazu Honneth 1992a, 153ff.). 5 Nun heißt es ausdrücklich von der Liebe, daß in ihr die Individuen ‘nach der Totalität, in der sie der Natur angehören’ (VI, 302) bzw. als ‘ungebildetes natürliches Selbst’ (VIII, 210) anerkannt seien. Dazu aber gehören offenbar die Charakteristika, durch die sich ein Individuum vom anderen unterscheidet. Die Aufgabe der Selbständigkeit in der Liebe kann mithin keine Negation der individuellen Eigenart sein [. . .]. Daß die natürliche Individualität in der Liebe anerkannt ist, bedeutet aber mehr: sie ist selber Gegenstand der Liebe, macht die Liebenswürdigkeit des Geliebten aus. Insofern muß sich in der Liebe tatsächlich jeder in seiner ‘unvertretbaren Individualität’ darstellen können. Das SichAnschauen im Anderen bedeutet unter diesem Aspekt: sich gerade von dieser natürlichen

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When Siep affirms that “recognition” means “to find again the self in the other” (Siep 1979, 56), one must therefore understand by this: to find again in the other, i.e., in the love relationship, the same self that already existed before this relationship. In the following, I shall attempt to first demonstrate that this view is incompatible with the necessity of love in Hegel’s process of recognition, and then that this view is in equal measure incompatible with the way in which Hegel characterizes love and friendship. 2. The Necessity of Love in Hegel’s Process of Recognition Let us first inquire into what love as recognition in Siep’s quotation from the Jenaer Entwürfe consists in. This passage (“Willen”: VIII, 202) examines how, out of its two sides that manifest themselves as two “extremes”, the will reaches a unity without any opposition in which it recognizes itself. One extreme is the “interiority” of the will, the will as something universal, which is without content and can give itself any arbitrary object as an end. The other extreme is the “exteriority” of the will, the will as peculiarity, as objectness. The drive (Trieb) consists in the interiority striving to make the interiority suitable to itself. The willing being (das Wollende) wills (will), i.e., it wants to posit itself, [it wants] to make itself, as itself, its [own] object. It [the willing being] is free, but this freedom is an empty one, a formal, bad one. It [the willing being] is what is decided in itself, or it is the conclusion in itself. It is the universal aim [Zweck]; [it] is the individual [das Einzelne], the self, activity, actuality, it is the midway of both, the drive [. . .]. (Hegel VIII, 202)6

The will can have two features: “One character is the tension” (Hegel VIII, 208), the other one is the satisfaction of the drive, the “disappearance of the opposition”, i.e., a “fulfilled being” (Hegel VIII, 204). It occurs when both extremes know that it is the same as the other one. The will has divided itself into the two extremes. It is entirely in the first one, in the universal, like it is entirely in the other one, the individual.

Individualität des Anderen eingenommen wissen—und umgekehrt die eigene Individualität als wesentlich für den Anderen wissen. 6 Das Wollende will, d.h. es will sich setzen, sich als sich zum Gegenstande machen. Es ist frey, aber diese Freyheit ist das leere, formale schlechte. Es ist in sich beschlossen, oder es ist der Schluß in sich selbst; es ist das allgemeine, Zweck; ist [es] das Einzelne, Selbst, Thätigkeit, Wirklichkeit, ist es die Mitte dieser beyden der Trieb [. . .].



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These extremes have to posit themselves into one, and the knowledge of the latter has to become recognition [Erkennen]. This movement of the syllogism is posited by each of them being in itself what the other is. The one, the universal, is the individual, the knowing self; likewise the individual is the universal, because it is a self-relationship. But it has to become for them. Or the sameness has to become a knowledge of them. (Hegel VIII, 209)7

This happens precisely in love, which is a specific relationship with another ego. Love presupposes that the other I has the same nature as my own I, i.e., that it is a will which has, on the one hand, a particular object, but which is, on the other hand, also something universal, i.e., that which can will any arbitrary aim. As Honneth says, the I (Ego) “is always given to itself only as a reified subject of action, but in encountering the desire extended to it by the other, it experiences itself to be the same vital, desiring subjectivity that it desires of the other.” (Honneth 1996, 37; 1992, 63) Both individuals realize this satisfaction of the will because (1) the will, as universal, gives itself an object, though another object than its hitherto existing object, and (2)—what constitutes love—the object is an object that is common to both individuals and in which it knows or recognizes itself. Thus, it is only because of point (2) that the “indifference” between both extremes and their opposition is superseded. [. . .] knowledge knows its essence in the other. [. . .] It is precisely because each knows itself in the other that it renounces itself. Love. Knowledge is precisely this double meaning. Each is the same as the other in the respect in which he [has] opposed itself to it. Thus, differing from one another is to posit oneself as the same as the other; and it is recognition because it is the knowledge that its opposition changes into sameness. Recognizing precisely means to know that what is objective in its objectiveness is the self. (Hegel VIII, 209)8

7 Der Willen hat sich selbst in die zwey Extreme entzweyt, in deren Einem er ganz ist, dem Allgemeinen, wie im Andern dem Einzelnen. Diese Extreme haben sich in Eins zu setzen, das Wissen des letzteren in Erkennen überzugehen. Diese Bewegung des Schlusses ist dadurch gesetzt, daß jedes an sich ist, was das Andre ist. Das eine, das Allgemeine ist die Einzelheit, das wissende Selbst; eben so ist das Einzelne das Allgemeine, denn es ist das auf sich beziehen. Aber es hat für sie zu werden. Oder diese Dieselbigkeit ein Wissen derselben. 8 [. . .] das Wissen weiß sein Wesen im Andern. [. . .] Eben indem jedes sich im Andern weiß, hat es auf sich selbst Verzicht getan. Liebe. Das Wissen ist eben dieser Doppelsinn: [. . .] jedes ist darin dem andern gleich, worin es sich ihm entgegengesetzt [hat]. Sein sich unterscheiden vom Andern ist daher sein Sichgleichsetzen mit ihm; und es ist Erkennen ebendarin, daß es selbst diß Wissen ist, daß [. . .] seine Entgegensetzung in die Gleichheit umschlägt [. . .]. [. . .] erkennen heißt eben das gegenständliche in seiner Gegenständlichkeit als Selbst wissen.

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This refutes the thesis according to which in the other or in the love relationship we find again the same self that existed prior to this relationship. Indeed, the self is in no way—that is, neither for itself nor for the other self—a preexisting object, but constitutes and determines itself among friends or lovers first in the friendship or in the love relationship. 3. Hegel’s Characterization of Love In the following, I attempt to show that Hegel’s characterization of love and friendship is likewise incompatible with the conception of love in theories of recognition. I have just formulated two elements of the satisfaction of the will in love: (1) the will gives itself a new object that contains common aims, common principles, common judgments of taste, etc.; (2) this new object is common to this will and to the other in the love relationship. Siep affirms the second element, while rejecting the first one: The first movement is [second element] the movement of abandoning the autonomy in favor of the unity with the other, [Rejection of the first element] in which, nevertheless, each of them knows that its natural individuality is the reference point of the other’s affection, and that insofar it is recognized [by the other]. (Siep 1979, 67)9

If the love relationship really preserves “natural individuality”, one may wonder (1) how each of the human beings can reach a relationship of “unity with the other” and (2) which “autonomy” is actually abandoned by each of them. The only way not to understand Siep’s quotation as being contradictory is the following: According to Siep, the aforementioned unity obviously consists in the fact that what unites these two human beings is the reciprocity of their predilection for each other, their openness to each other and their emotional participation in the fate and in the feelings of the other. Honneth understands it explicitly in this way. In Das Recht der Freiheit, Honneth describes “modern” love, which he explicitly connects with Kant and Hegel, in the following way: The subjects educate each other to assume reciprocal roles, which they hold in order to benevolently participate in the vicissitudes of the life story and in the transformations of the stance of its counterpart. [. . .] another novelty 9 Die erste Bewegung ist [2. Element] die der Aufgabe der Selbständigkeit zugunsten der Einheit mit dem Anderen, [Ablehnung des 1. Elements] in der jeder der beiden gleichwohl seine natürliche Individualität als Bezugspunkt der Zuneigung des Anderen, insofern als anerkannt weiß.



