"I that is We, We that is I." Perspectives on Contemporary Hegel: Social Ontology, Recognition, Naturalism, and the Critique of Kantian Constructivism 9789004322950, 9789004322967

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“I that is We, We that is I.” Perspectives on Contemporary Hegel

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 17

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

“I that is We, We that is I.” Perspectives on Contemporary Hegel Social Ontology, Recognition, Naturalism, and the Critique of Kantian Constructivism

Edited by

Italo Testa and Luigi Ruggiu

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Testa, Italo, editor. Title: “I that is we, we that is I,” perspectives on contemporary Hegel :  social ontology, recognition, naturalism, and the critique of Kantian  constructivism / edited by Italo Testa, Luigi Ruggiu, and Lucio Cortella. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Critical studies in  German idealism, ISSN 1878-9986 ; VOLUME 17 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016017472 (print) | LCCN 2016020782 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004322950 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004322967 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. | Kant, Immanuel,  1724–1804. Classification: LCC B2948 .I224 2016 (print) | LCC B2948 (ebook) | DDC  193—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017472

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1878-9986 isbn 978-90-04-32295-0 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32296-7 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. 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 and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations ix List of Contributors xi 1 Hegelian Resources for Contemporary Thought: Introductory Essay 1 Italo Testa

Part 1 Hegelian Social Ontology 2 Hegel on Social Ontology and the Possibility of Pathology 31 Frederick Neuhouser 3 Ethical Perfectionism in Social Ontology—A Hegelian Alternative 49 Heikki Ikäheimo 4 Towards an Institutional Theory of Rights 68 Jean-François Kervégan 5 Reason and Social Ontology 86 Luigi Ruggiu

Part 2 Social Action, Ethical Life, and the Critique of Constructivism 6 Does Hegelian Ethics Rest on a Mistake? 109 Robert Stern 7 Hegelian Constructivism in Ethical Theory? 127 Arto Laitinen 8 Hegel’s Theory of Action: Between Conviction and Recognition 147 Francesca Menegoni 9 The Normativity of Ethical Life 157 Axel Honneth

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10 Freedom and Nature: The Point of View of a Theory of Recognition 169 Lucio Cortella

Part 3 Naturalism, Work and Power 11 Nature, Subjectivity and Freedom: Moving from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature 183 Luca Illetterati 12 Social Self and Work in The Phenomenology of Spirit 202 Emmanuel Renault 13 The Form of Labor: Individuation and Socialization 220 Paolo Vinci 14 Attractors of Recognition 230 Italo Testa

Part 4 The Logic of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity 15 Hegel on Recognition: Self-Consciousness, Individuality and Intersubjectivity 253 Alfredo Ferrarin 16 “I that is We and We that is I.” The Phenomenological Significance and the Logical Foundation of Intersubjectivity in Hegel 271 Franco Chiereghin 17 The Community of the Self 286 Leonardo Samonà 18 The Political Surplus Value of Subjectivity in Hegel 299 Geminello Preterossi Index of Names 311 Index of Subjects 315

Preface and Acknowledgements Can Hegel’s thinking provide us with a common thread for the critical reassessment of the constellation of contemporary thought? Could we find within it conceptual resources in order to gain a better understanding of a number of questions of crucial relevance to modern philosophy, concerning the intersubjective nature of rationality, the social structure of intentional action, the ontological form of institutional reality, and the varieties of naturalism? About twenty years ago in Venice, the editors of this book, at that time respectively a Ph.D student and his supervisor, (who since the eighties had been teaching at Ca’ Foscari University the sociality of reason as a key to understanding Hegel), realized that an epochal shift was taking place and that both in the European and in the Anglo-American tradition Hegel’s image was undergoing a deep transformation. This realization led to a research project and to the organization of a series of conferences, named Contemporary Hegel, designed to promote a renewed international dialogue, and which have been held in Venice in 2001, 2006, and 2013. This book brings together a selection of the papers presented at the latest Contemporary Hegel conference. This series of conferences has been made possible by the support of the Italian ministry of Education’s PRIN research program of national interest, led in Venice for many years by Luigi Ruggiu. Without the generous help of many students and colleagues it wouldn’t have been possible to organize these events. Here we would like to say a special thank you to Lucio Cortella for his participation in the scientific committee. We also acknowledge, for their work as commentators of the papers, Niccolò Cristante, Federica Gregoratto, Filippo Ranchio, Arvi Särkelä, Sabrina Tortorella, Diego Zucca. We cannot thank the contributors of this book enough for their wonderful work, suggestions, and for agreeing to come on board in the first place. In addition, we would like to thank Sage, the journal’s editor David Rasmussen, as well as the translator Felix Koch, for permission to reprint Axel Honneth’s paper “The Normativity of Ethical Life”, previously published in Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 115–124. We would like also to thank Brill, and the “Critical Studies in German Idealism” book series’ editor Paul Cobben, for fully supporting the ­project from the very outset. For their assistance, we thank Meghan Connolly, Michael Mozina, and Karen Cullen. Thanks also to Niccolò Cristante and Valentina Simeoni for their valuable assistance in preparing a first draft of the m ­ anuscript.

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Finally, we would like to acknowledge Ca’ Foscari University and Parma University for their institutional and financial support. Italo Testa and Luigi Ruggiu Parma and Venice, June 2016

List of Abbreviations GW

Gesammelte Werke, 21 vols. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, with the Hegel-Kommission der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Hegel-Archiv der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Hamburg: Meiner, 1968–). Cited by volume and page number. Werke Hegel: Werke: Theorie Werkausgabe, eds. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970). Cited by volume and page number. PR Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. GW 14. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. H.B. Nisbet, ed. Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Cited by paragraph (§) number sometimes followed by page number. Hegel’s remarks (Anmerkung) are indicated by an “R,” additions (Zusatz) from student lecture notes by an “A”. PS Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807). GW 9. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Cited by paragraph of Miller’s translation, and page number, followed by pagination from GW. Enc. Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (3rd ed.: 1830), GW 20. Cited by paragraph number, sometimes followed by page number of the English translation. Hegel’s remarks (Anmerkung) are indicated by an “R,” additions (Zusatz) from student lecture notes by an “A”. References to different English translations used by the authors are provided using the following abbreviations (followed by the paragraph number of the original edition): Enc. I

Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, trans. Théodore Geraets, Wallis A. Suchting, and Henry S. Harris (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1991). Enc. I* Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, Part I: Science of Logic, trans. Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Enc. II Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, 3 vols., ed. and trans. Michael J. Petry (London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: Human­ ities Press, 1970).

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list of abbreviations

Enc. III Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A.V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Enc. III* Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (§§377–482), 3 vols., ed. and trans. Michael J. Petry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978). Enc. ‘17

Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1st ed.: 1817), GW 13. Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline and Critical Writings, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Bloomsbury Academic: 1991). Enc. ‘27 Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (2nd ed.: 1827), GW 19. SL Wissenschaft der Logik (1st ed.: 1812–16, 2nd ed: 1832), GW 11, 12, 21. References to different English translations used by authors are provided using the following abbreviations: SL Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Cited by page number, followed by pagination from GW. SL* Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd—New York: Humanities Press, 1969). Cited by page number, followed by pagination from GW. Translation revised by authors without notice. In some Hegel’s writings cited by paragraph (§), Hegel’s remarks (Anmerkung) are indicated by an “R,” additions (Zusatz) from student lecture notes by an “A”.

List of Contributors Franco Chiereghin is Professor Emeritus at the University of Padua and member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. His work on the history of philosophy and philosophy of mind includes: L’influenza dello spinozismo nella formazione della filosofia hegeliana (1961), Dialettica dell’assoluto e ontologia della soggettività in Hegel (1980), Possibilità e limiti dell’agire umano (1990), La “Fenomenologia dello Spirito” di Hegel. Introduzione alla lettura (1994), L’eco della caverna. Ricerche di filosofia della logica e della mente (2004), Freedom and Thought: Stoicism, Skepticism, and Unhappy Consciousness (2009), The Peculiarly Human Feature of the Aesthetic Experience: The Teaching of Kant and the Challenge of Neurosciences (2011), Paradoxes of the Notion of Antedating. A Philosophical Critique to Libet’s Theory of the Relationships Between Neural Activity and Awareness of Sensory Stimuli (2011). Lucio Cortella is Professor of History of Philosophy at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, and since 2014 president of the Italian Society of Critical Theory (SITC). His research focuses on Hegel and 20th century philosophy, and is particularly concerned with critical theory, dialectics, hermeneutics, practical philosophy, theories of rationality, and modernity. His publications include three monographies on Hegel, among them The Ethics of Democracy. A Contemporary Reading of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (2015), books and essays on critical theory (from Adorno and Horkheimer to Habermas and Honneth), and many articles about a normative theory of recognition. Alfredo Ferrarin after teaching at Boston University, is now Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Pisa. His work on Greek, German classical philosophy and phenomenology includes some sixty essays as well as the following volumes: Hegel and Aristotle (2001), Artificio, desiderio, considerazione di sé. Hobbes e i fondamenti antropologici della politica (2001), Saggezza, immaginazione e giudizio pratico. Studio su Aristotele e Kant (2004), Galilei e la matematica della natura (2014), The Powers of Pure Reason. Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy (2015), Il pensiero e l’io. Hegel e la critica di Kant (2016).

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Heikki Ikäheimo is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at UNSW Australia in Sydney. He works on critical social philosophy, social ontology, philosophical anthropology, recognition and personhood. His publications include the monographies Anerkennung (2014) and Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity (2000), the edited collections The Ambivalence of Recognition (with Kristina Lepold and Titus Stahl, forthcoming), Recognition and Social Ontology (with Arto Laitinen, 2011) and Dimensions of Personhood (with Arto Laitinen, 2007), and a number of articles on Hegel, recognition, personhood and related themes. Jean-François Kervégan is Professor of Philosophy at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1) and Senior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research focuses on the practical philosophy of German Idealism (especially Hegel, Kant), contemporary philosophy of law, political philosophy, theory of normativity. His publications include: La raison des normes. Essai sur Kant (2015), Manuel de l’idéalisme allemand (ed. with Hans J. Sandkühler, 2015), Hegel au présent. Une relève de la métaphysique? (ed. with Bernard Mabille, 2012), Que faire de Carl Schmitt? (2011) L’effectif et le rationnel. Hegel et l’esprit objectif (2008); Hegel et l’hégélianisme (2005), Hegel, Carl Schmitt. Le politique entre spéculation et positivité (1992). Arto Laitinen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tampere, Finland. His publications include  Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources: On Charles Taylor’s Philosophical Anthropology and Ethics (2008), Hegel on Action (ed. with Constantine Sandis, 2010), Recognition and Social Ontology (ed. with Heikki Ikäheimo, 2011), and a number of articles in social philosophy. He is a co-editor of Journal of Social Ontology. Frederick Neuhouser is Professor of Philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University (New York), specializing in German Idealism and social and political philosophy. He is the author of four books:  Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality  (2014),  Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love  (2008), Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory  (2000), and Fichte’s Theory of Subjectivity (1990). He is currently working on a project on social ontology and social pathology in 18th, 19th, and 20th century thought.

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Axel Honneth is Senior Professor of Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Jack C. Weinstein Professor for the Humanities at the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. Since 2001, he also has been the Director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. His English language publications include: The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory  (1990), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1995), Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (with Nancy Fraser, 2003), Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (2007), Reification. A New Look at an Old Idea (2008); Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory (2009), The Pathologies of Individual Freedom. Hegel’s Social Theory (2010), The I in We. Studies in the Theory of Recognition (2012); Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life (2014), and The Idea of Socialism. Towards a Renewal (2016). Luca Illetterati  is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Padua. His scientific interests focus on German classical philosophy, the problem of the philosophical understanding of nature between modern and contemporary philosophy, metaphilosophy and the didactics of philosophy. His publications include: Natura e ragione. Sullo sviluppo dell’idea di natura in Hegel (1995), Figure del limite. Forme ed esperienze della finitezza (1996), Tra tecnica e natura. Problemi di ontologia del vivente in Heidegger (2002), Purposiveness: Teleology between Nature and Intention (ed. with Francesca Michelini, 2008), Hegel (ed. with Paolo Giuspoli and Gianluca Mendola, 2010). Francesca Menegoni is Professor of Moral Philosophy and Director of the Ph.D program in Philosophy at the University of Padua. Her work includes: Moralità e morale in  Hegel (1982), Finalità e destinazione morale nella “Critica del Giudizio” di Kant (1988), Soggetto e struttura dell’agire in Hegel (1993), La “Critica del Giudizio” di Kant. Introduzione alla lettura (1995, 20082), Le ragioni della speranza (2001), Fede e religione in Kant (2005).  Geminello Preterossi is Professor of Philosophy of Law and History of Political Thought at the University of Salerno, where he is director of the PhD program in Law and of the “Laboratory Kelsen”. His research focuses on German classical philosophy, the doctrine of state and constitution, and theories of power and rights. His work on political and legal philosophy includes: I luoghi della politica. Figure

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istituzionali della Filosofia del diritto hegeliana (1992), Carl Schmitt e la tradizione moderna (1996), Autorità (2002), L’Occidente contro se stesso (2004), La politica negata (2011), Ciò che resta della democrazia (2015). Emmanuel Renault is Professor of Philosophy at the University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. His works on Hegel, Marx, and contemporary critical theory include Marx et l’idée de critique (1995), Mépris social. Ethique et politique de la reconnaissance (2000), Hegel. La naturalisation de la dialectique (2001), Philosophie chimique. Hegel et la science dynamiste de son temps (2002), L’expérience de l’injustice (2004), Souffrances sociales (2008), Lire Marx (with Gérard Duménil and Michael Löwy, 2009), Marx et la philosophie (2014), and Connaître ce qui est. Enquête sur le présentisme hégélien (2015). Luigi Ruggiu  is Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy, University Ca’ Foscari, Venice. His publications on ancient philosophy, philosophy of economics and modern and contemporary philosophy include:  La scienza ricercata. Economia politica e filosofia. Studi su Aristotele e Marx  (1978), Genesi dello spazio economico. Il labirinto della ragione sociale: filosofia società e autonomia dell’economia  (1982),  Spirito assoluto, intersoggettività, socialità della ragione (2003), Tempo della fisica e tempo dell’uomo. Parmenide Aristotele Agostino (2007), Hegel contemporaneo. La ricezione americana di Hegel a confronto con la tradizione europea, (ed. with Italo Testa, 2003), Lo spazio sociale della ragione. Da Hegel in avanti (ed. with Italo Testa, 2009), Logica, metafisica politica. Hegel a Jena (2009), Lo spirito è tempo. Saggi su Hegel (2013), Parmenide Nostos. L’essere e gli enti (2014). Robert Stern is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has written widely on topics in German Idealism, and is the author of Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object (1990), Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism (2000), Hegel and the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ (2002), Hegelian Metaphysics (2009), Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard (2012), and Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation (2015). Leonardo Samonà is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Palermo. His works on the Greek metaphysics, German philosophy, philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, include: Dialettica e metafisica. Prospettiva su Hegel e Aristotele

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(1987), Heidegger. Dialettica e svolta (1990), Aporie nell’ermeneutica. Le decostruzioni di Derrida e la filosofia ermeneutica (1999), Diferencia y alteridad (2005), and Ritrattazioni della metafisica (2014). Italo Testa is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Parma. His publications on Hegel, critical theory, pragmatism, social ontology, recognition, and second nature, include the books La natura del riconoscimento. Riconoscimento naturale e ontologia sociale in Hegel (2010), Lo spazio sociale della ragione (ed. with Luigi Ruggiu, 2006), Teorie dell’argomentazione (with Paola Cantù, 2006), Lo spazio sociale della ragione (ed. with Luigi Ruggiu, 2006), Hegel critico e scettico (2002), and a number of essays, including Ontology of the False State (2015), How Does Recognition Emerge From Nature (2012), Hegel’s Naturalism, or Soul and Body in the Encyclopedia (2012), Social Space and the Ontology of Recognition (2011), Second Nature and Recognition (2009), Selbstbewußtsein und zweite Natur (2008). Paolo Vinci is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University La Sapienza, Rome, and chief editor of the journal Polemos. Materiali di filosofia e critica sociale. His work on Marx, Hegel and Heidegger includes: Soggetto e tempo. Heidegger interprete di Kant (1998), “Coscienza infelice” e “anima bella”. Commentario della “Fenomenologia dello spirito” di Hegel (1999), Essere ed esperienza in Heidegger. Una fenomenologia possibile fra Hegel e Hölderlin (2008), La forma filosofia in Marx. Dalla critica dell’ideologia alla critica dell’economia politica (2011).

chapter 1

Hegelian Resources for Contemporary Thought: Introductory Essay Italo Testa This collection of essays focuses on the formula, to be found in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, “ ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’ [Ich, dass Wir, und Wir, dass Ich ist]”.1 Its aim is to explore the many facets of this formula, which expresses the recognitive, intersubjective, and social structure of human life, in Hegel’s Logic, Ontology, Philosophy of Nature, Moral and Social Theory, and to use it as the guiding thread for the theoretical reconstruction and critical reassessment of Hegelian arguments that are of great relevance for contemporary thought. The book gathers together a selection of papers presented on the occasion of the third international conference “Contemporary Hegel”, bringing together an international group of contemporary philosophers and Hegel scholars. The discussion sets out from a hermeneutic hypothesis: namely, that it is possible to read Hegel as a protagonist of contemporaneity once again only if one brings to light the Hegelian roots that underlie the crucial questions of current debate. That the present-day horizon be interpreted anew as the result of a Hegelian turn in philosophy is the wager that the essays presented here place on the philosophical table. This move, at the same time, revives the possibility of judging the merits of the theoretical solutions that an innovative reading of Hegel makes available to contemporary thought. The operation demands both some historical examination of Hegel’s work and a precise articulation of what is at stake. For this reason the essays have been organized around a number of precise theoretical focal points corresponding to the sections of the book, with each section designed to verify Hegel’s influence on the genesis and structure of specific aspects of the contemporary constellation: the socio-ontologic­al approach to social theory, its historical and conceptual origins in Hegel’s theor­y of spirit and social institutions (part one); the action-theoretical model in moral and social philosophy, its connection with the metaphysics of sociality, and its relevance for the criticism of radical constructivist approaches to social practices (part two); the question of naturalism, the reassessment of the 1  P S § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004322967_002

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cruciality of work and power for our understanding of human life, and its relevance for the criticism of idealist interpretations of Hegelian spirit (part three); the intersubjective turn, its consequences for our understanding of the logical structure of subjectivity, and its relevance for a critical confrontation with pheno­menological and hermeneutic approaches (part four). Hegel’s thinking thus provides the historical and textual material, in which some hidden paths underlying the present can be rediscovered, as well as the conceptual tool capable of defining the reciprocal relation with aspects of the contemporary horizon that have emerged in differentiated and often noncommunicating sectors of philosophical knowledge. For many years this path was blocked due to a number of obstacles that stood in the way of the pioneering efforts that in Europe date back to the 1960s. Philosophy had first to free itself from the prejudices of an analytic tradition that proclaimed Hegel to be its greatest enemy and that, in continental philosophy, influenced by the historicist, phenomenological and hermeneutic tradition, branded him as the last and culminating exponent of onto-theology, seeing his opus as a metaphysics of Cartesian subjectivity. This work on the plane of the history of thought, now underway even if still far from complete, is of fundamental importance in responding to the need to liberate and renew the theoretical potential of a series of Hegelian ideas that have long remained invisible, because they have been stifled by interpretative prejudices. But work on historical contexts and on the interpretations of texts must be accompanied by an effort of translation designed to transpose the Hegelian lexicon into a contemporary vocabulary, and therefore must aim to clarify the conceptual content of Hegel’s solutions in this light, evaluating their validity and feasibility in the present. What is needed, then, is a hermeneutic circle that links past and present, historical interpretation and conceptual analysis, and that finds its prime justification precisely in the dialectical procedure of comprehension that shapes both Hegelian systematic thought and philosophy of history. It is thus opportune to view the essays presented here as moves and steps within a long operation of historical examination and clearing away: only in this vein will it be possible to appreciate their value adequately and to see them as synthetic results of previous studies and as innovative steps within this research context. In this introductory chapter, we will first briefly outline some aspects of renewal of Hegel’s interpretation in twentieth-century European philosophy. In paragraph 2 we will sketch out some aspects of the confrontation of Hegelianism with American pragmatism and analytic philosophy, and how this has developed since the 1990s in a new strand of interpretations. In paragraph 3 we will focus on the exigencies to go beyond some limits of these interpretations which have emerged more recently and are expressed in the essays

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presented in this collection: providing a chapter-by-chapter summary of the rest of the book, we will underline the most important conceptual novelties these essays offer to our understanding of the contemporaneity of Hegel. 1

The Twentieth-Century European Demand for a “Contemporary” Hegel

The demand for a “contemporary” reading of Hegel, through a translation of his vocabulary, and thus through a theoretical reform of the dialectic, was powerfully voiced in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe by Italian neoHegelianism, with the work of Giovanni Gentile and, particularly, of Benedetto Croce.2 The reform of the Hegelian dialectic championed by Croce—according to the well-known formula of the ‘dialectic of distincts’—lent new centrality to objective spirit, understood in historical, social and intersubjective terms, within a revival of the Hegelian idea of history as a history of freedom. But Croce understands history as an open process, which does not contemplate systematic closure through some form of absolute knowing. On another front, regarding the reading of the Hegelian spirit in an intersubjective vein, the influence of Alexander Kojève’s work is still very great. Kojève, in his lessons on the Phenomenology of Spirit in the 1930s, was the first philosopher to place the concept of ‘recognition’ (Anerkennung) at the center of the interpretation of Hegel, albeit in the context of an eminently anthropological interpretation of the dialectic and, as was the case with Croce, whilst prioritizing the philosophy of history.3 Kojève’s interpretation left its mark not only on the subsequent tradition of Hegelian studies in France, but also on French philosophical culture of phenomenological, existential and structuralist orientation, becoming an important point of reference for intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and later Judith Butler. But it is in the German tradition that Kojève’s intuition will be liberated from its unilateral aspects dictated by anthropological and existential Marxism, to be presented as a possible, coherent model for the interpretation 2  See Giovanni Gentile, La riforma della dialettica hegeliana (Messina: Principato, 1913); Benedetto Croce, Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel (Bari: Laterza, 1907); Croce, Indagini su Hegel e schiarimenti filosofici (Bari: Laterza, 1952). 3  Alexander Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Leçons sur la Phénomenologie de l’esprit, professées de 1933 à 1939 à l’École des Hautes Études, Raymond Queneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1947).

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of Hegel’s practical philosophy. In this regard the tradition of Frankfurt critical theory, and especially of Jürgen Habermas, was decisive. Habermas begins, on the one hand, with the historical and social approach to the dialectic already matured within the philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno—whose Negative Dialektik (1966) represents another chapter of the twentieth-century theoretical reform of Hegelianism, based on opposition between the open and negative spirit of the dialectic and the positive closure of the system.4 On the other hand, Habermas reads Hegel also on the basis of the historicist, dialogical and linguistic approach to Geist formulated by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Wahrheit und Methode (1960), rediscovering and reviving the continental hermeneutic tradition.5 Accordingly, Habermas, in Arbeit und Interaktion (1967), presents an interpretative model of the Jena conception of spirit as an ensemble of the “middles” of labor, language and recognition.6 Interweaving historico-philosophical investigation and conceptual analysis, Habermas essay—from which he would draw the ultimate consequences forty years later, precisely in an engagement with the new interpretations of Hegel developed in the 1990s7—made it possible to read Hegel for the first time as the philosopher whose youthful intuitions anticipated and prepared the pragmatic and intersubjective turn at the center of the contemporary constellation: an anticipation of future trends, moreover, that for Habermas was immediately negated by the successive subjectivistic closure of Hegel’s mature system. The problem with this reading, however, was that it completely expunged the role of the Phenomenology—the very text that stands at the center of the current Hegelianism—while delivering Hegel to the metaphysically-oriented subjectivist tradition. It will be, then, from the meeting between the theoretical work of the Frankfurt School and the exegetic and history-of-philosophy current of Hegelian studies—centering, from the 1960s, around the Hegel-Archiv in Bochum—that the Hegelian theory of recognition, thanks to the work of Ludwig Siep, by the late 1970s would enter the German interpretative tradition no longer as a particular aspect but rather as the general principle for the

4  See Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966). 5  See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1960). 6  Jürgen Habermas, “Arbeit und Interaktion. Bemerkungen zu Hegels Jenenser ‘Philosophie des Geistes’,” in Natur und Geschichte. Karl Löwith zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Hermann Braun and Mandfred Riedel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), 132–155. 7  See Jürgen Habermas, “From Kant to Hegel and Back Again,” European Journal of Philosophy, 7, 2 (1999): 164–189.

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comprehension of Hegel’s practical philosophy.8 Reconnecting with Habermas’s reading and, in particular, with Siep’s studies on Hegel’s Jena writings, Axel Honneth, from within critical theory, with his Kampf um Anerkennung (1992) would then make a decisive contribution to the affirmation of recognition as a new paradigm of contemporary social and political philosophy;9 and this, in the same year in which, on the American side, Robert Williams’ first work on the ethics of recognition is published.10 This paradigm—again, in 1992—would be relaunched by Habermas and Taylor also within the dawning philosophicopolitical debate on multiculturalism; a debate that, not by chance, was marked by the meeting of a European philosopher with a North American one whose philosophical position was shaped by an intense engagement with the contemporary legacy of Hegel.11 Then, 1994, with the simultaneous publication of works by Pinkard, Wood, and Hardimon,12 and of McDowell and Brandom’s major works, is the year in which American Hegelian studies and the neopragmatism of Sellars and Rorty began to forge strong links and to present themselves jointly as a new model for approaching Hegel. In successive years also the European philosophers would begin to engage with this new American Hegelianism, an engagement whose first important consolidation would come in 1999 with the publication of a monographic section of the European Journal of Philosophy dedicated to the theme of Hegel’s Legacy13 and then, in 2001, with

8   See Ludwig Siep, “Der Kampf um Anerkennung. Zu Hegels Auseinendersetzung mit Hobbes in den Jenaer Schriften,” Hegel-Studien, 9 (1974): 155–207; Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg: Alber Verlag, 1979). 9   Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992). 10  Robert R. Williams, Recognition. Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992); Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley, Los Angeles, New York: University of California Press, 1997). 11  See Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and the “Politics of Recognition”, ed. Amy Guttmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). We also wish to recall the awarding of the Hegel Prize to Donald Davidson in 1991 (Davidson, Dialektik und Dialog. Rede anläßlich der Verleihung des Hegel-Preises, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), which may have seemed strange at the time but gained very different meaning in the successive years. 12  See Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology. The Sociality of Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Michael O. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 13  See European Journal of Philosophy, 7, 2 (1999).

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a direct moment of wide-ranging and articulated debate on the occasion of the first Venice conference on Contemporary Hegel.14 2

Pragmatism, Analytic Philosophy, and the New Approaches to Hegel in the 1990s

With the publication in 1994 of Robert Brandom’s Making it Explicit and John McDowell’s Mind and World—works in which Rorty and Bernstein see the opening of a third historical phase of the relationship between American pragmatism and Hegelianism, after the classical phase and the Sellarsian phase of the 1950s15—the paths of historiography and those of analytic and post-analytic philosophy, long on separate tracks, began to intersect, converging not only on the re-evaluation of Sellars as one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century—a historiographic and theoretic operation to which Rorty and Brandom made a decisive contribution16—but 14   Contemporary Hegel. American Readings of Hegel in Comparison with the European Tradition (16–18 may, 2001), whose proceedings, including essays by main figures of the new interpretative wave such as Richard J. Bernstein, Robert B. Brandom, Ardis B. Collins, Vittorio Hösle, Stephen Houlgate, William Maker, John McDowell, Terry Pinkard, Robert B. Pippin, Paul Redding, Tom Rockmore, Richard Rorty, Robert R. Williams, have appeared in the volume Hegel contemporaneo. La ricezione americana di Hegel a confronto con la tradizione europea, eds. Luigi Ruggiu and Italo Testa (Milano: Guerini, 2003). Some other collections in different languages have subsequently been devoted to the theme of Hegel’s contemporaneity, which gather many of the essays first presented at the Venice conference: see Hegels Erbe, eds. Christoph Halbig, Michael Quante and Ludwing Siep (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004); Das Interesse des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger Sicht, eds. Wolfgang Welsch and Klaus Vieweg (München: Fink, 2007), and the monographic number of the French journal Philosophie, 99 (2009), devoted to the subject: “Hegel pragmatiste?”. The proceedings of the second Contemporary Hegel international conference, on “The Social Space of Reason” (Venice, 28–30 September, 2006), have been published in Lo spazio sociale della ragione. Da Hegel in avanti, eds. Luigi Ruggiu and Italo Testa (Milano: Mimesis, 2009). 15  See John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert B. Brandom, Making it Explicit. Reasoning, Representing and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994). 16  See the edition with Brandom’s commentary and Rorty’s introduction of Sellars’s essay (Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, with an introduction by Richard Rorty, and a study guide by Robert Brandom, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1997) and the edition of a collection of Sellars’s fundamental essays, edited by Brandom (Wilfrid Sellars, In the Space of Reasons. Selected Essays of Wilfrid Sellars, eds. K. Sharp and R.B. Brandom,

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also on the necessity of a return to Hegel within the contemporary constellation. This opened a new side to the question, in which historical research and the solution of conceptual problems are closely interwoven. The line to which McDowell and Brandom’s interpretation of Hegel can be ascribed originated, in fact, with the now classic Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), which Sellars referred to as his “Méditations Hégéliennes.” Going back to Hegel’s critique of immediacy and of sense certainty, Sellars, in that work, attacked the empiricist foundationalism expressed in the “myth of the given.” Sellars’ intuition had a significant effect firstly on North American philosophers of the analytic school: on Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty in particular, who looked to the legacy of idealism for a way out of the tradition that had shaped them. Thus Taylor, back in the early 1970s, returned to the theme of critiquing the “myth of the given” and individuated in Hegel and in the romantic tradition an expressivist alternative to representationalism.17 Rorty and Bernstein returned, then, to the pragmatist aspect of the Sellarsian reading of Hegel, placing it within the American tradition going back to Dewey and, at the same time, valorizing its positive contribution to the linguistic turn.18 The re-evaluation of the pragmatist component of Sellars’ thought and thus of his connection with Hegelian philosophy in fact played a decisive role in the attempt to develop a new narrative on the history of analytic philosophy. It was a question here of revising the constitutively anti-Hegelian prejudice Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2007), as well as some comprehensive studies on Sellars: James O’Shea, Wilfrid Sellars: Naturalism with a Normative Turn (London: Polity, 2007); Joel Rosenberg, Wilfrid Sellars: Fusing the Images (London: Oxford University Press, 2007). Different Sellarsian readings of Hegel had been developed by Kenley Dove, Hegel’s Phenomenological Method, The Review of Metaphysics, XXIII, 4 (1970), 615–641, and Kenneth Westphal, Hegel’s Epistemological Realism (Kluwer, Dordrecht 1989). For the reprise, again influenced by Sellars, of the metaphor of the “social space” within Kantian and Hegelian studies, see Joel Rosenberg, The Thinking Self (Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1986); Willem A. de Vries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1988). 17  See Charles Taylor, “The Opening Arguments of the Phenomenology,” in Hegel: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. A. MacIntyre (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972), 151–188; Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 18  See Richard J. Bernstein, “Why Hegel Now?”, The Review of Metaphysics, 121, 1 (1977), 29–60; Richard Rorty, “Dewey’s Metaphysics,” in Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Rorty, “Transzendentale und holistische Methoden in der analytischen Philosophie. Zur Einführung,” in Kant oder Hegel, ed. Dieter Henrich (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1983); Rorty, “Dewey between Darwin and Hegel,” in Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 290–306.

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of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy—shaped, nonetheless, in the sphere of British neo-idealism—canonized with George E. Moore’s celebrated Refutation of Idealism (1903);19 a prejudice that was imported to the United States with the arrival of logical empiricism between 1933 and 1940 and historiographically canonized by Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy (1946).20 By contrast, the new historiographic narrative sought to show how, under the official ideology of neo-positivist orientation which was dominant in the United States beginning in the 1940s, motifs ascribable to pragmatism continued to be present; and such motifs, at least since the 1950s—and here again Sellars was decisive, working behind the scenes—allegedly gave rise to a subterranean tremor, whose full range and consequences were not measurable before the end of the century.21 Allegedly, then, this underground current set in motion a process that—as Sellars foresaw—eventually renewed in a new context the critique of sense certainty broached by Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. As the story goes, the progressive re-emergence of pragmatism has effectively set in motion a sort of dialectic within analytic philosophy, a return to Hegel—at first only implicit— within which the empiricist assumptions of the official ideology progressively undergo self-criticism, and then emerge at the moment in which Hegel’s presence becomes explicit, or in a decidedly post-analytic climate (Rorty and McDowell’s preferred narrative), or in the Aufhebung of analytic philosophy in a sort of “analytic pragmatism” (the narrative Brandom prefers).22 At the same time, this historical narrative—as had already been suggested at an important Hegel congress in 198323—made conceptual tools available that are capable of translating the theoretical potential of Hegel’s critique of the representationalist and foundationalist assumptions of empiricist epistemology into contemporary vocabularies, and thus of rereading central themes of Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, and even of Gottlob Frege, in the light of 19  Georg E. Moore, “The Refutation of Idealism,” The Monist (1903), reprinted in Moore, Philosophical Studies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1922). 20  Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945). 21  For a comprehensive picture of the role of pragmatism for this movement see Richard J. Bernstein, The Pragmatic Turn (London: Polity, 2010). 22  See in this regard Brandom’s John Locke Lectures: Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). On Hegel and analytic philosophy see in particular Tom Rockmore, Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 23  See Richard Rorty, “Transzendentale und holistische Methoden in der analytischen Philosophie”.

