INTRODUCTION 1. This question of a drive to self-knowledge, and thus to recognition, is, of course, an essentially metaphysical one, which Hobbes seeks to reduce to a primal struggle to survive, but which even in his thought seems to point toward an inherent, human sociability. 2. While Marx certainly has a concept of ‘transcendence,’ his revolutionary ideal does not fit within this construal of the problem. Alienation for him was indeed tied to the principle of subjectivity, in the sense that it is rooted in the original separation of mental and material labor, and the division into a ruling and producing class tied to that distinction. This division, which began originally in the family between the man and the woman, was the basis of all future exploitation and alienation. But it was a division that began in prehistory, according to him, and all future history is an extension of it. Hence the idea that one can find a sharp dividing line between traditional and modern in the terms discussed here flies in the face of a Marxist analysis. Modern subjectivity was, for him, a product of the modern bourgeois economy, and to comprehend it one must look to its materialist basis, rather than taking it on its own terms. 3. See Harris (1972) and Taylor (1975) for detailed discussions of the intellectual context within which Hegel’s concerns were shaped. 4. This is manifest in his “Tubingen fragment,” in “The Life of Jesus,” and in “The Positivity of the Christian Religion.” Both Knox and Kroner (1971) emphasize the Kantian nature of Hegel’s thought here, while Harris (1972) and Henrich (1970) paint a picture of undoubtedly much more accurate complexity, referring to the individuality of Hegel’s appropriation of Kant and pointing out the influence of other figures such as Mendelssohn, Lessing, Spinoza, Rousseau, and most notably, the young Schelling. Harris, as I indicate, also points to Hegel’s concern with the principle of Christian love as having been evident from the beginning, instead of emerging merely with the “Spirit of Christianity” essay as Kroner seems to argue. Nevertheless, what is essential here is that all seem to be in agreement about moral reason as forming the essential core of Hegel’s ontology in this period, as the basis for individual autonomy and political community, whether it be in the Kantian sense of subjective moral con133 N O T E S sciousness or in the Fichtean sense of the individual’s participation in a larger moral reason. And all recognize the shift in this conception when Hegel came under the influence of Hölderlin. 5. Kroner (1971) refers to Hegel’s existential encounter with the “mystical certainty ” of love. 6. Hyppolite (1974) recognizes the mystical element in Hegel’s writings, but nevertheless appropriates the latter in a secular manner in his subsequent writings on Hegel. Kroner (1971) also emphasizes this religious or mystical basis of Hegel’s thought in the early writings, but believes that he abandons it in his subsequent philosophical development. 7. See especially Fackenheim’s discussion of the “crucial assumption”of the Hegelian middle. Copleston concludes that Hegel never actually achieved such a philosophical vindication. 8. Westphal’s (1979) interesting analysis of the achievement of mutual recognition in terms of love also has political implications, but as I suggest in chapter two, he seems to restrict these mainly to mutual toleration, rather than developing the more substantive implications of love. CHAPTER 1 1. Kroner, for example, ranks it with The Phenomenology of Spirit as the most important of Hegel’s texts. 2. Thus, this early essay by Hegel can be seen to stand in the same relationship to the rest of his philosophy as The Second Discourse does to Rousseau’s, for in both pieces the authors are seeking to come to terms with the modern individual’s alienation from a more primordial knowing due to the development of the modern principle of reflective thought. Both pieces thus represent a point of departure for the thinkers’ subsequent philosophical development. 3. And not just in terms of his attempt to come to grips with the modern socioeconomic reality, as others have tended to do (e.g., Lukács 1975; Plant 1983). See also Laurence Dickey’s (1987) work more generally on this confrontation. It is true that Hegel is examining the clash between love and a world dominated by private property relations, but as I shall discuss, property has its deeper root for him in the rise...