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is that here, all at once, sentiments and stances are discussed in a dialogue [. . .]. (Honneth 2011, 243)10

However, the following renunciation by which Honneth characterizes recognition is incompatible with such a unity: Ego and Alter react simultaneously to another by restricting their egocentric needs, whereby they make their other actions depend on the behavior of their counterpart. (Honneth 2010, 31)11

This kind of recognition corresponds to the legal model of the conditions for recognition already developed in Fichte’s Foundation of Natural Rights (1796) and that reveals itself in Hegel as the result of the struggle for recognition. In other words, this kind of recognition is another kind of recognition. In this model of love, the reciprocal openness and participation are necessarily restricted. Thus, we find in Hegel at least two models of Hegel’s love that ­collide with another: (1) the reciprocity of the predilection for another, the openness and the emotional participation, and (2) the restriction of the reciprocal needs. Siep’s view could be explained by the first model rather than by the second one, but the latter is not to be completely excluded as another possible explanation. Now, each of these two aspects of recognition through love in Hegel is incompatible with Hegel’s concept of love. In friendship, the will of a friend is not restricted by the will of the other. Rather, according to Hegel, both wills are the same will: Ethical life, love is renouncing one’s peculiarity, one’s particular personality, to extend [them] to universality,—likewise, family, friendship; here is the identity of the one [person] with the other [person]. By acting in a way that is just towards the other, I consider the other as being identical with me. (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion II, 16:239)12

10 Die Subjekte erziehen sich dazu, wechselseitig Rollen anzunehmen, die sie zur wohlwollenden Anteilnahme an den lebensgeschichtlichen Geschicken und Einstellungswandlungen ihres Gegenübers anhalten. [. . .] neu ist auch, daß hier mit einemmal im Zwiegespräch Empfindungen und Einstellungen zur Sprache kommen sollen [. . .]. 11  Ego und Alter ego reagieren zeitgleich aufeinander, indem sie jeweils ihre egozentrischen Bedürfnisse einschränken, wodurch sie ihre weiteren Handlungen vom Verhalten ihres Gegenübers abhängig machten. 12 Die Sittlichkeit, Liebe ist, seine Besonderheit, besondere Persönlichkeit aufzugeben, zur Allgemeinheit zu erweitern,—ebenso Familie, Freundschaft; da ist die Identität eines mit dem anderen vorhanden. Indem ich recht handle gegen den anderen, betrachte ich ihn als identisch mit mir.

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jean-christophe merle [. . .] however, friendship [. . .] requires a content, something substantial, as its unifying aim. (Hegel, Ästhetik II, 13:152)13

In Siep’s quotation from the Jenaer Entwürfe, Hegel provides two examples of friendship that furnish evidence for this identical will of the friends: “There is friendship only in collective work [. . .] Theseus and Pirithous, Orestes and Pylades” (Hegel VIII, 211).14 In the Ästhetik, Hegel develops the same example of Orestes and Pylades. They were educated together when they were children and “shared everything” (Euripides, Orestes, 735; cf. also Konstan 1997, 58ff.). In the Ästhetik, Hegel comments on this example, saying: Steadiness of friendship [. . .], Achilles and Patroclus, and, in an even more intimate way, Orestes and Pylades, are the most beautiful archetypes among the Ancients. Friendship in this sense finds its substrate and its period of life in youth. [. . .] Now, youth, as the period in which individuals still live in the collective indetermination of their actual condition, is the period in which they unite with one another and closely merge into one mental disposition (Gesinnung), one will and one activity that thereby each undertaking of one of them becomes at the same time the undertaking of the other. (Hegel, Ästhetik II, 13: 186f.)15

This implies that friends receive their particular character first through their love relationship: “In love, in friendship, the person becomes itself, and love gives [the person] its subjectivity, which is its personality.” (Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion II, 16:239)16 From this results the incompatibility of Honneth’s first model of love, as an empathic communication of feelings, with Hegel’s concept of love. In fact, Hegel rejects as untrue every friendship or love that rests on contingent—and hence versatile—feelings:

13 [. . .] Freundschaft [. . .] fordert doch einen Gehalt, eine wesentliche Sache als zusammenschließenden Zweck. 14 Freundschafft ist allein im gemeinschafftlichen Werke [. . .] Theseus und Pirithous, Orest und Pylades. 15 Festigkeit der Freundschaft [. . .], als deren schönstes Vorbild unter den Alten Achill und Patroklos und inniger noch Orest und Pylades galten. Die Freundschaft in diesem Sinne des Wortes hat die Jugend vornehmlich zu ihrem Boden und zu ihrer Zeit. [. . .] Die Jugend nun, wenn die Individuen noch in gemeinsamer Unbestimmtheit ihrer wirklichen Verhältnisse leben, ist die Zeit, in welcher sie sich einander schließen und so eng zu einer Gesinnung, einem Willen und einer Tätigkeit verbinden, daß dadurch jedes Unternehmen des einen zugleich zum Unternehmen des anderen wird. 16 In der Liebe, in der Freundschaft ist es die Person, die sich erhält und durch ihre Liebe ihre Subjektivität hat, die ihre Persönlichkeit ist.



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In modern dramas, one is interested in the passions that are represented, in hardships, deprivations, and bad luck that are endured for love’s sake. But it is a reserved interest, because of the contingent way in which this individual has decided in favor of the other. Therein, one can see no necessity, because the individuals, who are committed to the relationship, could just as well abandon this relationship. (Hegel, Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie III: 516f.; admittedly, Hegel paradoxically finds an example of this in a novel, Goethe’s Elective Affinities, cf. Ästhetik I, 12:399f.)17

4. “True friendship” without Making an Absolute Out of Love Of course, the thesis according to which recognition and self-consciousness can be obtained in the aforementioned way thanks to friendship does not imply that, as soon as this kind of friendship ceases to exist, recognition would disappear. On the contrary, self-consciousness as well as recognition remains once they are attained. However, each such particular friendship or love between two (or more) human beings is a particular friendship or love that is admittedly of the same kind, yet not the same as the friendship between any two other human beings. Furthermore, ethical life obviously does not merely consist in such friendships and love relationships, but also in still other kinds of relationships that contribute to the advancement of mutual recognition between human beings: the system of needs or labor relationships, corporations, the state, etc. Therefore, absolutizing the significance of friendship for the whole sphere of recognition would be wrong, and Honneth’s correct intuition, according to which there are several spheres of recognition, is a valid implication from this. But, on the other hand, this means neither (1) that friendship, as I characterized it hitherto, is dispensable for the process of recognition nor (2) that this modifies the nature of the friendship that I am dealing with. Youth, in which Hegel locates friendship’s contribution to recognition, is a period of life in which human beings are still living in “the collective indetermination of their actual condition”, i.e., still outside of further spheres of recognition. The aforementioned quotation (Hegel, Ästhetik II, 13: 186 f.) continues by mentioning a non-absolute friendship that exists in the context of other social institutions: 17 In modernen Dramen ist einmal das Interesse die Leidenschaft, die dargestellt wird, Härten, Entbehrungen, Unglück das für die Liebe geduldet wird. In diesem Interesse liegt aber ein Frostiges, durch die Zufälligkeit daß dieß Individuum sich auf das andere gesetzt hat, worin eine Nothwendigkeit nicht zu sehn ist, denn ebenso gut, als sie daran hangen, könnten die Individuen das Verhältniß auch aufgeben.