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dialectical logic.24 This idea was systematically taken up by Brandom, with a sharp turn to the semantic, in his vast hermeneutic fresco Tales of the Mighty Dead.25 Hegel’s dialectical mediation thus became the keystone which was used, historically and theoretically, to bridge inferentialistic logic, semantic holism and the pragmatic conception of meaning as use. This perspective has merged in recent decades also within Hegelian scholarship thanks, in particular, to the works of Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard.26 Revisiting the post-metaphysical interpretation of idealism as a theory of cate­ gories advanced by Klaus Hartmann in the 1990s,27 and combining it with theo­ retical tools akin to Sellarsian pragmatism and Brandom’s semantics, these authors have proposed a renewed image of idealism, understood as an entirely intersubjective philosophy that thematizes the essential sociality of reason— whose normative structure they interpret in fundamentally Wittgensteinian terms—arousing interest that goes beyond the specialistic studies on Hegel, and becoming the principal interlocutors of the “Pittsburgh neo-Hegelian School”—as Rorty defined it.28 The new readings of the history of pragmatism and of the history of analytic philosophy, combined with a new and powerful revisitation of that crucial point—both historically and theoretically—represented by the transition from Kant to Hegel, thus provided an important drive towards an overcoming of the great divide that marked the relationship between analytic and 24  The path to a reading of Hegel in relation to Wittgenstein was opened—with very different slants, aims and outcomes—first by John N. Findlay (Hegel: a Re-examination, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958) and then by David Lamb, Language and Perception in Hegel and Wittgenstein (Avebury, 1979). 25  See Robert B. Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead. Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2002). See also the introductory essay in Brandom, Articulating Reasons. An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 26  See Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism. The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Pippin, Idealism as Modernism. Hegelian Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology. From the standpoint of a reading of Hegel’s conception of institutions and of freedom in terms of social philosophy, see also the important works by Alan Patten, Hegel’s Idea of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Frederick Neuhouser, The Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 27  See Klaus Hartmann, Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View, in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press), 101–124. 28  See Richard Rorty, “Robert Brandom on Social Practices and Representation,” in Truth and Progress, 124.

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continental philosophy for a full century. Hegel, in fact, had long represented the most galling case—the name on which the two traditions were divided, also historically. Reweaving the threads of the Hegel-Kant relationship— Kantian philosophy had already been rehabilitated for some time, at least by major sectors of practical philosophy of analytic orientation—authors such as Brandom, McDowell, Pippin, Pinkard, Paul Redding,29 and others, provided an interpretative framework within which to recreate a dialogue also between Hegel’s philosophic discourse and, at least, that political philosophy of normative orientation which has dominated the scene in recent decades. The European tradition, both in the Italian historicist and neo-idealist aspects, in the French existentialist and Marxist elements, and in the German theoretico-critical and hermeneutic currents, had already brought to light diverse aspects of the practical, linguistic, social, historical, intersubjective and recognitive turn inspired by Hegel’s philosophy.30 Nevertheless, in most cases this model of interpretation remained operative within an opposition between spirit and system, young Hegel and mature Hegel, open character of the dialectical method and closed character of the systematic edifice: a reading that effectively concluded with Hegel’s liquidation. This, in fact, was an interpretation dictated first of all by the idea that, beginning with the Phenomenology of Spirit and to an increasing extent in the later works, Hegel’s philosophy progressively took the form of a metaphysics of the subject, at once the ultimate expression and the completion of Western metaphysics—a form that, in its monological and closed structure, allegedly came to stifle the social, historical, linguistic and intersubjective openness of Geist.31 The principal novelty of the ‘post-metaphysical’ interpretations consisted in its reversal of this thesis by 29  See Paul Redding, Hegel’s Hermeneutics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996); Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought. 30  These threads have been woven together into a unitary interpretation by the Venice School in relation both to the early and Jena writings (Luigi Ruggiu, Logica metafisica politica. Hegel a Jena, Milano: Mimesis, 2009; Ruggiu, Lo Spirito è tempo. Saggi su Hegel, Milano: Mimesis, 2013; Italo Testa, Hegel critico e scettico. Illuminismo, repubblicanesimo e antinomia alle origini della dialettica (1785–1800), Padova: il Poligrafo, 2002; Testa, La natura del riconoscimento. Riconoscimento naturale e ontologia sociale in Hegel (1801–1806), Milano: Mimesis, 2010), and to the mature writings (Lucio Cortella, Dopo il sapere assoluto. L’eredità hegeliana nell’epoca postmetafisica, Milano: Guerini e Associati, 1995; Cortella, L’etica della democrazia. Attualità della filosofia del diritto di Hegel, Genova: Marietti, 2012; Alessandro Bellan, La Logica e il suo ‘altro’, Padova: il Poligrafo, 2002). 31  Emblematic in this regard is the title of an important study, of Marxist orientation, by Heinz Kimmerle: Das Problem der Abgeschlossenheit des Denkens: Hegels „System der Philosophie“ in den Jahren 1800–1804 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1982²).

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highlighting the systematic bond that weaves these threads together more consistently than Habermas had done (as Habermas himself will acknowledge),32 reformulating all these elements in a vocabulary compatible with that of normative practico-political philosophy, and thus extending the social, linguistic and intersubjective reading of Geist also to the mature Hegel, and to the Phenomenology of Spirit in particular.33 (This operation had in some respects already been attempted by Vittorio Hösle34 with his presentation of an intersubjectivistic reading of the mature system, mediated theoretically by Karl Otto Apel’s transcendental pragmatics; an operation that, within an ongoing debate with the Pittsburgh neo-Hegelian School, will then be attempted with other instruments by Pirmin Stekeler Weithofer, in the context of a semantic interpretation of logic as a critical theory of meaning.)35 On this interpretative basis the new pragmatist interpretations developed from the 1990s, presented—as Habermas, somewhat reductively, termed it—a “deflationist” and, above all, undeniably post-metaphysical version of Absolute Spirit, no longer understood as a manifestation of the monological closure of thought but rather as an expression of the inner historical and critical self-reflection of modern social practices. As we can well imagine neither Habermas nor interpreters such as Rolf-Peter Horstmann36 were in agreement with this interpretation, nor was the Münster School of Siep’s followers, who have nonetheless engaged in fruitful dialogue with the epistemological and normative readings of Hegel.37 This model has found new theoretical support in the revisitation, mediated by neo-pragmatism, of the antirepresentationalist and antifoundationalist range of Hegel’s epistemology. This is the most important theoretical novelty recognized as positive by Habermas himse­lf, 32  See Jürgen Habermas, “From Kant to Hegel and Back again,” European Journal of Philosophy, 7, 2 (1999), 164–189. 33  For a reconstruction of this interpretative paradigm see now Luca Corti, Ritratti hegeliani. Un capitolo della filosofia americana contemporanea (Roma: Carocci, 2014). 34  V. Hösle, Hegels System (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998). 35  Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels analytische Philosophie. Die Wissenschaft der Logik als kritische Theorie der Bedeutung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1992); Stekeler-Weithofer, Philosophie des Selbstbewußtseins. Hegels System als Formanalyse von Wissen und Autonomie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005). 36  Rolf-Peter Horstmann, “What is Hegel’s Legacy and What Should We Do With It?”, European Journal of Philosophy, 7, 2 (1999), 257–287. 37  In addition to the works of Siep, see the contributions of his followers: Christoph Halbig, Objektives Denken. Erkenntnistheorie und Philosophy of Mind in Hegels System (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2002); Michael Quante, Hegel’s Concept of Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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who, not by chance, has taken Robert Brandom as one of his privileged interlocutors:38 a novelty destined not only to clarify and widen the range of the pragmatic turn opened by Hegel in philosophy but also to influence the affirmation of the recognitive paradigm—as we see, for example, from the new theoretical reading both of Hegel and recognition put forward by Axel Honneth in his second book on Hegel.39 Now the recognitive paradigm could be read also in its epistemological and semantic consequences and has therefo­re started to be increasingly understood as the global hermeneutic principle of Hegelian philosophy, no longer limited to the practico-political domain. On the other hand, the re-evaluation of the phenomenological concept of expe­ rience (Erfahrung) carried out with particular efficacy by McDowell, mediating the Sellarsian reading of Spirit (Geist) as space of reasons with the lessons of practical Aristotelianism and Gadamerian hermeneutics, along with the concept of “second nature” that McDowell has made the focal point of his interpretation of Hegel, have stimulated many to work towards an embodied, historical and concrete vision of human rationality. 3

Articulation of the Book and Chapter-by-Chapter Outline

In this way the Hegelian theory of Spirit (Geist) came back into play in the contemporary arena as a model through which to rethink the full range of the intersubjective and historical mediation of human rationality, and thus the social articulation of its structure. It is once again possible to “use” Hegel as an alternative to the abstract, formalistic and disembodied conceptions of rationa­lity that continue to circulate in contemporary thought. So, today, reade­rs of Hegel have to measure the value of the interpretations developed in the last two decades above all in relation to their normative approach, matured within a rereading of the legacy of Kant, whose conception of autonomy as normative authority—in Robert Brandom’s version—Hegel supplemented by a social and recognitive comprehension of its genesis and structure.

38  See the debate between the two philosophers hosted in 2000 in the European Journal of Philosophy: Jürgen Habermas, “From Kant to Hegel: On Robert Brandom’s Pragmatic Philosophy of Language,” European Journal of Philosophy, 8, 3 (2000), 322–355; Robert Brandom, “Facts, Norms, and Normative Facts: a Reply to Habermas,” European Journal of Philosophy, 8, 3 (2000), 356–374. 39  See Axel Honneth, The Pathologies of Human Freedom. Hegel’s Social Theory, Trans. Ladislaus Löb (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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From this standpoint, the next step forward in the reading of Hegel’s legacy appears to require a close scrutiny of the limits of the normative and neopragmatist approach, and in particular of the shortcomings of the Kantian and constructivist understanding of social practices and practical rationality it involves. The confrontation with the socio-ontological model is also destined to shed new light on Hegel’s approach to metaphysics and to put into question some presuppositions of the post-metaphysical interpretative paradigm. Furthermore, it is required a renewed engagement with the European interpretative traditions of Marxism and of structuralism that focused their Hegelian reflections on that nexus between power and authority which was overlooked by many normative and neopragmatist readings, intent as they were on a conciliatory interpretation of modernity and of social space. Getting beyond this vision of rationality as, basically, an expression of conciliation appears to demand further engagement with the critical tradition, which had grasped the connection between the historicity of rationality and its mediation in practical interests and hence with contemporary critical theory, which with the model of the ‘struggle for recognition’ had grasped in an articulated and profoundly dialectic manner the link between social conflict, genesis of norms and social structure. Furthermore, the anti-naturalistic tendency of the normative interpretation of Hegel seems to be put again into question by the pressure of contemporary naturalism, and the need arises to regain some strands of Hegel’s philosophy of nature to better understand his comprehension of social life. In this light we can now appreciate the value of the essays presented in this collection as both being connected to previous studies and also introducing innovative steps within this research context. It is the recognitive paradigm that emerges in this collection as the model that appears to characterize the specificity of the Hegelian approach to the various domains of philosophical knowing, and thus to weave into a single theoretical fabric the various “turns” that shape the contemporary constellation. Thus the notion of recognition is not the theme of a single part of this book, but is rather the guiding thread through the different essays, which offer a close reading of all the implications of the formula “I that is We and We that is I” for different aspects of Hegel’s thought. This allows the authors to reformulate anew the notion of “recognition [Anerkennung]” as an interpretative key to Hegel and to his contemporaneity. The book is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on Hegelian social theory as an alternative to contemporary socio-ontological models and addresses the role recognition theory plays in this context. The second part discusses the relevance of Hegel’s socialized action theory for overcoming the limits of both contemporary constructivism in moral and political theory and

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constructivist interpretations of Hegel’s theory of ethical life. The third part focuses largely on the contribution that Hegel’s theory of subjectivity, recognition and work may bring to the contemporary debate on naturalism and social theory. The fourth part addresses the underestimated (at least in recent literature, mainly focused on the Phenomenology of Spirit) logical and systematic aspects of Hegel’s theory of intersubjectivity and their importance for the confrontation with contemporary phenomenological, hermeneutic, and poststructuralist criticisms of Hegel. Although the parts have been arranged thematically and the chapters are conceptually intertwined, all of them are also stand-alone essays, capable of being read on their own in any order. 3.1 Part One: Hegelian Social Ontology The first part of the collection focuses on Hegelian thought from a socio-ontological standpoint. Whereas the interpretative paradigm formed in the 1990s was mainly concerned with epistemological, pragmatic and normative aspects of Hegel’s understanding of social practices and ethical life, an ontological turn has occurred in more recent approaches to Hegel’s philosophy of sociality. Once we assume, as many do, that recognition is the core of Hegel’s theory of spirit, then we cannot overlook the fact that, understanding it as playing a constitutive role as for both individual and collective self-consciousness and social institutions—as the phenomenological formula “I that is We and We that is I” seems to involve—then we are already implicitly characterizing recognition as a mechanism from which the very being of social phenomena ontologically depends. But this appreciation of the socio-ontological role of recognition also has consequences which can lead us to question some aspects of the post-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel. Whereas Habermas attacked Hegel as a metaphysical thinker insofar as he is assumed to still be indebted to the metaphysics of subject, interpreters such as Pippin and Pinkard, as we have seen, have defended a post-metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s spirit as consisting of a radically intersubjective, historical and pragmatic theory of social practice. But once we appreciate the not eliminable socio-ontological side of the Hegelian theory of intersubjectivity, then we are in a different position to evaluate the distinction between metaphysical and post-metaphysical thought,40 since we can now see that the former may well be compatible with the intersubjective turn, allowing for a socialized understanding of what 40  For a discussion of the merits and limits of post-metaphysical interpretations of Hegel, see Hegel au present. Un rèleve de la métaphysique?, eds. Jean-François Kervégan and Bernard Mabille (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2012). For new interpretations of some aspects of Hegelian metaphysics, see in particular Robert Stern, Hegelian Metaphysics (Oxford

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metaphysics is, or else we must acknowledge that the so-called ‘post-metaphysical thought’ cannot be emancipated from some ontological aspects of metaphysical thought.41 The four essays of the first part (by Frederick Neuhouser, Heikki Ikäheimo, Jean-François Kervégan, and Luigi Ruggiu) deal with the socio-ontological turn in the interpretation of Hegel’s spirit, addressing issues to do with the way Hegel’s metaphysics cuts across the distinction between nature and spirit (Neuhouser), with the proposal of Hegel’s recognition theory as a viable alternative to both Weberian theory of social action and Searlian social-ontology (Ikäheimo), and institutional theory of right (Kervégan), and finally with the idea that in the Hegelian approach social ontology takes the place of ontology as such (Ruggiu). In Chapter 2, titled “Hegel on Social Ontology and the Possibility of Pathology”, Fred Neuhouser argues that Hegel offers us a social ontology which cuts across the distinction between nature and spirit insofar as it conceives of what society is on the model of life understood as immanent purposiveness. On this understanding, what is distinctive of human spirit is conscious life, which allows it to operate with internal self-conceptions and strive towards a final end which is not merely maintenance and reproduction, but also freedom. Furthermore, whereas the “I that is We” part of Hegel’s formula already captures the immanent relation of individuals to their species in natural life, the “We that is I” part better captures the constitutive relation of the ‘I’ to the ‘We’ in spiritual life, where individuals structurally aspire to a certain degree of independence from the ‘We’ they compose. This life-based socio-ontological approach results in a criticism of hypernormative understandings of spirit understood as something entirely cut off from life, and in criticism of those “all or nothing” notions of freedom that cut it off from naturalness, such as those involved in the bootstrapping model favoured by Pippin.42 Moreover, this approach permits us to regain a certain materialist strand of Hegelian thought, University Press, Oxford 2009); James Kreines, Reason in the World. The Philosophical Appeal of Hegel’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 41  On the socio-ontological role of recognition see the important collection Recognition and Social Ontology, eds. Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2011), which gathers many contributions that deal directly and indirectly with Hegel. See also Michael Quante and David Schweikard, “Leading a universal life—the systematic relevance of Hegels social philosophy,” History of the Human Sciences, 22 (1) (2009), 58–78; Italo Testa, La natura del riconoscimento. Riconoscimento naturale e ontologia sociale in Hegel. 42  See, for instance, Robert Pippin, “Hegelian Sociality: Recognitive Status”, in Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Rational Agency as Practical Life, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 202.

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insofar as spirit’s recognitive patterns are to be understood as something for which it is necessary to be enacted in material practices and intertwined with the natural functions of life. Such intersubjective practices can result in pathological forms of social embodiment, which are to be understood as a specific manifestation of the more general tendency of life’s phenomena to falling ill, all of which leads Neuhouser to his proposal to ground the notion of social pathology and the diagnostic role of social philosophy on a life-based ontology. In his essay “Ethical Perfectionism in Social Ontology—A Hegelian Perspective” (Chapter 3) Heikki Ikäheimo contrasts Hegel’s social ontology with ethically neutral models such as Max Weber’s theory of social action and John Searle’s notion of acceptance/recognition as constitutive of social facts. Whereas Weber and Searle end up contradicting themselves and cannot de facto succeed in keeping the foundational level of social ontology neutral with regard to ethical evaluation, on Ikäheimo’s view Hegel offers us a more consistent approach, which is characterized by what the author names ‘normative essentialism’: freedom, understood as ‘concrete freedom’—as being oneself in otherness—would be the ‘concept’, that is the ‘normative essence’ distinctive of human life form. Such an essence or concept has to be understood as the immanent criterion which can be instantiated at various degrees by spiritual phenomena, which correspond to different degrees of ethical perfection. Applying this interpretative model in particular to the chapter “Selfconsciousness” in the section on the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit of Hegel’s Berlin Encyclopedia, Ikäheimo offers an analytical articulation of the ‘I-We’ relation contained in Phenomenology’s formula, introducing a distinction between the ‘horizontal axis’ of intersubjective recognitive relations between individuals (which can be pure or institutionally mediated), and the ‘vertical axis’ of recognitive relations between individuals and institutions (which can have upwards and/or downward direction). This distinction allows us first to see some shortcomings of contemporary socio-ontological approaches which, such as Searle’s, articulate acceptance/recognition only on the vertical axis and thus neglect its intersubjective horizontal axis. Furthermore, Ikäheimo introduces a distinction between two ‘dimensions’—‘axiological’ and ‘deontological’—which recognitive relations (both horizontal and vertical) can have, and two ‘modes’—‘conditional’ (obedience or respect for authority)— and ‘unconditional’ (concern for the well-being of the other)—that these dimensions can assume. He finally argues that on this view the ethical goodness of horizontal and vertical relations—whose fullest realization, according to the immanent ethical principle of concrete freedom, would be ‘unconditional’ recognition—is the intrinsic ideal of our life form.

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In “Towards an Institutional Theory of Rights” (Chapter 4) Jean-François Kervégan sketches out an institutional approach to law inspired by Hegel’s understanding of ‘right’ in § 4 of The Elements of the Philosophy of Right as ‘second nature’—as quasi-nature. Such Hegelian intuition allows Kervégan to critically revise and to combine in a unitary scheme socio-ontological tools offered by different authors such as Adolf Reinach, Maurice Hauriou, John Searle, Wesley N. Hohfeld, and Carl Schmitt. On Kervégan’s view institutions are normative systems which combine the action of individuals and groups, and which have their origin in constitutive rules (Searle) rather than in nature. Furthermore, institutions have objective ideality, that is, are organized around an idea (Hauriou) which has an objective nature in a Hegelian sense, that is, is embodied in a collective mode of being and acting. Moreover institutions, characterized by temporal duration, have both a procedural and ritual character. Translating Hegel’s idea of the identity of obligation and right into Hohenfeld’s idea that right and duty are correlative concepts, Kervégan can adopt Hohenfeld’s typology of rights (right, privilege, power, immunity) to criticize the bifurcation between negative and positive rights (rights to receive and rights to do), and as a basis to reconceive rights in institutional terms. Rights as institutions can be conceived as second nature, as something that is not natural without being a mere matter of convention, hence going beyond the division between natural and positive rights. This institutionalized notion of right leads to a de-transcendentalized reformulation of Reinach’s deduction of civil law, since now the idea of right can be conceived in a Hegelian way as its rational kernel, rather than as some kind of mysterious juridical essence, as put forward by Reinach. Finally, Hegel’s idea, developed in his analysis of the civil society, that liberal rights are valid inasmuch as they form a network with other rights, is the conceptual tool which, according to Kervégan, makes it possible to revise Carl Schmitt’s notion of “institutional guarantee”—rights understood as a statutory position held within an institution—and to reformulate it as a framework for an institutional theory of liberal rights, in a way which is also compatible with Searle’s approach to rights in general as deontic powers inherent to social status functions. In Chapter 5, “Reason and Social Ontology”, Luigi Ruggiu contrasts Hegel’s social ontology with Searle’s, arguing that whereas according to Searle social ontology is a special ontology (whose domain, for instance, is different from that of the natural physical world and of the individual mind), according to Hegel social ontology is a general ontology. Hegel’s idea of the “essentially social valence of the nature of spirit”, understood as the expression of the primacy of mediation, would lead us to reconceive being as such as having an

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essentially social structure. Even the formula “I that is We and We that is I” should be reconsidered from this radically ontological point of view: sociality is not a deduction, the result of a process of self-constitution of human, the mere product of the self-reflexive activity of consciousnesses—be they individual ‘I’ or collective ‘We’—which would appear abruptly as a sort of bootstrapping process. Sociality has rather to be understood as the progressive discovery of something that is already there but not yet known, a sort of unconscious background of our practices. And this process, which describes the transition from merely natural life to the human form of life, is mediated by recognition, but the latter doesn’t have to be understood in radical constructivist terms as a bare process of subjective constitution, but rather as a complex interweaving which can exist only in a social dimension that comes to light gradually with the construction of the selves. On this view the rediscovery of this ‘unconscious side’ of the process of recognition also leads us to the appreciation of the fact that opacity, tension and conflict are immanent to it. Hegelian recognition is always deeply embedded in social life, and the recognitive interplay always involves a plurality of subjects, which have a certain amount of opacity and resistance, and thus—pace those who see Hegel as the theorist of complete transparency—must be effected in spite of the fact that in social life perfect and total transparency is impossible. Part Two: Social Action, Ethical Life, and the Criticism of Constructivism The second part of the collection has five essays (by Robert Stern, Arto Laitinen, Francesca Menegoni, Axel Honneth, and Lucio Cortella) focusing on Hegel’s theory of action, its connection with Hegel’s social metaphysics and theory of modern institutions, and its relevance for the criticism of Kantian and constructivist approaches in contemporary moral, social and political philosophy. A major achievement of the neo-pragmatist interpretative paradigm which has been formed since the 1990s was to highlight the crucial role which action theory plays in Hegel’s practical philosophy and to uncover the peculiarity of Hegel’s theory of social action with respect to contemporary Humean, utilitarian and Kantian models more inclined towards an individualistic paradigm.43 But such an understanding of action was then combined with 3.2

43  See on this point Michael Quante, Hegel’s Theory of Action; Robert Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy, and the collection  Hegel on action, eds. Arto Laitinen and Constantin Sandis (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). See also chapter 4, “Hegel’s Expressive Metaphysics of Agency”, in Robert Brandom’s forthcoming book A Spirit of Trust: A Semantic Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology.

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a model of practical rationality based on a Kantian notion of normativity as rational autonomy, although socialized in a certain Hegelian fashion through the means of a pragmatics of social attribution.44 We have already seen how the socio-ontological turn can bring into question the idea that such pragmatics of social attribution can exhaust both the recognitive interplay and the meaning of social and ethical life. This poses anew the problem of the relation of Hegel’s theory of action and ethical theory to his social metaphysics and theory of subject, as well as of its relation to moral realism (Stern, Laitinen, and Menegoni). Another problem connected with this discussion and which has emerged in recent literature, concerns the idea that even a socialized constructivist perspective cannot escape the paradox of normative rational autonomy, which in order to work has to be based on presuppositions it cannot account for.45 Such a problem is explored in this collection in relation to action theory, as well as to Hegelian criticism both of constructivist approaches in practical philosophy (Honneth, Cortella) and of radical constructivist interpretations of Hegel which do not fully get the point of Hegel’s criticism of Kant. In Chapter 6, “Does Hegelian Ethics Rest on a Mistake”, Robert Stern discusses the connection, in Hegelian philosophy, between two main theses, that is, the ethical ‘self-actualization thesis’—the idea that self-realization is a central issue in moral life—and the metaphysical ‘social holism thesis’—according to which individual agents must be seen as essentially tied up to the social whole of which they are part. Stern addresses here Harold A. Prichard’s Kant-inspired thesis, according to which the model of Hegelian ethics, endorsed by British Idealists such as Thomas H. Green and Francis H. Bradley, would be mistaken because it would consist in an attempt to address the threat of the egoist, who asks for some reasons to be moral, by appealing to the social holism thesis: hence, giving him some non-moral reasons to be moral. But in Stern’s view the social holism thesis, as it becomes more clear if one turns to Bradley’s interpretation of Hegelian ethics, is not an answer to moral egoism, but rather a metaphysical answer to a problem which arises for Kantian universalism at 44   See for instance Robert Brandom, “Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel’s idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms”, European Journal of Philosophy 7, 2 (1999): 164–189; Robert Pippin, “Hegelian Sociality: Recognitive Status”, 196 and 197. 45  For a summary exposition of this paradox, see Terry Pinkard, “Das Paradox der Autonomie: Kants Problem und Hegels Lösung” in Paradoxien der Autonomie, eds. Thomas Khurana and Christoph Menke (Berlin: August Verlag, 2011), 25–60. Christoph Menke has convincingly argued that the interpretation of autonomy as participation in social practices developed by Pippin and Pinkard does not solve this paradox (see Menke, “Autonomie und Befreiung”, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58, 5 (2010): 675–694).

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the level of his action theory. The problem is that agency always requires that we will something particular, but this is destined to seem inadequate from the Kantian universal standpoint. On Stern’s view Hegel’s social metaphysics of the participation of individuals in the whole and their integration within plural subjects, is rather to be understood as a critical integration to Kant’s impartialism, insofar as, according to Hegel’s account of the freedom of the will in  §§ 5–7 of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, it is only the participation in a social community which makes it possible that individuals, while pursuing their own self-realization and acting in a determinate way, nonetheless contribute to the general whole. The contribution by Arto Laitinen (Chapter 7), “Hegelian Constructivism in Ethical Theory?” addresses three different takes on the question of how Hegelian Ethical theory would socialize Kant’s moral theory. The first is what Laitinen calls the ‘standard story’ and corresponds to radical constructivist interpretations developed by authors such as Pippin, Pinkard and Brandom. Such an interpretation relies on an argument from autonomy to constructivism— assuming that moral autonomy implies that moral agents do not presuppose objectively valid moral contents. Moreover, it addresses the paradox of Kantian self-legislation—the fact that self-legislation is in danger of being either “arbitrary self-launching” or presupposing some form of moral realism— through a social constructivist reading of Hegel, since it assumes that the legitimate law-giver is the community of subjects, structured by recognitive relations. But the problem with radical constructivism is, according to Laitinen, that it threatens to make the community an infallible source of value, since it cannot offer independent reasons that could be used as criteria according to which something can be judged as mistaken. The second strategy Laitinen addresses is what he names the ‘hybrid story’ and attributes to interpreters such as Robert Stern. This strategy would consist in answering the problems posed by radical constructivism by appealing, with a sort of McDowellian move, to some form of moral realism concerning moral contents. This view is hybrid insofar as, whereas moral contents are assumed to be objectively given, it is social command which makes them obligatory. Here Laitinen objects that such a fork between rightness and obligatoriness would be consistent with Kant but not with Hegel. Finally, Laitinen articulates and defends a third strategy, which he names ‘mediated realism’ or ‘sublated constructivism’. Accordingly, historical forms of life must be judged according to objective metaphysical criteria of progress (subjectivity, conscience, autonomy as actualized freedom) which give independent reasons to judge and revise our historical formations. Social construction still plays an epistemic role here, since objective contents are not

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directly and positively accessible but only via negation through the device of social misconstructions such as negative experiences of misrecognition. In “Hegel’s Theory of Action: Between Conviction and Recognition” (Chapter 8), Francesca Menegoni discusses the relation between individual and social dimensions of action, with reference to the final section of the Spirit chapter in Hegel’s Phenomenology, which allows us to see how the ‘I’ and ‘We’ perspectives are closely intertwined but not mutually reducible. Menegoni defends the thesis that the individual element of personal conviction is a necessary element for the production of an action, and as such cannot be fully reduced to intersubjective factors of social construction. Still, this moment is not sufficient for an action to be real (wirklich). The latter involves the determination of the qualitative element, of the value of the act, which requires an external factor depending on the intersubjective practices of a social community. For the action to be real, its value has to be valued by mutual recognition of free consciousness: but the ‘We’, the recognizing community, still involves a not eliminable role for the ‘I’, for individual self-consciousness, which has to freely declare itself in front of other self-consciousness in order for genuine recognition to take place. Menegoni also underlines that in Hegel’s analysis the social recognitive community, which alone can guarantee the value of the action, is based on the element of language: and inasmuch as not every form of recognition will do (for instance, patterns of recognition which have the master-servant form do not), not every form of language is adequate to express the recognition which is required for free mutual acknowledgment to take place, but only a language practice such as the “reconciling yea”,46 endowed with certain qualities which again involve a decisive role for individual selfconsciousness. Hence, the Hegelian model of action requires a virtuous circularity between ‘I’ and ‘We’ to be established in the community of the agents. Chapter 9, by Axel Honneth, “The Normativity of Ethical Life”, presents the theory of recognition as an answer to the problems of Kantian constructivist and the grounding of an alternative strategy, namely ‘Hegelian Reconstructivism’. Accordingly, Hegel’s critique of the Kantian moral standpoint and of the groundlessness of constructivist moral theory is a peculiar strategy to face the already mentioned paradox of self-determination: constructive self-determination presupposes a kind of freedom that can in turn be explained only by recourse to already existing moral norms. In Honneth’s view, Hegelian reconstructivist is an alternative conceptual method, which reconstructively extracts principles from norms already in existence, and which 46   P S, § 671 (GW 9, 362).

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can be defended against the charge of conventionalism, since it can provide immanent criteria to distinguish between valid norms and merely accepted ones. A key role is played here by recognition: the first criterion that validates these norms is that they be generated by a set of social actions that exhibit the structure of reciprocal recognition, understood as a practice of reciprocal empowerment and authorization, whereas the second requirement is that participants in these practices can view such norms as conditions of their self-realization. Such a model of recognition is articulated by Honneth on an action-theoretical level and assumed to be compatible with a socio-ontological account based on collective intentionality. And criticizing authors such as Brandom, who tend to reduce recognition to the ascription of deliberative autonomy, Honneth defends a pluralized view of these practices, which include the ascription of other forms of personality (love, social esteem). Finally, according to Honneth one does not need to appeal to an objectivist philosophy of history to defend Hegelian reconstructivism against the charge of conventionalism and prove that some norms are valid not just in relation to a particular human group. The model of the ‘struggle for recognition’, understood as a practice characterized by an ineradicable element of historical revisability and openness, can provide here a different basis for addressing this charge, allowing for a concept of moral progress and history as an unplanned learning progress which leads to an increasing generalization and differentiation of social norms. In his “Freedom and Nature. The Point of View of a Theory of Recognition” (Chapter 10), Lucio Cortella develops a model of recognition as minimal fundamental ethics which, along with Honneth, is understood as something presupposed by constructive morality and which, against Habermas’ discourse ethics, cannot be constructed through argumentative procedures. On this view the ethics of recognition can satisfy the Kantian rooting of morality in freedom better than the constructivist models, and also answer the inacceptable Kantian assumption that freedom be conceived as completely separate from nature. In the Hegelian model the relation of recognition is assumed to be constitutive of subjecticity and characterized by reciprocity, and understood as an objective learning process, rooted in the natural structure, but always fragile and questionable; a process through which individuals learn to be autonomous, and acquire autonomy as their second nature. In this sense this definition of ethics is both rooted in nature and beyond nature, since it answers to a certain logic—the logic of freedom, which is not present in first nature but which in another sense constitutes our acquired nature as autonomous animals. But the logic of reciprocal recognition is not one of pure transparency and accomplished self-mastery: the fragility of the process of

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recognition, which always involves an imitative dynamics, is constitutive of our identity as limited and finite subjects, vulnerable and exposed by this very process to specific possibilities such as the risk of suffering misrecognition and humiliation. 3.3 Part Three: Naturalism, Work, and Power The third part of the collection has four essays (by Luca Illetterati, Emmanuel Renault, Paolo Vinci, and Italo Testa) addressing the relevance of naturalism for Hegelian philosophy, its materialistic strands, and the question of social power. The normative and constructivist reading of Hegel which formed the core of the interpretative paradigm that has been forming since the 1990s, was accompanied by an understanding of the relation between spirit and nature which, notwithstanding McDowell’s suggestions, insisted on an interpretation of spirit and the social sphere as a strong bootstrapping process, a network of normative social practices which self-launches and self-justifies, and has no footing in naturalness.47 Against such anti-naturalistic consequences a new interpretative model is now emerging,48 presented here by Illetterati, Testa, Renault, and Testa, which re-evaluates the naturalistic side of Hegel’s take on sociality and on this basis reads anew the notion of subjectivity as well as the constitutive role recognition plays for it. The normative neopragmatist approach to Hegel was also characterized by a rather thin, idealist understanding of sociality/spirit as consisting of a set of normative practices of reciprocal attribution, thus underestimating the role played in Hegel’s philosophy by the materiality of social practices and their intertwinement with the process of social production and with the phenomena of social power. These aspects are treated by the essays of Renault,Vinci, and Testa, where the materialist and naturalist impulse of Hegelian thought is revisited in comparison with the European tradition of Marxist readings of Hegel, as well with contemporary post-structuralism.

