Essays on Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit

The “Struggle for Recognition” and the Thematization of Intersubjectivity

The “Struggle for Recognition” and the Thematization of Intersubjectivity Marina F. Bykova Although Hegel’s concept of recognition and its significance for the account of intersubjectivity became a central topic for many recent publications of Hegel scholars, there is a noticeable deficiency in literature discussing this problematic on the material of Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit. In contrast to the vast amount of publications on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807, a good portion of which deals exclusively with questions of intersubjectivity and recognition, there are only a few—mostly dating back to 80th–90th—investigations into the conceptual role of intersubjectivity in the mature Philosophy of Subjective Spirit. Furthermore, the authors of those publications are in a serious disagreement about the conceptual status of Hegel’s account of intersubjectivity as well as the role of the latter in the constitution of an individual human subjectivity in the theory of subjective spirit. For commentators the most troublesome and puzzling appears the dense section of the Encyclopedia “Phenomenology,” especially its subsection on self-consciousness (§§ 424–37) where Hegel formulates his positive account of mutual recognition. The existing confusion among commentators concerns the significance of the “Phenomenology” section in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit and the real function of the concept of recognition in the thematization of intersubjectivity. Perhaps the most negative interpretation of the role of recognition and intersubjectivity in Hegel’s late system is offered by Axel Honneth. He identifies a real potentiality of Hegel’s concept of recognition for developing what he calls “a formal 139 140 / Marina F. Bykova conception of ethical life,” but maintains that all the promising insights about intersubjectivity and recognition that Hegel has date back to his early Jena period, still prior to the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit. They are, however, completely lost in his system of a “monologically self-developing spirit”1 where intersubjectivity becomes reduced to a temporal subordinate episode of the spirit formation. This position is echoed in Jürgen Habermas’ interpretation of the role of intersubjectivity in Hegel’s system. According to Habermas, Hegel’s intersubjective intuitions visible in his early works are fatally harmed by the peculiar subjectivism of his later philosophy centered around the concept of the “ego” or “absolute self-consciousness,” which is unfolded in the Logic. As a result, “[i]ntersubjectivity is repressed by subjectivity, leaving no presence in the presentation of the absolute idea.”2 In general agreement with Honneth and Habermas are also some prominent Hegel scholars. For example, Vittorio Hösle maintains that “the thematization of intersubjectivity does not assume any vital role in Hegel’s system.” He further notices that due to “the fundamental limits of his [Hegel’s] philosophy, [i.e.] his inability to categorically distinguish between subject-subject and subject-object relations,”3 Hegel cannot really grasp the intersubjective or subject-subject relation effectively. The reading that reduces Hegel’s account of recognition to a single-subject theory is also offered by Adriaan Peperzak who claims that “the entire sense of the ‘struggle for recognition’ in the Encyclopedia phenomenology is not at all consisting in the thematization of intersubjectivity [. . .], but only in a process through which the immediate or abstract self-consciousness must become another for itself in order to be able to identify with itself.”4 It should be said, in all fairness, that there are commentators who hold contrary views on significance of intersubjectivity in late Hegel, emphasizing intersubjective character of self-consciousness and considering mutual recognition as a foundation for the constitution of the subject in Hegel.5 However, those commentators are dramatically outnumbered and not always consistent in their views. For example, Hermann Drüe, who points to the intersubjective character of recognition in Hegel, yet believes that Hegel’s account of self-consciousness is not thought of as the actual development of consciousness, but is rather a pure logical and historic-fictional conceptual construction.6 In the light of such a critical disagreement and real confusion in understanding the role of recognition and intersubjectivity in Hegel’s late system it is crucial to take a closer look at Encyclopedia Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, especially at its section on the phenomenology of spirit, where, in my opinion, Hegel lays out his concept of intersubjective rec- The “Struggle for Recognition” / 141 ognition and develops it as a condition of self. This reading of the section is largely supported by the 1827–28 Lectures on...