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jean-christophe merle [. . .] youth [. . .] is the period in which [. . .] each undertaking of one [of the friends] becomes at the same time the undertaking of the other [friend]. In men’s friendship it is already no longer the case. [. . .] [Mature] men meet and separate again. Their interests and occupations diverge and join again. [In mature men] friendship, the most intimate mental disposition, principles, and common directions remain, but [men’s friendship] is not juvenile friendship in which neither of the friends decides something and starts working at it without it directly becoming a common matter of both. It essentially belongs to the principle of our innermost life that on the whole everybody cares for oneself, i.e., that each person has the capacity to be who they actually are. (Hegel, Ästhetik II, 13:186 f.)18

This passage provides evidence for both of my theses as well as exemplifying them. Firstly, juvenile friendship is indispensable for a more mature friendship, because it produces the “innermost mental disposition, principles, and common directions” that provide the basis for the more mature friendship. Furthermore, for Hegel, friendship remains an important sphere of recognition, even in a ripe old age (see, for instance, Pinkard 2000, 622 ff.). Secondly, the mature and relative friendship alters nothing at all in the essence of friendship. Indeed, juvenile friendship not only provides the basis for the more mature friendship, but in itself it also bears the “truth” (Wahrheit) of friendship. In order to explain what he understands by truth, Hegel precisely chooses the example of friendship: Usually we call truth the concordance between an object and our representation. [. . .] On the contrary, truth in the philosophical sense means, to say it in a universal and abstract way, a concordance between a content and itself. [. . .] Incidentally, the deeper (philosophical) meaning of truth can already be found in everyday language. For instance, one speaks of a true friend, and one understands by that a friend whose course of action is suitable to the concept of friendship. (Hegel, System der Philosophie, 8:89 f.: Enzyklopädie § 24, addendum 2)19

18 Die Jugend [. . .] ist die Zeit, in welcher [. . .] jedes Unternehmen des einen zugleich zum Unternehmen des anderen wird. Dies ist schon in der Männerfreundschaft nicht mehr der Fall. [. . .] Männer finden und trennen sich wieder, ihre Interessen und Geschäfte laufen auseinander und vereinen sich; die Freundschaft, die Innigkeit der Gesinnung, der Grundsätze, allgemeinen Richtungen bleibt, aber es ist nicht die Jünglingsfreundschaft, bei welcher keiner etwas beschließt und ins Werk setzt, was nicht unmittelbar zu einer Angelegenheit des anderen würde. Es gehört wesentlich zum Prinzipe unseres tieferen Lebens, daß im ganzen jeder für sich sorgt, d.i. selbst in seiner Wirklichkeit tüchtig ist. 19 Gewöhnlich nennen wir Wahrheit Übereinstimmung eines Gegenstandes mit unserer Vorstellung. [. . .] Im philosophischen Sinne dagegen heißt Wahrheit, überhaupt abstrakt ausgedrückt, Übereinstimmung eines Inhalts mit sich selbst. [. . .] Übrigens findet sich die tiefere (philosophische) Bedeutung der Wahrheit zum Teil auch schon im gewöhnlichen



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Now, in the case of the concept of friendship, this “concordance between a content and itself ” does not consist in the recognition of the “natural” individuality of the other that “cannot be represented” by someone else; rather, it consists in the will recognizing itself or being recognized in the other or by the other as a will whose unity is exempt from opposition. As Siep notices, right after this, there occurs in the struggle for recognition a “moment of distance, in which the individual claims independence and distinction [from the others].” (Siep 1979, 63)20 The “truth” of friendship or the “true friendship” belongs in Hegel’s thought to the process of recognition and it is defined as a step inside this process. Mature friendship is no longer the “truth” of friendship or the “true friendship”. On the contrary, Honneth takes over his concept of “modern” love expressly from Schleiermacher’s romantic characterization of love. Accord‑ ing to Schleiermacher, friendship is a mutual “convergence with the individuality [of the other] ad infinitum”, a communication between two individualities (see Dilthey 1870, 107). Unlike Hegel’s concept of friendship, according to Schleiermacher, friendship is not a step in the universal process of recognition of the free will, but an irrational inclination originating in the affinity of the souls. It is one thing to rightly assert that it belongs to the dignity of a human being that such inclinations and feelings are duly legally protected against discrimination, which partly inspired Charles Taylor’s politics of differences, but it is another thing to wrongly assert that this contributes to Hegel’s ethical life. As Paul Cobben demonstrates, only if one deprives Hegel’s concept of love from its necessary dialectical unity, that is, only in a post-dialectical determination of love does today’s usual concept of love, considered as a contingent harmony between two particular individuals, and today’s concept of recognition, considered as a recognition of differences, become possible (cf. Cobben 2002, 145). The misunderstanding of Hegel’s concept of friendship by many of the commentators on Hegel’s thought may be due to their one-sided focus on the aspect of unity in friendship and to the fact that Hegel fully excludes from the “true” sphere of friendship any disagreement between friends and any individuality of each friend as compared to the other one. For this reason, even authors who are as inspired by Hegel as Konrad Utz (cf. Utz 2012) choose to deal with the issue of friendship from a non-Hegelian Sprachgebrauch. So spricht man z.B. von einem wahren Freund und versteht darunter einen solchen, dessen Handlungsweise dem Begriff der Freundschaft gemäß ist. 20 [. . .] ein Moment der Distanz, des Geltendmachens der Selbständigkeit und Unterschiedenheit des Einzelnen [. . .].

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starting point. The focusing of Honneth’s theory of recognition on “otherness” is as one-sided as Hegel’s aforementioned one-sided focus, albeit in the opposite direction (concerning my conception of friendship, cf. Merle 2012). Literature Cobben, Paul (2002): Das Gesetz der multikulturellen Gesellschaft. Eine Aktualisierung von Hegels “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts”. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1870): Denkmale der inneren Entwicklung Schleiermachers, erläutert durch kritische Untersuchungen. In: Leben Schleiermachers. Vol. 1, “Anhang”. Berlin: Reimer, 1–145. Forst, Rainer (1994): Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit. Politische Philosophie jenseits von Liberalis­ mus und Kommunitarismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. —— (2002): Contexts of Justice. Political Philosophy beyond Liberalism and Communitar­ ianism. Transl. John M.M. Farrell. Berkeley CA: California University Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Hermann Glockner. Vol. 8: System der Philosophie, 1st volume. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 41964. ——: Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Hermann Glockner, vol. 12: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik. 1st volume. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 51971. ——: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Hermann Glockner. Vol. 13: Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik. 2nd volume. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 41964. ——: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Hermann Glockner. Vol. 16: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. 2nd volume, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 41965. ——: Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie. Ed. by Karl-Heinz Ilting. Vol. 3: Vorlesungen über Rechtsphilosophie 1818–1831. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974. ——: Gesammelte Werke. Ed. by the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Vol. 8: Jenaer Systementwürfe III. Ed. by Rolf-Peter Horstmann. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1976. Honneth, Axel (1992): Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Kon­ flikte. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. —— (1996): The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Trans. by Joel Anderson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —— (2010): Das Ich im Wir. Studien zur Anerkennungstheorie. Berlin: Suhrkamp. —— (2011): Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Konstan, David (1997): Friendship in the Classical World. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Merle, Jean-Christophe (2012): “Educar na realidade da amizade”. In: Pedro Angelo Pagni, Sinésio Ferraz Bueno and Rodrigo Pelloso Gelamo (Eds.): Biopolítica, Arte de Viver e Educação, Marília: Oficina Universitária / São Paulo: Cultura Acadêmica, 251–266. Pinkard, Terry (2000): Hegel. A Biography. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Siep, Ludwig (1979): Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes. Freiburg i.Br./München: Verlag Karl Alber. Taylor, Charles (1992): Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Index of Terms absoluteness absolute knowledge (absolutes Wissen)  72, 107, 197 absolute spirit (absoluter Geist) 92, 104–105, 111, 115, 197, 202, 268, 270 Achtung 199–200 acknowledgment 43, 54–56, 84, 96, 207 action communicative action 39–40 activity (Tätigkeit) 57–58, 63, 82, 85, 108, 113, 117, 120, 131, 168, 177, 292, 300–301 administration of justice 47–48 ancient 96, 131–135, 248 animal 7, 13–16, 20 n. 23, 36, 182, 210, 211, 214, 219, 223, 225–228, 232 antiquity 131–133 antithesis 84–85, 222 appearance 25, 83–84, 97, 107, 137, 154, 257, 262, 269, 271, 277, 285 apperception 57–58, 63, 168–169, 219–220, 278 architecture 110 argumentation 69, 79, 104, 147, 197, 199, 203, 209, 210, 212, 244 artist 138, 260 association 257, 278, 283 assumption 45, 80, 134 asymmetric or asymmetry (Asymmetrie) 31, 55, 59–60, 62, 147, 170, 199, 203 attitude attitude-dependence 3, 54–56, 58–60 normative attitude 3, 8, 54, 60–62, 66, 267, 275, 277–281, 284–285 authority 3–4, 17–18, 25, 28–34, 53–55, 57–64, 66, 147, 149, 170–171, 185–186, 208–210, 212, 220, 228, 232, 258–259 autonomous 4, 68, 105, 174, 176, 208, 210, 245–246, 277, 282, 306 autonomy 3, 41, 42, 53, 55–56, 58–62, 64, 66, 68, 123, 155–156, 166–168, 180, 201, 208, 277, 282–283, 305, 307, 316 beautiful 131, 318 beauty 131–132 being human being 9, 36, 49–50, 53–54, 60, 129, 146, 148–151, 161, 167, 170–171, 173, 176, 178, 180, 183–185, 187, 240,