47  See for instance Pippin’s criticism of McDowell in “Leaving Nature Behind: or Two Cheers for Subjectivism,” in  Reading McDowell. On Mind and World, ed. Nicholas H. Smith (London: Routledge, 2002), 58–75. 48  See in particular the monographic number on “Nature in Spirit” of the journal Critical Horizons, 13, 2 (2012). On this subject see also Italo Testa, “Hegel’s Naturalism, or Soul and Body in the Encyclopedia”, in Essays on Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, ed. David Stern (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), 19–35, and the (partial) correction of his previous perspective in Terry Pinkard’s most recent book Hegel’s Naturalism. Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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In Chapter 11, “Subjectivity and Freedom. Moving from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature”, Luca Illetterati proposes a naturalistic reading of the roots of subjectivity in the Encyclopedia’s Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit. Qualifying in § 337 of the Encyclopedia animality as subjectivity, Hegel introduces the notion of freedom already at the natural level, in order to characterize the animal subjectivity’s capacity to free itself from the bond of external forces. Once we realize that natural animality is already endowed with a certain degree of self-movement and self-determination, as well as self-feeling as feeling of loss (or desire), we are in an ideal position to appreciate the fact that there is in Hegel a certain form of naturalization of the subject, which counters contemporary interpretations assuming that Hegel’s Spirit would leave nature behind and that freedom and subjectivity would be merely normative phenomena that would appear only after nature within attributive social practices. On the other hand, introducing notions such as ‘subjectivity’ and ‘freedom’ already within the natural process, Hegel’s move implies a redefinition, in non-reductivist terms, of the notions of ‘nature’ and ‘naturalism’ as they figure in contemporary debates. Emmanuel Renault’s essay, “Social Self and Work in the Phenomenology of Spirit” (Chapter 12), argues that contemporary theories of recognition, both intersubjectivistic ones (such as Honneth’s) and neopragmatist or idealist ones (such as Brandom’s, Pippin’s, and Pinkard’s) suffer from a twofold shortcoming: they underestimate the natural presuppositions of recognition, and tend to reduce sociality to a poor model of recognition, understood apart from material processes of work. As for the first point, he argues that Hegel’s spirit is not just a process of normative authority which posits itself—which is the case by Ficthe—but rather a relation to itself through its externality, that is, a process of theoretical and practical appropriation of the conditions of its freedom. Accordingly, the chapter on Self-consciousness of Hegel’s Phenomenology, results in a proto-materialist criticism of idealistic models that do not take into account the internal relationship between life and self-consciousness, and leads to an understanding of the struggle for recognition as a movement of progressive appropriation of its own natural presuppositions. As for the second point, Renault argues that the socio-ontological role of recognition cannot be fully appreciated if we do not take into account its relation with work. In chapters IV and VII of the Phenomenology work is not only formative activity, but also a shape of self-consciousness—an idea which would later be developed by John Dewey—which is constitutive of the social world and intertwined with the notion of freedom as being oneself in otherness. From this point of view, the fundamental concept of Hegel’s social ontology would be the notion, to be found in his Objective Logic, of Wechselwirkung

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(reciprocal interaction), of which recognition and work, the latter including not just intersubjective relations, but also material interaction with external objects (both natural ones and artefacts), would be distinct manifestations. In his “The Form of Labor: Individuation and Socialization” (Chapter 13), Paolo Vinci traces the roots of Marx’s analysis of labor in Das Kapital back to Hegel’s chapter on Self-consciousness. First, Marx would inherit from Hegel a notion of work or labor which goes beyond the Aristotelian opposition between poiesis and praxis, understanding it as transformative praxis, that is, as a process of self-production of the essence of human beings. The constitutive role of labor for the nature and self-conception of human beings, in Vinci’s view, can not be understood separately from the dynamics of recognition— of a subjectivity which objectivates and finds itself in the other—of which labor would be a decisive moment, even if a partial one, since it lacks the symmetrical movement on the side of the object required by accomplished recognition. A second important aspect of Marx’s Hegelian heritage is the way the internal relation between recognition and work allows for an account of the intertwinement between individuation and socialization. And here Vinci finds the roots of the formula “I that is We and We that is I” in the Jena Manuscripts, where labor is qualified as universal recognition, and commonality, the ‘We’ moment, is understood as something which is not superimposed, but comes from beneath, being the result of the activity of one and all individuals. The contribution by Italo Testa (Chapter 13), “Attractors of Recognition”, proposes a new approach to recognition as a metaphysics of social power, resulting from a conceptual analysis backed by the reconstruction of some passages of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts and of the Self-consciousness chapter. Arguing that the passive power of being recognized is ontologically prior over the active power of recognizing (which is usually privileged by attributive and normative models of recognitive practice), he then introduces the notion of ‘attractors of recognition’ to qualify the bio-power to attract recognition from others that is universally, even if asymmetrically distributed between individual bearers of our specific life-form. In this way he manages to characterize recognition in socio-ontological terms which are compatible with a naturalistic approach based on the notion of habituation, as well as understanding recognition as a social power in the strict sense, that is as a power to induce some effects on other agents, whether they want it to or not. After introducing the notion of ‘recognitional authority’, understood as the authority to let others recognize or be recognized, whether they want to be or not, Testa argues that an approach based on this model is in a better position than those which characterize recog­nition from scratch in intentionalist and normative terms, to grasp within recognition theory wider pre-intentional aspects of social power that

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normally fall within the ambit of Foucauldian bio-political theories. In particular, this model of recognitive attractors could be used to develop a socioontological analysis alternative both to Foucauldian and Searlian models of the power of socialization that is the background power of our social practices, and could frame power relations that subsist not only at the inter-individual level but also between individuals and institutions. 3.4 Part Four: The Logic of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity The Hegel renaissance of the 1900s was centred on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit—which has led to the publication of a number of new commentaries of this work—as a key to understanding also crucial aspects of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. As for the systematic works, the post-metaphysical readin­gs, with some exceptions,49 have so far devoted less attention to the Science of Logic, which, along with the philosophy of history, is still the aspect of Hegel’s system that needs more efforts to be emancipated from old, dismissive interpretative models which used to think of Hegel as the bad, founda­tionalist metaphysician of absolute transparency. This situation is now changing and the essays gathered in the fourth section of the collection (by Alfredo Ferrarin, Franco Chiereghin, Leonardo Samonà, and Nello Preterossi) testify as to how fruitful a perspective centred on Hegel’s mature systematic works can also be for those who, adhering to the intersubjective turn, are interested in understanding the relational structure of the spiritual social sphere and in coun­ tering the objections of those, such as interpreters inspired by hermeneutics, who usually criticize the mature system as being finally indebted to a monological perspective. In his essay “ ‘I that is We and We that is I’. The Phenomenological Significance and the Logical Foundation of Intersubjectivity in Hegel” (Chapter 14), Franco Chiereghin understands Hegel’s quote as expressing the formula of intersubjectivity and argues that this cannot find an adequate foundation in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Even the most concrete manifestation and reformulation of this principle at the beginning of the moment “Religion”, where spirit is characterized as “the universal work produced by the action of each and all”,50 is accordingly still affected by immediateness, and thus expresses the limited and partial way consciousness experiences spirit rather than spirit as it is in and for itself. It is only in the “Logic of Concept” of the Science of Logic that the formula of intersubjectivity finds adequate foundation. According to Hegel’s idea that “the concept is free”, intersubjective relations can find their ground 49  See for instance Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Hegels analytische Philosophie. 50   P S, § 439, 264 (GW 9, 239).

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only insofar as they incorporate within themselves the logic of the self-determination of the concept. But this does not result in a monological and solipsistic understanding, since the concept thus understood has rather a relational nature, consisting in its capacity of finding itself in the absolutely other. In Chapter 15, “Self-consciousness, Individuality and Intersubjectivity”, Alfredo Ferrarin also argues that intersubjectivity cannot find its foundation in Hegel’s Phenomenology but only in objective spirit in its relation to the logical system. Ferrarin proposes distinguishing the notions of ‘recognition’ and ‘intersubjectivity’ and to use the former as a more restricted notion, which applies to the phenomenon of the reciprocity of self-consciousnesses analysed in Hegel’s Phenomenology—the realization that I depend on others as others on me—whereas intersubjectivity would apply to the sphere of social relations analysed in objective spirit and which are not reducible to the phenomenon of reciprocity. This would better explain why Hegel’s mature writings still have an intersubjective approach to the social sphere of “universal self-consciousness”, notwithstanding the fact that after the Jena writings the role of the recognitive analysis of these relations is progressively narrowed. Based on this, Ferrarin criticizes Pippin’s thesis51 that the selfconsciousness chapter would be the most important of the whole work—arguing that the distinction between recognition and intersubjectivity could not be grounded at that level—and Brandom’s thesis that self-consciousness would be a social achievement—arguing, along the lines of Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank, that there is a sense of the ‘I’’s individuality which cannot be explained away by social interaction. The essay by Leonardo Samonà, “The Community of the Self” (Chapter 16), addresses two main critical readings of the formula “I that is We and We that is I”, arguing that these can be countered only if we realize that this formula has it fullest completion at the level of absolute spirit. According to the first, traditional criticism, the ‘We’, Hegel’s universal self-consciousness, would eventually swallow up the ‘I’, absorbing the particular individualities into an encompassing whole dominated by a non-relational, monological logic. On Samona’s view this criticism of Hegel, often seen as a direct consequence of his metaphysical social holism, oversees the dynamizing force of the formula and reads it unilaterally, neglecting the fact that Hegel’s social holism involves also a movement from the universality of the ‘We’ to the plurality of the ‘I’s’, requiring the radical freedom of the other as its condition. The second criticism of the formula reconsidered by Samonà is the one formulated by hermeneutical 51  See Robert B. Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), vii.

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interpreters such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer, who do not charge Hegel’s formula for swallowing up the other, but rather for pursuing a project of familiarization with the extraneous, with the ‘otherness’ of the other. Hegel’s dialectics of recognition, as Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricoeur have argued, would first, at the level of objective spirit, submit reciprocity to equality, losing sight of the structural asymmetrical side of human reciprocity—of its difference—and eventually leaping from objective to absolute spirit, eliminate this asymmetry through the subjection of difference to the identity of the self-thinking subject. But according to Samonà this criticism ontologically reifies the despotic conception of a hierarchy order in human relations which is not eliminable at the level of finite, objective spirit. Moreover, it does not realize that it is only through the leap to absolute spirit that we can be emancipated from these limits in love as unity of plurality (Religion), in the self-recognition of individual self-consciousness in universal self-consciousness (Philosophy), and in the non despotic conception of the divine involved by this sphere. In “The Political Surplus Value of Subjectivity in Hegel” (Chapter 17), Geminello Preterossi argues that, reconsidering the relation between Hegel’s Science of Logic and the conception of politics developed in The Elements of the Philosophy of Right, we can obtain a notion of subjectivity which remains viable even after the postmodernist deconstruction of the modern subject and competes with post-structuralist understandings of the process of subject formation. Describing in § 278 of The Elements the logic of individualization of the universal which constitutes the sovereignty of the state, Hegel would uncover the political traits of the notion of subjectivity, connecting the constitution of the subjectivity of individual subjects with the constitution of political plural, collective subjects. Moreover, understanding in § 278 the sovereign will in logical terms as “absolute and self-determining ground”, and connecting in § 13 its movement of self-determination with the logical and practical problem of “decision” for the finite, Hegel would unveil the constitutive role that decision plays both for the subjective moment of individual and collective will, allowing us to revisit in a new light the debate between Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt on sovereignty. On this view subjectivity can thus be re-evaluated, even within recognitive and intersubjective patterns, as that groundless moment which has a surplus value insofar as it does not consist in a positive content, but rather in a negative function which permits us to distance ourselves from the given, to filter and creatively re-elaborate it.

part 1 Hegelian Social Ontology

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chapter 2

Hegel on Social Ontology and the Possibility of Pathology Frederick Neuhouser Abstract: This paper examines the resources Hegel’s philosophy offers for constructing a compelling conception of social pathology. In doing so it attempts to understand the fundamental analogy Hegel draws between spirit (including human societies) and life, especially with respect to their essential ‘functions’. The paper’s primary focus is the type of social pathology in which human subjects fail to ‘endure’, or negotiate, the fundamental opposition between spiritual and merely animal life or, in other words, fail to unite their ends as living beings with the loftier end of freedom.

My aim in this paper is to examine the philosophical resources Hegel offers for constructing a conception of social pathology that remains compelling for us today. Although Hegel is not the only social philosopher we should consult when trying to figure out how problems of present-day societies might be understood as pathologies, his conception of social reality, and of what constitutes a good social order, is by far the most important resource we can avail ourselves of in this undertaking. Moreover, many of the other philosophers whose views are relevant to this project—Marx, Durkheim, members of the Frankfurt School—are themselves disciples of Hegel, and their contributions to a theory of social pathology are often extensions of Hegel’s project that remain mostly within a Hegelian framework, broadly construed. Hegel remains, for them and for us, the indispensable starting point for reflection on the topic of social pathology. The main reason for this, in my view, lies in Hegel’s extraordinarily rich understanding of the nature of social reality or, in other words, in his social ontology. The thesis of this paper is that the theoretical resources Hegel provides for conceiving of social pathology can be adequately grasped only by first getting clear on what kind of thing he takes society to be. As my title suggests, I want to understand the possibility of social pathology—and the various forms it is capable of assuming—from the more fundamental vantage point of social ontology. Before turning to social ontology, however, I want to make two preliminary points about my project. First, I want to exclude a possible misunderstanding of its aims. To contemporary ears the talk of grounding conceptions of social

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pathology in social ontology can convey the impression that one intends to derive normative conclusions about healthy societies from a metaphysical, and non-normative, account of the kind of thing human society is, just as Plato or Aristotle might be taken to derive their accounts of the good society from prior accounts of the ultimate nature of reality. It would be more precise to say that the misunderstanding I am concerned to avoid derives from the contemporary prejudice of Anglo-American philosophy that distinguishes metaphysics as one branch of philosophy from a separate branch it calls value theory. While I am not interested in protecting Hegel’s social philosophy from the charge of being metaphysical—everything depends on how that term is understood—I do want to dispel any suggestion that my intent is to uncover in Hegel’s social ontology a non-normative foundation for normative claims about healthy societies. I doubt that any useful account of what human societies are can avoid altogether normative claims about how societies ought to be. In any case, this is not how Hegel’s metaphysics proceeds, and my interest in social ontology has nothing to do with this un-Hegelian picture of the relation between metaphysics and normative philosophy. Put very simply, the thought I am ascribing to Hegel—one he appropriates from Aristotle—is that saying what a human society is involves determining what functions it serves—what tasks it has to accomplish—within the context of human life more generally, and that once the talk of function enters into specifying what a thing is, ontology also reveals what it is for that thing to function well or badly, to accomplish its characteristic tasks more or less adequately. Pathology, then, will consist, roughly, in disturbances in the characteristic functions of whatever kind of thing is at issue—in the present case, human societies. My second preliminary point concerns Hegel’s own use of the category of illness (Krankheit). Although he devotes four paragraphs of his philosophy of nature to a discussion of illness in animal organisms, illness is not a central category for him in the way it is, for example, for Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, for whom the relation between spiritual phenomena and sickness is very close to being constitutive.1 The difference between Hegel and his more romantic successors is that while he finds it necessary to explain how the possibility of illness is inscribed within what it is for animals to be alive, he ascribes no positive role to illness in the processes through which organisms realize their own living nature or in leading animal forms of life to develop into more highly 1  The difference is not that Hegel restricts illness to merely animal life, for he explicitly recognizes the existence of what we would now call mental illnesses, ways of being ill that are possibilities only for spiritual beings (Enc., § 371 A). Translations from Hegel’s Encyclopedia and Phenomenology of Spirit are the author’s except where otherwise noted.

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organized, spiritual beings. Hegel famously ascribes great positive significance to ‘the negative’ in many of its guises—despair, alienation, fear, and death— but illness does not appear on this list. None of this, however, speaks against recruiting Hegel as a theorist of social pathology.2 Even if Hegel’s own interests do not lie in diagnosing the ills of contemporary society, his conception of what human society is—more precisely, his conceiving of human society on the model of life—provides an especially promising foundation for a social philosophy that aspires to understand the problems of social life as instances of pathology. As I have just suggested, teasing an account of social pathology out of Hegel’s understanding of what makes a social order function well depends on there being a close connection between human society and life, and with this thought we have already entered into the topic of this paper, social ontology. The most important claim Hegel makes about the kind of thing human society is is that social life belongs to the domain of the spiritual (des Geistigen). In the Philosophy of Right, Sittlichkeit is said to embody “objective spirit” in its highest form,3 and in the Phenomenology of Spirit we are told that we encounter the concept of spirit for the first time precisely when what we have before us are social phenomena (characterized, among other things, by I’s that are constituted as a we in and through a dialectic of recognition). Following this suggestion, the set of relations inhabited by bondsman and lord count for the Phenomenology as the first—the conceptually most primitive— example of spirit and human society, and I will return to this example later, when setting out what Hegel takes the basic features of any human society to be. Avowing the spiritual character of human society may appear to conflict with my previous claim that it is the connection between society and life that is central to Hegel’s social ontology, but this confusion dissipates once one recalls that spirit, too, is defined in terms of its relation to life. Understanding the relation between spirit and life is essential to seeing why conceiving of social life 2  As I have noted, Hegel recognizes the legitimacy of applying the concept ‘illness’ to spiritual phenomena. That he fails to articulate an account of social pathology is due mainly to the fact that—unlike Rousseau, say, in the Second Discourse—he does not take philosophy’s aim to lie in diagnosing the ills of society but instead in reconciling us to the existing social world by showing how, and to what extent, it is already rational (and therefore precisely not diseased). We do not have to share Hegel’s optimistic assessment of existing social reality in order to make use of the resources his account of the rational social order provides for detecting functional disturbances—pathologies—in contemporary social life. 3  I ignore here the place of world history in the Philosophy of Right.

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as a spiritual phenomenon opens the door to understanding it as something that is vulnerable to falling ill (although in ways appropriate to the spiritual being it possesses). Very briefly, this relation can be expressed in the claim that spirit is aufgehobenes Leben, or sublated life. I will argue here that thinking of spirit as aufgehobenes Leben implies that an essential feature of spiritual entities, including human societies, is that they incorporate life, which they do in three distinct ways (to be specified later). Since spirit, however, is not simply identical to life—it is life that has been aufgehoben—there must also be some respect in which something beyond the merely biological enters into social reality, something that both interacts with and transforms the processes of life. Doing social ontology in a Hegelian vein, then, will entail explaining: first, what life is for Hegel; second, what must be joined to life for spirit to be present; and, third, how human societies unite processes of life with those functions that distinguish spiritual beings from their merely living counterparts. Once I have explained the kind of thing a human society is, it will be possible to see how disturbances in the characteristic functions of human social life can be grasped with the help of concepts derived from the realm of life—with the help, in other words, of the language of pathology. 1

Social Ontology

Hegel’s social ontology can be described as taking very seriously the fact that we often refer to human societies as if they were living beings: we speak, for example, of ‘social life’ and the ‘life of society’, and we often find it natural to employ metaphors of health and sickness when evaluating societies.4 I said that spiritual entities, especially human societies, ‘incorporate’ life for Hegel in three ways. The first can be expressed in the claim that human society is to be conceived of on the model of life, which is to say that society and life share a basic structure that non-living (and non-spiritual) beings lack. The first step in reconstructing Hegel’s social ontology, then, is to explain how he conceives of life—or, since my space is limited—to examine the aspects of his conception of life most relevant to his understanding of human society. It is tempting to locate the difference between living and non-living beings in the former’s organic structure. This would not be wrong, but I do not want to begin with this claim about organic structure because, applied to social theory, it tends to suggest a society-as-biological-organism metaphor that conveys a 4  Viewed in this light, the standard translation of Sittlichkeit as ‘ethical life’ captures something important about Hegel’s conception of society.

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misleading picture of the sense in which Hegel takes human society to be organized on the model of life. (Most importantly, the members of a human society have a greater integrity and independence than the model of the biological organism suggests; individual members of society are not, in other words, like the mitochondria or food vacuoles of amoebae). Instead, I want to say that for Hegel both societies and living things are teleologically (or purposively) organized, where this means that it is impossible to understand what they are or why they are constituted as they are without referring to their characteristic functions—functions that can be said to ‘aim at’ purposes or ends (Zwecke) and are for that reason teleological. Thus, when articulating what it is to be an animal organism, Hegel appeals to Aristotle’s characterization of the living as something that “must be regarded as behaving in accordance with ends”5 (even though, as both agree, in the case of spirit-less living beings these ends remain unconscious).6 I take this to mean that it is impossible to understand why livings are constituted as they are, and why they move in the world as they do, without appealing to some end or function that their features and activities serve. This can be applied even to the lower-level behaviors of an organism. We can ask, for example, ‘Why do animals salivate?’, which in the domain of life is equivalent to asking, ‘What function does salivation serve?’. In the case of living beings, however, the answer to this question—‘Salivation aids the digestion of food’—calls for a further question to be asked—about the function of digestion—until one sees how the behavior in question serves an end attributable to the organism as a whole. What brings this line of questioning to an end in the domain of life is the discovery not of just any end attributable to the whole but of what could be called a characteristic end of the organism, an end that defines that being as the kind of being it is. The ends characteristic of living beings, according to Hegel, are self-maintenance and reproduction,7 and this implies—this is what it is to say that life is teleologically organized—that, when working together, their various specialized functions contribute in some way to achieving these characteristic ends of the organism:8 the function of salivation is to aid digestion, but digestion’s function is to enable the organism to maintain itself. This observation points to a further feature of life’s teleological organization that plays an important role in Hegel’s social ontology: once the features and 5  “Dass es als nach dem Zwecke wirkend zu betrachten sei” (Enc., § 360 R). 6  Enc., § 360 R & A. 7  Enc., §§ 350–3. 8  Enc., § 354.

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behaviors of a living being have been shown to serve one of its characteristic ends, the call for further explanation ends. It would make no sense—it would reveal a failure to grasp what it is to understand a living being—if one were to respond, ‘Yes, I see that salivation enables the porcupine to digest its food, which in turn enables it to remain alive, but what’s the point of that?’. This is (part of) what Hegel means when he says (taking himself both to be following Kant and going beyond Aristotle) that a living being is not merely purposive but also an end in itself, a Selbstzweck9—something that works for the sake of certain ends that are not themselves instrumental to achieving other ends beyond the maintenance of life itself. The ultimate, characteristic ends of a living being are not external but come, as it were, from that being’s form of life itself.10 I have thus far been discussing living beings, but Hegel usually compares spirit and human society not to living beings but to life more generally. ‘Life’ refers to the vital activity not of individuals but of their species (or Gattung), which itself is made up of nothing more than the vital activity of multitudes of living individuals.11 In its broadest sense, ‘life’ refers to the vital activity of all species—to what we could call the entire web of life, since the vital activity of one species typically requires relating to (for example, eating) members of other species. Underlying this shift in focus from living beings to life is an ontological thesis concerning the priority of the species (or “the universal”) over living individuals.12 One feature of living beings, in distinction to rocks and raindrops, is that a certain relation of dependence holds between them and their species. Living beings, according to this thesis, are not self-standing (or fully substantial) because their being depends on something larger than themselves, the entire species to which they belong.13 This can be interpreted to mean that all living beings are the biological offspring of other living beings, which in turn are the offspring of others, and so on, but the deeper claim concerns the conceptual, not the existential, dependence of individual living beings on their species. This, too, can be interpreted in various ways, but in Hegel it usually has the following sense: certain characteristic behaviors of 9    Enc., §§ 352, 360 R. 10  Being a Selbstzweck entails more than this: “life must be grasped as an end in itself (Selbstzweck), as an end that has its means within itself, as a totality in which everything that is distinguished [from other ‘parts’] is at the same time both end and means”. 11   Enc., § 423 A. 12  Enc., § 367. 13  Of course, the species also depends on its individual members since it is nothing beyond the totality of them and their activities.

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living beings themselves ‘refer to’ the species and can be understood only in the context of that relation. The most obvious example is when the sexual drive impels living beings to behave in ways that serve no end from the point of view of their own individual vital needs. Living beings, then, characteristically engage in behavior that serves only universal ends,14 which means that we can understand them only by situating their behavior in relation to the species’ ends as a whole (the reproduction of the species, as opposed to the individual’s self-maintenance). Living beings, we might say, are what they are only insofar as they participate in the life of the species. Hegel will make a similar claim about human individuals and their social life, but for now I want merely to note that the analogy his social ontology relies on is not between society and a biological organism but between society and the life of a species (though it must not be forgotten that the analogy is imperfect since a human society, but not a biological species, is also a spiritual being). Before examining what must be introduced into life in order to arrive at spirit, I want to note a further claim Hegel makes about life that finds an echo, in spiritualized form, in his account of human society. In his treatment of living beings in the Encyclopedia, Hegel makes the following puzzling remark (which I have translated as literally as possible): “A being that is capable of having the contradiction of itself within itself and of enduring that contradiction is a subject; this constitutes the subject’s infinitude”.15 The claim here is that living beings are subjects (in some technical sense of the term) and that what makes them subjects is their ability to endure internal contradiction. There are many features of living beings that inspire Hegel to make this odd claim,16 but I will restrict myself to what is most important in it. First, a living being does not merely exist (inertly) like a stone. It is not, as Hegel puts it, a mere Seiendes.17 Its way of being is more like that of a subject—think of Fichte’s conception of the subject as having no being beyond its self-positing activity—in the sense that the living being exists only as a sich Reproduzierendes. The living being, in 14  Pleasure or release of sexual tension is not an ‘end’. An end must be a state of affairs brought about in the world. 15  Enc., § 359 R. 16  For example, their possession of drives (Triebe). The idea here is that being subject to a drive involves a holding together of opposites in the mode of a subject because it unites both a feeling of lack (Mangel) and a “being-beyond-the-lack” (Darüberhinaussein) (Enc., § 359 R); the two together translate into movement in the external world that satisfies the drive (removes the lack) and restores the living being to a state of being-one-withoneself (Enc., § 360). Nothing in my account of social pathology or of the connection between human society and life turns on this understanding of drives. 17   Enc., § 352.

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other words, exists as such only insofar as it is constantly engaged in the activity of reproducing itself as what it is, including the constant reproduction of its characteristic “form” (Gestalt).18 As Hegel puts this point, “the living being [. . .] exists only by making itself into what it is”.19 Moreover, it reproduces itself only by constantly relating to what it is not—air, water, food, for example— which involves assimilating what is foreign to it and making those foreign elements into itself, not merely by ingesting them but by subordinating them to its own end of self-maintenance. (Nietzsche will later call this activity of life interpretation: taking something given and imposing a purpose upon it.) The living being is ‘infinite’ in Hegel’s sense, and like a subject, because it relates to itself (it maintains its own living form) only by relating to what is not-it. We could say that such a being endures internal contradiction (the contradiction between itself and what is not it), but it would be more accurate to say that it feeds on—lives off of—a particular way of negotiating this contradiction. The living being “is and maintains itself ”20 as what it is—a teleologically organized being that aims at self-maintenance and reproduction of the species—only by interacting with what it is not,21 and it does so fluidly, that is, constantly and without losing its identity (without flipping back and forth between states of being itself and being its opposite). Since the life of a species is a closer analogy to human society than the individual living being, it is worth noting that Hegel ascribes this same ‘subjective’ structure to life in general: a biological species maintains itself by positing ‘differences’ internal to itself (individual members of the species, which enter the world with their own ends) and then abolishing those differences in asserting itself as what it is.22 For life in general—a biological species, for example—maintains itself over time only by breaking itself up into individual living beings, which, in striving to live and reproduce and ultimately even in dying, carry out the vital functions on which the survival of the species as a whole depends. In this case the species’ abolishing of difference—negotiating contradiction in the manner of a subject—means establishing its identity with the individual living beings that compose it by putting their activities (of selfmaintenance, reproduction, and ultimately, dying) in the service of its own universal end, the reproduction of the species as a whole. 18   Enc., § 353. 19   Enc., § 352. 20   Enc., § 352. 21  “Animal subjectivity consists of bodily self-preservation in the face of contact with an external world, and of remaining with itself as the universal” (Enc. II, § 350 A). 22   P S  § 18 (GW 9, 18).

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If life and spiritual beings share an underlying structure, then what distinguishes them? It is not difficult to locate the most important respect in which spirit is something beyond mere life: although both maintain themselves by positing internal differences and then abolishing them, life remains unconscious of itself and its characteristic activity. Life can exist as what it essentially is only for another; its nature can be apprehended only by a being that, like spirit, is conscious (and self-conscious). We would not be far off the mark, then, if we defined spirit—and, by extension, human society—as self-conscious life. In light of this, the question addressed by social ontology could be formulated as: what becomes of life and its characteristic functions when it is infused with self-consciousness? The answer, of course, is much more complex than is implied by the simple formula ‘spirit equals life plus self-consciousness’. That more is involved than merely adding one thing to another becomes apparent when we consider the complications that arise once self-consciousness is introduced into the living. Let me note three of these. First, the end of life is transformed when self-consciousness enters the picture: in spiritual beings the end of biological self-maintenance becomes the end of freedom (where freedom is understood such that a kind of self-consciousness is essential to it). Second, self-consciousness brings with it a type of Entzweiung, or internal division, that is lacking in mere life. Whereas only something that is more than life can see that life both is and is not identical with what is distinct from itself, self-conscious spirit knows itself as both identical and not identical with what it posits as its other. Finally, the principal other the self-conscious subject distinguishes itself from and identifies with is life itself; the fundamental contradiction spirit must negotiate is that between self-consciousness and life. This means that it is characteristic of spiritual beings to know themselves as both identical and not identical with life or, more precisely, to be conscious of themselves as life and, at the same time, as more than life, which is to say above, higher than, unself-conscious life. This points to the second respect in which spirit, including human societies, incorporates life: it is central to what spirit is that it relates itself consciously to life. This means: a spiritual being operates with a conception of itself, a conception of what life is, and a conception of its own ambiguous relation to life. I will begin by discussing the second of these complications, the ‘contradiction’ in the conscious relation that spirit adopts with respect to life—the fact that a self-conscious subject both distinguishes itself from life and at the same time identifies with it. Failures to establish this dual attitude to life, I am suggesting, must qualify for Hegel as forms of spiritual pathology (disturbances in the proper functioning of a spiritual being), and this class of pathologies can be described as a failure of consciousness in carrying out the specific

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activity that defines self-conscious subjectivity in general. Recall here Hegel’s characterization of the subject in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit as “pure, simple negativity”, “the Entzweiung (or bifurcation) of the simple”, and as a Verdoppelung (or doubling) that first posits difference (or opposition) and then, in consciousness, negates this difference by restoring identity among the very opposites it has posited. The nature of self-consciousness, then, is to engage in a distinctive activity—self-negation—which consists both in dividing itself in two and in subsequently negating this division so as to bring together what it is has torn apart in a way that both cancels and preserves that division. That this defining activity of self-conscious subjectivity is relevant to understanding spirit as aufgehobenes Leben is made clear by Hegel’s remark in the same paragraph that it is what makes spirit a “living substance”, and that the lifelike activity distinctive of spirit is relevant to pathology is indicated by Hegel’s identification of this movement of consciousness—still in the same paragraph—with the overcoming of alienation (Entfremdung).23 Some of what these abstract characterizations of spirit and its pathologies amount to more concretely is hinted at in the following lines: The life of spirit does not shrink from death and [. . .] devastation but instead tolerates death and preserves itself in it. Spirit wins its truth only by finding itself in its own absolute dismemberment. This power does not [. . .] turn away from the negative [. . .] but looks it in the face and abides within it.24 As I read this passage, the fundamental mark of flourishing spirituality is the capacity consciously to tolerate contradiction (or ambiguity) in a way that avoids denying either of the opposed poles and that for this reason never completely eliminates their opposition; spiritual health, in other words, consists in consciously enduring, or negotiating, inner contradictions rather than ignoring, denying, or fleeing from them in some other manner. I want to return now to my claim that life and human societies share a basic structure and draw on what we know about the structure of life in order to articulate a preliminary sketch of the kind of thing a human society is. A society, like life, exists only as a sich Reproduzierendes, as something constantly engaged in maintaining itself as what it is through its own purposive activities, 23   P S, § 18 (GW 9, 18). And later in the Preface, dispelling any doubt that might remain about the significance of these connections, Hegel characterizes the absence or breakdown of consciousness’s self-negating activity as a kind of (spiritual) death. 24   P S, § 32 (GW 9, 27).

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which are coordinated so as to achieve its characteristic ends—self-maintenance (just like life) but also the distinctly spiritual end of self-conscious freedom. Both of these ends are Selbstzwecke—they are pursued for their own sake and not because they serve other ends external to them—and they are realized only through the activities of individual social members that both serve individuals’ particular ends and at the same time stand in some constitutive relation to the characteristic ends of society as a whole. Moreover, a crucial aspect of the activity by means of which a society maintains itself as what it is involves holding together internal contradictions, especially the ‘contradiction’ between free self-consciousness and life. Let me fill in some of the details of this sketch by beginning with the teleological character of social activities. Like life, society reproduces itself through a variety of activities that ‘aim at’ purposes or ends. Raising children (in the family) and producing commodities (in civil society) are two examples of such activities, both of which are obviously bound up with satisfying needs humans have by virtue of being alive. Such activities serve a vital function, but because they are activities of spiritual beings, they are also carried out with an awareness of the functions they serve. Activities of social members not only have a point; they also have a point for those members themselves (even if it is also possible for them to have only partial or mistaken understandings of what they do and why). Moreover—and, again, because these are the activities of spiritual beings—the point of such activities cannot be reduced to the reproduction of life. As spiritual activities, they aim also at freedom. This means that for members of human societies, there is more at issue in raising children and producing goods than merely reproducing life; they are, rather, ways of reproducing life that at the same promote, and are taken to promote, the end of freedom, and this constitutes the third sense in which spiritualized social activity ‘incorporates’ life: its characteristic activities unite the ends of living beings with the loftier end of freedom. In order to accommodate the fact that many real societies do a poor job of enabling their members to incorporate these two ends within the same activity, it might be more appropriate to say that it is the nature of spirit to aspire to unite them, and that social members can be spiritually satisfied only when it is possible for them to do so. While it is relatively clear what counts as the reproduction of life, it is more difficult to say what freedom consists in; as I have argued elsewhere, Hegel’s social theory is founded on a conception of freedom that has many dimensions and resists easy summarization.25 As a first step, however, it will be 25  Frederick Neuhouser, Actualizing Freedom: Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

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­ elpful to consider Hegel’s most general description of the freedom that spirit h seeks to realize. In the Phenomenology one can find several formulations of what spirit essentially strives for—unlimited Selbständigkeit, for example, but also: complete self-knowledge, perfect correspondence between what it is and what it takes itself to be, and the creation of a world that adequately expresses spirit’s self-understanding. And alongside these, in the chapter on selfconsciousness—where spirit and society first appear—the aim of the subject’s activity is described in terms of recognition from other self-conscious subjects. Yet all these formulations can be understood as descriptions of a single aim that guides spirit in each of its characteristic activities. Expressed most generally, spirit’s project—its characteristic striving—is self-definition and self-realization. More precisely, a spiritual being always operates, implicitly or explicitly, with a conception of what it essentially is, where the essence in terms of which it defines itself is some version of Selbständigkeit, or freedom, and where freedom is defined in contrast to what it takes not to be free, whether this be a mere thing, another subject that has surrendered its own standing as a subject, or life itself understood as self-consciousness’s antithesis. A self-conception of this general kind is clearly normative rather than merely descriptive—it invokes a standard for what ‘true’, fully realized subjectivity looks like—and it is the basis for spiritual striving because the subject that possesses such a selfconception is typically also aware that its current existence fails to measure up to what it takes itself to be essentially. Spirit’s striving manifests itself as activity in which a subject interacts with what it regards as different from itself—with the objective world and with other subjects—in order to make itself, in its concrete relations with its others, into the kind of (free) being it takes itself to be. Spiritual satisfaction, then, consists in establishing real relations to things and other subjects that give complete expression to the subject’s understanding of its own free nature. The complexity of Hegel’s view is due to the fact that freedom enters his account of spiritually satisfying social life in a variety of places. Members of a fully rational society conceive of themselves as practically free in three senses—as persons, moral subjects, and members of ethical life26—but their freedom is complete only when, in their social activity, they successfully give expression to these conceptions of themselves as free, that is, when they see that the world accommodates their self-conceptions and that social life reflects these self-conceptions back to them. Only then are their spiritual aims of self-definition and self-realization fully achieved.27 26  Neuhouser, Actualizing Freedom, 18–35. 27  At least in the realm of objective spirit. I ignore here how self-definition and self-realization are achieved in absolute spirit and why the latter form of spirit is ‘higher than’ the former.

