Abstract
There has been much debate regarding interpretation of the concept of recognition(Anerkennung) in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Among the issues discussed in various commentaries, two that are particularly interesting and important are: (a) the question of the social and historical vs psychological significance of the concept of recognition which appears in Chapter 4 of Hegel’s Phenomenology and (b) the status of the dialectic of lordship and bondage for understanding the nature of the reconciliation of self-consciousness in the realm of objective spirit. Both of these topics have been widely discussed and one could not pretend to do justice to them in the space of this paper. Our particular interest here is to discuss the political significance of Hegel’s concept of recognition, specifically by exploring its connection to Hegel’s overtly political works, especially the Philosophy of Right with its articulation of the Idea of the state. However, before proceeding directly to that task, I will begin with some comments on the two issues I just mentioned, as they are relevant to my topic on the political significance of recognition.
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Notes
. G.A. Kelly, “Notes on Hegel’s `Lordship and Bondage”’ inIntroduction to the Reading of Hegel, ed. Alaisdair McIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972 ), pp. 189–217.
. G.A. Kelly,Idealism,Politics,and History: Sources of Hegelian Thought( London: Cambridge University Press, 1969 ), p. 334.
Alexander Kojeve,Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H. Nichols ( Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980 ), p. 9.
. Robert Williams,Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other( Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991 ), p. 144.
. G.W.F. Hegel,Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie ( New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1967 ), pp. 234–240.
. Judith N Shklar,Freedom and Independence: A Study of the Political Ideas of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976 ), pp. 60–61.
. Richard Norman,Hegel’s Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction. ( London: Sussex University Press, 1976 ), p. 54.
G.W.F. Hegel,Natural Law. Trans. by T.M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975 ), p. 88.
Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 94. Hereafter cited as LPWH.
For Hegel’s discussion of the dialectic of universality and particularity with reference to the state in his Logic see paragraph 198 of the 1830 edition of the Encyclopedia. In the 1978 printing of the Wallace translation see pp. 264–65.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 21. Hereafter cited as PhR.
. G.W.F. Hegel,Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, ed. Ernst Behler (new York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1990), par. 335, p. 221.
Reason in History, trans. R.S. Hartmann ( New York: Bobbs-Merrill Inc., 1953 ), p. 60.
Hegel here also notes that, “The first determination of all within the state is the distinction between rulers and ruled.” (116)
. Cf. Z.A. Pelczynski, “The Hegelian conception of the state,” inHegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Z.A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 1–29. Also by the same author, “Political community and individual freedom in Hegel’s philosophy of the state,” inThe State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, ed. Z.A. Pelczynski ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 ), pp. 55–76.
. Cf. Karl Popper,The Open Society and its EnemiesVol. 2 ( New York: Harper and Row, 1963 ).
. Cf. Jay Drydyk, “Hegel’s Politics: Liberal or Democratic?”Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (March 1986), pp. 99–122
Also, David MacGregor,The Communist Ideal in Hegel and Marx (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984 ).
In the following several paragraphs I am summarizing the material from Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Right.
Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Mind’: Being Part Three of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. William Wallace and A.V. Miller (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), par. 552, p. 282.
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Duquette, D. (1997). The Political Significance of Hegel’s Concept of Recognition . In: Browning, G.K. (eds) Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 149. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8917-8_12
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