244, 294–295, 299, 302, 306, 311, 313, 316, 319, 321 moral beings 154, 157–158, 200 belief (Glauben) 3, 6, 149, 184, 214, 218, 239, 243, 291 body 20, 43, 68, 92, 95–96, 108, 138, 146–147, 153, 213, 220, 230–232, 258, 262, 269, 276 n. 20, 277 n. 22, 280, 292, 309 bondage or bondship (Knechtschaft) 26, 93, 230, 267, 278–279, 283 bondsman (Knecht) 12, 13 n. 3, 20–23, 25–26, 29–32, 45, 88–89, 91, 93–95, 203, 267–269, 277, 279–284 capitalism or capitalistic 39, 49 Cartesian 73, 220, 242 categorical categorical imperative (kategorischer Imperativ) 168, 172, 174–176, 179, 181 n. 9, 207 category/categories 69–71, 77–79, 96, 144, 215, 218, 224 cause/causal causal relation 217 character 5, 9, 58, 64, 72, 74, 81, 102, 107 n. 33, 109, 123, 131–132, 134, 136, 145, 150, 158–159, 166–167, 170, 172, 174–175, 179, 182, 186, 222, 240, 242, 246, 248, 256, 296 n. 25, 298, 318 child/children 45, 82, 148, 152, 208, 304, 309, 318 Christ Christianity 132 citizen 146, 174, 180 n. 8, 186, 309 civil society 45–48, 49 n. 23, 178–179, 183–184, 256 coercion (Zwang) second coercion 8, 253, 257–259 cognition 71, 77, 113, 137, 183–184, 270, 272–275, 278, 280, 304, 307–308 comedy 136–138 commitment 3, 53–54, 55 n. 2, 56, 58, 60, 62–63, 66, 179, 269, 282 community community of value 48–50 concept (Begriff ) 1–6, 8, 11–15, 18, 23–24, 28, 41, 55 n. 2, 57, 63, 67–69, 71, 72 n. 8, 74, 76–77, 83 n. 18, 99–117, 119,

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index of terms

120 n. 58, 121–123, 141, 143–147, 150–154, 160, 162, 165, 167, 170–171, 174–175, 177–180, 184–185, 187, 215, 217, 219, 221–222, 227, 230, 246, 253–256, 258, 260, 262 n. 15, 263 n. 19, 264, 268–273, 274 n. 16, 276 n. 19, 278, 282–284, 287–288, 290–291, 294–295, 298–299, 301–304, 308–309, 312, 317–318, 320–321 concept of recognition (Begriff des Anerkennens) 1–3, 5-6, 11–13, 41, 68, 74, 77, 99, 119, 143–146, 151, 153–154, 162, 192–193, 195, 200–204, 268, 273, 288 n. 4, 299 n. 37, 304, 308–309, 321 condition precondition 6, 71, 166, 168, 171, 273 consciousness (Bewusstsein) self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein)  4, 7–9, 12–14, 17, 19–20, 23–29, 31–32, 35, 42 n. 10, 44–45, 67–72, 74–82, 83 n. 18, 84–97, 109, 138, 145 n. 4, 171, 172 n. 4, 173, 192, 194, 196, 198, 203, 207–208, 213, 217–218, 220–222, 223 nn. 16–17, 224–225, 227, 229–231, 245, 255, 257, 267–279, 281, 288–289, 305–307, 319 consensus 156, 160, 241, 257, 268, 279 constitution 9, 18, 22, 57 n. 3, 146, 159, 231, 238, 268, 273 n. 14, 311 consumption 93 contingency 43, 131, 133, 135–136, 294 contract 8, 41 n. 7, 42, 53, 178, 253, 257, 262–263 contradiction 71, 75, 77–78, 85, 87, 93, 95, 97, 134, 150 conviction 1, 117, 129, 138, 144, 149, 167, 179, 185 corporation 48, 50, 319 creator 53, 131, 148, 184 crime 148, 151, 259–263 criminal 135, 259–261, 263 crown 148 cult 97 culture (Kultur) 1, 5–6, 45, 53, 99, 120–124, 130, 134, 143, 177–178, 183, 187, 191, 194, 204, 308 custom 149 death (Tod) fear of death (Todesfurcht) 3, 40, 44–47, 49–50, 92, 94, 203, 209, 232, 269, 276–277, 279–280, 283–284 deception 262

decision 107, 135, 146, 183 demand 3, 41–47, 58, 60, 66, 135, 143, 147, 152–155, 157, 170, 172 n. 4, 179–180, 227–228, 232, 254, 259–260, 304, 308–309 democracy 110, 160 dependence or dependency 3–4, 8, 22, 59, 62, 66, 68, 83, 85–87, 89, 92–93, 178, 267, 276, 277–280, 282 desire (Begierde) 5, 7, 20–23, 36, 75, 77, 85, 87, 90, 92, 129, 133, 139–142, 184, 198, 207, 210, 221–224, 226–232, 267–268, 274, 276 n. 19, 280–284, 299 n. 38, 309, 315 devotion 296 dialectics 8, 13, 68, 89, 93, 134, 140, 177, 267, 269, 273, 277–280, 284 dialogue 5, 143, 232, 317 dichotomy 178–179 differentiation 89, 96–97, 211, 214–215, 229, 232, 287, 290, 298 n. 32, 302 disappearance 133 discourse democratic discourse 147 emancipative discourse 147–152 discourse ethics 312 divine 53, 97, 183, 187 dualism 5, 116, 118, 129, 175, 187 duplicity 86 duty 123, 143, 150–151, 167, 171, 175, 186–187, 232 education 8, 47, 107, 239, 267, 270–272, 275–281, 283–285, 304 effect 11, 22, 135–136, 150, 161, 167, 184, 208, 214, 244, 260, 288 n. 3, 294 n. 22 Egyptian 97 embodiment 92, 278 emotional 165, 292, 316–317 empirical science 75 n. 10, 247 empiricism 214, 229 employee 269 Enlightenment 3, 53–55, 58–60, 66, 150 n. 15, 182 epistemology or epistemological 4, 67, 70, 151, 303–304 essence 14–15, 36, 44–45, 47, 68, 77–83, 85–89, 91–93, 95, 97, 130, 168, 222, 291–292, 297, 301–302, 315, 320 esteem 6, 32 n. 2, 165 exchange 42–43, 46, 161, 262 existence 15, 48, 60, 63, 69, 74, 77–80, 82–86, 88–89, 91–96, 105 n. 27, 115, 140, 169, 175, 180, 185, 198, 237, 256–258,