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I now want to illustrate the conception of social ontology I have just articulated by showing how the essential features of social life are manifested in the simple model of society contained in Hegel’s treatment of the relation between bondsman and lord. The easiest point to see is that the activities of the two serve the vital ends of each: the lord commands, the bondsman labors, and together the two specialized, complementary activities result in the production of the goods needed to reproduce life.28 But their activities also have a significance in relation to freedom. The lord’s commanding and the bondsman’s obedience are mediated by—they are grounded in and give expression to—a shared conception both of what freedom is and of the superior value freedom has in relation to life. The future bondsman may ‘blink’ in the decisive moment of the struggle unto death and choose his own life over freedom, but his doing so does not signal an abandonment of the basic normative position he held before the struggle. Or, more precisely: the future bondsman does embrace a new principle—“that life is as essential to him as pure self-consciousness”29— and there is an element of progress in this stance, for life is essential to spirit, even if freedom remains the higher value. But that the bondsman continues to subscribe to the higher normative authority of freedom, and (as long as he remains a bondsman) to the same conception of freedom he had before the struggle, is revealed by the fact that for both him and lord, prestige and authority—in short, recognition—properly attach to the individual who has given expression in his actions to the superiority of freedom over life. The two figures share conceptions of freedom and of its value relative to life in general, but they differ with respect to the value each has in fact accorded to his own survival. The relation between bondsman and lord counts as genuinely social, then, because it imbues jointly undertaken activities of life with spiritual significance. Moreover, it does so in a way that entitles us to speak of the relation between social members in terms of an “I that is a we”, and vice versa.30 This expression points back to the relation Hegel posited between living beings and their species—where their activities always ‘refer to’ the species—though in human society that relation is elevated into the realm of the spiritual and is therefore transformed. Neither of the life-related activities of the bondsman and lord is complete without reference to the activity of the other, and neither makes sense on its own, without being brought into relation with the universal end of social reproduction. But the spiritual dimensions of the I’s that

28  This aspect of their interactions is clearer in Enc., § 434. 29   P S, § 189 (GW 9, 112). 30   P S, § 177 (GW 9, 108).

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constitute a we are even more important. Because human individuals, like living beings, have a degree of independence from the we they compose, each aspires to be recognized as free, which means that each can find satisfaction of his own ends only in the recognizing activity of the other (even if these aspirations are very poorly satisfied in the bondsman-lord relation). At the same time, a genuine we is present because the I’s are bound by a shared consciousness of what is of ultimate value, and this shared commitment determines the relations of normative authority, including relations of recognition, among society’s members: the shared conception of freedom determines who is entitled to rule, who must obey, and who gets recognized as superior. Although the relation of bondsman and lord represents a primitive and unsatisfying way in which subjects collectively attempt to unify their immersion in life with their certainty that they are also more than life, all human societies are engaged in some version of this project and exhibit some version of the basic structure of the bondsman-lord relation. That, in any case, is the claim of Hegel’s social ontology. One aspect of the relation between bondsman and lord I have not yet adequately articulated is how their activities can be seen as attempts to negotiate the contradiction between self-consciousness and life. Perhaps the best way to do this is to proceed to my final topic: the implications Hegel’s social ontology has for diagnosing social pathology. Since my space is limited, I will restrict myself to only a part of that undertaking, namely, an examination of what social pathology in the case of bondsman and lord consists in. I have suggested thus far that pathology in general can be understood as a systematic disturbance in the characteristic functions of living and spiritual beings. Especially in the case of spiritual beings, pathologies can be characterized in terms of the failure to find satisfaction in one’s characteristic activities, or to realize the ends those activities aim at. Nowhere does Hegel suggest that the failure of bondsman and lord has to do with an inability to reproduce the material conditions of life. (Because Hegel lived in the nineteenth century rather than ours, it never occurred to him that a society might organize production such that it systematically undermined the environmental conditions of future life. But since the reproduction of life is an important end of society, there is room in his theory to recognize that scenario, too, as social pathology.) The pathologies associated with bondsman and lord appear, instead, at the level of spiritual satisfaction. The spiritual failings of bondsman and lord (like those associated with the previous stage in the Phenomenology, Desire) can be traced back to inadequate self-conceptions—more precisely, to conceptions of one’s relation to life that either disavow that connection or grossly misconstrue the threat it poses to achieving freedom. What is common to both Desire and

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bondsman and lord is an overly exalted conception of self-consciousness and its Selbständigkeit. In each case the essential property of self-consciousness, its being undetermined by anything external, is taken to consist in what will eventually be shown to be a deficient, one-sided relation to life, in which a subject asserts its freedom by proving itself not to have any essential relation to life, thereby demonstrating its elevated status in relation to the merely living. Similarly, the failure of both configurations can be traced back to different ways in which the practices their subjects must engage in in order to assert themselves as what they take themselves to be in fact require a connectedness to life that belies their self-conception. That bondsman and lord subscribe to the same exceedingly stark conception of freedom explains why the result of the struggle unto death is thoroughly asymmetric: if freedom requires absolute independence from everything ‘other’, then avowing one’s ties to life, as the future bondsman does in the struggle, is incompatible with being free. The unequal relation between bondsman and lord is merely an expression of this shared, all-or-nothing view of freedom, conjoined with the fact that, facing the prospect of death, one subject affirms the value of his life while the other persists in its exclusive valuation of absolute independence. Thus, the one-sided recognitive relation between bondsman and lord is grounded both in a certain general conception of freedom and in the different specific relations to life that (in the struggle unto death) each has taken up in the world. Since patterns of recognition always manifest themselves in material practices,31 bondsman and lord take up relations to life within society that are just as one-sided as the relations of recognition they express. The two moments of the reproduction of life—production and consumption—are torn apart, each ascribed to one of the relation’s opposing poles: the bondsman labors while the lord enjoys, and in doing so each at the same time relates to the other in the mode of recognition. For the bondsman, labor is at once a relating to life, a relating to self (an expression of his own attitude to freedom and life), and a relating to another subject (through relations of recognition that define conditions of authority and subjection). That servile labor is spiritual activity—the same is true of the lord’s enjoyment—since it is a way, however unsatisfying, of negotiating the opposition between self-consciousness and life. If the pathologies of bondsman and lord can be traced back to inadequate self-conceptions—to an impoverished conception of the freedom of 31  This follows from the view that the mental and the material are never completely separate, which is itself bound up with the fact that, for human subjects, relations of recognition are always expressed in relations among bodies.

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self-consciousness—it is tempting to conclude that those pathologies reside first and foremost in the realm of consciousness and that social pathology is nothing more than false consciousness, a deficient conception of what one essentially is (and that its remedy therefore will focus on transforming the consciousness of those who suffer it). Call this the therapeutic model of emancipation. That this view approximates Hegel’s account in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right of the emancipatory role that philosophy can play in the modern world should not blind us to the fact that Hegel’s resources for conceiving of social pathology extend far beyond the therapeutic model and that the importance this model assumes in the Philosophy of Right depends on a specific, no longer plausible claim that the modern social world already is, in basic outline, objectively rational and that all it needs to become fully rational is for its members to apprehend it as such, in thought. As the Phenomenology makes clear, Hegel has more resources than this for understanding social pathology, and it is these resources we must appropriate if we are to have a genuinely critical social theory. Another way of putting this point is to say that what can look like a one-sidedly idealistic position in the Preface to the Philosophy of Right covers over a decidedly more materialistic view of social pathology that Hegel’s thought also makes available to us (and that is, I would argue, the more fundamental of the two). But Hegel’s conception of social pathology is more materialistic than this. The source of Hegel’s materialism in social theory is his view that spirit’s characteristic activities are at once mental (activities of consciousness) and material. This is because what drives spirit is not merely the urge to conceive of itself in a certain way but also to make that self-conception real—to enact it in the world—in such a way that its activities and products bear objective witness to its actually being what it takes itself to be. The activities of life, then, at once express spirit’s self-conceptions and shape, even correct, them. In other words, the holding together of contradictions that characterizes spirit does not occur only in consciousness; material practices, too, are essential to the spiritual negotiation of opposition. Moreover, material practices are essential to spirit’s goal of achieving a true conception of itself because the only way it has of correcting its self-conceptions is by discovering how those self-conceptions, when enacted in material practices, produce real relations between subject and object—between self-consciousness and life—that belie the very conception of freedom those practices were meant to express. If, for Hegel, ‘social being’ does not unidirectionally determine ‘social consciousness’, the latter is given determinate expression in and transformed by social practices that are irreducibly material in the sense that they are thoroughly intertwined with the functions of life. And even if there is more to the social than mere engagement with life, it is also true that whatever belongs to

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the social—relations of recognition, for example—is at the same time inextricably bound up with the processes of life. This means that social pathology must be theorized not simply as false consciousness but, at the same time, as false material practices—social practices that embody false, or unsatisfying, ways of negotiating the opposition between self-consciousness and life. Where exactly, though, does pathology enter this picture? One could locate the pathological character of the bondsman-lord relation in any number of its features: neither party finds recognition from its counterpart that is genuinely satisfying; their relation is grounded in domination rather than freedom; and the bondsman is alienated from his true essence (since he is potentially a free subject even though he sees only his lord as belonging to that exalted category). None of these responses is wrong, but a more comprehensive description of what has gone wrong is that the society to which bondsman and lord belong cannot achieve spiritual satisfaction—cannot satisfy itself—in the sense that the real conditions of its existence necessarily contradict, or fail to measure up to, the conception of freedom it takes itself to be grounded in. Its practices aim at realizing freedom (under a specific description) but end up producing its opposite. This characterization of social pathology can also be formulated in terms of society’s failure to fulfill its characteristic task (or ‘function’) of negotiating the opposition between subjectivity and life in a satisfying way. What this means is that the various ways in which social members participate in life are not, at the same time, expressions of their freedom; and that the activities they regard as expressions of freedom are not, at the same time, ways of participating in life. Full spiritual satisfaction, in contrast, requires that life be elevated to freedom and that self-consciousness be filled with the aims of life. On this view, social pathology exists whenever the basic conditions of a society prevent its members—in their self-conceptions, in their recognitive relations to others, and in their material practices—from bringing together their membership in both the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity. Complete success in doing so would mean that there is no essential life activity that is not also a site of freedom and no expression of freedom that is not at the same time a material practice. It is not difficult to recognize in this thought the central idea of Marx’s account of alienated labor: “[T]he [alienated] worker no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions, [. . .] and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal”.32

32  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. R.C. Tucker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 74; Marx, Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1981–1985), 40: 514–15.

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A society based on the relation of bondsman and lord exhibits pathology, then, because rather than holding together the contradiction between selfconsciousness and life, it responds to the problem with a strategy that psychoanalysis calls splitting. Life itself gets split into two, insofar as production and consumption fall to different, mutually antagonistic social classes. This has the result that consumption takes place in ignorance of the activity and of the agents that make it possible, while production is carried out not in order to satisfy spiritual aims but only because obeying the lord is a basic prerequisite of staying alive. This division within the activities of life implies a spiritual division as well: society divides itself into two groups of individuals, one of which is absorbed in life but unfree, while the other, as far removed from life as possible, enjoys, precisely for that reason, a kind of freedom. The problem is not only that some are free while others are not but, more important, that both freedom and life remain empty and unsatisfying. Labor for the necessities of life becomes a site of domination and self-denial rather than of freedom, and its counterpart, enjoyment, devolves into luxury consumption that fails to satisfy. Those who labor do so merely in order to survive, while those who consume have a spiritual end in view (demonstrating their freedom) but are moved by a distorted vision of what that freedom consists in (complete independence from the ties of life). There is, of course, much more to be said about the possibilities for understanding social pathology that Hegel’s social ontology opens up. But I have tried to set out what I take to be the most fundamental categories Hegel provides us with for diagnosing social pathology. Most generally, I have argued that for Hegel social pathologies should be understood as ways in which society fails in the spiritual task of relating to life in the mode of freedom, a task that can be characterized in terms of successfully negotiating the opposition between self-conscious freedom and life or, in other words, of identifying with (and affirming) life while at the same time demonstrating in practical activity that one is also above life in the manner of a free, self-conscious subject.

chapter 3

Ethical Perfectionism in Social Ontology— A Hegelian Alternative Heikki Ikäheimo Abstract: I discuss in this article two opposing conceptual approaches to the relationship of the ontological foundations of the human life-form to ethical or moral goodness present in social ontology broadly construed. The first one, represented by Max Weber and John Searle, is officially neutral with regard to ethical evaluation or normativity, yet in both cases it ends up in introducing ethical considerations into their conceptions, which in Weber’s case introduces an interesting internal tension and in Searle’s case an outright contradiction with the official ethical neutrality of the conceptual approach of the respective author. The second approach, represented by Hegel, is distinguished by, first, positing a normative essence for distinctively human social phenomena, and, secondly, by conceiving the normativity involved explicitly as of an ethical or moral kind.

What is the relationship of the ontological foundations of the human life-form to ethical or moral goodness? I will discuss in this article two opposing conceptual approaches to this issue present in social ontology broadly construed. The first approach, represented by Max Weber and John Searle, is distinguished by the two interlocking features of, firstly, pinning down the basic concepts for dealing with the human social world in terms of definitions by necessary and sufficient conditions, and, secondly, trying to keep these foundational conceptual operations neutral with regard to ethical evaluation or normativity. As I will show, both Weber and Searle nevertheless end up in introducing ethical considerations into their conceptions, which in Weber’s case introduces an interesting internal tension and in Searle’s case an outright contradiction with the official ethical neutrality of the conceptual approach of the respective author. The second approach, represented by Hegel, is distinguished by, first, positing a normative essence for distinctively human social phenomena, and, secondly, by conceiving the normativity involved explicitly as of an ethical or moral kind. For Hegel, introducing ethical considerations into his social ontology, or his ontology of life with the human, essentially social form does not introduce the kinds of conceptual tensions or troubles found in Weber and Searle, and his strategy has also other arguable advantages which make it worthy of closer scrutiny. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004322967_004

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An Internal Tension in Weber’s Conceptualization of Sociality

What exactly is the object of study of social ontology? A simple reply is “all things social”, which immediately prompts the further question what exactly is it that makes something ‘social’. Thinkers working in this field have recently paid much attention to what makes actions or intentions to act ‘social’, ‘collective’, or ‘shared’, and typically this question has been addressed by means of definitions by necessary and sufficient conditions. An important pioneer in this general approach to social ontology is Max Weber whose definition of ‘social action’ is well-known and often cited.1 In chapter 1 of his Economy and Society Weber stipulates the necessary and sufficient condition of action being social as follows: [a]ction is social insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course.2 A little later in chapter 1 Weber distinguishes non-social action from social action as follows: Overt action is non-social if it is oriented solely to the behavior of inanimate objects. Subjective attitudes constitute social action only so far as they are oriented to the behavior of others.3 Weber then proceeds to grasp social phenomena more broadly by defining ‘social relation’ via the concept of social action. There is a social relation between individuals insofar as [. . .] the action of each takes account of that of the others and is oriented in these terms. The social relationship thus consists entirely and exclusively in the existence of a probability that there will be a meaningful course of social action.4 Commentators often complain that Weber’s definitions are too liberal or inclusive. As one of them points out, even a “population of individuals who 1  See for example Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 24–27. 2  Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 4. 3  Weber, Economy and Society, 22, my italics. 4  Weber, Economy and Society, 26.

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took account of each other’s behaviour only to the extent of seeking to avoid collisions”5 would on Weber’s definition be engaged in social action, and if the probability of these collision-avoidance-activities would be high enough, there would be a “social relationship” between the agents. What I am interested in is a similar doubt, only with an explicitly ethical or moral twist. It is a doubt that arises from considerations that Weber himself presents later in the book, in his reflections on the market in the uncompleted essay The Market: Its Impersonality and Ethic, included in the second part of the first volume of Economy and Society.6 Weber writes: Dickering [. . .] is always a social action [Gemeinschaftshandeln] insofar as the potential partners are guided in their offers by the potential action of an indeterminately large group of real or imaginary competitors rather than by their own actions alone. The more this is true, the more does the market constitute social action. Furthermore, any act of exchange involving the use of money (sale) is a social action simply because the money used derives its value from its relation to the potential actions of others. Its acceptability rests exclusively on the expectation that it will continue to be desirable and can be further used as a means of payment.7 This seems unproblematic, given Weber’s definition of social action. Actions constitutive of the market such as bargaining, or buying and selling are social actions since engaging in them necessarily involves having the behaviour or actions of others in view. And following Weber’s definition of social relation, if there is a probability that such action or interaction will also continue to take place in the future, the agents have a social relation. But what Weber writes later in the same page introduces an interesting tension: [t]he market community as such is the most impersonal relationship of practical life into which humans can enter with one another.8 And a few lines later:

5  Angus Ross, ‘Society, concept of’, in Edward Craig & Luciano Floridi (eds.), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, CD-ROM, 1998. 6  Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, Book 2, Ch. VII. 7  Weber, Economy and Society, 636, my emphasis. 8  Weber, Economy and Society, 636, my emphasis.

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Where the market is allowed to follow its own autonomous tendencies, its participants do not look toward the persons [kein Ansehen der Person] of each other but only toward the commodity; there are no obligations of brotherliness or reverence, and none of those spontaneous [urwüchsig] human relations that are sustained by personal unions.9 And finally on the next page: Such absolute depersonalization is contrary to all the elementary [urwüchsigen] forms of human relationship.10 One way to read this is that Weber is merely commenting on the quality of market-interactions and social relations constituted by them from the point of view of an ethic of “brotherliness or reverence”, or an ethic pertaining to close “personal unions”. But the claim about the “absolute depersonalization”11 of the “autonomous tendencies” of the market being “contrary to all elementary forms of human relationships” suggests that something more fundamental may also be at stake. This impression is further supported by Weber’s historical or anthropological remarks about the birth of the market in the same text. Originally, he writes, market-interactions (or rather their primitive precursors) devoid of “obligations of brotherliness or reverence” only took place across, but not within, the “boundaries of neighbourhood, kinship, group, or tribe”. In other words, they were only exercised between strangers—indeed, they were the first kind of peaceful relationship between strangers to begin with. It required a long historical process for such interactions free of, as Weber also says, “ethical norms”12 to become established between group-members as well. What Weber is saying here raises questions with regard to his definitions of social action and social relation. For sure, if we read them as sociologists, everything is in order: there are all kinds of social actions and social relations 9   Weber, Economy and Society, 636. 10  Weber, Economy and Society, 637. 11  ‘Depersonalization’ is the translators’ choice for Weber’s ‘Versachlichung’ (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Frankfurt a. M.: Zweitausendeins, 2005, 490). I follow their clue, which is in line with Weber’s thought that market-relations are devoid of “regard for the person” (“ansehen der Person”). ‘Reification’ would be another obvious translation, and for my purposes ‘depersonalization’ (or ‘depersonification’) and ‘reification’ are synonymous. 12  Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 490.

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with individuals engaging in them with various motives and attitudes, and the sociologist’s definitions must be broad enough to grasp all of them. One way in which social actions and relations differ from each other is that some are ethically or morally more agreeable than others (on a relevant conception of ethics or morality). Surely one should not expect the social actions and relations defining of the market to be characterized by the kinds of ethical motives, attitudes or norms defining or characteristic of close personal unions. But if we read Weber from the perspective of social ontology understood as an inquiry into the foundations of social life, our perspective to what he writes is different. Now we are not satisfied with merely grasping the immense variety of social actions, relations and structures by catch-all definitions that grasp what is common to all of them. We are more (or at least also) interested in asking questions like ‘which phenomena are more fundamental, or more central than others for social life?’, or ‘which phenomena are supportive of social life and which ones are corrosive of it?’ Social life, or a social form of life, as life, only exists by constantly reproducing itself, and therefore an adequate ontological description of it must account for the conditions or principles of its reproduction. In other words, such a description must be capable of distinguishing phenomena or tendencies that contribute to the reproduction of social life from ones that are ‘contrary to’ it. Looked at from the point of view of social ontology understood as a foundational discipline, Weber’s definitions of social action and social relation thus now seem problematic in light of considerations that his discussion of the market brings to light. Though Weber does not say it explicitly, what his discussion suggests is that not all actions and relations that on his definitions count as social actions could actually have a place at the very foundations of social life. More exactly: relations defined by what Weber calls the “autonomous tendencies of the market” involving “absolute depersonalization” do not appear as such. Historically speaking, they only emerged once social groups were already there. But more importantly, by saying that they are somehow “contrary to all the elementary forms of human relationship” Weber seems to suggest that this was not so by accident, but necessarily. Assuming that social life cannot be reproduced without such elementary forms, then the elementary forms are not only historically, but also ontologically fundamental for social life, whereas factors that are “contrary to” them seem not to be. If one takes these implications seriously, it follows that for the purposes of social ontology understood as a foundational discipline Weber’s definitions of social action and social relation are not only too broad, but moreover this seems to be related to their ethical neutrality.

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An Internal Contradiction in Searle’s Account of ‘Acceptance or Recognition’

Whereas it is debatable whether Weber’s intention was to be engaged in social ontology in the foundational sense, John Searle is a self-described social ontologist and explicitly interested in foundational questions. A central concept in Searle’s account of specifically human social reality is the concept of ‘status function’. But status functions depend on something more fundamental, namely on what Searle calls collective “acceptance or recognition”.13 Something has the status of, functions as, and thus is, say, money, or the government of a country, or someone’s property, if and only if it is collectively accepted or recognized as being that, and thereby attributed that status. But what exactly is “acceptance or recognition” according to Searle? In his recent book Making the Social World—The Structure of Human Civilization Searle emphasizes the ethical neutrality of the concept: Acceptance, as I construe it, goes all the way from enthusiastic endorsement to grudging acknowledgement, even the acknowledgement that one is simply helpless to do anything about, or reject, the institutions in which one finds oneself.14 And a few lines later: I want to emphasize that “recognition” does not imply “approval”. Hatred, apathy, and even despair are consistent with the recognition of that which one hates, is apathetic towards, and despairs changing.15 Ontologically, it hence does not matter whether A imposes his will on B and forces her or them to accept or recognize something as something, say, someone’s property, or the government or ruler of a country, or whether B gives her or their acceptance or recognition wholeheartedly. Though from an ethical point of view this of course makes a major difference, Searle insist that it makes no difference for the existence of status functions and thus for the foundations of the social world. As was the case with Weber’s definitions of social action and social relation, also for Searle’s concept of “acceptance or recognition” the

13  John Searle, Making the Social World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8. 14  Searle, Making the Social World, 8. 15  Searle, Making the Social World, 8.

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ethical or moral quality of attitudes that agents have towards to each other, and thereby towards the relevant social entities or structures, is irrelevant. But analogically to Weber, also Searle in fact presents considerations that clash with the official ethical neutrality of his conception. This happens towards the end of Making of the Social World, in a chapter on power, where Searle wants to demarcate institutional or ‘deontic powers’, which are the kinds of powers that something or someone has by virtue of collective ‘acceptance or recognition’, from power based on “brute force or self-interest”.16 That something is, or that some people are, the government of a country means that they have the ‘deontic powers’—or in other words the rights and duties—of a government, and their being collectively ‘accepted or recognized’ as having them is the necessary and sufficient condition of their actually having them and thus being the government. This, Searle wants to maintain, contrasts with mere coercion. He writes: [a]n army that occupies a foreign country has power over its citizens, but such power is based on brute physical force. [. . .] To the extent that the occupied accept the orders of the occupiers, without accepting any validity of the status functions, they act from fear and prudence. They act on reasons that are desire dependent.17 Hence, although a foreign army has power over a population, it does not have institutional or ‘deontic power’ constituted by the collective acceptance or recognition of the population. If the occupied people would collectively recognize the army or its commanders as the ruler or rulers of the country with the respective deontic powers, this would give the former ‘desire-independent’ reasons to obey the latters’ orders. Searle’s idea is that recognizing or accepting status-functions gives one reasons to live by them, whether or not one has the desire to do so. But in Searle’s scenario this is not the case: the only reasons that the occupied people have for obeying stem from fear or prudence, which for Searle’s means that they are ‘desire-dependent’. Searle notes that in real life deontic powers created by collective acceptance or recognition interact and overlap with other forms of power, and that the distinction he wants to make is a conceptual or logical one: “the logical structure of the ontology where the power is deontic differs from the cases where it is, for example, based on brute force or self-interest”.18 16  Searle, Making the Social World, 164. 17  Searle, Making the Social World, 164. 18  Searle, Making the Social World, 164.

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Now, the contrast of deontic power to ‘brute physical force’ or ‘brute power’ (Searle seems to use these terms synonymously in these pages), such as the force of a bulldozer to move anything small enough on its way, including human persons, or that of artillery fire to destroy or seriously damage anything in sight, including human persons, is clear. But this, of course, is not how occupying armies actually rule the populations of occupied territories, at least most of the time. Though the military may also exercise ‘brute physical force’ on civilians by bulldozers and cannons, the everyday activity of ruling a recalcitrant population is done by appealing to the occupied people’s ‘self-interest’, including (but not limited to) a show of capacity to use brute physical force if needed. In other words, the occupiers’ power over the occupied actually relies on the latter considering obedience and thus “accept[ing] the orders of the occupiers” to be more in their self-interest than risking life and limb by rebellion. There is now an obvious problem that Searle does not seem to notice. He wants to say that “accept[ing] the orders of the occupiers” is not accepting or recognizing the occupiers as having the status of rulers of the country (or as he puts it, not accepting such status as having ‘any validity’), if that acceptance is based on threat of and fear for brute physical force and is thus self-interested or ‘desire-dependent’. Yet, this is at odds with the official ethical neutrality of his concept of acceptance or recognition. According to his own stipulations ‘acceptance or recognition’ under coercion is still acceptance or recognition and thus constitutive of genuine status-functions. What Searle hence wants to do is to presents an ethically decisive distinction between a social structure based on coercion and fear on the one hand, and a social structure free of coercion and fear on the other hand also as an ontological distinction between conceptually different kinds of social structures. Yet, his conceptual strategy of definition in terms of ethically neutral necessary and sufficient conditions does not entitle him to do so. 3

The Hegelian Alternative

So what is the alternative Hegelian conceptual strategy? Hegel’s approach differs from Weber’s and Searle’s in that rather than trying to come up with clear-cut demarcations between phenomena by stipulating necessary and sufficient conditions that something has to fulfill in order to be an entity of some particular kind (say, for action to be social, or power to be deontic), he focuses on what it means for something to be a good entity of that kind—in a sense

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of goodness proper to that kind. What Hegel never says is that in order for something to be or to count as x it must be a good x. What he says is that x’s have an essence or ‘concept’, and that this essence or concept is the immanent criterion of the goodness of anything that is x. This is the conceptual strategy of normative essentialism. This strategy is also at work in Hegel’s social ontology, or in his ontology of the human, essentially social life-form. His title-word for features and phenomena distinctive of the human life-form as a not merely animal life-form is ‘spirit’ (Geist), and its normative essence or ‘concept’ is freedom.19 This means that the more such phenomena instantiate freedom, the better they are, and since they are phenomena distinctive of the human life-form, the goodness in question is ‘goodness of life’ with that form, something we may meaningfully call ethical goodness. Hegel’s normative essentialism on Geist or the human life-form can thus equally well be characterized as ethical perfectionism. What exactly does Hegel mean by freedom here? Not freedom in the ‘abstract’ sense of freedom or abstraction from causal or other determination by something other than oneself,20 but rather ‘concrete’ freedom in the sense of overcoming the alienness or hostility to oneself of what one is necessarily determined by—be it other people, social institutions, or internal or external nature. Hegel characterizes concrete freedom in this sense of reconciliation with what one is necessarily determined by as “being with oneself in otherness”, “knowing oneself in otherness” or “self-consciousness in otherness”, and thinks of it in terms of the logical structure of “double negation”, “negation of negation” or “absolute negation”.21 Being determined by something is the first negation, and overcoming the externality, alienness or hostility of that by which one is determined is the second negation completing absolute negation, and thus bringing about concrete freedom with regard to it. On Hegel’s account the essence, criterion of goodness, and telos of humanity is concrete freedom, which means both acceptance of the independence of that whereby one is constitutively determined—both individually and collectively—and overcoming its alienness or hostility. Instantiations of human life can realize

19  See Enc. III, § 382. 20  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827–8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 14. See also Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 18–27. 21  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit 1827–8, 14; SL, 531 (GW 12, 34).

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the essence to various degrees and hence be better or worse in a broadly ethical sense of goodness.22 In what follows, I will discuss how the principle of concrete freedom applies to Hegel’s account of ‘horizontal’ relations between individuals, which is what Weber starts his conceptualization with, and ‘vertical’ relations between humans and institutions, which is what Searle’s focuses on.23 I will emphasize the themes of “acceptance or recognition” found in Searle’s text, and of “depersonalization” (and its implied opposite ‘personalization’ or ‘personification’) found in Weber’s.24 My main textual reference is the chapter ‘Selfconsciousness’ in the section ‘Subjective Spirit’ of Hegel’s Berlin Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences. As I have elsewhere provided a closer reading of this text,25 I will remain here at some distance from its details. Let us start with the idea of acceptance or recognition. Whereas Searle only applies it on the vertical axis, and only in the ‘upwards’ direction of individuals recognizing social institutions, Hegel applies the idea both on the horizontal and the vertical axis.26 And as to the vertical axis, he talks of both the upwards direction, and the ‘downwards’ direction of social institutions or the state as the master institution ‘recognizing’ individuals. Though Hegel does not say this clearly, on a rational reconstruction there is a close connection between vertical upwards recognition and horizontal recognition—and furthermore in two distinct senses of the latter. I will call these the ‘institutionally mediated’ and the ‘purely intersubjective’ sense of horizontal recognition, and denote the first with ‘recognition*’ in short. They are related to two kinds of social norms, which I call the ‘genuinely institutional’, and the ‘not genuinely institutional’ or ‘purely intersubjective’, respectively. Norms whereby particular persons live are genuinely institutional with regard to the persons in question to the degree that the existence of the norms is independent of their (vertical upwards) recognition by these persons. To the degree that this is the case, the norms constitute what we might call ‘genuine institutions’ or ‘institutions proper’ with regard to 22  One can understand ‘ethical’ here either in a narrow sense applying only to interhuman relations or in a broader sense applying also to relations with internal and external nature. 23  I will forego a discussion of relations to nature, and most importantly of theme of work which is of course of central importance for the ontology of the human life-form. 24  See note 11. 25  See Heikki Ikäheimo, “Hegel’s Concept of Recognition—What is it?”, in Recognition— German Idealism as an Ongoing Challenge, ed. Christian Krijnen (Leuwen: Brill, 2013), and Heikki Ikäheimo, Anerkennung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), chapter 4. 26  See Ludwig Siep, Prinzip der Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg und München: Karl Alber, 1979).

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the persons in question. For example, the norms of property-ownership in a state exist or are in force broadly independently of whether a particular citizen or pair of citizens whose life they regulate ‘recognize’ them. In contrast, norms are purely intersubjective if, or to the degree that, their existence only depends on the persons whose actions or interaction they regulate recognizing them, by subsuming their interactions under them. With regard to genuinely institutional norms or institutions proper, vertical and horizontal recognition are internally related: to recognize the norms or institutions (vertically upwards) means to recognize* others as bearers of the deontic statuses, or in other words rights and duties that the norms imply and that the institution in this sense (vertically downwards) recognize the individuals in question as bearers of. Thus, to recognize the institution of property-ownership is to recognize* the relevant individuals as bearers of property-rights, or in terms of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, as “abstract persons”.27 With regard to not genuinely institutional or purely intersub­ jective norms, vertical and horizontal recognition are internally related in that interaction is only gover­ned by such norms to the extent that at least one of the parties recognizes another as an authority on the norms of the interaction. Here to recognize the norms in question ‘vertically’ as binding on one is to recognize the other ‘horizontally’ as having authority on one. These two complexes of vertical and horiz­ontal recognition—the genuinely institutional and the purely intersubjective—are among the central building blocks of Hegel’s social ontology. He never spells them out explicitly, but what he writes in the texts most directly relevant for social ontology in his mature work—the Self-consciousness-chapter in his Berlin Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences—cannot be properly understood without a grasp of them as well as of the related distinction between the two kinds of norms.28 In the Self-consciousness-chapter Hegel famously discusses an idealized transition from ‘desire’ to ‘recognition’, or in other words from a solipsistic animal mode of intentionality to the social mode of intentionality defining of human persons. Put in Weber’s terms (or of his English translators to be exact), when two solipsistic subjects meet, they are forced to ‘take account’ of each other.29 The ‘struggle’ between them follows from the initial irreconcilability of their practical intentionalities and the way(s) they take account of each other. Both are looking for immediate satisfaction of their physiological needs and urges, without any concern for the other’s practical point of view, or initially 27   Enc. i*, §§ 34–40. 28  See Ikäheimo, “Hegel’s Concept of Recognition”, and Ikäheimo, Anerkennung, chapter 4. 29   Enc. III, §§ 430–431.