index of terms

260, 263 n. 19, 264, 276, 291, 293–296, 298, 300, 306 experience 8, 20, 44, 46, 57, 70, 78, 85, 89–92, 94, 97, 102, 104, 112, 131, 134, 139–141, 157, 175, 177, 213–214, 216, 236, 238, 242, 267, 269, 271–273, 276, 278–281, 283–285, 295–296, 305–308, 315 experiment 247, 271, 273, 285 fact of reason 168 faith 188 family 11, 24, 27, 31 n. 44, 32 n. 2, 39, 45–46, 48, 150, 256–257, 290, 295, 303–307, 309, 317 fate 130–133, 135, 137, 316 fear (Furcht) fear of death (Todesfurcht) 3, 40, 44–47, 49–50, 92, 94, 203, 209, 232, 269, 276–277, 279–280, 283–284 finitude 7, 44, 71, 135, 158, 235, 254 force 3, 34, 46, 49, 56, 59–60, 62–63, 66, 94, 96, 116, 135, 139, 155–157, 159–160, 170, 177–178, 182, 187, 213–214, 216–217, 231, 258–259, 283–284, 302 foundation 2, 4, 6, 47 n. 18, 100, 102, 104, 106 n. 28, 114, 123, 162, 165–166, 168, 184, 216, 254, 303–306 framework 5, 36, 39–40, 49, 101, 111, 114, 118, 120, 143, 154, 158–162, 166, 272, 288–289, 291–292, 296, 299, 303, 309 Frankfurt School (Kritische Theorie) 194, 312 freedom subjective freedom 39, 48–49 freedom of choice (Willkür) 174, 179, 186 realization of freedom 42–44, 46, 168 friend or friendship 9, 24, 27, 166, 304, 311, 314, 316–322 gender 147, 311 generality 106, 116, 176, 209, 215 genus (Gattung) 200, 215, 223–225, 263 n. 16, 274 God 45, 73 n. 9, 96, 139–140, 148–149, 152, 183, 185, 187, 209 good 13, 34, 44, 47–49, 61–62, 73, 77, 110, 113–115, 118, 121, 173, 182–183, 185, 208, 217, 219, 223–226, 230–231 government 150 Greece or Greek 42 n. 10, 97, 130–131, 137, 222 n. 15, 261

325

harmony 34 n. 46, 44–46, 129, 132, 215, 321 heaven 138–139 hero 55, 138, 185 n. 11, 309 history history of philosophy 102, 104 nn. 18, 20, 111, 144, 182, 249 history of self-consciousness 145 n. 4, 268, 270–272, 278, 281 humanity 6, 16, 36, 130, 146–154, 172, 181 n. 9, 183, 289, 291–292, 294, 298–299, 302 idea 3–5, 11, 30 n. 41, 53–55, 57–60, 66–69, 72, 74–75, 81, 83–84, 95–96, 99, 101–106, 108, 110–119, 120 n. 58. 121–123, 137, 139, 144–145, 147–148, 150–151, 158, 165–167, 169, 172–174, 179–180, 182, 184, 186, 208, 210–211, 213, 232, 240, 253, 255, 258–259, 272, 289, 307 ideal 27–28, 34 n. 46, 36, 39, 113, 133, 137, 172, 174–175, 194, 214–215, 217, 229, 275, 277, 292 idealism German Idealism 1, 56, 99, 102, 118–119, 129, 144–145, 162, 296 n. 25 identification 79, 119 n. 56, 145, 150, 152–153, 159–161, 219, 238, 305 identity 1, 7, 35 n. 47, 78, 80, 84–86, 88, 99, 109, 115, 130–131, 138–139, 145, 147, 151–153, 170–171, 172 n. 4, 201, 215, 222, 253, 257, 268, 272–275, 278, 295, 312, 317 ideology 46, 149, 160 illusion 82, 242–243, 257 imagination 34 n. 46, 242, 262 immediacy 22–23, 89, 113, 213, 216, 221, 226, 253–254 imperative categorical imperative (kategorischer Imperativ, Sittengesetz) 168, 172, 174–176, 179, 181 n. 9, 199, 207 inclination 24 n. 34, 167–169, 174–178, 183, 282–283, 321 independence or independency 3–4, 8, 22 n. 28, 23, 35, 40, 42, 44, 56, 59–60, 62, 66, 68, 79, 85–86, 96, 208, 224 n. 18, 255, 267, 269, 276–285, 301, 312, 313, 321 individual moral individual 145–146, 156, 158, 160 individuality 85, 105 n. 26, 153, 156, 159–160, 223, 254–255, 264, 274, 276, 288 n. 3, 305, 308, 311–313, 316, 321

326

index of terms

injustice or wrong 8, 253, 257, 258, 259, 264 institution 9, 17–18, 26, 28, 35, 39, 48, 50, 58, 61, 66, 148, 159–160, 180 n. 8, 182, 185, 187–188, 305 intention 3, 40, 71, 105 n. 26, 154, 196, 210, 227, 229–231, 291 n. 10 intentionality 3, 20–21, 23, 27, 36, 66, 120 n. 58 interaction 18, 29, 33, 44, 159–160, 165–166, 212, 219, 267, 273, 275, 279, 284 interest (Interesse) 16, 23, 71, 100 n. 8, 115, 119 n. 56, 132, 137, 177–178, 192, 194 n. 3, 197, 219, 259, 261, 274 n. 5, 282, 307, 319, 320 internalization 81 intersubjective 9, 17–19, 23, 25–28, 30–35, 42, 146, 158, 268, 273, 279 n. 23, 285, 289, 292–293, 298–303, 306, 311 interplay of forces 46 intuition 11, 69, 78, 79 n. 14, 95, 112, 167–169, 173, 211, 213–214, 217, 219, 319 judgment (Urteil) aesthetic judgment (ästhetisches Urteil) 5, 129 infinite judgment (unendliches Urteil) 261–264 negative judgment (negatives Urteil) 34 n. 5, 261–262 rational judgment 7, 214, 235, 238, 240–241, 243, 245–248 theoretical judgment 112 justice (Recht) 31 n. 44, 39, 44, 47 n. 19, 105, 110, 130, 135, 148, 260 justification absolute justification 254–255 rational justification 7, 235–237, 240–246, 248–249 katharsis 141–142 kingdom animal kingdom 210 moral kingdom 169 knowledge absolute knowledge (absolutes Wissen) 72, 107, 197 empirical knowledge 7, 235, 243, 249 knowledge claim 104 n. 18, 114, 122, 218, 229 metaphysical knowledge 4, 68, 79 philosophical knowledge 72–73, 95, 101 n. 10, 103, 104 n. 18, 107

practical knowledge 110, 112, 114–116, 118 theoretical knowledge 110–111, 114, 116, 118 labor labor process 40 n. 4, 47 language language game 215, 221 law Divine law 97 human law 97 moral law (Sittengesetz) 129, 168–169, 172–176, 183–186, 199–200 natural law 129, 135 n. 13, 168, 268 positive law 185 lawfulness 168–169, 175–176 legitimacy 48, 60–61, 147, 260 liberalism 256, 322 life animal life 13, 15, 223 ethical life (Sittlichkeit) 6, 8, 110, 133–135, 137, 139, 166, 178, 182–184, 186, 201, 203, 263, 288–291, 295–297, 303–304, 308–309, 317, 319, 321 good life 44, 48–49, 223–225 human life 84, 129, 212, 221, 224, 226, 290, 292, 294–295 organic life 82–83, 93 social life 8, 24, 25 n. 36, 28, 36, 156, 182, 288 life and death (Leben und Tod) 21, 134, 141, 209–210, 231, 292, 307 logic (Logik) 1, 6, 15, 70–71, 72 n. 8, 87, 100, 102–106, 111, 119, 121–122, 150, 152–153, 160, 165, 167, 173, 183, 185, 215, 236, 261, 274 n. 15 lord (Herr) lord/bondsman relation 68, 87–89, 91, 94–97 lordship (Herrschaft) Lordship and Bondage (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft) 8, 88–89, 192–193, 197–199, 202–203, 230, 267–269, 272, 274, 278, 280, 284 love 8–9, 18, 24, 27, 30, 32 n. 2, 34–35, 39, 141, 181 n. 9, 183, 287–298, 300–309, 311–319, 321 machine 49, 248 marriage 45 n. 15, 290, 295, 305 maxim 57, 176, 179, 186 mediation (Vermittlung) 6, 81, 89, 159, 193, 195, 199, 204, 213, 231 n. 25 metaphor 93, 212, 270 n. 5



index of terms

metaphysical or metaphysics 4, 6, 67–68, 72, 75, 79, 95–96, 101–103, 129, 134, 183–184, 188, 217 methodological 4, 100, 103–104, 119, 144, 240, 293 n. 21 mind and body 95, 269 modality 70 n. 5 modernity (Modernität) 5, 7, 131–133, 138, 142, 253, 303–304, 308–309 monarch or monarchy 138, 148, 150, 152 money 40 n. 4, 50 monological (monologisch) 100, 268 morals moral law (Sittengesetz) 129, 168, 172–176, 183, 185–186, 199 moral world 146, 154, 156–160, 173, 187 morality (Moralität) 6, 8, 42, 44, 73, 105 n. 26, 123, 130, 144, 146, 157, 166–167, 170, 173–174, 177–181, 184–185, 212, 219, 260, 263 mother 136, 140–141, 208 movement movement of recognition (Bewegung des Anerkennens) 6, 192, 196–199, 202–204, 306 movement of self-consciousness (Bewegung des Selbstbewusstseins)  79, 91, 197, 203, 222 nature 1, 3–5, 8, 13, 15–16, 20, 22, 36, 40–42, 44–46, 50, 56, 58, 67–72, 73 n. 9, 74, 76–96, 99, 102–104, 108–109, 111–112, 114, 116–117, 119, 129–131, 134, 136, 157, 159, 168–169, 173, 175, 177–178, 182–185, 187–188, 227, 235 n. 2, 253, 255, 259, 275, 278, 280 n. 25, 281, 283–284, 294, 295 n. 24, 298, 302–303, 313, 315, 319 necessity 32–33, 60, 86, 103, 129–131, 134, 150, 160–162, 176, 186, 306, 314, 319 need 13, 18, 20–22, 26, 29, 32–33, 36, 46, 47 n. 19, 48, 57–58, 65, 70, 72 n. 8, 85, 88, 92, 96, 131, 136, 157 n. 33, 162, 166, 171, 175, 178, 180 n. 8, 209, 210–211, 213, 215, 229, 232, 244, 253 n. 2, 268, 272, 295–296, 317, 319 neediness 85, 96 negation determinate negation 246, 272, 274, 276 neo-Kantian or neo-Kantianism South-West neo-Kantian or South-West neo-Kantianism 119–123 non-contradiction 242

327

norms (Normen) 18, 28–31, 33–34, 45–46, 49, 54–55, 58, 63–65, 207, 209–210, 212, 214, 219–220, 227–229, 231, 238, 249, 277, 296, 309 n. 64 normative normative attitude 3, 8, 54, 55 n. 2, 60–62, 66, 267, 275, 277–281, 284–285 normative status 3–4, 18 n. 18, 53–55, 58–63, 66 normativity 53, 55 n. 2, 56, 65, 100, 101 n. 10, 120 n. 58, 123, 182, 220, 228, 281–283 notion 1, 5–7, 9, 53, 55–56, 59–60, 64, 67, 79–81, 95, 99, 143, 165, 171, 186, 209, 213, 215, 216, 218 n. 13, 220–221, 223, 230, 239, 262, 270–271, 299 n. 37 noumenal 58, 69, 165, 170–172, 180, 184, 284 obedience 25 n. 36, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 186, 208, 209, 279 n. 23 objection 73 n. 9, 179, 230 objective objective logic 121 objective spirit 16, 100 n. 8, 105, 106, 110 n. 39, 111, 117 objectivity 7, 14 n. 9, 102 n. 14, 106 n. 27, 113, 114, 121, 229, 235, 249, 257, 274, 280 observation 154, 176, 220, 223, 247 offspring 268, 273 n. 14 organism 44–45, 48, 82–85, 93, 94 n. 30, 239 social organism 45, 48 origin 58, 158, 177, 299, 302 paradigm (Paradigma) paradigm of recognition (Paradigma Anerkennung) 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 102, 119 parents 82, 208 particularity (Besonderheit) 146, 148, 153, 171, 173, 176, 215, 254, 255, 312 partner 257, 313 pathos 133, 135 perceiver 243 perception sense-perception 213 person (Person) 19, 33, 34, 35, 41–45, 130, 165, 170, 171, 172, 178, 180, 181, 196, 198, 200, 207, 208, 210, 212, 219, 223, 231, 254, 255, 256, 257, 263, 292, 295, 301, 306, 307, 308, 309, 320

328

index of terms

personal inter-personal (interpersonal) 8, 9, 18, 19, 30, 33, 36, 119 n. 56, 180, 197, 198, 203–204, 230, 268, 272, 279, 287, 289, 290–292, 294, 298, 302–306, 311 intra-personal (intrapersonal) 170, 197–198, 203–204, 230 personality inter-personality 8, 256, 257, 259, 261, 263 pharaoh 96, 97 phenomenal 165, 170, 184, 185 philosophy philosophy of consciousness (Bewusstseinsphilosophie,—theorie)  2, 40, 109, 193–194 practical philosophy 1, 4, 99, 100, 101, 109–112, 118, 123, 290, 291, 297 n. 30, 309 theoretical philosophy 4, 68, 111, 112, 123 pleasure pleasure and displeasure 177 police 208 possession (Besitz) 43 n. 12, 89, 105 n. 27, 178, 187, 202, 297, 298 power deontic power 19, 26, 35 power of choice 176, 183, 186 power of nature 40, 44, 46, 92–95, 284 presupposition 48, 50, 72, 81, 92, 155, 220 principle  principle of recognition 2, 17, 100 progress 21, 150, 281, 283, 284 properties 43, 46, 55, 226 property 8, 42, 43, 46, 47 n. 19, 232, 253, 257, 258 n. 9, 260, 262, 263, 309 psychoanalytic 267 n. 2 psychology or psychological 72, 74 n. 10, 108, 109 punishment 8, 30, 130, 131, 259, 260, 261 pure self 42 n. 10, 269, 274, 276, 277, 278, 280, 284 quality 43, 70 n. 5 quantity 70 n. 5, 71 n. 5 realization (Realisierung) realization of freedom 42–44, 46, 168 realm  realm of ends (Reich der Zwecke) 173, 174 realm of spirit 15, 108

reason (Vernunft)  fact of reason 168 practical reason (praktische Vernunft) 112, 114, 115, 123, 129, 130, 165, 166, 168, 171, 175, 177, 184, 185, 187, 201, 212, 282 theoretical reason (theoretische Vernunft) 68, 69, 112 unity of reason 4, 68, 72, 73 reciprocal (reziprok, gegenseitig) 61, 152, 154, 158, 160, 167, 170, 173, 174, 180, 182, 186, 187, 192, 200, 256, 258, 268, 316, 317 reciprocity (Reziprozität) 152, 172, 173, 192, 193, 196, 316, 317 recognition (Anerkennung) concept of recognition (Begriff des Anerkennens) 1–3, 5–6, 11–13, 41, 68, 74, 77, 99, 119, 143–146, 151, 153–154, 162, 192–193, 195, 200–204, 268, 273, 288 n. 4, 299 n. 37, 304, 308–309, 321 horizontal recognition 17–19, 26–28, 30–32, 35 interpersonal recognition 119, 268, 272, 279 intersubjective recognition 17–19, 27, 28, 32–35 movement of recognition (Bewegung des Anerkennens) 6, 192, 196–199, 202–204, 306 mutual recognition (reziproke Anerkennung) 7, 13 n. 3, 14, 17, 26, 28, 32, 35, 50, 100, 101 n. 10, 185, 192–193, 196, 200, 210, 235, 244, 245, 256, 257, 267, 268, 312, 319 social recognition 3, 41, 165, 307 struggle for recognition (Kampf um Anerkennung) 25 n. 36, 90 n. 26, 143, 147, 149, 152, 166, 167, 194, 196–198, 207, 210, 231, 317, 321 theory of recognition or recognitiontheory 6, 99, 100, 110, 151, 154, 193, 195, 204, 267 n. 2, 268, 273, 284, 287, 312, 322 vertical recognition 18, 25, 28 reconciliation 5, 115, 129, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139, 292 n. 11 reconstruction 28, 30, 89, 143, 168, 182, 210, 237 redemption 142 reflection self-reflection 219, 277 n. 22 relation asymmetric relation 31, 152