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even a grasp that the other is a being similar to oneself with a point of view to the world. Central to Hegel’s developmental account of recognition in the Self-consciousness-chapter is the idea that social life involves socialized subjectivities or structures of intentionalities. Very roughly, for subjects to be able to live together their intentionalities have to be mediated through each other and this means that the ontology of a social form of life is as much an ontology of socialized subjectivity as it is of social objectivity; or in Hegel’s terminology, as much an ontology of “subjective” as of “objective spirit”. It is also this mutual mediation of intentionalities that enables the subjects to be ‘conscious of themselves’ in and thus be ‘concretely free’ with regard to each other: I am conscious of myself in you when your intentionality is mediated through mine and in this sense ‘affirms’ me.30 Recognition in the purely intersubjective sense is this mediation of one’s intentionality through another, or affirmation of the other, and thus the overcoming of the mutual irreconciliability of intentionalities. Mediation and thus reconciliation of intentionalities in intersubjective recognition is, however, not necessarily nearly as pacific as it may sound at first hearing, as the story of the master and slave or bondsman makes clear. The furthest-from-ideal social relation is one subject forcing the other to recognize him, and the other doing this out of fear for her life. This is the initial relationship of the ‘master’ and ‘slave’. Importantly however, the master and slave, as depicted by Hegel, can be understood either in the institutional register as deontic roles made of rights and duties (or their absence) in an institutional system, or in the purely intersubjective register as roles constituted simply by how the parties regard each other. Hegel seems to have had both ways of seeing the relationship in mind, but from the point of view of social ontology the purely intersubjective reading has priority in that it does not already presuppose institutions as given. Unlike Searle, Hegel does not try to draw a clear conceptual demarcation between an order based on coercion and one based on acceptance or recognition: the slave’s recognition of the master as his master is grounded on ­coercion, which is to say motivated by the slave’s fear for his life in facing the master. In Hegel’s terms, this does not mean however that it is ‘desire-­dependent’, as Searle would have it, since Hegel draws a distinction between simple ­animal ‘desire’ for immediately given objects, and the future-directed reflective kind of self-concern characteristic of psychological persons which can

30   Enc. III, § 436: “General self-consciousness is the affirmative knowing [das affirmative Wissen] of one’s self in the other self”.

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motivate a person to yield, obey and thus to become a slave.31 Understood in the purely intersubjective register, the slave recognizes (horizontally and purely intersubjectively) the master as an authority on himself and thus recognizes (vertically) the master’s commands as norms on his actions by obeying the master. The slave’s intentionality becomes thereby mediated by the master’s who sets the norms governing the slave’s actions. This enables the master to be concretely free in relation to the slave in that he can be ‘conscious of himself’ in the slave whose obedience affirms his will or authority. Importantly, obedience and attribution of authority is only one of the ‘dimensions’ of intersubjective recognition at stake. Another dimension, contrasting with this ‘deontological’ dimension, is the ‘axiological’ dimension of concern for well-being. The slave affirms the master not only by attributing him authority, but also by being concerned for his well-being—as failing to secure it would risk punishment and possibly death in the master’s hands. Hence, the second way in which the master can be conscious of himself affirmed by the slave, and thus be concretely free in the relationship is in the slave’s recognition of him in the sense of concern for his well-being.32 A usual way to describe the idealized progress of the master-slave-relation is to say that whereas recognition between them is at first extremely unequal or asymmetric, the ideal is equal or symmetric recognition. There is however more to Hegel’s account of the ideal development of recognition-relations. Concrete freedom is not realized simply by the master-slave-relationship becoming somehow equal or symmetric, by both parties becoming both masters and slaves to each other as it were, but rather by both parties recognizing each other in a register or mode that we can call ‘unconditional’ or ‘fully personifying’, both in the deontological and axiological dimension. Hegel hints at this by noting that, in fact, the master cannot be ‘fully’ conscious of himself in the slave’s recognition, and thus not ‘truly’ (concretely) free in the relationship.33 He does not explain why this is the case, but the point can be 31  See Enc. III, § 434 on “need and concern for its satisfaction”, “acquisition, conservation and formation” of objects, and “provision which takes the future into account and secures it”. All of this is talk of a mode of concern which transcends mere animal ‘desire’ and is constitutive of psychological personhood. This is not to be confused with personhood as legal status mostly at stake in section ‘Abstract right’ of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as well as in the following sentence of the Phenomenology of Spirit: “The individual who has not risked his life may well be recognized as a person [. . .]” (PS, § 187; GW 9, 111). 32  The axiological dimension of recognition is most clearly present in Enc. III, § 434 and the deontological dimension in § 435. 33  “The master who confronted the servant was not yet truly free, for he was not yet fully aware of himself in the other.” (Enc. III, § 436 A).

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readily understood by considering how exactly the slave’s recognition of the master reflects the master. As noted above, both the slave’s deontological and his axiological recognition of the master is conditional on the master’s capacity to exercise brute force and thereby on the slave’s fear or self-interest. The master’s commands only count as norms or laws for the slave’s actions on the condition, and to the extent, that the slave prefers obeying them to facing the consequences of disobedience. Similarly, the master’s well-being matters for the slave only on the condition and to the extent that the latter considers it as necessary or instrumental for his own well-being. Thus, the slave’s recognition of the master does not affirm the master’s authority and well-being in a way that would fully reflect how these matter for the master himself. For him namely, his own well-being does not have merely instrumental or conditional importance, but intrinsic or unconditional importance. Similarly, for the master his own will or authority is not important merely conditionally, merely in light of its prudential significance for others and in this way reducible to their point of view, but intrinsically or unconditionally.34 In other words, the ‘fully personifying’ mode of recognition which allows the recognizee to be ‘fully’ conscious of himself in the recognizer, or which fully reflects the recognizee’s practical self-relations constitutive of him as a psychological person, attributes him the same practical significances in the eyes of the recognizer that he has, as a psychological person, in his own eyes. These are something like ‘someone whose well-being has unconditional importance’, attributed by intrinsic and thus genuinely personifying concern for well-being, or in other words by love, and ‘someone whose will or judgments have an unconditional claim for authority’, attributed by unconditional or genuinely personifying attribution of authority, or in other words by respect. The ideal reconciliation of intentionalities, a state in which each subject can be fully conscious of herself in an independent other (or others), and thus a structure that ideally realizes the “absolute negation” or “unity of unity and difference” of concrete freedom in horizontal relations is discussed by Hegel in the sub-chapter ‘General self-consciousness’. It is essentially a state of mutual, unconditional or fully personifying intersubjective recognition or Anerkanntsein. Unconditional or fully personifying intersubjective recognition has a counterpart in vertical upwards recognition of social norms. Whereas 34  Hegel uses the language of ‘end’ and ‘means’ to distinguish between the conditional and unconditional mode. The slave or bondsman is first “the means of mastery” (Enc. III, § 434), and ideally becomes “an end, counts, is honoured” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit. Summer Term 1985’, in Hegel, Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, 3 vols., ed. and trans. M.J. Petry (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978), Vol. 3, 270–357, 342).

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individuals recognizing each other as co-authorities of the norms of their interaction only conditionally, or in other words only if this seems prudentially the best option for oneself, will cease to abide to the norms, or to ‘recognize or accept’ them, to borrow Searle, when they believe the prudential situation has in this regard changed, this is not the case with individuals recognizing each other unconditionally, in the fully personifying mode. Genuine respect for others as having authority on the norms or terms of interaction means that one’s recognition of the norms is not exclusively prudential, but at least partly motivated also by one’s respect for the will or judgments of the others. And non-instrumental concern or genuine love for others means that even one’s prudential considerations concerning the ‘acceptability’ of the norms are not merely egoistic, but include unselfish concern for the others. Hence, these two unconditional modes of intersubjective recognition bring about a double mediation of an individual’s vertical upwards recognition of norms through the perspectives of others. From the opposite perspective, as the object of such fully personifying recognition by others one can see the co-administered norms effective in their actions reflecting one’s own irreducible perspective of authority and demands of well-being. This is to say that their ‘acceptance or recognition’ of the norms is partly mediated through their unconditional recognition for one. In this structure each individual thus relates both to the ­others and to the social norms as partly independent of oneself,35 yet at the same time reflecting or affirming oneself as a full-fledged person with unconditional importance and authority in the eyes of the others and thus in the shared social space. Full or ideal concrete freedom in intersubjective relations hence corresponds to full or ideal concrete freedom in one’s relation to social norms regulating the relations. What about genuinely institutional relations and structures? The concept of concrete freedom applies also here, though in ways which are not fully analogical with the purely intersubjective case. As I explained earlier, unlike purely intersubjective norms, norms are genuinely institutional or form ‘institutions proper’ with regard to particular persons to the degree that they are not dependent on their (vertical upwards) recognition by these persons so that they would simply cease to exist or be in power if these persons ceased to accept or recognize them.36 Yet, there are various ways in which individuals can be more 35  This is so with regard to social norms since they also embody for one the authority and concerns of the others. 36  In the master-slave-relation conceived of as a purely intersubjective, i.e. not institutionalized or not institutionally mediated relationship, if the slave ceases to recognize the master’s commands as norms, they cease to exist as norms in the relationship.

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or less ‘conscious of themselves’ in institutionalized norms and thus genuine institutions as well and to thus be concretely free with regard to them. Even the worst institutional arrangement must be preferable to death for an individual for her to obey it. However coercive and hostile the institutions, if they are accepted or recognized (upwards) in the sense of obeyed, this shows that they must reflect the recognizers’ interests to some minimal degree at least. In cases that realize concrete freedom in relation to institutionalized norms more fully, individuals find the norms (for whatever reasons) genuinely good or preferable to other possible institutional arrangements, and thus also horizontally recognize* others as bearers of the deontic powers that the institutionalized norms prescribe not merely out of fear for the consequences of non-recognition*, but also out of conviction that it is good or rational to do so. The mode of purely intersubjective recognition however makes a difference also here. The difference is again in the degree that the individual’s upwards recognition of the institutions and thus recognition* of others as bearers of institutional rights, duties etc. is influenced by her genuine intrinsic concern for the life or well-being of the relevant others, or genuine respect for them as co-judges on the goodness or rationality of the institutions. Thinking of the institution of property rights that Hegel discusses in the chapter ‘Abstract right’ of his Philosophy of Right, the institution, or the norms constituting it, exist relatively independently of what this or that particular individual or pair of individuals engaged in exchange thinks or accepts. This is what it means to say that the relationship of property owners is an institutionally mediated one. The mentioned difference here concerns whether or to what extent the individuals recognize and thus obey the norms constitutive of property rights and thus the relationship of property owners (only) because they find it best for themselves, or (also) because they find the institution good for others they care about non-instrumentally, or corresponding to the judgments or will of others they have genuine respect for (which may or may not include the respective partner of exchange).37 The latter case is in a clear sense ethically or morally superior, and in terms of the sub-chapter ‘General self-consciousness’ it is the ideal realization of concrete freedom in an institutionally structured co-existence, such as Hegel’s ideal state depicted in his Philosophy of Right.

37  On recognition between individuals unknown to each other, see Ikäheimo, Anerkennung, chapter 7.

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Advantages of and Challenges to the Hegelian Approach

Let me finish with some brief notes on the arguable advantages of the Hegelian approach, as well as on the challenges that it faces. One advantage of Hegel’s ethical perfectionism is that it is explicitly in touch with and can theoretically accommodate the kinds of deep ethical intuitions that both Weber and Searle express, yet have problems handling with due to the nature of their conceptual strategies. In his essay Weber indirectly suggests that besides not being foundational of human social life, inter-human relationships devoid of explicitly ethical (in the sense of ethically good) attitudes or motivations are also ‘contrary’ to its foundations, and thus ‘anti-social’ rather than ‘social’ (in the sense of ‘pro-social’). Yet, these ethical intuitions or convictions play no role in how Weber defines his most basic concepts in Economy and Society. Searle, in his part, suggests that a social structure based on coercion and fear, and thus on “self-interest”, differs logically from social structure free of these ethically clearly negative phenomena. His focus is on the latter, which he thinks of as distinctive of “human civilization”. These ethical intuitions are however contradicted by the official ethical neutrality of the basic concepts of Searle’s ontology of that civilization. In contrast, Hegel takes no stance on the question present in Weber whether a human society completely or largely devoid of ethically positive interhuman attitudes or motives would be possible, and he is clearly against drawing a clear-cut distinction à la Searle between free and unfree social structures. Importantly, this does not so much imply a difference in basic ethical intuitions, as it does in the conceptual articulation and theoretical role they are given. What Hegel does is to conceive of ethical goodness of horizontal and vertical relations as an immanent ideal for life with the human form, rather than a ­necessary condition for something to count as a human form of life, or as “human civilization”, as Searle does. More precisely, Hegel conceives of both horizontal and vertical relations in terms of a conceptual framework which involves concrete freedom as an immanent ethical principle, and thinks of unconditional or ‘fully personifying’ horizontal recognition as the fullest realization of this principle, one which is internally related to the maximal realization of the principle in vertical relations. Important for how the question of the conditions or principles of reproduction of life with the human form—a question I said in section 1 social ontology thought of as a foundational discipline must address—is dealt with in this framework is the connection of ethical goodness to functional goodness. Though Hegel is not claiming that social life devoid of genuinely ethical or moral attitudes of unconditional recognition would be completely impossible, one of the implications of the

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Self-consciousness-chapter is that it is inherently unstable and thus not ideally functional due to the implied motivations that individuals have with regard to each other. There are now three large and fairly obvious questions or challenges facing Hegel’s strategy. I can only take them up very briefly here. There is, first, the question whether the thought which Weber and Searle in their different ways express and to which Hegel gives a systematic theoretical formulation is reasonable in the first place, namely that it makes sense to conceive of ethical or moral goodness at a universally human, anthropological or ontological level, abstracting from historical, cultural and other variability? Secondly, if it is reasonable, is Hegel’s principle of concrete freedom a viable candidate for conceiving what makes life with the human, essentially social form ethically or morally better or worse universally, independently of the variability? Thirdly, what exactly does it mean to translate the ideal of concrete freedom into an essence, and is Hegel justified in doing so? As to the first question, though it is nowadays often taken for granted that any substantial talk of the good life can only reflect particular conceptions of the good among a plurality of others, the only critical and open-minded approach is to remain agnostic about this question, and continue considering and testing serious candidates for conceptions with universal validity such as Hegel’s. As to the second question, I have tried to show that the principle of concrete freedom is at least flexible enough to incorporate and give conceptual form to some of the more particular intuitions that Weber and Searle had, namely those concerning ‘recognition’ and ‘personification’ (and its opposites), and that it is at the same time substantial enough to have evaluative and critical bite. Whether it is acceptable more widely, by other thinkers and laymen across cultures, is again a question to which the only critical approach is default agnosticism, and thoughtful consideration and testing. As to the third question, the basic idea of translating an ideal into a normative essence is arguably not as extravagant as it may seem at first sight. Consider Robert Brandom’s notion of humans as ‘essentially self-conscious’ beings: a creature is “ ‘essentially self-conscious’ if what it is for itself, its self-conception, is an essential element of what it really is [. . .] essentially self-conscious creatures are [thus] (partially) self-constituting creatures”.38 This I take to be the key to understanding also Hegel’s ethical perfectionism, and it has two aspects. First, Hegel gives very little in the way of direct argument for the principle or ideal, and one could read this as indication of his 38  Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, eds., Recognition and Social Ontology (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 25.

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confidence that what he is articulating is something people will be convinced by or can recognize as an ideal they actually hold, once they are confronted with the articulation. Secondly, the articulation itself has a practical function in that ideals can only become fully actual in actions once agents are able to genuinely acknowledge them as their own. As Brandom writes, “[e]ssentially self-conscious creatures [. . .] enjoy the possibility of a distinctive kind of selftransformation: making themselves to be different by taking themselves to be different”.39 What is at stake here is collective self-transformation through acknowledging something as a self-ideal that one actually holds, or cannot reasonably not hold. To the extent that something is the overarching ideal of human affairs that humans as humans hold or must hold regardless of historical, cultural and other differences, it is the human self-ideal. And for humans as essentially (social and) self-conscious beings what they are essentially, their normative essence, is (at least partly) constituted by what they collectively hold as their self-ideal and use as the overarching evaluative framework in light of which they think and talk about particular instantiations of human life. Whereas Weber and Searle shun this immanently normative dimension of human life from their respective ontologies of that life, Hegel gives it philosophical articulation in the concept of concrete freedom and by doing so makes a contribution to the realization of this immanent ethical ideal or normative essence.40

39  Ikäheimo and Laitinen, Recognition and Social Ontology, 26. 40  For such general ideal to organize social life in a particular society, it of course needs to be given institutional concretizations that are fitting to the historical and cultural circumstances of that society. In his Philosophy of Right Hegel presents a system of concretizations that for him represents the “actuality of concrete freedom” (PR, § 260) for his own time and place. Axel Honneth, Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life (Cambridge: Polity, 2014) is an attempt to concretize the idea of concrete freedom (or “social freedom” as Honneth calls it) for contemporary liberal-capitalist societies. See also Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory, for a reading of the more concrete levels of Hegel’s normative social theory from the point of view of the theme of freedom. On my reading these are all to be understood as historically and culturally specific concretizations of the general principle of Hegel’s normative social ontology, namely concrete freedom. I thank Christopher Yeomans and Jack Ferguson for comments to an earlier version of this paper.

chapter 4

Towards an Institutional Theory of Rights Jean-François Kervégan Abstract: After having precised the meaning (rather vague in the common usage) of what a subjective right is, among others by standing on the classic distinctions established by Hohfeld, and after having showed that one thus may relativize common oppositions such as rights to do (liberty rights) and rights to receive (social rights), the paper comes up with a definition of legal institutions that allows to conceive rights as institutional facts. This approach of rights falls within the scope of the weak interpretations of legal positivism (soft positivism) that have the virtue of avoiding a metaphysical conception of rights without necessarily making them mere ‘reflections’ of objective legal norms of them.

Ever since the nineteenth century within the theory of ‘subjective’ rights— just as in the theory of ‘objective’ law—the natural law based approach and the positivist approach have been at loggerheads. According to the theory of natural law, rights—or at least basic rights (human rights)—are part of human nature and are founded on it. In the most widespread version of this theory, basic rights are said to derive from the ‘reasonable and sociable nature’ of man (Grotius) and to belong to ‘rational law’. The latter is superior to positive law, for which it also serves as a criterion of evaluation. In contrast, from a positi­vist standpoint, ‘natural law’ is, at the very most, an incorrect name for a certain number of ‘elementary truths’ that every legal system is required to presuppose (Hart),1 or it is a ‘dream’ (Windscheid), a ‘weed to be torn out without pity’ (Bergbohm).2 Rights, including those that are fundamental, should be exclusively defined on the territory of positive law, for example, in the form of a Declaration of Rights incorporated (or not) within the constitutional text, and possibly acquiring a transnational validity (like the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man adopted by the United Nations in 1948).

1  See Herbert L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 193 sq. 2  See Bernhard Windscheid, “Über Recht und Rechtswissenschaft”, in Gesammelte Reden und Abhandlungen (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1904), 9; Carl Bergbohm, Jurisprudenz und Rechtsphilosophie (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1892), Bd.1, 118.

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The arguments against each of these grand conceptions of rights are well known. Take rights that supposedly emerge from nature: not only does this ‘nature’ lack any precise definition thus being more or less imaginary (is it not said that the very nature of human beings is to have no nature?), but the real risk is that natural rights have no more weight than a verbal proclamation— there are no positive guarantees behind them. What happens if these ‘natural’ basic rights are not respected? After all, this happens quite often. From whom should one claim redress? Perhaps natural rights are profoundly respectable ‘moral rights’, but supposing that a notion like ‘moral right’ is even acceptable, and this is debatable—that is not sufficient to constitute rights stricto sensu, actionable legal rights.3 On the other hand, rights of a purely positive origin (determined by legislation or custom) appear to be very fragile indeed since they can always be revised. Is it possible to reconcile the inalienability of basic rights, their ‘sacred’ character (as the first French Declaration says), with the status of posited rights? The terms of the debate are quite simple. If basic rights are ‘natural’ rights, their ‘efficacy’, as Kelsen puts it, supposes a forever uncertain external guarantee, arising from ‘what is’ and not from ‘what ought to be’. If, on the other hand, these rights are rigorously positive, their efficacy is secured by the totality of means that positive law possesses, but their ‘validity’ (Kelsen again) remains conditional, and in a certain sense, arbitrary.4 In what follows a hypothesis will be advanced. If it is true that ‘institutions’ belong to what Hegel, after Aristotle, calls ‘second nature’,5 if they inscribe conventions, thus positive law, within a quasi-natural zone, to conceive law and rights as an institution (or as a system of institutions) will perhaps help us in avoiding the fork of natural versus positive law. Institutional theories of law from Hegel up till today constitute an attempt to escape this dilemma. However, in my eyes, institutionalist theories of law have not sufficiently explained their implications for (‘subjective’) rights.

3   See Bentham’s classic critique, “Nonsense upon Stilts”, in Jeremy Bentham, Rights, Representation, and Reform: ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’ and Other Writings on the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), as well as the critique made of a defender of moral rights like Joel Feinberg of what he calls the ‘there ought to be a law’ theory of moral rights: Joel Feinberg, “In Defence of Moral Rights”, in Problems at the Roots of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 43. 4  On the distinction between validity and efficacy, see Hans Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, trans. M. Knight (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1989), 10–11 and 211–214. 5  See PR, § 4, 35: “The system of right is the realm of actualized freedom, the world of spirit— produced from within itself as a second nature”.

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Of Institutions

The following definition can be proposed for institutions: an institution is a normative system which coordinates in a sustained manner, but not necessarily an organized manner, the actions of individuals or groups to which it assigns roles (whether it is a matter of the institution’s ‘agents’ or its ‘users’). These actions relate to a goal or a function that is defined in an objective manner; that is to say, independently of the representations and expectations of the individuals and groups in question. An institution can (but not necessarily) be organized according to explicit rules (‘statutes’, or ‘regulative rules’). It can also (but not necessarily) possess certain characteristics commonly attributed to individuals, like ‘personality’, or ‘will’; and, under certain conditions, it can behave like an individual (we shall call this its ‘quasi-individuality’). Finally its origin is not found in a natural event (an institution is not a brute fact6) but in a ‘constitutive rule’ (according to the name given by Searle7) or (according to McCormick8) an ‘institutive’ rule of a social nature, which causes its existence and its manifestations. This rule, whether real or mythical, can be derived from the existence of another institution. Institutional facts have some noteworthy characteristics. First of all, they have normative implications. Institutions have the effect of prescribing, prohibiting or authorizing classes of actions that will be considered as good, harmful or acceptable in the context of the institution in question—indeed sometimes this is their raison d’être. For example, the institution of the school prescribes certain behaviours and prohibits others for different types of agents (who themselves can have an institutional character) on which this institution confers a role or a status: teachers, students, parents, trade unions, local associations, and the State. In other words, institutions do not directly bring about actions (but sometimes they do), they generate ‘what ought to be done’; that is, obligations, explicit rules, or rules deriving from certain tacit conventions (the so called informal norms). The second characteristic aspect of institutions is the following one: they are organized around an idea (“the idea of the work to be done”, Hauriou 6  Gertrude Elizabeth M. Anscombe, “On Brute Facts”, Analysis 18–1 (1958): 69–72. Anscombe does not use the expression ‘institutional facts’, but she evokes facts ‘in the context of institutions’. 7  See John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chapter 2.7; and The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), 27–29 and 43–51. 8  See Neil McCormick, Institutions of Law. An Essay in Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 11–14 and 36.

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says); for example, public service for the institution of the public administration. An institution is an idea made into a thing or an act. This idea (again, according to Hauriou) is not the ‘goal’ of the institutional enterprise, nor its ‘function’, but rather its ‘object’.9 It is not what the institution aims at, nor what it serves, but rather that in view of which it exists. Moreover, this idea has an ‘objective nature’:10 it is not an idea that someone or a group of persons might have, but an idea possessing existence in itself, incarnated in the life of the institution (and not necessarily present in its agents’ representations, even in the background). The idea constitutes the ‘objective individuality’ of the institution. Thus Hegel—one of the great precursors of contemporary institutionalism—makes a distinction between ideas that people ‘have’ (and which are often ‘mere ideas’, in Hegelian terms, ‘representations’) and ideas that people ‘are’; that is to say, ideas that are incorporated in their collective mode of being, speaking and acting.11 These ‘ideas’ deposited in institutions correspond to what Hegel calls ‘objective spirit’, a ‘spirit’ deposited in laws, customs and institutions before it emerges in consciousness. As Durkheim says of the social fact and its institutional manner of being, such an idea is “generally present throughout the extent of a given society whilst having its own proper existence independent of its individual manifestations”.12 The third characteristic of institutions is their duration.13 Amongst their actors, consciousness of this stability—illustrated by the fact that institutions often escape the grasp of those who would transform them (despite being in continual transformation)—is signaled by the fact that their presumed origin is often lost in the mists of time. In traditional societies these origins are spoken of in the language of rites and foundational mythologies that guarantee the identity of these societies and their members by sacralizing those social institutions that are judged to be fundamental.14 An institution belongs to noone (unless to some mythical hero); it has always been there, or so we would like to believe. This is particularly true of legal institutions that are presupposed by effective legal relationships, and by the objective rules of the law.15 9   Maurice Hauriou, “La théorie de l’institution et de la fondation” (1925), in Aux sources du droit: le pouvoir, l’ordre, la liberté (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 1986), 98–100. 10  Hauriou, “La théorie de l’institution”, 101. 11   Enc. III, § 482, 215. 12  Émile Durkheim, Les règles de la méthode sociologique (Paris: PUF, 1999), 14. 13  See Hauriou, “La théorie de l’institution”, 89: “institutions represent in law, as in history, the category of duration, continuity, and reality”. 14  On marriage and agriculture as institutions, see PR, § 203, 235. 15  See Friedrich C. von Savigny, System des heutigen römischen Rechts (Aalen: Scientia, 1981), vol. 1 (1840), chap. 1, § 5, 9–10.

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The legal institution of property (its ‘idea’) logically precedes the legal relationships that relate to property (purchase, sale, rent, inheritance . . .), and the rules that are applied in each case. Fourth characteristic of institutions: actions which are performed within an institution are, as Hauriou says, ‘procedural operations’, ritualized acts, as we can see in the case of archaic Roman law, in which the legal validity of acts depended on the pronunciation of certain ritual phrases. Of course in a certain sense every legal act is ritualized; but in the context of living institutions (that is, those that enjoy the adhesion of the individuals and groups in question), it is a procedure—providing “objective discipline” and “giving rhythm to the institution’s life”16—that determines the legal validity of the act. This proceduralization guarantees the objective identity of the institution, and avoids any recourse to the doubtful fiction according to which, behind every act, and in particular every ‘collective’ act, there is a ‘will’, or an ‘intention’.17 For example, in the case of the institution of election, the “adhesion to the fact” (I accept the institution by taking part in the procedure) explains that I can (and must) recognize the validity of the result even when it contradicts my own expressed opinion, better than Rousseau’s reasoning, according to which, in voting in a different manner to the majority, I simply made an error of judgement with regard to the content of the general will.18 It is also the case that a distinction must be made between institutions which solely possess an ‘objective’ individuality and those which accede to the status of a so called ‘moral’ person. This is the entire difference between property or marriage, which are ‘institutions-choses’ (things institutions) in Hauriou’s language, and associations or corporations, which are ‘institutionspersonnes’.19 Juridical languages other than German unfortunately do not make the distinction between Rechtsinstitute (‘legal institutes’: these are Hauriou’s ‘institutions-choses’) and Institutionen (institutions in the common sense of the term; persons institutions, in which objective individuality “accedes to the subjective level”, as Hauriou says). However, this is an important distinction. Too often we confuse institutions with personified institutions, and by 16  Maurice Hauriou, “L’institution et le droit statutaire”, in Recueil de législation de Toulouse (1906), 152, 154. 17  Without going so far as to invoke Nietzsche’s critique of free will, one can refer to thesis Elizabeth Anscombe opposes to the ‘absurd these’ of ordinary psychologism: “Roughly speaking, a man intends to do what he does”. Gertrude Elizabeth M. Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2000), 45. 18  See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (Paris: GF, 2001), IV, ch. 2, 147. 19  Hauriou, “La théorie de l’institution”, 96–97.

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the same token we value the ‘subjective’ dimension of personality to the detriment of the fundamental objectivity of the institution and its ‘directive idea’. Thus we should be just as interested in things institutions (which often belong, but not always, to the domain of private law) as we are in the personified institutions of public law (but these also exist in the domain of private law: the case of the limited company). However, things institutions are particularly interesting to us because it is on their terrain that an institutional approach to rights can be developed. In both cases we have institutions endowed with these four distinctive characteristics: normativity, objective ideality, duration and proceduralization. 2

Of Rights

There is a radical solution for avoiding the difficulties that arise as soon as one attempts to precisely define the notion of right: that is to contest the pertinence of such a notion. Any such notion would be superfluous; either because it has no assignable object, or because it simply defines the correlate of a duty or an obligation. This solution is defended, for example, by Bentham (who, strictly speaking, only contests the existence of natural rights), and by Kelsen (for whom ‘subjective rights’ are simply the reflective images of obligations)20— and it is perfectly coherent with a strict deontological theory of normativity. But, apart from the fact that it neglects the performative dimension of the language of rights, and its capacity to mobilize people, it comes up against a simple objection: to have duties, one must have rights.21 Moreover, it is not possible to systematically match up rights to existing duties that would be their correlates. Rights can be correlated to conditional obligations, which are not necessarily realized, and they should possess their own consistency such that these realizations can take place.22 In short, as Hohfeld emphasizes, right and obligation are, at least in most cases, correlative concepts: to eliminate one is to rob the other of its object. What we thus have to think is not only the correlative character, but the identity of obligation and right, the fact that the possession of a right generates an obligation for its holder himself, and vice versa.

20  See Bentham, ‘Nonsense upon Stilts’, 328–330; Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law, 127–129. According to Frey, rights are “superfluous entities”, in Raymond Frey, Interests and Rights: the Case against Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 12. 21  See Enc. II, § 486, 218; PR, § 155, 197, and § 261, 283–285. 22  See Joseph Raz, The Concept of a Legal System (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 225–227.

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This is precisely what the institutional theory of rights attempts to do, as we shall see. What does a right consist of? In a very general manner it can be defined as the liberty or power a person has to perform certain actions, relative to other persons and/or things.23 Since any liberty to act relative to a thing (for example, using it) or to a person (for example, asking her for a service) appears to generate an obligation for the other person (at the very least inasmuch as he or she should not prevent my action from occurring if I have a recognized right to accomplish it), one can also, especially if one adopts a deontological approach, define a right as the power to create an obligation for another person.24 Moreover, to conceive of a right and determine its validity supposes an intensional and extensional definition of the subject or holder of this right, commonly designated as a person. What class of things is capable of possessing personality if what is understood by the latter is the ability to possess and exercise a right?25 In modern societies, in spite of some restrictive conditions, the answer to this question is: every human being with the ability to act on his or her own, and to which, by correlation, actions can be attributed.26 But we know that this has not always been the case. Roman law, for example, had a restrictive definition of personality that linked it to the possession of a certain status. Moreover, one could conjecture that this situation might change: nothing forbids us, in principle, from attributing rights to non-humans, even to non-living beings, if it can be established that they can, in a certain sense, act ‘on their own’. Besides, it is generally admitted that ‘moral’ personality can belong to non-physical entities. An association, a company, or a State understood as a public power are, as Hobbes says, ‘personified things’ capable, on this basis, of possessing rights; they are also the addressees of legal claims on the part of individuals. In French literature one usually distinguishes between two grand categories of rights, which are structurally almost opposites: ‘liberties’ (libertés), 23  See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin Classics, 1988), ch. 14, 189: “Right consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare”. 24  For Kant, a right is “a (moral) capacity for putting others under obligation”. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 393. 25  See PR, § 36, 69: “Personality contains in general the capacity for right and the (itself abstract) basis of abstract and hence formal right”. 26  See Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 378: “A person is a subject whose actions can be imputed to him”.

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which are rights to do something, and ‘claims’ (créances), which are rights to benefit from a service, rights to receive.27 The ‘first generation’ rights of man, those proclaimed by the first French Declaration (according to article 2: freedom, property, security, and resistance to oppression), would be authentic liberties, designed to define and protect the intangible and native sphere of individual autonomy. They require the absence of any external interference, in particular on the part of the State. The ‘second generation’ rights of man, whose list is forever being lengthened, is made up of claims for which one can demand satisfaction in the form of services. These rights incarnate an entirely different perspective than that of liberties because their exercise does suppose an external intervention, notably on the part of the State. This second set of rights, which mainly includes social rights, involves a different notion of the relation between the rights holder and the collective. From the point of view of liberties, the individual primarily (‘by nature’) possesses a private sphere protected by these rights. In contrast, from the standpoint of claim-rights, the individual is above all a “shareholder”, according to Sièyes’ image, in the “great social enterprise”,28 rights thus being dividends that the latter must pay to the individual. In fact, from the standpoint of the semantics and pragmatics of rights, this opposition is far less clear-cut than is often pretended. This can be shown using Hohfeld’s typology of rights, which demonstrates the false simplicity of the notion of a right and establishes that for each type of right there is a specific sense of the idea of liberty.29 Hohfeld distinguishes four classes of rights, which he respectively terms ‘right’, ‘privilege’, ‘power’ and ‘immunity’. Each of these types of right (right in a general and vague sense) has a ‘correlative’, which is a kind of obligation or reciprocal duty, and an ‘opposite’, more precisely a contrary. Following board summarizes this classification:

27  See Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, “Droits-libertés et droits-créances”, Droits 2 (1985): 75–84. This distinction corresponds more or less to the one that made Berlin between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ liberty: see Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”, in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). 28  See Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, “Projet de Déclaration des droits de l’homme”, in La Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, ed. S. Rials (Paris: Hachette, 1988), 600. 29  See Wesley N. Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).

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Type of right

Correlative

Opposite

Right Privilege Power Immunity

Duty No-right Liability Disability

No-right Duty Disability Liability

Let us quickly comment this classification: 1) First type: In the strict sense of the word, a right is an actionable claim, a claim against someone,30 whose correlate is a duty on the part of this person, and whose contrary is having no right to claim the object of this right. For example, if I have a property right over some land, the other has the obligation not to trespass; but if I am not the owner of a thing, I have no right over it. 2) Second type: A privilege is a licitation, a non-obligation. The correlate of A’s privilege or liberty is not B’s obligation, but his lack of any right to oppose A exercising this liberty. The contrary of the liberty to do X is the obligation to not do X. The term ‘privilege’ therefore does not designate an exorbitant right, but a bare liberty to accomplish an action without being prevented from doing so.31 A Hohfeldian privilege thus corresponds quite closely to the idea of a ‘negative liberty’. We should also note that claim-rights and privileges have symmetrical structures, each having the other as its contrary. 3) Third type: A legal power is a capacity to modify a legal situation, which is something other than the physical power to accomplish certain acts. Its correlate is the liability of others to the effects of this capacity’s exercise. Its contrary is the disability to modify this jural situation. For example, as a creditor, I have the power to free my debtor from his debt, but the latter, if I do not free him, is liable to this situation and thus is obliged to reimburse me. 4) Fourth type: Immunity or exemption, that is, the fact of not being liable to a legal position, has as its correlate the disability of an other (an individual or a public authority) to impose such a position on me for as long as this 30  See Joel Feinberg, “The Nature and Value of Rights”, in Philosophy of Law, ed. J. Feinberg & J. Coleman (Belmont: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2008), 351, 355. 31  See Jeremy Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 6 sq. Raz criticizes severely the Hohfeldian classification: see The Concept of a Legal System, 179–181.

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immunity is in force. One finds the same symmetry between power and immunity as between claim-right and privilege. Hohfeld’s analysis thus distinguishes four different meanings of the expression ‘to have a right’. There are four corresponding conceptions of ‘duty’ (if this term can be employed in a generic sense). Moreover, in a certain sense, powers and immunities belong to a second rank of rights, since they do not directly define rights or obligations with a precise content, but concern situations within which a distribution of rights, obligations and privileges takes place. Despite the critiques it has been subject to,32 Hohfeld’s typology has the merit of revealing the ambiguity of the common concept of a right, and the necessity of distinguishing and combining diverse conceptions of what it means to have (or claim, or contest) a right. It also leads us towards a restrictive and rigorous definition of claim-rights by indicating their distinctive character which other types of rights lack: they are actionable. If we now apply this fourfold classification to the opposition mentioned earlier between liberties and claims, the latter’s over-simplification becomes evident. ‘Liberty-rights’, or at least some of them, are privileges; that is to say, liberties correlate to the absence of any right on the part of others to oppose their exercise. For example, I have the ‘privilege’ of free movement or expression (under the condition that legal arrangements do not restrict either). But liberty-rights also include Hohfeldian ‘powers’. For example, I have the power to renounce ownership of a thing or renounce the benefit of certain services stipulated by the law, and others will be bound by my decision. As for ‘claims’, for the most part they are legal claims whose correlate is the obligation, on the part of other persons (and of the State), to accept or encourage the exercise of this right. However, certain claim-rights are ‘privileges’: if I claim a right to happiness, this does not mean that others or the society have the obligation to make me happy, but rather that no-one has the right to obstruct my legitimate pursuit of happiness. Moreover, certain claims can be interpreted according to various Hohfeldian categories. For example, the ‘right to work’ can be understood as a claim-right; in this case, society has the obligation of providing me with a job. But it can also be interpreted as a ‘privilege’, which then means that others, or society, have no right to obstruct me from working if I wish to, whatever my age might be. Here it becomes evident that the interpretation of rights does not belong solely to the semantics or pragmatics of juridical language; it also entails political choices. 32  See Waldron, Theories of Rights, 8–11.

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Up till this point we have looked at the structure or rights, and we have left aside the question of their justification, that is, the reasons for which they are claimed, and the criteria of validity for such claims. Traditionally the two paradigms of natural law and positive law clash over this point. Even inside the positivist camp one finds competing justifications of rights. A classic conception—going back to Jhering’s famous thesis according to which “a right is a legally protected interest”33—justifies rights by the recognized ‘interests’ that they express. Another conception, defended notably by Herbert Hart, considers that a right is justified when a socially accepted rule defines the space of choices open to the owner of that right; any ‘right’ is in this sense a legally protected open option.34 But in either case the interest or the rule must be recognized before it creates rights, and this recognition, generally speaking, is an institutional phenomenon. We thus need to examine whether an institutional definition of rights, or of certain rights, generates a sufficiently solid justification for them. 3

Rights as Institutional Facts

The advantage of conceiving of rights, or of certain kinds of rights, as institutional facts is that it could offer a passage beyond the alternative between a ‘natural law based’ conception of rights (at least of basic rights) and a positivist conception, which claims that the only real rights are those defined by positive law.35 Let’s note in passing that these two antithetical conceptions probably share the same naturalist epistemology that conceives norms as brute facts in 33  Rudolf von Jhering, Der Geist des römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1877), part III, section 1, § 60, 327. 34  This theory corresponds to that one call the ‘choice theory of rights’. See Herbert L. A. Hart, “Are there any natural rights?”, The philosophical Review, 64–2 (1955): 175–191; and his Essays on Bentham (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 166–167 and 188–189. 35  This position, which is classically illustrated by Bentham, corresponds to what is currently called hard positivism. On the distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ positivism, which came about as a response to Dworkin’s objections to Hart, see Herbert L. A. Hart, “Postscript”, in The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 250–254; Jules L. Coleman, “Incorporationism, Conventionality, and the Practical Difference Thesis”, in Hart’s Postscript, ed. J. Coleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 99 sq.; Brian Leiter, “Legal Realism, Hard Positivism and the Limits of Conceptual Analyse”, in Hart’s Postscript, 355–370; Joseph Raz, “Legal Positivism and the Sources of Law”, in The Authority of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 37–77; Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 162–170; Scott J. Shapiro, “On Hart’s Way

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Anscombe’s sense, and not as institutional facts; that is, as socially instituted. However, it is not a question here of replaying the ancient discussion on nature and convention. The proper characteristic of institutional facts is that of not being ‘natural’, without usually, for all that, having been created by an explicit convention. One of Savigny’s observations in his Treatise of Contemporary Roman Law (1840) could lead us towards an institutional conception of rights. He writes that legal ‘institutes’ (Rechtsinstitute) are anterior to any given legal relationship.36 This does not mean that institutions exist for eternity (otherwise we would have simply transferred the natural law point of view onto institutions). Rather, institutions constitute the presupposed context within which one can legally (or normatively) estimate a situation. Following this idea, one can hold that rights (just like obligations) are generated by institutions (or rather by ‘institutes’) for which they are indispensable functional parameters. Let’s take an example, that of contractual exchange. This legal ‘institute’ (‘institution-chose’) implies rights and obligations for the seller as well as the buyer which are fixed by the ‘rules’ of the positive law of contracts. But the institution or, if you like, the objective idea of the contract, is the presupposed framework for the procedures relative to the legal act of sale and for the rights that both parties have or can claim. These rights only make sense within the context of the institution in question, which itself presupposes other more ‘enveloping’ legal institutions, which also generate rights and obligations, like the institution of property. Moreover, even if it is true that the latter does not lead back to a “unique essence”,37 nevertheless it remains the case that the institution of property, as distinct from its various proposed interpretations, does logically precede the legal relationships constituted within it; it precedes the arrangements that regulate these legal relationships, as well as the pertinent rights and obligations. If law exists via relationships that engage persons, these relationships only make sense, and consequently only become legally operational, within the framework of legal institutions that most often function in a network to the point of forming a system. This very general remark (legal relationships are inscribed in a framework of an ‘institution-chose’, but not necessarily within that of an institution-agency or an institution-arrangement)38 leads to the following observation. In the Out”, in Hart’s Postscript, 149–191; Will Waluchow, Inclusive Legal Positivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 36  Savigny, System des heutigen römischen Rechts, vol. 1, chap. 1, § 5, 9–10. 37  See Mikhail Xifaras, La propriété. Etude de philosophie du droit (Paris: PUF, 2004), 485. 38  This distinction (implicitly based on Hauriou) is made by McCormick, Institutions of Law, 34–36.

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case of contracts as with property, the rights and obligations of the different actors must not only be determined and compatible, but they must also be justifiable on the basis of the ‘directive idea’ of the institution, under which the entire normative configuration in question (‘contract law’, ‘property law’) should, in principle, be subsumed. What is at stake here is the requirement of simple internal coherency within positive law. Relative to the same object, its arrangements must proceed from the same ‘idea’ of the institution in question, within whose framework this object should have a determined legal signification and effects. This is the reason why the positive law, whereby through legislation or jurisprudence, periodically engages a process of ‘re-ordering’ its terms and conditions with regard to various domains. Let’s take one further step. Is it the case that certain rights exist (actionable rights, accompanied by correlative obligations, and clearly different from powers, liberties and immunities) which are inherent to legal institutions like contract or property in the sense that the abandon of such rights would be equivalent to the disappearance of such institutions’ ideas? The first step in responding to such a question would be a comparative historical inquiry: can one plausibly infer the existence of non-trivial constants from historical examples of the institution of ‘property’?39 If it turns out that the ‘directive idea’ of property does bear such constants, including actionable rights, then it would be appropriate to try to deduce the latter, in a quasi-Kantian fashion. Of course, it is incomparably more difficult to generate an a priori definition of these constants than to note down the factual existence of constants. However, without necessarily adopting his phenomenological approach, one could follow the example of Adolf Reinach, who tried to elaborate an a priori theory of civil law on the basis of explaining certain conceptual presuppositions (claim, obligation) and the ‘social act’ (the promise) that are foundational for the idea of a legal relationship.40 Of course, Reinach himself admits that he stopped halfway in his attempt at an eidetic description of the idea of right.41 But, if one allows 39  This distinction between as institution and the examples of this institution is not entirely satisfactory. What is an institution separate from its effective realizations if not an abstract ‘essence’, incapable of producing the normative effects that are the signature of any living institution? 40  See Adolf Reinach, Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 1 (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989), 141–278. It should be remarked that when Reinach defines the a priori concepts implied by a ‘pure’ theory of the legal act (claim, obligation, promise), he explains the fundamental characters of a right stricto sensu; his concept of claim (Anspruch), a correlate to that of obligation, corresponds to the Hohfeldian concept of claim-right. 41  Reinach, Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts, 204–205.

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that the kernel of what he calls ‘legal structure’ (Rechtsgebilde) corresponds to the idea of legal institution (Rechtsinstitut), his (certainly quite programmatic) analysis of “the essence of legal structures”42 does lead us towards a not descriptive, but conceptual theory of rights as ‘bound variables’ of a perennial institutional structure. Does this entail the adoption of a transcendental perspective? I do not think that it will be necessary. One could carry out the same conversion to immanence that Hegel puts Kantian transcendentalism through on the Husserlian transcendental perspective in Reinach’s work. Thus the idea of a right (or of a Rechtsanspruch) would no longer be understood, as it is in Reinach, as belonging to the system of pure a priori presuppositions of positive law, residing in a mysterious “region of juridical essences”. Rather, it would be what makes rights like property rights both rational and effective, conceptual and positive: not an essence separated from its manifestations or an institution distinct from its ‘examples’, but rather that which—amongst the rights and obligations that positive law attributes to the partners of a legal relationship formed within the context of an institution—forms the rational kernel of the whole structure: an idea, but now in the Hegelian sense of the term.43 All of this might appear quite abstract and programmatic. This is why, to conclude, I would like to examine two examples of an institutionalist approach to rights. The first is Carl Schmitt’s theory of ‘institutional guarantees’ from 1930.44 In contrast to the previous considerations, which concerned rather ‘institution-things’ (property, contract), this theory, which emerged within the framework of an assessment bearing on a technical question of administrative law, concerns personified corporative institutions in Hauriou’s sense, in this case, the public service. The question concerned the problem of public servants’ “established rights”. Neither the immediate object of discussion nor Schmitt’s debatable response are of any particular concern to us here. It is rather the instrument that was forged on this occasion, the notion of “institutional guarantee”, that constitutes a noteworthy contribution to the institutionalist conception of rights. What it designates, in contrast to liberties, powers, exemptions and claim-rights that belong to the individual as such, or to classes of abstract individuals (children, women, employees . . .), is those rights that are bound to a statutory position held within an institution: 42  Reinach, Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts, 236. 43  The idea, in the sense in which Hegel uses the term, “is not so impotent that it merely ought to be” (Enc. I, § 6, 30). 44  See Carl Schmitt, “Freiheitsrechte und institutionelle Garantien”, in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1973), 140–171; and “Grundrechte und Grund­ pflichten”, in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze, 181–230.

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for example, the irremovability of certain kinds of public servants, or the academic freedom of University professors. Such guarantees enjoy a special position that makes them independent from the arbitrary of the government and even of the legislator. However, nor are these ordinary constitutional rights, like the fundamental liberties; because, as Schmitt points out, they are correlates of obligations not only on the part of the addressee of their claim (management, or the government), but also on the part of the holders of these rights themselves: for example, the obligation of discretion. This coupling of rights and obligations, law and obligation is, Schmitt claims, the only way of avoiding the transformation of institutional guarantees into “exorbitant privileges” reserved to a cast.45 But it does reveal a structural dissymmetry between basic rights (which are not linked with any obligation, and are independent of any statutory position other than belonging to humanity) and guarantees related to a statute within the context of an institution (in this case, a public institution, the public service or a university). Moreover, this dissymmetry corresponds to a hie­rarchy: institutional guarantees, which have a “connected and complementary”46 character, logically presuppose individual basic rights and therefore must be subordinated to the latter. This last step reveals a classic liberal conception of rights, which is fairly surprising for an author who is rarely suspected of harbouring liberal tendencies. These analyses indicate an approach which does not so much dismiss the traditional liberal understanding of rights—whose obvious weakness is that of not paying sufficient attention to the structural differences highlighted by Hohfeld—as show that “liberal rights”,47 as basic liberties can be described, only make sense once they form a network with other kinds of rights, some of which should be thought of as institutional norms (not only as guarantees), on the condition of a considerable extension of that notion, as has been the case in what I have said so far. In his considerations of institutional guarantees, Schmitt seems to think that this notion is applied in a preferential if not exclusive manner to public institutions (Institutionen) and not to the ‘institutes’ of private law (Rechtsinstitute), for the following reason: “fundamental rights are liberty-rights”, and “personal liberty is not a Rechtsinstitut”.48 45  Schmitt, “Freiheitsrechte und institutionelle Garantien”, 159. 46  Schmitt, “Freiheitsrechte und institutionelle Garantien”, 171. This expression is borrowed from the Austrian theoretician Renner, who developed a quasi-institutionalist approach to ‘institutions-choses’: see Karl Renner, Die Rechtsinstitute des Privatrechts (Tübingen: Mohr, 1929). 47  See Jeremy Waldron, Liberal rights (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), especially chapter 1. 48  Schmitt, “Freiheitsrechte und institutionelle Garantien”, 167.

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However, if we relax this stipulation (as Schmitt himself does when he indicates that basic liberties are also anchored by “connected and complementary guarantees”), we could attain a significant expansion of the idea of institu­ tionalized right. The second example is that of John Searle’s analysis of rights in terms of deontic powers. If Schmitt narrowly circumscribes the recourse to the notion of institutional guarantee, Searle seems disposed to considerably extend the institutional approach to rights. He attempts to show that with the conceptual instruments forged in the context of his ‘social ontology’ it is possible to produce a consistent theory of rights, and even of human rights understood as institutional rights, that is as deontic powers attributed to a status-function by a collective intentionality. Basing his argument on Anscombe’s article “On brute Facts”, and on Austin’s work How to do things with words, Searle introduces the notion of institutional fact in his book Speech Acts (1969), which is consequently developed in The Construction of Social Reality (1995) and recently in Making the Social World (2010). Searle’s “general theory of institutional facts” is based on the idea that a collective intentionality (a “we-intention”, as Raimo Tuomela terms it49) can attribute to a thing—in particular, but not exclusively, to an individual or a class of human individuals—a status-function, according to a general formula (termed a constitutive rule): “X counts as Y in the context C”.50 In this perspective, rights (which in Searle’s eyes are always correlated to obligations; that is, they can always be reduced to claim-rights) are deontic powers conferred upon an individual or a class of individuals by a “status-function declaration” which attributes a status-function to them.51 It is not my intention here to discuss, in a general manner, the presuppositions, problematic and developments of Searle’s social ontology. They certainly merit such discussion, and they have been subject to lively debate, notably on

49  See Raimo Tuomela and Kaarlo Miller, “We-Intentions”, Philosophical Studies 53 (1988): 367–389; Raimo Tuomela, “We-Intentions Revisited”, Philosophical Studies 125 (2005), 327–369; and Tuomela, The Philosophy of Sociality (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007). 50  John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), chapters 2.5 and 2.7; The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), 28; Making the Social World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009), 10 sq., 96 sq. 51  Searle, Making the Social World, 13, 93 sq., 176 sq.

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the part of Ian Hacking, who denounces Searle’s “universal constructionism”.52 My purpose is far more focused: if we situate ourselves within the framework Searle defines, can we provide a satisfactory theory of human rights, as he claims in Making the social world? The idea of making basic rights into institutional predicates is quite convincing, in that it enables one to refute objections addressed to the idea of human rights by authors as different as Bentham53 and Alasdair MacIntyre.54 To consider rights as deontic powers inherent to the status function of humanity is an incisive idea: it allows one, at least at first sight, to avoid both a ‘naturalism’ as patently incredible (dixit MacIntyre) as belief in unicorns and witches, and a positivism which trusts a human legislator with the definition of basic rights—a choice to be feared. I have no objection to the idea that humanity, conceived not as a biological reality but as a moral and legal reality, is an institution created by an objective collective intentionality (that is to say, not necessarily occurring via an explicit speech act like: “We decide that this kind of thing [X] counts as ‘a man’ [Y] in the context of an organized social life [C]”55). The important question is that of knowing whether this institutional definition of humanity allows one to actually ‘deduce’ in a convincing manner a precise list (and thus a limited list) of basic ‘human rights’. In this regard, Searle’s answers do not convince me. First of all, he does not clearly respond to the question that he himself raises: if humanity is an institution, what is its ‘purpose’, that is, in Hauriou’s terms, what is its ‘directive idea’? Second, the distinction that he makes between negative rights (liberties) and positive rights (claims) is too rough.56 I indicated previously that the Hohfeldian typology obliges us to abandon any summary opposition between rights to do . . . and rights to receive . . . My third critique is that the decision to consider negative rights alone (whose paradigm is the right to free speech) as authentic human rights, and to exclude the ‘positive rights’ (as the right to get adequate housing) from their list,57 is debatable. In any case it is part and parcel of a liberal and individualistic conception of human rights that requires justification, especially because it entails a return to the hard kernel of first generation human rights. Yet, and this is my last critique, the reasons Searle 52  See Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1999). 53  See Bentham, “Nonsense upon Stilts”. 54  See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1990), 68–69. 55  Searle, Making the Social World, 181. 56  Searle, Making the Social World, 184–187. 57  Searle, Making the Social World, 193–194.

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gives for this decision represent a regression with regard to the innovation present in the idea of humanity as an institutional status. His reasons consist of: 1) a reinstatement of the idea of human nature (understood not in a biological but in a moral sense); and, 2) an obviously debatable definition of “what is valuable in human life”, thus “a certain set of values”,58 values which just happen to be, as if by miracle, those of a liberal Californian academic, who nevertheless is not particularly happy about having to pay taxes to satisfy the innumerable ‘positive rights’ claimed by everyone and anyone. Nevertheless, these last remarks do not condemn the standpoint of an institutional approach to rights, on the contrary. The failure of Searle’s justification of human rights is not due to his basic intuition, but to the prejudices that stain and corrupt its realization. The enterprise deserves to be taken up and reworked, but on different bases, perhaps by developing the idea Schmitt proposed, but in a completely different context: the idea of an institutional guarantee. (Translated from French by Oliver Feltham)

58  Searle, Making the Social World, 191–192, 198.

chapter 5

Reason and Social Ontology Luigi Ruggiu Abstract: Social ontology is general ontology. Reality is spirit, being is mediation. Community is not given, but is an expression of mediation. Objectivity and subjectivity are moments of the social being that is realized as free. The ‘We’ and the ‘I’ are both constituting and constituted. The relation with otherness is constitutive. Identity is a becoming. Desire is a tension towards the other of consciousness. Otherness is difference that asks to be recognized. But recognition is tension and struggle. In this process the space of the compatibility of life projects is determined.

1

The Sociality in Question

The ongoing debate on the nature and meaning of what is called ‘social ontology’ involves a wide range of questions and movements, from John Searle’s encyclopedic project,1 founded and built on sociality, to the revival of communitarianism, which advocates a return to the community as a remedy for the globalization and the anonymous dispersion of present-day societies. Why is sociality in question, and what sociality is in question? The meaning and uses of the term ‘social’ become clearer when we contrast it with another term in the history of thought—namely, Aristotle’s term ‘political’, in his celebrated definition of anthropos as a ‘political animal’. This definition connects two terms that at first blush appear to be contradictory: on the one hand, the living being; on the other, as a specification of the first, the relation with the ‘political community’—with the State—which is thus the specific form in which human beings who live in a community are organized. The State, for Aristotle, was but one of many possible forms of the aggregation of living beings, which finds its necessary fulfillment and essential realization in the perfection of the political community. It is not fortuitous that Medieval culture found Aristotle’s ‘political animal’ overly suggestive. In the Middle Ages, in fact, ‘politikon’ was translated as ‘social,’ which seems to express the degree zero of association—a sort of neutral term, common to both 1  John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Mind, Language and Society (New York: Basic Books, 1998).

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humans and animals. The renowned examples of sociality in insects—bees in particular—and in beasts sharply underline the inadequacy of this sense of the term. Nevertheless, the aggregation of human beings does not constitute itself by means of the generic instinct of natural ‘socialization’ typical of certain beasts; rather, it seems to represent a form of aggregation based on the community as an expression of both instinct and reason. Here, however, reference to the adjective ‘common’ indicates an aggregation that, not simply factual, is based on deliberate choice. ‘Common’ forms are founded on certain basic values that, for Aristotle, are revealed by language, the expression of community par excellence. Hence the forms of sociality must share and realize common ends, which means going beyond simply ‘being together’ on the basis of conditions that are necessary but not sufficient, such as sharing a territory or aggregating for purposes of defense or the satisfaction of needs. The foundation of the human community is constituted by a natural bond that holds its members together. Aristotle expressed this bond in terms of three elementary and natural communities: male/female, father/son, and master/slave. Human beings cannot live alone: this prerogative is reserved only for God, or for beasts—high and low degrees of being, super-naturality and subnaturality, with human beings positioned in between. This picture dominated Western thinking from antiquity until the modern age, when new forms of sociality eroded and then superseded the natural sociality that had characterized the classical form of thought and life. Modernity gave rise to the construction of human being as a private individual, and as a subject independent both of nature and of the relation with other humans. The price to be paid was the separation of humans from the world and from their fellows. Cleavage took the place of unity—a cleavage that modified our relations with both political and socio-economic institutional structures, which now present themselves as independent objectivities pitted against us and undermining our autonomy. Hegel was fully aware of the negative consequences of this situation in the political sphere, with the crisis of the State and of the various forms of social aggregation. The crux was the supremacy of subjectivity and of the private. The dramatic crisis of the State-form was heightened by the expansion of a completely new and self-sufficient economic form that accentuated the sensation of an end of the State and of the political. The only way out of this contradiction seemed to be a revival of the classical political form, to be navigated by means of a full and total reabsorption of the individual in the State. The part—i.e., the individual—immersed anew in the State understood as an organism, completely devoid of all autonomy,

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must submit to and obey the State’s impulses of life. Human beings regain their bond with other human beings and with the State only at the price of completely losing their individuality in this project of an organic State. From then on, this sort of regressive utopia was to accompany the expansion of individualism as its negative. But this backward-looking design ran counter to the spirit of the times. Plato did not set up an ideal, but rather grasped the State of his time in its inner [life]—but this State has passed away—[it is] not [the case] that [the] Platonic Republic is not realizable—because Plato lacked the principle of absolute individuality. What is actual [e.g. in Sparta] does not look outwardly like the [Platonic] Ideal, of course—because the observer confines himself to what is immediate—to the necessary [upon which Reason must operate]—[the] extravagance, decadence, wanton carelessness, viciousness of the individuals [that] it must be possible to put up with—that State is the cunning [that can use them].2 Hegel’s effort to create a new form of sociality can be understood only in the light of this failure, whose value is not personal but epochal. His awareness of this ‘passing away’ is epitomized in the reference to ‘absolute individuality.’ This is the hallmark of the modern. The State must bear individuality. Hegel’s conclusion, that “the State is the cunning” (der Staat ist die List), is reminiscent of the oblique operation of technology. The clash of forces can be overcome only by means of the force of individuals directed anti-subjectively. The affirmation of the individual and the private within the community structure and the State as a whole must not contradict the whole. Once it has been regulated, this presence will lead to the theorization of civil society as a moment and articulation of the State itself. 2

Presupposing the Individual’s Givenness

But if the individual were an inescapable givenness, closed and self-sufficient, the pact and the contract would sanction the primacy of subjectivity and, at the same time, the necessity of the absolutism of the State as a guarantor of 2  Hegel, Jenaer Systementwürfe III. Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes, GW 8, 264; quoted from H.S. Harris, Hegel’s Ladder. Volume II: The Odyssey of Spirit (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 410.

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self-preservation, extinguishing any possibility of reciprocal and communitarian relations. At this point, it is necessary to rethink the foundations of modern individualism and solipsism in its connections with the form of sociality that pervaded the economy and the State in recent centuries of European history. This means fully admitting the end of the sociality of human beings who are ‘by nature’ political animals. But how can a metaphysical assertion be transformed into a mere historical fact? Can it be because the metaphysics was inadequate, or is it metaphysics as such that appears to be without foundation? But the first question that needs to be rethought is the relation between human beings and nature. Nature presents itself as a totalizing structure, simultaneously horizon and content of the process of which humans appear to be a necessary extension. At the same time, it is necessary to focus on the connection between human beings themselves, and on their relation with the institutions in which they live. A new sociality has to justify a phylogenetic process that has, ultimately, to legitimate the affirmation of human beings as an irreducible novelty that justifies the leap from nature to spirit. This is the key to understanding Hegel’s repeated efforts to formulate a philosophy of nature as the moment of a philosophy of spirit. The cornerstone of this new orientation of thought consists in the affirmation of a philosophy of spirit whose completeness does not entail a limit or impediment but, on the contrary, presents a new and necessary starting-point. It is in the light of this turning point that Hegel’s revival of the Aristotelian model of ‘organism’ and ‘living being’ is to be understood, since they are used by Hegel to justify the leap from nature to spirit and, thus, also to affirm absolute subjectivity. Here, it is necessary to bring the end back to the beginning, and so to posit spirit in the form of a power immanent to nature itself. Hegel tells us: it is nature that is spirit, not spirit that is nature: Spirit is “higher” than nature. This gives rise to a situation of permanent opposition and conflict between spirit and nature. From here on, the liberation of nature means the necessary loss of innocence. Only leaving nature behind can reveal the dimension of freedom and, at the same time, place the bond between human beings and the forms of life in which they are immersed on a new footing. The new ontology will therefore be exclusively social. This, because there is no being that is not an expression of mediation. The givenness of being and of nature is only a presupposition that must be superseded.

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Social Ontology

Not just a particular aspect of Hegel’s ontology, social ontology expresses its total and essential meaning. This meaning expresses the essentially social valence of the nature of spirit. Spirit is posited as “originary” (ursprünglich). Saying that spirit is originary means that it is not a particular aspect or a derived determination, as is the case in Searle’s interpretation based on the primacy of collective intentionality. Searle’s intentionality gives rise to realities whose existence is exclusively social and is based exclusively on the presupposition of an originary natural givenness that is outside and independent of the claims of sociality. In this way sociality is ‘derived’ twice over, as the primacy of the existence of a ‘natural’ component presupposed both with respect to subjects themselves and to their intentional activity, whose final result is the language act that constitutes social reality. In Hegel sociality is an expression of the primacy of mediation. The originariness (Ursprünglichkeit) of spirit is itself an expression of the primacy of mediation. No reality is given: reality is always only constructed. Spirit is not being, but being-that-has-become. Nevertheless, the posited being of nature does not refer to a subject that posits it; rather, it indicates the absolute circularity in which the identity of subject and object expresses reality as constructed. In this sense Hegel’s expression “I that is We and We that is I” in the Phenomenology of Spirit is to be understood: not in the sense that the movement that seems to transit between ‘I’ and ‘We’ is seen from the side of the subject, be it individual or collective. Neither ‘I’ nor ‘We’ can constitute themselves without relation to the world. It is in this sense that Hegel’s statement on the meaninglessness of the opposition between idealism and realism is to be interpreted. Consciousness is not a simple activity opposed to objectivity, but is the middle term that unifies the presupposed extremes. Only the middle term exists. The meaning of the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness in the Phenomenology is to be understood in terms of the exclusion of selfconsciousness as a product of the self-reflective activity of consciousness: self-consciousness is an expression of unity with the world. The ‘We’ is thus not a product of social atomism, just as the ‘I’ is not a meaning derived from the ‘We’. What is called ‘We’ is a historical and social aspect in which the originariness of spirit is expressed, and of which the ‘I’ is an essential moment. Consciousness reveals itself as containing an otherness within it that it cannot do without. By contrast, the particular otherness that resists the process of uncontested absorption, in so doing manifests the other

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consciousness. So, what can be expressed as the ‘object’, both in terms of the world and in terms of another consciousness, reveals itself as originarily constitutive of consciousness. Hence both ‘I’ and ‘world’—the ‘I’ with its world, which is ‘We’—are an expression of social production. In this sense, every identity is the identity of identity and, at the same time, of non-identity. Every identity is an expression of difference. So, as we have seen, Hegelian social ontology is a general ontology, which purely and simply takes the place of ontology. For Searle an ontology of the natural fact is posited as a foundation for the construction of ‘social facts’. Sociality is thus nothing more than a further category added to the category of natural facts, confirming it. With this, we have returned to traditional ontology. For Hegel objectivity is always and only social. The dialectic of the deception of consciousnesses that is developed in the ‘Reason’ section of the Phenomenology3 posits reality as constructed. The ‘I’ is the Thing, and the Thing is the construction of the action of consciousnesses. Yet the Thing is always ‘presupposed’, since there is no way out of the circle of sociality. For Searle objectivity is a presupposed natural given—that is, it expresses the cleavage between subject and object. But subject-object are one—hence, circularity and reciprocal adaptation. This is expressed by Darwinian unity as the process of adaptation to the environment—i.e., to the given social construction—and is thus an expression of second nature. The objectivation of spirit posits itself as the grounding of institutions. ‘Instituting’ is thus a concrete expression of social relations as an exercise of power. The concept of social practice guides all the relations within the domain of the social. The exercise of giving and receiving reasons is an integral part of this practice. From this point of view, the normative value of concepts takes on special meaning. The rule is the norm. The result is the work. 4

Mutual Recognition

Hegel’s claims that the individual has rational existence only in the State are well known.4 It is only in institutions that the individual can attain freedom. Institutions constitute our second nature. In them and from them we obtain the rules of our acting. “Each individual has his class, his State; he knows, in

3  P S, § 416, 249–250 (GW 9, 226). 4  Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 55.

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general, what the legitimate and right way to act is”.5 Against the individualism and subjectivity of modernity, Hegel re-affirms the value of institutions as an expression of the norms and rules of action. His statements have been interpreted at times as forms of strong institutionalism, at times as forms of weak institutionalism. Individuals always express themselves as citizens of a State, and their substantial freedom develops only within the State,6 in its actual articulations of class or estate. For this reason, “the individual knows, in general, the legitimate and right way to act”.7 These declarations that make reference to a form of strong holism, in which individuals can attain freedom only by expressing themselves socially, at first blush seem to be no different from Aristotle’s theses in which the State is ‘by nature’, and it is ‘by nature’ that the whole comes before the parts, and the State comes before the individuals. But we must not lose sight of the strict connection between these theses of Aristotle’s and the dialectic of mutual recognition. The central position of this dialectic is revealed by the fact that its value is nearly constant from the beginning to the end of Hegel’s work, before and after the Phenomenology. His works, then, are to be read not only as a justification and explicitation of the reasons of sociality, but also as an interpretation of the sociality of reason in a history that is already perceived to be postmodern. Indeed, his dialectic pits itself against the strong holism of the classical form of the political and of sociality, but also against the subjectivism that permeates all expressions of the modern. In the Phenomenology the transition from consciousness to selfconsciousness is mediated by the emergence in living beings of the structure of desire as an expression of the tension towards otherness as the object of the satisfaction of what one lacks.8 With this, we already have before us the concept of Spirit. What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is—this absolute substance that is the unity of the different independent selfconsciousnesses that, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: “ ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’.9 5  Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 85. 6  Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 134. 7  Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 44. 8  P S, § 166, 105 (GW 9, 104). 9  P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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The fact that Hegel makes reference here to “für uns” (“we already have before us”) indicates that we are not exactly following the progress of consciousness but, rather, are anticipating something that is already implicit in the process, but that will not be fully expressed until later. Therefore the theses announced here have pure and grounding theoretical value. This passage, moreover, is to be read not only in terms of the relation between nature and living beings and, in some way, of the revealing of sociality in the course of this process, but also as expressing the mediation of nature by sociality and, finally, as delineating the dialectic that characterizes the connection between institutions and individuals. The first reading refers to the conclusion of the itinerary of nature as an expression of living beings—for Aristotle, nature is life—on its journey through the construction of the desiring consciousness to its completion in the full manifestation of sociality. Thus sociality emerges as the result of the extension of desire, which is a continuation of the tension of living beings, but which also introduces something new in the natural process. The sociality that—as spirit—seems to appear so suddenly is not in fact a ‘deduction’ but, rather, is the ‘discovery’ of something that is already there but is not yet known. “With this, we already have before us [ für uns] the concept of spirit”.10 It would be erroneous to posit, first, the subjective dimension of the ‘I’ and then—following this—intersubjective nature as a wholly new presence. The relation between different individual subjects that constitutes the social form is not the result of intersubjectivity itself. The presence of the social dimension in fact operates in a way that is not known by consciousness itself, but is very much present to the ‘für uns’ from the very beginning of the journey of natural consciousness as sensuous consciousness. The development of consciousness in its search for truth and for the criterion of truth shows itself, from the very beginning, to be rooted in spirit as an expression of sociality. Hence there is not ‘first’ a solitary dimension of consciousness and ‘then’ a social dimension. Rather, the social dimension has always been present as a background not known by consciousness itself, as an expression of that unconscious logic to which Hegel will later refer in the Introduction to the Science of Logic. This dimension is unconscious in that it is presupposed. It is not to be demonstrated but only made explicit. Social ontology has always moved within the originary horizon of sociality. The reasons for this

10   P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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sociality have to be given, it has to be justified—but not grounded. The originary is already there, otherwise it could not even be sought.11 Hence the phenomenological process is to be seen as the refutation ‘in act’ of the presupposition of natural consciousness, which is itself a solipsistic presupposition. Consciousness’s tacit presupposition that knowledge and the criterion of truth have a solipsistic dimension clashes from the very beginning, in the dimension of sensuous consciousness, with the emergence of sociality as the background of the very possibility of expressing any sign—i.e., any sensuous determination in its particularity. Such particularity proves to be wholly inexpressible and immediately turns into its opposite, as the universality of the ‘this’ and the ‘now’. Language is always and only an expression of the sociality underlying it—namely, of what is common.12 Language is the Dasein of consciousness. Hence language is both revelatory and participatory. Language expresses insofar as it communicates. Language exists insofar as it is always ‘intentioned’ toward another, toward others. The supposedly solipsistic dimension of the immediacy of self and object on the one hand, and of knowledge and the relation of consciousness with the world on the other, shows itself from the very beginning to be a participatory and social dimension that operates behind the back of the development of consciousness. In the end, in selfconsciousness it is made explicit that “It is in self-consciousness, in the concept of spirit, that consciousness first finds its turning-point”.13 Self-consciousness does not constitute itself as a process of reflection immanent in consciousness, it is not the Cartesian cogito me cogitare; it is what it is only as a relation to its other that is determined only as its self. Hence consciousness itself cannot be constituted without its relation to another consciousness. The reference to another consciousness is not something added to a consciousness that is already given and self-sufficient. In its very origin consciousness exists only insofar as it is in relation with a plurality of consciousnesses. But this plurality is unknown to consciousness. What consciousness knows is only its relation with its other, considered simply as an object or, more precisely, as the content of its desire to cancel the object itself. The object has no autonomy; it only exists to satisfy the lack that desire reveals. When we speak of consciousness we are not dealing with a pure activity devoid of content. In the form of a middle term, consciousness expresses spirit 11  Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, Trans. H.S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977), 93 (GW 4, 15). 12   P S, § 110, 66 (GW 9, 70). 13   P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 109).