index of terms

fundamental axiological relation 120–123 interpersonal relation 36, 180, 290, 292, 294, 303–306 intersubjective or inter-subjective relation 146, 158, 268, 273, 279 n. 23, 265, 289, 291, 292, 293, 298–303, 306, 311 lord/bondsman relation 68, 88, 89, 91, 94–97 personal relation 219, 226 self-relation 33, 77, 79, 80, 81, 95, 105 n. 26, 229, 256, 315 social relation 8, 21, 110, 166, 167, 268, 273, 287, 289, 306–308 subject/subject relation 40 relationship asymmetrical relationship 152 human relationship 293, 296, 301, 302, 309 love relationship 308, 312, 313, 314, 316, 318, 319 religion 5, 49, 100, 123, 129, 143, 148, 161, 180 n. 8 representation 73, 78, 79, 91, 92, 103, 120, 165, 167, 168, 177, 186, 187, 275, 277, 280, 320 reproduction 82, 83, 93, 94 res cogitans 73 res extensa 73 revolution or revolutionary 54, 247 right abstract right 105 n. 27, 174, 178, 179, 254–257, 259, 263 fundamental rights 8, 253 human rights 110 role institutional role 17, 18, 26, 27 social role 88, 178, 278 Rome or Roman 134 romantic 5, 129, 321 satisfaction 5, 7, 20, 22, 36, 42 n. 9, 46, 85–87, 89, 134, 142, 175, 183, 209–212, 220, 221, 223, 224, 226–230, 243, 283, 299, 300, 301, 314–316, Scepticism / Skepticism (Skeptizismus) 106 n. 31, 204, 237, 243, 272, 276 scheme 102, 156, 185 school 119, 123, 239 science empirical science 75 n. 10, 247 standpoint of science 8, 267, 270, 272, 273 n. 13, 279, 284, 285

329

second nature 22 self /selves pure self 269, 274, 276, 277, 278, 280, 284 real self 269, 278 self-awareness 220, 224, 225, 226 self-conceit 172 self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein) 20, 170 n. 3, 192–198, 203, 223 n. 16, 224 n. 19, 231 n. 25, 269 n. 4, 299 n. 36, 302 n. 43 self-constitution 8, 267, 269, 273, 278 self-determination 105 n. 25, 117, 122, 123, 168, 171, 175, 208, 221, 255, 269, 278, 282, 284, 296, 305 self-love 167, 183 self-realization 89 n. 24, 122 self-relation 33, 77, 79, 80, 81, 95, 105 n. 26, 229, 256 self-sufficient or self-sufficiency 244 sense-certainty (sinnliche Gewissheit)  84, 203, 216, 222, 223 singularity 22, 116, 153, 158, 172, 209, 215 social social dimension 240 social esteem 6, 165 social institution 26 social life 8, 24–25 n. 36, 28, 36, 156, 182, 288 social order 50, 88, 92, 94, 136, 143, 150, 153, 160, 161 social organism 45, 48 social recognition 165, 307 social relation 21, 308 social structure 208, 289, 308 society  civil society 45–49 n. 23, 178–179, 183–184, 256 ideal society 27, 36, 39 modern society 101 n. 8, 303, 305–306 solidarity 290, 296 soul 80–81, 108–109, 132, 139, 149, 187, 222, 230–232 species 82–84, 86, 93–94, 154, 183, 215, 223–226 speech speech act 218–219, 221, 228, 269 spirit (Geist) absolute spirit 92, 104 n. 20, 105 n. 26, 111, 115, 202, 268, 270 objective spirit 13, 16, 27, 36, 100 n. 8, 105 n. 126, 106, 110 n. 39, 111, 117, 253, 284

330

index of terms

subjective spirit 2, 12–14, 16, 19, 22 n. 31, 34 n. 46, 105 n. 26, 106, 108, 111, 115, 116–118 Spirit-Chapter (Geist-Kapitel) 197 spiritual or spirituality 14, 36 state state of nature (Naturzustand) 184, 199, 201–203 statue 271, 273, 275, 278, 284 status normative status 3, 4, 18 n. 18, 53–55, 58–63, 66 social status 58 Stoicism 134, 276 n. 19, 284 struggle (Kampf) struggle for recognition (Kampf um Anerkennung) 25 n. 35, 90 n. 26, 143, 147, 149, 152, 166, 167, 194, 196–198, 207, 210, 231, 317, 321 struggle of life and death or life-and-death-struggle 231 subject (Subjekt) transcendental subject 4, 68, 78–79, 82, 95–96 subjectivity 1, 16, 22, 43 n. 11, 49, 68, 74, 78, 99, 106 n. 27, 107, 110, 113–117, 121, 134–135, 149, 154–156, 160, 162, 225–226, 229, 256–257, 268, 270, 285, 315, 318 substance (Substanz) 4, 24, 26–27, 42, 63, 72–74, 79, 82, 83 n. 18, 84, 87, 89, 95, 105 n. 23, 134–135, 138, 195, 199, 204, 224 n. 18, 271, 292 n. 11, 301 survival 83, 276 syllogism (Schluss) 193, 315 symmetric or symmetry (Symmetrie) 31–32, 56, 60, 61, 193 synthesis 17 n. 16, 69, 112, 175, 188, 292 n. 11 system system of needs 46, 47 n. 19, 48, 268, 319 system of philosophy 101–102, 104–105, 107–108, 118–122, 296 n. 25 system of right 181 teleological or teleology 14 n. 9, 73 n. 9, 101, 151, 178 theoretical theoretical and practical 5, 47, 72–73, 100–101, 108–109, 111–112, 114–120, 123, 171, 214

theoretical philosophy 4, 68, 111–112, 123 theoretical reason 68–69, 112 theory theory of action 8, 169, 260, 269 theory of communicative action 39–40 theory of freedom 254, 282 theory of intersubjectivity or inter-subjectivity 8, 144, 162, 193–195, 256–257, 287, theory of justice 110 theory of knowledge 120–122 theory of recognition or recognition-theory (Anerkennungstheorie) 2, 6, 12, 37, 99–100, 110, 151, 154, 193, 195, 204, 267 n. 2, 268, 273, 284, 287, 312, 322 theory of self-consciousness 4, 67, 274 thing thing-in-itself 4, 68, 73, 96 totality (Totalität) 104, 119 n. 56, 122, 124, 131, 133, 145, 201–201, 276 n. 19, 278, 281, 305, 313 tradition 45, 48, 54, 130, 167, 216–217, 230, 248, 268–269 traditional (traditionell) 45, 53–55, 59–60, 62, 101, 117, 120, 123, 129, 144, 211 n. 5. 217, 230, 248 tragedy 5, 129–137, 139–140, 142 transcendental transcendental ‘I’ 4, 67–68, 75, 77, 95, 218 transcendental philosophy 102, 114 transcendental subject 4, 68, 78–79, 82, 95–96 transcendence 44 trust 186 n. 12 truth 103, 109–110, 112–113, 115, 117–118, 121, 129, 140, 149, 160, 167, 175, 212–220, 223, 225, 227–228, 230, 235–237, 247, 257, 262, 269, 274, 283–284, 292, 320–321 truth condition 220 understanding (Verstand) 1, 4–7, 13, 16, 19, 30 n. 42, 37, 64–66, 69–70, 77–78, 79 n. 14, 87, 93, 96–97, 99, 102, 104 n. 18, 110–111, 134, 137, 143–144, 145 n. 4, 152, 159, 161, 166, 168–169, 171, 173, 187, 202, 213, 216, 220, 222–223, 238–239, 244, 247, 259 n. 10, 260, 284



index of terms

unity unity of reason 4, 68, 72–73 universality 22 n. 28, 47 n. 19, 131, 153, 160, 169, 176, 254–257, 262, 317 value community of value 48, 49, 50 violence 139, 142, 177, 182, 258, 260, 263 virtue 31, 36, 55, 73, 173, 181, 186, 235 volonté générale 199 welfare 209, 296 will (Wille) free will 31 n. 44, 41, 69, 100 n. 8, 106 n. 27, 110 n. 39, 117, 174, 184, 185, 254, 255, 258–260, 321 general will 257