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itself. Spirit does not exist indeterminately and separately, as something nearly transcendent. It expresses itself first of all and determinately as consciousness of the other. Spirit is consciousness.14 Furthermore, as a middle term consciousness is simultaneously theoretical and practical.15 Knowledge does not leave the other at a distance. It takes possession of the object theoretically, but also practically. The negativity of consciousness thus shows itself to be twofold. Consciousness also manifests itself as desire. In Aristotelian terms, we could say that consciousness is a reflected expression of desire (orexis), while desire constitutes its practical side. Consciousness, then, is internal to the desiring structure. Thus desire plays a decisive role in the tension towards cancellation of the separation between subject and object, with the subject that cancels its distance from the object practically, by consuming it. Desire is practical rationality, while rationality is an expression of desire. Consciousness is also world. Its being in the world is a relating-itself to its other on the part of a desire that reveals the lack that can be satisfied only in the other. The otherness toward which consciousness is intentionally oriented is, then, an expression of what supersedes the emptiness of the lack, and in this its absence the object is already constitutively present in consciousness. Otherness, then, shows itself in its absence, as the absence that produces desire. Knowing and cognizing are expressions of an originary desire. The very first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics expresses this double—theoretical and practical—sense of knowing: “All humans desire to know”. The reciprocal reference between knowing and desiring, and desiring and knowing, reveals this constitutive tension towards the other. A single structure supports the two moments. I think it would be superfluous to emphasize how the Hegelian structure of desire that stems from life is nothing other than the conatus of Spinoza and Hobbes. I say this, to emphasize the fact that Hegel’s starting point is nature as process, which necessarily turns in the direction of sociality, not of atomistic individualism: hence in the direction of a State ‘by nature’, so to speak, not by contract. Consciousness is thus essentially negativity: it supersedes the otherness of the other. But as long as it is only negative power no enduring element can subsist. The natural process starts all over again, without making any progress. This process becomes decisive in every process of formation, from things on 14  Hegel, Jaener Systementwürfe I. Der System der spekulative Philosophie, GW 6, 273. 15   G W 6, 275.

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up to the State. The State is the enduring and permanent form par excellence. Being is permanence. The Zeus who defeats Chaos and Kronos-chronos, powers of Night, is an expression of the leap from the unformed to form, from chaos to order.16 In the relation of consciousness with things, this leap is characterized by the transition from animal craving to desire:17 the leap is from the accidentality and volatility of consumption to the dimension of control of the appetites. Appetite must be controlled; the other must be rescued from destruction and subjected to formative re-elaboration. Hegel interprets these processes in the light of Adam Smith’s work in political economy, culminating in his thesis on the difference between unproductive and productive labor, where the latter is, precisely, labor that is fixed in an enduring product. But, in Hegel, labor is bound up with method. As with productive labor, without the formation of the State as a permanent structure there is no history. In this process, moreover, the temporalizing and de-temporalizing activity of consciousness is revealed in act. Consciousness must go beyond the dimension of the pure present. Going beyond the immediacy of the present is necessary to curb the appetite, which thus constitutes itself in the very act in which the construction of the past and the future take place. Curbing the appetite means postponing, i.e. deferring in time: which means constructing the time of postponement and expectation—namely, the future. In its structural and constitutive relation to the other, consciousness reveals its strict connection with time. Hence it is in the constitution of the subjectivity of consciousness and, at the same time, of intersubjectivity with other consciousnesses that the construction of sociality is strictly connected with the emergence of the consciousness of time.

16  Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 145 (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, 101): “A nation is only world-historical in so far as its fundamental element and basic aim have embodied a universal principle; only then is its spirit capable of producing an ethical and political organization. If nations are impelled merely by desires, their deeds are lost without trace (as with all fanaticism), and no enduring achievement remains. Or the only traces they leave are ruin and destruction. In this way, the Greeks speak of the rule of Chronos or Time, who devours his own children (i.e. the deeds he has himself produced); this was the Golden Age, which produced no ethical works. Only Zeus, the political god from those head Pallas Athene sprang and to whose circle Apollo and the Muses belong, was able to check the power of time; he did so by creating a conscious ethical institution, i.e. by producing the State”. 17   P S, § 190, 115–116 (GW 9, 113).

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Consciousness, in the first instance, relates itself to the other simply in order to exercise its will to cancel or to subdue it. This fact is not to be taken lightly. On the one hand, it is an expression of the pathology of considering others to be things; on the other, it posits the implicit ethical norm that is present in the relation of mutual recognition. In consciousness’s intentional drive to cancel its other, the other’s resistance to being negated reveals the presence of a living otherness, which proves to operate in the same way consciousness does. This otherness, then, demands the same things of consciousness that it does of the active ‘thing’—a ‘thing’ that manifests itself as consciousness. But, here, it is also a question of the fact that, in the first place, every consciousness is considered to be a thing. It is only in its tension with the other that consciousness can reveal itself, to itself and to its other. The force of resistance manifests the will to independence, albeit in a still embryonic form. The desire of one consciousness clashes with the desire of another. In this act, becoming conscious of the self—self-consciousness—is constituted. Self-consciousness is reflection only insofar as it is, initially, intentional activity directed to another, in which each consciousness knows how it is determined. In this way consciousness reveals itself to be self-consciousness. Hegel refers to this situation when he says that “self-consciousness is desire”.18 We need to focus our attention on this transition from living beings belonging to the purely biological dimension of existence, characterized by the sheer desire to live, to the emergence of self-conscious individuals. We note that such individuals are not the natural result of the first process—not a sort of mysterious leap from pure biological naturality to the reality of self-conscious subjects. On the contrary, what we have is a break with the natural process. Desire acquires consciousness thanks to the active resistance of its other. In Hegel the constitution of the subject as an expression of self-consciousness does not come about in the continuistic form of magical naturalism entrusted to pure evolution, as is the case, for example, in Searle’s most recent work. The leap of evolution is constituted by the complex interweaving of individuals who can exist only in a social dimension, which comes to light gradually with the construction of selves. But I can become I only if I become conscious of myself as a subject in a social dimension in which a plurality of subjects take part. Self-consciousness is not a natural given—on the contrary, it is the result of the sociality produced by human interaction. Individuals acquire self-consciousness only insofar as they are conscious of others—that 18   P S, § 174, 109 (GW 9, 107).

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is, only insofar as they see their own selves in others. But, here, ‘seeing’ means acquiring consciousness, with an act that is a mirroring only in part. Consciousness, precisely as consciousness, reveals itself to be the presence of the other in the self. From this standpoint, then, otherness is constitutive of consciousness. That this otherness is the expression of another consciousness, which is such only as consciousness of itself and, thus, as self-cons­ ciousness, is grounded in the structure of recognition. Recognition is not a natural given; on the contrary, it is the result of an activity that, while positing the self in the other, thereby constructs its own self, becoming subject as selfconsciousness. The transformation of self into purely reflected subject comes about only insofar as the self is a recognizing subject that relates itself to an other that, in its turn, is both recognizing and recognized. Recognizing means attributing authority and responsibility—i.e., attributing the very power of recognition that is proper to oneself. In this movement the self attains selfconsciousness—i.e., constitutes itself as subject: in the very act of attributing power and authority to others, it is recognized by others as subject. “Self-consciousness is faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself ”.19 In Hegel’s analysis of this ‘out of itself’ it emerges that self-consciousness has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other essence: “in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self”.20 This dissymmetry between the two consciousnesses, one of which does not see the other as essence, prevents the other from truly constructing an essence and, therefore, from positing itself as a self. The effective recognition of a self cannot but be symmetrical and, therefore, reciprocal. Hence the unity of self-consciousness consists only in its duplication. Through this movement, “it again becomes equal to itself and receives back its own self”. But, in parallel, “the other self-consciousness equally gives it back again to itself, for it saw itself in the other, but supersedes this being of itself in the other and thus lets the other again go free”.21 The movement of self-consciousness that has been represented to this point as the action of one self-consciousness is, in fact, double: “this action of the one has itself the double significance of being both its own action and the action of the other as well”.22 At the conclusion of this double movement, then, the action of desiring is itself superseded, with the other consciousness no longer appearing as a simple object of desire: now, it imposes itself in its full and absolute 19   P S, § 179, 111 (GW 9, 109). 20   P S, § 179, 111 (GW 9, 109). 21   P S, § 181, 111 (GW 9, 109). 22   P S, § 182, 111–112 (GW 9, 110).

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independence. In this way desire is transformed from an impulse toward negation into a desire for recognition. The other becomes a source of meaningfulness capable of attributing a normative valence to the other recognized consciousness, since this other is, in its turn, recognizing. But recognition does not eliminate the tension. On the contrary, tension— struggle—is innate in both the will to effect a recognition of the other and in the difficulty of effecting a full recognition. What is it that is to be recognized? The other’s consciousness, of course. But the other is always only a world, a culture, practices unlike one’s own, different or individually incompatible life projects, and it all has meaning and value, it all deserves and demands recognition. What is more, the recognition must be effected in spite of the fact that a situation of perfect and total transparency is impossible. Autonomy and independence of the self always involve a certain amount of opacity and resistance. In European civilization, this is the ground of our privacy and our inviolability as true expressions of the self’s autonomy. Each self-consciousness “sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore does what it does only in so far as the other does the same”.23 Hence it is not simply a question of accepting the rules and norms that stem from the common belonging to a social form expressed in participation in the same institution. Indeed, it is often a question of constructing the very dimension that makes such belonging possible. This is the case in a multicultural society or in an international dimension, with the multifarious coexistence of consciousnesses and cultures that in the unified history of Europe are merely different stages on the path of evolution. While evolution proceeds by negating forms that are superseded and left behind, consigning them to different times, on the international scene different times marked by different cultures are all in the same present, which thus brings the three incompatible dimensions of the times together in a single ‘now’. In the end: “The two extremes recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another”.24 To recognize someone is to take or treat that individual in practice as a self: a knowing and acting subject, hence as subject to normative assessment as potentially committed, responsible, authoritative, and so on.25 23   P S, § 182, 112 (GW 9, 110). 24   P S, § 184, 112 (GW 9, 110). 25  Robert Brandom, “The structure of desire and recognition: Self-consciousness and selfconstitution” (paper presented at the 2nd Contemporary Hegel International Conference, Venice, Italy, September 28–30, 2006); printed in Philosophy & Social Criticism 33, 1 (2007): 127–150.

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Recognition means that each individual is recognized as ‘recognizing’; that is, as subject to entitlements and commitments. Thus, in already-constituted societies, and not only in societies on the way to constitution, such recognition is most certainly mediated by communities as horizons of belonging, but is not exhausted in them. If freedom emerges in a community or a State, this freedom will preserve and enhance difference. No community, as an expression of autonomous and free consciousnesses, can be without mutual recognition: “each is for the other what the other is for itself”, recognizing each as recognized by an other. But each must be recognized in the fullness of its otherness, underpinned but not annulled by sociality. What is said of the differences underlying the same community must also be said of the differences between communities. Communities, too, must labor arduously to find a common dimension. If each culture and community represents a language-game, then one must seek the language-game that piece-by-piece will shape the common horizon. So, if within the State this horizon constitutes the circle of circles represented by the actual (wirklich) forms in which each individual lives—each circle was exemplified in terms of class or estate in Hegel’s day—this must hold also for the relations between States, which, not fortuitously, are themselves represented as individuals. Recognition is reflective insofar as each member of the community must be capable of recognizing himself as a full-fledged member of that community. What is more, it is symmetrical—i.e., reciprocal. The reflectivity depends on the reciprocity: without reciprocity there is no reflectivity either. The selfconsciousness presented here is, therefore, a social acquisition that is realized ‘outside’ individual self-consciousness. It is not an inner illumination. The tension between consciousnesses can be released only by consciously accepting the necessity of struggle. Struggle is not a prerogative of individualistic atomism. Struggle must be regulated by the institution. But it continues to be a layer of permanent tension between individuals who are autonomous and therefore free, and who for this very reason escape complete manifestivity and transparency, struggling to maintain their subjectivity and privacy. Only by radically putting itself in question, only but putting its life at stake, fully accepting the possibility of death, can consciousness free itself of its naturality and posit itself as absolutely for itself. The mediation is liberation from the dominance of naturality. Without this fracture, without this projection beyond the present fully accepting the possibility of death, consciousness cannot rise to the status of subject.26 This is what moves consciousness beyond the structure of desire to the sphere in which it is possible to make commit26  Brandom, “The structure of desire and recognition”, § IV.

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ments and play by rules. Self-conscious individual selves and the communities in which they live are epitomized by the mutual recognition between the particular participants in the practices of a recognitive community. The epoch in which Nation States arise is marked by this tragic dimension. Still, I wonder whether the liberation from naturality may not be a sort of permanent condition, even when it is a question of being naturally attached to life—but attached to what have become ‘other’ dimensions, to a second nature, based on practices that have been rendered amorphous by customs no longer recognized as habits. I wonder whether in these cases too—i.e., always—it may not be necessary to break away and distance oneself from a terrain now removed from conscious practices, rendered unplayable and stripped of real productivity. A terrain that has been transformed into a dead given that, with its resistance, makes it impossible to recognize others. We see, now, that the subjects of mutual recognition are “geistig, spiritual, beings, and no longer merely natural ones”.27 This is what “self-consciousness is in itself and for itself when, and by the fact that, it is in itself and for itself for another self-consciousness”.28 Being a subject of consciousness, a self, means, for Brandom, being the subject of normative statuses—that is, not only of desires but also of commitments. Universal self-consciousness is the positive knowing of oneself in another self, each of which, as free individuality, has absolute independence, but through the negation of its immediacy it is not distinguished from the other, is universal and objective and has real (reelle) universality, as it knows itself to be recognized in the free act, and knows this insofar as it recognizes the other and knows it to be free.29 But this self-consciousness expresses itself precisely as, and in, the social space of reason. 5

Repercussions of the Structure of Recognition on Institutions

Hegel does not give us a metaphysical demonstration of the ‘true’ nature of human beings, given once and for all. He has no intention of bringing to light a metaphysical essence that, historically, both the classical and the modern 27  Brandom, “The structure of desire and recognition”, § IV. 28   P S, § 178, 111 (GW 9, 109). 29   Enc. ‘ 17  § 358.

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form have failed to recognize. Is the failure to know the new form due to the fact that the classical tradition is founded exclusively on the reabsorption of the individual in the whole and, thus, on the absolute supremacy of a whole in which the individual is only a particular and accidental moment? While modernity is based on the predominance of an individual atomistically closed up in himself and, thus, in the atomistic relation of a conflict of forces with other individuals? Does this mean that the resulting totality—the State or other institutions—has no intrinsic relation with its subjects, and can govern their movements only in the context of an organization based on constraint? The iron cage created by individualistic atomism is a necessary conclusion not only for the absolutist thinking of Hobbes but also for thinkers such as Fichte and Kant, despite their intention, after the French Revolution, to champion the demands of individual freedom. But the demands of freedom enter into radical collision with the constitution of a structured and organized totality that regulates and fixes the limits of individual action in order to protect the freedom of others. This means that wherever we find an asymmetric relation within a society rather than one of reciprocal recognition, the relation between individuals is always exclusively one of domination. In this way tension and conflict are cut off from any possibility of struggle’s pursuing and attaining reciprocal recognition. In this context conflict can be resolved only when dominance of one over the other is imposed. But conflict is possible only against the background of reciprocal relation. Without the ‘We’ that expresses communitarian relation no conflict can take place and evolve. Conflict also requires the presence—unknown and unwanted—of a dimension of recognition that existence of the conflict reveals.30 The apparent solitude of consciousness somehow constitutively contains otherness, albeit in the form of tension and conflict. While this line of development seems, insistently, to produce authoritarian forms that pit nature against freedom, other institutions—economic institutions in particular, related to the rise of political economy—seem to be moving in other directions. Atomism is a social creation designed to liberate individuals from dependence on a communitarian structure that absorbs and negates their autonomy. By producing this rift between the individual and the community it becomes the premise of the market economy. But political economy presupposes as its background precisely that social and communitarian structure which ought to follow only as its result. The social division of labor

30   G W 8, 218.

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is the premise of market society, on which the exchange and productivity of labor rest.31 Given the unlimited multiplication of exchange and its expansion in the ever more open and enlarged space of the market, it appears that one must act ‘as if’ only individuals without reciprocal recognition exist. Here, in fact, recognition comes about in the form of self-interest. In the final analysis, the primacy of exchange value gives rise to a fabric of relations and cooperation, and thus creates a series of social forms that heighten the need for the mutual recognition effected through exchange. It is not fortuitous that Hegel, referring to economic institutions, speaks constantly about the fact that labor in the market society wants to be recognized.32 Here, however, the recognition that comes is mediated through ‘things’. But the commodity, which has replaced the product, is itself the objectivation and incorporation of labor—i.e., of activity. It does not express a natural given, but is the result of social construction. Relating oneself to labor in the act of exchange means, then, realizing the economic form of reciprocal recognition, albeit in a very particular way. The constant analogy between labor and language33 says that language constitutes the expression of the community in which the self is presented as Dasein des Geistes: I realize myself in the consciousness of the other through language. Language is the existence—the being-there—of spirit:34 the self as positing itself in its exteriority. 6

After Society, the Necessity of a Return to Community

Is a return to community and to its renewed relations between individuals possible in logical terms and necessary in logico-political terms? What are the reasons for a return to community at the very moment in which the globalized relations produced by maximum market expansion gain supremacy? The return to the theme of community is, first of all, negative—a negative reaction to individualism and to the universalizing and anonymous abstraction of the market society. But it also has a positive side, when it posits the relation with the other as the very ground of the self and, for this very 31  Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 32   G W 8, 226–227. The presence of the structure of recognition is strongly emphasized. 33  We will find this analogy again in Marx: see Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1974). 34   P S, § 652, 395 (GW 9, 351).

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reason, posits communitarian relations as originary. In this way the primacy of the whole over the parts is most certainly affirmed. But, here, the ‘whole’ in question is the whole of a limited community, flanked by other communities. Hence it is affirmed only apart from the all-embracing whole. In this case, the predominant element of the community is its limit: the more intimate and deep its relations, the more limited its perimeter. The process, then, is doubled: on one side, the openness of society; on the other, exclusion and closure on the part of the community. The more intimate and absolute the bond, the greater the necessity of excluding what is outside. Thus openness to the communitarian relation becomes, at the same time, a principle of the exclusion of whoever is outside this relation—that is, of whoever does not participate in this identity that is relational within itself and atomistic towards what is outside. This community, then, is essentially ‘exclusive’: exclusion becomes the hallmark of its members.35 The question is: Can there be a community that is inclusive rather than exclusive, and in which openness to the other can maintain the deep bonds proper to the community in its intimacy? Moreover: Is it possible to maintain the autonomy of the individual in the community? And if so, how? In this case, then, the whole will require a relation of reciprocal recognition, in order to deal with both a total relation that includes individuals, but also includes a reciprocal relation between individuals, and between the community as a whole and each single individual. With this in mind, let us take a fresh look at the transition from ‘We to I’ and from ‘I to We’ of which Hegel speaks in reference to spirit.36 The grounding of relationality requires a transformation of the reasons of consciousness. Consciousness originarily implies a relation to the other. The other is constitutive of the positing of consciousness and of the ‘I’. Recognition is a complex movement that proceeds from the whole towards the individuals and from the individuals towards the whole, but also and necessarily from the individuals among themselves as parts and moments of the whole. The concept of recognition, which is essential to the meaning of community, necessarily implies pluralism. Differences are differences insofar as they maintain a veil of reserved impenetrability. The community is not a place of 35  It is in this vein that Hegel interpreted the first Christian communities in his early writing on The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate: Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T.M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 260–261 (Theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl. Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1966, 260–261). 36   P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 109).

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absolute transparency. The dimension of privacy preserves and enlarges the non-suffocating role of the community. The community does not erase individuality, as Hegel once dreamed, lamenting the demise of organic societies.37 Each individual is marked by the whole, but the individual is also in the whole in a specific and distinct way. There is no crushing of the identity among individuals, which would make them all alike and indistinguishable, and therefore in no need of reciprocal recognition. And this is all the more so in elementary communities, in which each and every individual receives his and her own distinctive individuality. Reciprocal recognition is grounded in a recognition of the legitimacy of the differences that characterize the other’s identity, be these differences religious, cultural, or historical. For this very reason recognition always also implies tension and conflict. Recognizing someone means that their life project is compatible with my project and with that of the community. Every recognition deepens and broadens the community’s horizon of sense. Hegel’s lesson is a lesson of drive and tension towards a progressive dimension where sociality and recognition are inseparable moments of the structure of sociality. (Translated from Italian by Giacomo Donis) 37  Hegel, Early Theological Writings, 260 (Theologische Jugendschfiften, 308): “Even in the expression ‘A son of the stem of Koresh,’ for example, which the Arabs use to denote the individual, a single member of the clan, there is the implication that this individual is not simply a part of the whole; the whole does not lie outside him; he himself is just the whole that the entire clan is. [. . .] In modern Europe, on the other hand, where each individual does not carry the whole state in himself, but where the bond is only the conceptual one of the same rights for all, war is waged not against the individual, but against the whole that lies outside him. As with any genuinely free people, so among the Arabs, the individual is a part and at the same time the whole.”

Part 2 Social Action, Ethical Life, and the Critique of Constructivism

∵

Chapter 6

Does Hegelian Ethics Rest on a Mistake? Robert Stern Abstract: Hegelian ethics is often said to involve an account of self-actualization based on a form of social holism, such that the individual’s well-being is then bound up with the well-being of others, so that egoism must give way to altruism. However, H.A. Prichard famously argued that this sort of approach to ethics rests on a ‘mistake’, as this position still fundamentally grounds morality in self-interest, and he criticised the British Hegelians accordingly. This paper will consider whether this criticism is justified, or whether the Hegelian’s claim concerning social holism can be given weight, but without any such apparently objectionable implication.

Hegelian ethics is known for two central themes that make it distinctive. First of all, it makes the notion of self-actualization, or self-satisfaction, or selfrealization central. Thus, for example, Allen Wood summarizes this aspect of Hegel’s position as follows, in a way that would have been familiar also to the British Idealists: The rational state is an end in itself only because the highest stage of individual self-actualization consists in participating in the state and recognizing it as such an end. This means that Hegel’s ethical theory is after all founded on a conception of individual human beings and their self-actualization.1 Secondly, it is known for its social holism or organicism, namely the view that individual agents must be seen as essentially tied to the social whole of which they are part. Thus, as Hegel writes: “Since the state is objective spirit, it is only through being a member of the state that the individual himself has objectivity, truth, and ethical life”,2 while Green and Bradley put the point as follows: “it is only in the intercourse of men [. . .] that we really live as persons [. . .] [S]ociety then [. . .] is the condition of all development of our personality”;3 1  Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 21. 2  P R, § 258, 276. 3  Thomas H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, new edition with introduction by David O. Brink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), § 183, 210. Cf. also Prolegomena, § 370, 456:

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“The ‘individual’ man, the man into whose essence his community with others does not enter, who does not include relation to others in his very being, is, we say, a fiction”.4 The question I want to explore in this paper is: what is the connection between these two themes? How do the ideas of selfrealization and social holism relate to one another, and play into each other’s hands? Let me call the first the self-realization thesis, and the second the social thesis. Inevitably, what precisely they mean and amount to may be rather vague at this stage, but this will hopefully become clearer as we proceed. My title, of course, is a reference to the famous claim by H.A. Prichard, that moral philosophy rests on a mistake.5 He believed this was so, because he thought that it tries to address the threat of the egoist who asks for some reason to be moral, by giving him non-moral reasons, based on his interests, desires, well-being, self-realization etc. But Prichard held that to act morally is to act just because you see that it is right or what is called for, not because it will further your interests in these ways: this is still to be an egoist, not a proper moral agent. And Prichard thought that Hegelian ethics makes this mistake, because it too starts with egoistic assumptions and tries get from there to morality using the idea that individual self-realization is only possible in society, but in a way that fundamentally cannot escape the egoism from which it begins. Thus, Prichard writes of Green, in particular:6 [Green’s] view really amounts to resolving the idea of duty into the idea of conduciveness to our advantage, or, in other words, resolving the moral ‘ought’ into the non-moral ‘ought’ in the sense in which it means conducive to our purpose, on the presupposition that our purpose is always our greatest good or advantage.7

“In thinking of ultimate good he thinks of it indeed necessarily as perfection for himself [. . .]. But he cannot think of himself as satisfied in any life other than a social life”. 4  Francis H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), 168. 5  Cf. Harold A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, and also “Duty and Interest,” both reprinted in Moral Writings, ed. Jim MacAdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7–20 and 21–49 respectively. 6  Green is Prichard’s central focus: he claims not to be able to understand Hegel or Bradley: cf. Moral Writings, 21 and 163. 7  Prichard, “Duty and Interest,” 43. Cf. William D. Lamont, Introduction to Green’s Moral Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1934), 214: “If to give another person self-satisfaction gives you satisfaction, and if your self-satisfaction is always your ultimate motive, then you are only aiming at his self-satisfaction because his being satisfied gives you self-satisfaction”.

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The plan of this paper is to look at Prichard objection as a critique of Green, and consider possible responses that could be made to it, where in the end I will allow that it has some force. But I will then look at Bradley’s position and distinguish it from Green’s, arguing that Bradley’s more Hegelian position has a better way to respond to Prichard’s concerns, and thus show that Hegelian ethics is not ultimately founded on a mistake, despite its commitment to the two theses outlined above.8 1

Green’s Ethics

One can see the force of Prichard’s worry concerning Green’s ethics, if one has the following simple view of the latter’s position: 1. We are egoists 2. Then why be moral? 3. Social thesis: we are parts of a social whole 4. We are therefore dependent on each other for our own well-being 5. So, rational to act for others, as well as ourselves So, egoism is not at odds with altruism: we can resolve the tension between them using the social thesis. Given this view, Prichard’s response seems very reasonable, where he argues that we have not got real morality here, as the only reason the individual acts for others is because his interests are bound up with theirs, and so he is still being fundamentally guided by his own concerns and not that of others: this is just enlightened self-interest, or ‘higher egoism’. Prichard argues that we should attribute (1) to Green (the claim that we are egoists), where he quotes the following passage: The motive in every imputable act for which the agent is conscious on reflection that he is answerable, is a desire for personal good in some form or other [. . .] It is superfluous to add good to himself, for anything conceived as good in such a way that the agent acts for the sake of it, must be conceived as his own good, though he may conceive it as his own good

8  I will focus exclusively on Green and Bradley, as the leading figures in this tradition, though some of what I have to say would also be relevant to others, such as Bernard Bosanquet and Edward Caird.

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only on account of his interest in others, and in spite of any amount of suffering on his own part incidental to its attainment.9 Prichard also attributes a strong version of the social thesis to Green, claiming that Green thought that individuals are identical, which is why their ends converge, despite (1): The net result is that according to Green, where a group of, say, five persons are disinterestedly interested in one another, they are not really five persons but one, a state of A being related to a state of another, B, just as it is related to another state of A—these states being states of one self.10 We might therefore consider Pritchard’s reading of Green in the light of a question posed by Henry Sidgwick of the latter’s position: “By what logical process can we pass from the form of unqualified egoism under which the true end of the moral agent is represented to us on one page, to the unmediated universalism which we find suddenly substituted for it on another?”11 Pritchard’s answer would be that for Green, the social thesis is the bridge whereby we get from the one to the other, thereby giving it a role in what is fundamentally still an egoistical position, and thus revealing it to be caught up in an ethics that is based on a mistake. A first response to Prichard’s concerns might be to question the claim that Green held the social identity view, which is attributed to him by Prichard.12

9  Green, Prolegomena, §§ 91–2, 103–4; quoted by Prichard on “Duty and Interest”, 38; cf. also 39. 10  Prichard, “Green: Political Obligation,” Moral Writings, 242. 11  Henry Sidgwick, Lectures on the Ethics of T.H. Green, Mr Herbert Spencer and J. Martineau (London: Macmillan, 1902), 55–6. Cf. Prichard, ‘Duty and Interest’, 43: “According to [Green], the thinking that a certain action is a duty is really the concluding that it is a duty in virtue of its being, as we think, for the good of the whole and of that good’s being, as we think, our greatest good, and therefore the thinking that the action is a duty requires as its explanation the prior existence of the thoughts which form the premises of the argument. And the view really amounts to resolving the idea of duty into the idea of conduciveness to our advantage, or, in other words, resolving the moral ‘ought’ into the non-moral ‘ought’ in the sense in which it means conduciveness to our purpose, on the supposition that our purpose is always our greatest good or advantage”. 12  Cf. Peter P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 68–9. For Prichard’s textual support, see Prichard, “Moral Obligation”, Moral Writings, 195.