331

wisdom 178, 232 work work of art 138 world inner world 81, 82, 290, 298 n. 33 intelligible world (Verstandeswelt)  169, 173, 200 modern world 1, 131, 305, 306, 308, 309 moral world 146, 157, 158, 159, 160, 173, 187 sensible world (Sinnenwelt) 72, 169, 173, 184, 200 worship 133 wrong (Unrecht) 8, 43–44, 135, 253, 257, 258, 259, 264

Index of Names Acosta 2, 5, 143 Adorno 139 Antigone 134, 135, 303 Aristotle 109, 131, 201, 214, 237 Astell 147, 149, 150 Austin 238 Beckett 142 Beiser 236 n. 3 Benjamin 134, 136 Berkeley 67, 214 Bizet 132 Bondeli 100 n. 7 Bonsiepen 106 n. 30 Brandom 2–3, 18 n. 18, 20 n. 21, 30 nn. 41–42, 53, 101 n. 10, 120 nn. 58–59, 207, 210, 230, 295 n. 24, 298 n. 34, 299 n. 36, 300 n. 40, 302 n. 43 Breazeale 145 n. 6 Buchdahl 239, 242 Buchwalter 110 n. 39 Canivez 12 n. 2 Carnap 237 Chomsky 65 Claesges 270 n. 7 Cobben 1–3, 9, 39, 40 n. 4, 42 n. 10, 44 n. 13, 50 n. 26, 71 n. 5, 99 n. 4, 100 n. 6, 101 n. 10, 105 n. 26, 112 n. 47, 145 n. 4, 249 n. 18, 269, 276 n. 20, 277–279, 288 n. 4, 299 n. 37, 321 Coleridge 138 Conde 145 n. 6, 146 n. 8 Condillac 271, 273, 278, 284–285 Critchley 2, 5, 129 Danermark 144 n. 1 Deranty 145 n. 2 Deregowski 243 Descartes/Cartesian 73, 75, 236, 242 n. 10, 243–244 Diderot 137 Dilthey 321 Düsing, E. 268, 292 n. 12 Düsing, K. 110 n. 39, 113 n. 49, 270–271, 292 n. 12 Eliot 138 Emundts 294 n. 22

Fichte 2, 6, 75, 77, 109, 120 n. 58, 143–146, 150–151, 157, 180, 199–202, 220–221, 227, 268, 270–271, 296, 311, 317 Flikschuh 186 Forst 312, 313 Fowler 144 n. 1 Frank 118 Fraser 39 Fulda 100 n. 7, 102 n. 15, 107 n. 34 Gadamer 86 Gill 144 n. 1 Girndt 75 n. 11 Goethe 138, 296 n. 25, 319 Gregory 242 n. 11 Haack 241 n. 9, 248 n. 16 Habermas 39, 40, 50, 110 n. 40, 145 n. 4, 161, 186 n. 12, 207, 268, 312 Halbig 101 n. 9, 111 n. 42, 297 n. 28 Hamlet 5, 129, 131, 133–136, 138–142, 296 n. 25 Hegel passim Heidegger 56, 222 n. 15 Henrich 100 n. 7, 290 n. 7, 291 n. 10 Hobbes 184 n. 10, 199, 202 Hoeltzel 146 n. 10 Höffe 120, 180 n. 8 Hölderlin 129, 291 n. 10 Hösle 256, 261 n. 13 Honneth 3, 6, 40, 41, 42 n. 10, 48–50, 86, 90 n. 26, 100 n. 8, 105 n. 23, 106 n. 28, 110, 119, 145 n. 4, 165–167, 174–176, 178–180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 194, 208, 267, 279, 288 n. 4, 292 n. 11, 312, 313, 315–319, 321–322 Horkheimer 194 n. 3 Horstmann 288 n. 3, 294 n. 22 Houlgate 67 n. 1 Hubig 269 Hume 81, 214, 217, 239 Hyppolite 82, 207, 210 Ikäheimo 2, 11, 19 n. 19, 119 n. 56 Jaeschke 106 n. 30 Jamme 291 n. 10 Jaspers 277 n. 22 Jerlinder 144 n. 1



index of names

Josifovic 2, 8, 267, 270 n. 8, 272 n. 11 Joyce 139 Kambartel 225 Kant 1–6, 30 n. 42, 53–59, 63–64, 66–75, 77–79, 81, 86, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 103, 109–112, 114, 118–120, 129–130, 143, 150–151, 156, 165, 167–168, 169 n. 3, 170, 172–174, 176–177, 179–183, 185, 185, 186–187, 199–202, 211, 214, 216–220, 232, 236, 258, 278, 293–294, 296 n. 25, 299, 316 Karásek 288 n. 4 Kersting 180 n. 8 Kesselring 74 n. 10 Kojève 145 n. 4, 207, 267–268 Kok 2, 4, 67, 100 n. 6, 104 n. 20, 107 n. 33 Konstan 317 Korsgaard 120, 282 Kotkavirta 292 n. 14 Krijnen 1–2, 4–5, 99, 104 nn. 18, 20, 106 n. 27–28, 121 n. 62, 249 n. 18 Lacan 140, 267 n. 2 Laclau 147 Laitinen 119 n. 56 Las Casas 147–149 Leibniz 58 Lewis 237 Locke 223 Longino 241 n. 9, 248 n. 16 Loose 2, 6, 165 Luckner 269 Lukács 207, 267–268 McDowell 211 n. 5, 218, 269, 299 n. 35 Maraguat 145 n. 6 Marx 36 n. 49, 39, 46, 137, 207, 267–268 Maza 145 n. 4 Mead 208 Melville 139 Merle 2, 9, 311 Minsky 232 n. 26 Moors 68 n. 2 Mouffe 147 Moyar 297 n. 28, 309 n. 64 Newton 239 Nietzsche 132–133 Nohl 291 n. 9 Parfit 223 Pawlik 260 n. 12 Peperzak 110 n. 39

333

Perry 150 n. 15 Petherbridge 145 n. 2 Pinkard 67 n. 1, 76 n. 12, 207, 211 n. 5 Pippin 20 n. 20, 67 n. 1, 100 n. 8, 309 n. 63 Plato 199, 201, 216, 217, 225, 230–232 Prauss 181, 185 n. 11 Pyrrho 246, 272 Quante 100 n. 8, 103 n. 16, 119 n. 55, 279, 288 n. 4, 292 n. 12, 309 nn. 63–64 Quine 214, 216 Reinhold 274 Rickert 99 n. 3, 120–121, 123 Rockmore 145 n. 6 Rousseau 55–56, 145, 199 Rózsa 100 n. 8, 287, 288 n. 3, 294 n. 23, 297 n. 30 Rundell 145 n. 2 Schäfer 113 n. 49 Schelling 5–6, 129–138, 143–146, 153–162, 201, 270–271, 296 Schiller 5, 129, 145, 296 n. 25 Schlegel 132 Schmidt am Busch 3, 39–41, 50, 288 n. 4 Schnädelbach 259 n. 10 Schulz 268 Sellars 63, 65 Shakespeare 5, 129, 131–133, 135–137, 141–142, 153 Sherman 145 n. 4 Siep 17, 110, 119 n. 55, 145 n. 4, 267–268, 279, 288 n. 4, 292 n. 11, 297 n. 28, 312–314, 316–318, 321 Sinnerbrink 145 n. 2 Solomon 241 n. 9 Sophocles 130–132, 137 Spinoza 72–74, 211 Stekeler–Weithofer 2, 6–7, 103 n. 16, 207, 268–269, 277, 288 n. 4 Stern 172 n. 4 Sutherland 149 n. 13 Taylor 291 n. 10, 298 nn. 33–34, 312, 321 Theunissen 268 Tillich 291 n. 8 Tuomela 227 Vieweg 2, 7–8, 110 n. 39, 253, 288 n. 4 Vos 109 n. 36 Wagner 132 Walter 6, 191, 296 n. 25

334

index of names

Weil 198 Westphal 2, 7, 124 n. 68, 235, 237 n. 5 Will 247 n. 15 Willaschek 168 Williams, R. 134 n. 11 Williams, R. R. 11 n. 1, 13 n. 4, 145 n. 3, 4, 5

Wittgenstein 56 Wolff 237 Zeidler 2, 6, 191 Zizek 267 n. 2, 268 n. 3 Zurn 39, 288 n. 4