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For, it seems more plausible to attribute to him a more moderate social holism or organicism, as suggested by the following passage: This well-being he doubtless conceives as his own, but that he should conceive it as exclusively his own—his own in any sense in which it is not equally and coincidentally a well-being of others—would be incompatible with the fact that it is only as living in community, as sharing the life of others, as incorporated in the continuous being of a family or a nation, of a state or a church, that he can sustain himself in that thought of his own permanence to which the thought of permanent well-being is correlative.13 Green’s argument here seems to be as follows: In taking his own individual good as a starting point, a person nonetheless cannot think of himself as an individual with any permanence unless he thinks of himself as a member of a community of some sort, which he must therefore act to uphold, and so act for the good of the community and the other selves it contains. As a result, Green claims to be able to collapse the distinction between egoism and altruism: “Hence the distinction commonly supposed to exist between considerate Benevolence and reasonable Self-Love, as co-ordinate principles on which moral approbation is founded, is a fiction of philosophers”.14 However, of course, Prichard can respond that his fundamental objection still stands, as the individual only takes into account the well-being of others because the individual sees this as the basis of her own, as a result of the dependence of the individual on the social whole. Thus, as John Skorupski has put the point recently, Green’s account of practical reason still remains egoistical in a formal sense, even if the social thesis is viewed more holistically: [For Green] there is thus no need to posit—as an underived principle in practical reason—a principle of impartiality that says that the good of any one individual has no inherently greater reason-giving force than the good of any other. The only ultimate practical-reason-giving consideration is my own good. However, the truer my understanding, or the fuller the development, of myself and my own good, the more I grasp its identity with the common good. I achieve my true good by being and doing good. Green’s idealist metaphysics underpins this ethics by denying the

13  Green, Prolegomena, § 232, 272–3. 14  Green, Prolegomena, § 232, 272.

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final separateness of individuals, seeing them instead as differentiated moments of a single subject.15 It is Green’s apparent egoism, therefore, that now seem to be the fundamental concern, at least to a Kantian such as Prichard.16 It could be said, however, that even if a person acts as Green suggests, there is still nothing wrong with them from the moral point of view, as this is to confuse formal egoism with selfishness or treating others instrumentally. However, if a person sees her own good as bound up with that of others, doesn’t that require them to be sympathetic, caring and attentive in various ways, and so morally admirable? Thus, a father may well see his well-being as dependent on that of his children and act accordingly: but precisely in order to view his relation to his children in this way, doesn’t that need him to have a self-less attitude towards those children, as otherwise he wouldn’t take their welfare to impact on his well-being at all, as he would only be concerned with his personal interests and have no concern for them at all? So, it would appear, egoism is not the same as selfishness, and thus perhaps Prichard was wrong to think that a position based on it is making a fundamental mistake from a moral point of view. This response to the problem is fairly familiar, and may be traced back to Aristotle on which it is modeled, and where Aristotle may be taken as an influence on Green in this respect.17 But ultimately, the Prichardian question can still be pressed, by asking the father why he acts to help his child, and what his reason ultimately is. The response would seem to be for Green that his child’s well-being is a necessary aspect of his own well-being, whereas Prichard 15  John Skorupski, “Ethics and the Social Good”, in Allen W. Wood and Songsuk Susan Hahn (eds.), Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 462. 16  Cf. Prichard, “Duty and Interest,” 48–9: “I think it is possible to sum up most of what I have been contending for by a reference to Kant. His moral philosophy is of course open to many obvious criticisms. Nevertheless he always strikes me as having, far more than any other philosopher, the root of the matter in him. More especially, he seems to me to steer completely clear of those views which I have been maintaining to be errors, and indeed to insist that they are errors. He will have nothing to do either with the idea that the rightness of action depends on its being for our own good, or with that idea that we think of it as so depending, or with the idea that desire for our own good is our only motive. And it is, I think, for this reason that in spite of his obvious mistakes he retains so close a hold on his readers”. 17  Cf. David O. Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 44–50.

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will argue that the answer should really be: because the child needs help.18 It would seem, then, that a more radical response is required to the difficulty that Prichard has raised. This could be achieved, it might seem, if it is denied that Green’s starting point is egoistic at all—and some readers of Green have followed this route. Thus, for example, Peter Nicholson (in part following Charles A. Campbell)19 has adopted this approach, where he argues that what Green is fundamentally doing is drawing a contrast between acting from impulse, and acting from a conscious intention or deliberately. In the latter case, what the individual does must be seen as something that will be good for her in some way, but nonetheless achieving that good is not her motive or purpose, so the act is not really self-interested in any genuine sense. So, for example, in treating your injury, my motive or purpose is to help you and so not self-interested or egoistical, where nonetheless your well-being must be something desired by me if I am to act, and I wouldn’t want that unless I saw it as contributing to my self-satisfaction in some way. On this account, Green’s view may be compared to any desire or pleasure based account of action: while on this sort of account, no one acts unless they think that doing so will satisfy their desire or bring them pleasure, nonetheless satisfying that desire or getting that pleasure need not be the motive or goal of the action concerned, in which case is not self-interested; the agent is not acting in order to get pleasure or satisfy their desire, and so

18  A similar worry may apply to David Brink’s way of presenting Green’s position: he argues that for Green “concern for my overall good requires, as a constituent part, concern for the welfare of those to whom I am appropriately psychologically related”, where that concern is then for their good and so ‘other-regarding’ and not merely instrumental; nonetheless he also allows that for Green “the on-balance rationality of [such] other-regarding action depends on its promoting my overall good”—which may seem to put its ‘otherregardingness’ in doubt—see Brink, Perfectionism and the Common Good, 50–1. 19  Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists, 70–1; and Charles A. Campbell, Scepticism and Construction: Bradley’s Sceptical Principle (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), 201–11, and “Moral Intuition and the Principle of Self-Realization”, in his In Defence of Free Will and Other Philosophical Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), 107–44. A similar line is taken by W.J. Mander, British Idealism: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 198: “The claim that all conscious purposive action seeks selfsatisfaction may seem like the most ruthless psychological egoism [. . .] But on closer reflection we see [Green’s] view is quite otherwise. Rather the derivation flows from the very definition of conscious action itself. Whatever we want, in wanting it we necessarily want also a state in which our own wanting is satisfied. There is nothing necessarily selfdirected in the content of the want”.

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not treating you as a means to their pleasure or desire-satisfaction, and so not behaving here in an egoistical way. Moreover, it might be said, a Kantian like Prichard must also have an account that has a similar structure. For, the Kantian will claim, if I do something deliberately, I wouldn’t do it unless I believed that it was right or was my duty. However, its being right or my duty can’t be my motive for doing it, otherwise we would have a troubling kind of ‘moral fetishism’.20 The motive, therefore, must be that you need help, but where unless I thought your needing help was my duty, I wouldn’t do it. Thus, ‘being right’ or ‘being my duty’ must function as a kind of second-order necessary condition on my action,21 but not in a way that interferes to my being motivated by your injury, thus avoiding moral fetishism. In a similar way, then, Green could claim that ‘bringing me self-satisfaction’ or ‘contributing to my self-realization’ is a second-order necessary condition on my action, but in a way that doesn’t interfere with my motive being your needs, thus avoiding egoism. Nonetheless, Green’s position may still seem more vulnerable than the Kantian one to Prichard’s concerns. Firstly, the difference between Green’s account (as involving self-satisfaction) and the Kantian one (as involving duty) may still make one think the former is egoistical in the way that the latter is not. Secondly, one might wonder why self-satisfaction is a necessary condition for action, if it is not itself the motive of it? In the Kantian case, being seen as your duty can be said to be necessary, because as a rational being one needs to check that you are doing the right thing before you do it, either actually or potentially—but why is it an appeal to self-satisfaction necessary in the same way? The answer might be, that otherwise you wouldn’t see the action as good, and you need to see the action as good before doing it, even if doing what is good is not your motive or end. But then the Kantian can respond by claiming that it is sufficient to see that the action is right, where this need have nothing to do with your own self-satisfaction; and anyway, why does seeing the act as good have to bring in your own good? Thus, the Kantian position may in the end seem more plausible. Finally, as well as these philosophical issues, there are also textual problems in attributing this sort of position to Green, 20  Of course, some have accused Kant himself of precisely this sort of fetishism: cf. Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality”, in his Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 18. 21  For readings of Kant along these lines, cf. Barbara Herman, The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 24–5; Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 12; Philip Stratton-Lake, Kant, Duty and Moral Worth (London: Routledge, 2000), esp. Chaps 1 and 4.

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because there are several places where he does seem to talk about selfsatisfaction as the motive for actions, as in the following passage: “in all conduct to which moral predicates are applicable a man is an object to himself; [and] such conduct, equally whether virtuous or vicious, expresses a motive consisting in the ideal of a personal good, which the man seeks to realise by action”.22 There are therefore some difficulties in rejecting premise 1, and adopting a non-egoistical approach to Green. Moreover, even supposing that it were right to reject egoistic readings of Green, it might also be said that the consequences would be structurally unfortunate for his way of thinking. For, the result would seem to be that the social thesis would then have no role to play in Green’s ethics, even if might still be something he holds on metaphysical grounds, and gives some weight to in his political philosophy. For then, it actually wouldn’t be needed to provide any sort of ‘bridge’ from egoism to altruism, as altruism or impartiality would be assumed at the outset, and thus the dialectical role and significance of the thesis would be lost. There thus seems to be a dilemma in understanding Green’s position: We can either take it that he holds that we are egoists, but then he faces Prichard’s challenge; or we can take it that he thinks we are not egoists, but then render the social thesis ethically redundant. The latter price may not seem an insuperable one to pay, but I take it that it would still be of interest to see if we can avoid this second horn altogether—that is, can we say that Hegelian ethics is not egoistic in its starting point, and also still give a fundamental role to the social thesis? To see how this might be possible, I turn now from Green to Bradley. 2

Bradley’s Ethics

While certain differences between Green and Bradley are noted, they are often said to be broadly similar in their approaches, so that while the latter is hardly mentioned by Prichard, it might be assumed that Bradley too falls under his critique—while this perceived similarity may explain why he is not given any separate treatment. In particular, then, it may also be held that because Bradley talks about self-realization a good deal in Ethical Studies as well as the social thesis, he also starts with egoistic assumptions and tries to handle them in Green’s way. However, as with Green, the position is more complicated than it may first appear. On the one hand, Bradley too seems to talk about self-realization as 22  Green, Prolegomena, § 115, 130 (my emphasis).

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the end of our actions, as when he writes: “What remains is to point out the most general expression for the end in itself, the ultimate practical ‘why’; and that we find in the word self-realization”.23 On the other hand, Bradley also seems sensitive to Prichardian concerns. For example, like Prichard, Bradley thinks that the question ‘why be moral?’ requires very careful handling, and for similar reasons: [M]orality [. . .] teaches us that, if we look on her only as good for something else, we never in that case have seen her at all. She says that she is an end to be desired for her own sake, and not as a means to something beyond. Degrade her, and she disappears; and, to keep her, we must love and not merely use her. And so at the question Why [should I be moral]? we are in trouble, for that does assume, and does take for granted, that virtue in this sense is unreal, and what we believe is false.24 Like Prichard, Bradley therefore holds that we must avoid the temptation to address the moral sceptic directly. On the other hand, he thinks we can still do something else instead, which is to ask if there may nonetheless be some relation between acting morally and achieving our good, even if the latter is not taken to be the motivation or justifying reason for the former. Thus, as it were, in a ‘cool hour’, an individual may reasonably wonder if their moral actions have made their life go well or not, even if at no point did this concern play a role in grounding those actions. Thus, as Bradley puts the question one might ask in this spirit: “Is morality the same as the end for man, so that the two are convertible; or is morality one side, or aspect, or element of some end which is larger than itself? Is it the whole end from all points of view, or is it one view of the whole?”.25 Moreover, in chapter VII (or ‘essay’, as he calls it) 23  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 64. 24  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 58. 25  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 64. I think Bradley’s position may therefore be usefully compared to one proposed by David Schmidtz, in “Because It’s Right”, in Sam Black and Evan Tiffany (eds.) Reasons to be Moral Revisited (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2007), 70–1: “Even if we grant that being moral involves following a categorical imperative, we may coherently ask whether we would be better off following a categorical imperative. And, one way or another, the question has an answer. Whether or not moral imperatives are categorical, there remains a fact of the matter concerning whether following moral imperatives is to our advantage. To try to show that being moral turns out to be prudent is not to mistakenly treat moral imperatives as prudential imperatives [. . .] The point is that even agents committed to doing what is right because it’s right might nevertheless wonder whether they would have done anything differently had they been more

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of Ethical Studies, Bradley offers an account of selfishness, which is sensitive to the motive/necessary condition distinction outlined above, and also there accepts the idea that moral action should not be instrumental. Thus, notwithstanding his emphasis on self-realization, Bradley seems to have an awareness of the Prichardian concerns we have raised, in a way that arguably makes his account of human action and motivation non-egoistic. But then, if we deny that Bradley is an egoist, along the same lines as it is denied that Green is an egoist outlined above, wouldn’t we have the same structural worry as well, namely that the social thesis could then drop out of Bradley’s ethics? If it is not required to play its ‘bridging’ role, why is it really needed, and couldn’t it be set aside? Once again, then, the concern is that the structural centrality of the social thesis seems to lost, if we try to handle Prichard’s concerns by abandoning any commitment to egoism as a starting point. I now want to suggest, however, that when it comes to this issue, Bradley’s position is importantly and interestingly different from Green’s. For, to put the point rather schematically, my claim will be that the social thesis does not drop out of Bradley’s position because he is using the thesis to solve the problem of altruism not of egoism, where in this he is following Hegel. So then even if the egoist premise is dropped, the social thesis can still be given a crucial role in his thinking, in a way that is less clear in Green’s case insofar as his framework is less Hegelian in its construction. Here, in outline, is the way in which Bradley’s position might be sketched: 1. As rational agents, we are able to set aside our particular interests and adopt a more universal standpoint 2. But in doing so, we face the problem of agency 3. This problem can only be resolved if we accept the social thesis, and see that we are parts of a social whole 4. So ethics requires the social thesis Let me now consider each of these points in a little more detail. Regarding 1, Bradley accepts what might be thought of as the Kantian point, that as part of what it is to be free agents, we are capable of stepping back from all our particular interests and desires, and thus of moving from the ‘particular’ to the ‘universal’ standpoint. As Bradley puts it: “In short, we do not simply feel ourselves in [desires] A and B, but have distinguished ourselves from both, as self-consciously prudent. Moral agents might care about this issue not because they, like Glaucon, sometimes wonder whether they have prudential reasons to regret being moral, that is, whether their being moral is contrary to their self-interest”.

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what is above both. This is one factor in volition, and it hard to find any name better for it than that of the universal factor, or side, or moment”.26 But then (regarding 2), Bradley argues that action requires that we will something particular, some specific and concrete act: “In order to will, we must will something; the universal side by itself is not will at all. To will we must identify ourselves with this, that, or the other; and here we have the particular side, and the second factor in volition”.27 However, as such whatever we do always seems to fall short of what is universal, where the problem then is that when we step back, the ‘this, that, or the other’ that we do will seem inadequate and empty, because by so acting we will seem to ourselves to fail to properly realize what universality requires. For Bradley, therefore, there is a prima facie tension between these two ‘factors’ in action, which together yield the problem of agency.28 As an illustration of the kind of difficulty that I think Bradley has in mind, it is instructive to look at the following passage from Richard Rorty’s autobiographical essay “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids”: At [the age of] 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice [. . .] But I also had private, weird, snobbish, incommunicable interests. In earlier years these had been in Tibet [. . .] A few years later, [. . .] these interests switched to orchids [. . .] I was uneasily aware, however, that there was something a bit dubious about this esotericism—this interest in socially useless flowers [. . .] I was afraid that Trotsky [. . .] would not have approved of my interest in orchids.29 Brought up by his politically committed parents, Rorty was early on inculcated with the significance of the wider social good, and why this mattered more than any particular interest, so that the point of life was to follow Trotsky and other radicals in fighting injustice. This, he may have come to feel, is true willing, as it takes us beyond any of our particular concerns. On the other hand, 26  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 72. 27  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 72. 28  Cf. also Bradley, Ethical Studies, 72, note: “As we saw in our last Essay, there are two dangers to avoid here, in the shape of two one-sided views, Scylla and Charybdis. The first is the ignoring of the universal side altogether, even as an element; the second is the assertion of it as more than an element, as by itself the will. Against this second it is necessary to insist that the will is what it wills, that to will you must will something, and that you can not will the mere form of the will”. 29  Richard Rorty, “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids”, in his Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), 6–7.

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at the same time he found himself with particular interests of his own (Tibet, orchids), but which he felt from this more universal perspective were of little value or significance, where the pull of that universal perspective made it hard for him to identify with such things. However, one difficulty with giving the first standpoint priority over the second, is then knowing how one is to act at all, because then in seeking for a universality that takes us beyond particularity, any action can look ‘private, weird, snobbish’ simply because it must involve some particularity to be an action of any sort, insofar as one always does what is merely ‘this, that, or the other’. Indeed, as Derrida has suggested, this is apparently true even if the action is not related to the individual’s interests, but done for others, as the ‘others’ in question will still be an arbitrarily selected sub-set of those who could be helped, where the action will thus fall short of all the good that could be done.30 But then, a kind of paralysis may set in, as it may appear that nothing one can do is adequate to express the universal standpoint, so one must refrain from acting altogether. Having set up the difficulty, Bradley then suggests a way in which it might be solved, which he thinks requires putting both ‘factors’ in the will together, such that in acting in a determinate way, the individual nonetheless contributes to the general good as part of a social whole. Thus, he argues the two one-sided positions of ‘pleasure for pleasure’s sake’ (which constitutes mere particularity or hedonism) and ‘duty for duty’s sake’ (which constitutes mere universality or Kantianism) lead in the structure of Ethical Studies to the position of ‘my station and its duties’ (which offers a balance of both).31 In this way, one can act in a manner that is particular (as a father, teacher, doctor, politician, whatever), but which can also be seen from the perspective of the universal as having significance and value, in the contribution it makes to the social whole: I am to be perfectly homogeneous [cf. universal]; but that I can not be unless fully specified [cf. particularized], and the question is, How can I be extended so as to take in my external relations? Goethe has said, ‘Be a whole or join a whole’, but to that we must answer, ‘You can not be a whole, unless you join a whole’. 30  Cf. Jacques Derrida: “I am sacrificing and betraying at every moment all my other obligations: my obligations to the other others whom I know or don’t know [. . .] each of whom is the only son I sacrifice to the other, every one being sacrificed to every one else” (The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 69). 31  It is important to note, however, that ‘my station and its duties’ is not the final resolution, as further aporia emerge within it that move Ethical Studies into subsequent developments: but we cannot follow that full story here.

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The difficulty is: being limited and so not a whole, how extend myself so as to be a whole? The answer is, be a member of a whole. Here your private self, your finitude, ceases as such to exist; it becomes the function of an organism. You must be, not a mere piece of, but a member in, a whole; and as this must know and will yourself.32 In this way, Bradley argued, we manage to achieve proper self-realization, as without it the self will be ruinously divided between these universal and particular ‘factors’, whereas what is required is to ‘realize yourself as whole’,33 for which being part of social whole is then necessary, as his adaptation of Goethe’s slogan suggests. In this way, then, for Bradley the self-realization thesis and the social thesis come together, but in a way that is importantly different from what we saw before. For, on the account we gave of Green, they come together insofar as the latter forms a bridge from egoism to altruism, whereas here they come together because it is the universality of the will that creates difficulties for the agent, which the social thesis is then required to resolve. It would seem, then, that Bradley’s position is immune from the Prichardian concerns that troubled Green’s. Thus, while Green arguably sees the social thesis as an important adjunct to egoism, Bradley uses it as an important adjunct to Kant’s own impartialism, and so incorporates it within Kantian ethics, rather than setting it at odds with it, as Green appears to do. For, Bradley argues not that the flourishing we find in social life is a crucial counterweight to our egoism, but that the fact that flourishing takes place in society is precisely because Kant is right, and that we are altruists who can step back from all our individual concerns and interests—but where Kant does not see this role for the social thesis, because he does not see the difficulties that ‘the universal factor’ in the will poses for us when it comes to action, for which some particularity is also required. 3

From Hegel to Bradley

Now, the crucial inspiration for this Bradleyian approach, I would argue, is Hegel, and in particular Hegel’s account of the will in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right. I will therefore say something briefly about Hegel’s position, before showing how it relates to Bradley’s strategy as outlined above, 32  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 79. 33  Bradley, Ethical Studies, 73.

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and thus how he came to adopt his particular treatment of the social thesis. The focus will be on §§ 5–7 of the Philosophy of Right, where Hegel offers his famous account of freedom of the will in terms of his three fundamental categories: universal, particular, and individual. The universal aspect of the will consists in our ability to abstract from all content and determination, as a pure ‘I’.34 The second aspect of particularization consists in the determination or limiting of the will to specific goals or projects.35 On their own, Hegel argues, each of these moments is unsatisfactory: the purely universal moment leads to an empty indeterminacy, as the will cannot act unless it resolves on something particular;36 but the merely particular can equally seem empty and arbitrary, as the will can step back and abandon all its goals by taking up the more universal standpoint. What we need to resolve this impasse, Hegel suggests, is some kind of particularity to the self, but one which (from a more universal standpoint) can also be endorsed or seen as fundamentally meaningful, rather than as empty and arbitrary. This, then, is the third moment of the will, as a satisfactory unity of the other two: namely, individuality, as the coming together of universality and particularity.37 But how is this unity to be achieved? For example, could it be achieved by the individual through satisfying whatever desires they just happen to have? Clearly not, Hegel thinks, as this is where Kant is right, that the individual can always step back from such desires and question their value. On the other hand, could the individual achieve this unity by just abandoning all particular interests and goals, by just try acting for the general good or by engaging in some form of pure willing, in a universal manner? Clearly not, Hegel also thinks, as here we would have universality but not enough particularity, where as a result this universality will lack content—as Hegel thinks was demonstrated in the French Revolution, for example, where no concrete action was deemed adequate to express the universal will, and so nothing could

34  Hegel, PR, § 5, 37: “The will contains (α) the element of pure indeterminacy or of the ‘I’’s pure reflection of itself into itself, in which every limitation, every content, whether present immediately through nature, through needs, desires, and drives, or given and determined in some other way, is dissolved; this is the limitless infinity of absolute abstraction or universality, the pure thinking of oneself”. 35  Hegel, PR, § 6, 39: “(β) In the same way, ‘I’ is the transition from undifferentiated indeterminacy to differentiation, determination, and the positing of a determinacy as a content and object”. 36  Cf. also Hegel’s discussion of the ‘beautiful soul’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. 37  Hegel, PR § 7, 41: “(γ) The will is the unity of both these moments—particularity reflected into itself and thereby restored to universality”.

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be done without being undone.38 Thus Hegel, like Bradley, quotes Goethe in support of his view: A will which resolves on nothing is not an actual will; the characterless man can never resolve on anything [. . .] “Whoever aspires to great things”, says Goethe, “must be able to limit himself.”39 So, how can we achieve freedom, and thus the right balance between universality and particularity? Hegel’s answer, of course, is that this is only possible within the rational state, where through fulfilling their own particular ends, the individual can also contribute to the good of all, and vice versa. Thus, it is only through the social world that it is possible for the tensions within the will to be resolved, and empty universality transmuted into a genuinely coherent account of action. So, going back to the example of Rorty, he can see his life as particularized in various ways (a lecturer, a father, a husband, an orchid lover etc.), but if that life has a place within a wider whole with a more universal value, then he can also see these particular elements as not arbitrary restrictions and limitations but instead can come to reflectively endorse this particularity, by seeing it as related to the universal social good of which lives of this sort are part. In this way, Hegel thinks, a kind of abstract universalism can be avoided, where each person has a determinate part to play in the light of their abilities and interests, but where those abilities and interests are not just ‘private, weird, snobbish’, given their contribution to the social whole. 4 Conclusion This paper has concerned itself with the worry that Hegelian ethics rests on a mistake, because of the way in which it connects the self-realization of the individual to their life within the social whole—where the mistake is to offer 38  Hegel, PR § 5 A, 39: “This form [of freedom] appears more concretely in the active fanaticism of both political and religious life. An example of this was the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, during which all differences of talents and authority were supposed to be cancelled out. This was a time of trembling and quaking and of intolerance towards everything particular. For fanaticism wills only what is abstract, not what is articulated, so that whenever differences emerge, it finds them incompatible with its own indeterminacy and cancels them”. 39  Hegel, PR, § 13 A, 47.

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this self-realization to egoistical individuals as a reason for moral action, in a way that then turns morality into a matter of self-interest. While we have seen how this suspicion can and has been raised concerning the ethics of the British Idealists, by Prichard and others, some ways of presenting Hegel’s own views might raise the same concerns. For example, Frederick Neuhouser has written about Hegel as follows: Hegel’s point . . . is that members of a rational social world—one in which social freedom is realized—are subjectively constituted so as to be willing to subordinate their private interests to universal ends and to be able to do so not out of selflessness but because they regard their activity on behalf of those universal ends as intrinsic to their own (particular) good.40 And Allen Wood also writes: Hegelian ethical life involves a harmony between individual well-being and the needs of the rational social order [. . .] We identify with ethical duties because they fulfill us; they alone give us a meaningful life.41 On the face of it, these ways of reading Hegel would seem to raise precisely the concerns that troubled Prichard: namely that while we may “subordinate [our] interests to universal ends”, we do not do so “out of selflessness”, but because we see that acting for those ends is part of our own good, so that “we identify with ethical duties because they fulfill us”, and thereby “give us a meaningful life”. This, it would appear, connects the social thesis to the self-realization thesis in exactly the way that Prichard fears. But we have now seen that for Hegel, and also for Bradley, a rather different account can be offered, where it is not that we struggle to behave selflessly insofar as we are only concerned about our own good, but it is precisely because we are capable of such selflessness that the social thesis has such significance: for, if we did not see ourselves as fundamentally tied to some social whole, we could not satisfy the universal element in the will in a coherent manner that leaves room for the fact that all action requires particularity. Of course, Hegel and Bradley also think that only in this way can the self be properly realized, in the sense of overcoming the tension that will otherwise 40  Frederick Neuhouser, Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 92. 41  Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, 210.

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tear it apart, so that living in society is still tied to the self-realization thesis in their story, but not in a way (I have argued) that need raise any Prichardian concerns; for like Prichard they allow that we are capable of aiming to act in a way that abstracts from all our interests—indeed, it is precisely this (I have claimed) that for them brings the social thesis to the fore, rather than any problem posed by egoism. In this way, I hope to have shown, we can dispel the suspicion that Hegelian ethics, at least in all its forms, rests on a fundamental mistake.42 42  I am grateful for comments to the audience at the Venice conference at which this paper was first presented, and also to an audience at the University of Tübingen. I am also grateful to John Skorupski and Fabian Freyenhagen for their help.

Chapter 7

Hegelian Constructivism in Ethical Theory? Arto Laitinen Abstract: This paper discusses three takes on constructivism and realism in Hegelian ethical theory. Each sees Hegel as socializing Kant’s moral theory, but they locate the role of social constructions differently. The straight social constructivist position is the so-called ‘standard story’ (Pippin, Pinkard, Brandom). The second is Stern’s hybrid of command view of obligatoriness with realism concerning rightness, and the third is so-called ‘mediated realism’ or ‘sublated constructivism’ formulated here. The first has problems in accounting for fallibility and progress, the second with coherence and Hegelian credentials, whereas the third is arguably Hegelian and avoids the problems of the first two.

1 Introduction Rawls’s influential essay “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”1 brought constructivism to the ethical and metaethical debates, especially in the Kantian variant. Recently also e.g. Humean, Aristotelian and Society-based construc­tivisms have been formulated.2 Hegel has not figured very centrally in the broader debates on ethical constructivism and realism, but among Hegelscholars, the issue has received some attention.3 In this paper I discuss three 1  John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72. 2  See Carla Bagnoli, “Constructivism in Metaethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), eds. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/ entries/constructivism-metaethics/; Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Constructivism in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer (eds.), Constructivism in Practical Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 3  There is no discussion of Hegel for example in Bagnoli, Ethics, or Lenman and Shemmer (eds.), Constructivism, although Robert Stern, whose views are discussed in this paper, has contributed to both. In addition to Stern, and the representatives of the ‘standard story’ (Pinkard, Pippin, Brandom), constructivism has been discussed e.g. by Kenneth Westphal, in his “Normative Constructivism: Hegel’s Radical Social Philosophy”, Sats—Nordic Journal of Philosophy 8, 2 (2007): 7–41; “Hegel”, in The Routledge Companion to Ethics, ed. J. Skorupski (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 168–180; “Rational Justification &

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approaches to the issue of constructivism and realism in Hegelian ethical theory. Each of them sees Hegel as socializing Kant’s moral theory, but they see the place of sociality and the role of social constructions differently. Constructivism and (non-constructivist) realism are defined here in terms of the Euthyphro-question, while both agree that there are normative truths.4 In the general form, the Euthyphro-question asks whether something is good, right, obligatory because some X says so, or whether the X says so because it is good, right, obligatory. The X can be God as in divine command theory; or the X can be a suitably defined moral subject as in Kantian constructivism, or the X can be the society or collectivity as in Hegelian social cons­tructivism. As I use the terms, a theory is a form of constructivism if it takes some such X to be the constitutive source of goodness, rightness, reasons, and obligations, and it is a form of realism, if it needs no such X.5 What will be Mutual Recognition in Substantive Domains”, Dialogue: Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52 (2013): 1–40. It is not clear whether Hegel, had an “ethical theory” at all (for discussion, see Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, and Dean Moyar, Hegel’s Conscience, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Hegel did not present a ­specific ethical theory for individual’s action as opposed to normative social and ­political philosophy. Hegel’s political philosophy has been thoroughly discussed and the main aspects of his position are well known, while rival interpretations of course stress different aspects. Hegel is a historicist of sorts, with the idea of reason progressing in history; Hegel does not reject Kantian stress on freedom, and sees freedom as the main criterion of progress; Hegel combines Ancient communal life with Modern individualism or autonomy, he issues ­warnings against Utopian imagination and fancy etc. He clearly does give a standard for ­evaluating societies (degree of actualization of freedom; well-being or self-realization in and through social roles; a society should be worth reconciling with). 4  Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). Cf. Bagnoli, “Metaethics”, 1: “As a ‘metaethical account’—an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like—constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice”. Or see, Christopher Halbig, “Review of Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, edited by James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer”, European Journal of Philosophy 21, online first September 15, 2013: “Constructivism about some domain of normative facts understands these facts as the outcome of some procedure which in turn plays a constitutive role: It is not meant to track independent normative facts; rather being the outcome of some procedure is what constitutes those facts in the first place”. 5  Sometimes realism is conceived as appealing to some such X as well, maybe ‘nature’, ‘nonnatural normative structure of the universe’, or ‘Reason’. This, however, obscures the difference between constructivism and realism, as these candidates are not literally agents, and what constructivism stresses is literal construction or ‘norm-instituting’ or ‘law-giving’ or

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relev­ant for my argument is that any constructivism, so defined, must thereby make the X infallible, whether they like it or not.6 What X says is thereby the normative truth—there is no room for X to make a mistake (or otherwise it is not the constitutive source).7 The first of the three views to be discussed, which Robert Stern calls the ‘standard story’ (Pippin, Pinkard, Brandom), starts from John Rawls’s idea of “Kantian constructivism in Moral Theory” (which the title of this paper is meant to echo), and sees Hegel as socializing Kant so understood. If one would look for a clear-cut “Hegelian constructivism” in the literature, as an alternative to Kantian, Humean, or Aristotelian constructivisms, this would be the view. The second view to be discussed is Stern’s own view presented in Understanding Moral Obligation. Stern’s ‘hybrid’ view drives a wedge between the notions of rightness and obligatoriness, and is realist concerning rightness (and value), but has a ‘command view’ concerning obligatoriness or bindingness. Stern, too, sees Hegel as socializing Kant, but moving from an autonomous self-command view to a social command view about obligatoriness. ‘endorsements’ or ‘approval’ by some (perhaps suitably idealized) agents capable of such constructing, instituting, giving, endorsing, or approving. It is best to say that while realisms indeed come in different versions (e.g. naturalism, non-naturalism), the realist theories do not have the same structure as constructivist theories: realists do not share the idea that for every law or principle, there must be a law-giver. For a criticism of such attempts (especially Charles Taylor’s) to characterize realism, see my “A Critique of Charles Taylor’s Notions of Moral Sources and Constitutive Goods”, in Moral Realism, ed. J. Kotkavirta and M. Quante, Acta Philosophica Fennica 76 (2004): 73–104, and Strong Evaluation without Moral Sources (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2008). 6  See Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). This may well differ from other ways of using ‘constructivism’—typically divine command theory is not classified as a form of constructivism, and sometimes non-voluntarist (e.g. historicist, pragmatist or communitarian) theories which nonetheless regard the shared understandings of a society or a collectivity as defining the normative ‘last word’ would not be regarded as constructivist. This way of classifying theories highlights the need for any theory to take a stand on the issue of any infallible X as the source of normative truths—or the need to explain what determines normative truths if the X is taken to be fallible. 7  Especially Westphal (in “Normative”, “Hegel”, and “Justification” suggests that construc­tivist justification and fallibility go together. However, if constructivist justification is fallible, then it cannot be the ultimate criterion of truth (against which constructivist justification would count as fallible or mistaken). This is no problem for views which distinguish between truth and justification (such as typical realist theories), but I am not sure whether that is Westphal’s view.

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The third view is what I call ‘sublated’ constructivism or ‘mediated’ realism, which sees social constructions as structurally, epistemically, and normatively relevant, but does not regard them as an ultimate criterion of rightness, wrongness, obligatoriness, reasons, or value. This view preserves a ‘Kantian’ moment of dignity of persons as a structural feature of modern Sittlichkeit, but stresses the fallibility of moral agents and social formations. 2

The ‘Standard Story’: From Kantian to Hegelian Constructivism

The view that Robert Stern calls the ‘standard story’ starts from John Rawls’s (1980) idea of “Kantian constructivism in Moral Theory”. Kant is interpreted as relying on an argument from autonomy to constructivism: the idea that for a moral agent to be an autonomous moral legislator, it cannot rely in its moral law-giving on any objectively valid moral contents of the moral realist type. Being autonomous entails being a moral ‘author’, having ‘authority’ over moral contents, and so being the ultimate moral constructor or creator, not unlike God in Divine Command theory. The Kantian notion of self-legislation is expressed in the well-known passage from the Groundwork: Hence the will is not merely subject to the law but subject to it in such a way that it must be viewed as also giving the law to itself and just because of this as first subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author [Urheber]).8 And here’s Rawls’s way of arguing from self-legislation to constructivism: Another and deeper meaning of autonomy says that the order of moral and political values must be made, or itself constituted, by the principles and conceptions of practical reason. Let us refer to this as constitutive autonomy. In contrast with rational intuitionism, constitutive autonomy says that the so-called independent order of values does not constitute itself but is constituted by the activity, actual or ideal, of practical 8  Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, in Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 37–108, p. 81.

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(human) reason itself. I believe this, or something like it, is Kant’s view. His constructivism [. . .] goes to the very existence and constitution of the order of values. This is part of his transcendental idealism. The intuitionist’s independently given order of values is part of the transcendental realism Kant takes his transcendental idealism to oppose.9 So Kant is taken to move from autonomy to a denial of any independent order of value. Now this threatens to create the so-called Kantian paradox (the Socratic Euthyphro-dilemma as applied to Kantian self-legislation) of threatening to make moral law-giving either “arbitrary self-launching”10 in the absence of independent reasons to give this law rather than that, or presupposing moral realism after all. It threatens to be either “frictionless spinning in the void”11 or a form of realism. It is this constructivist reading of Kant, and this worry of the Kantian paradox, that has played a key role in the social constructivist reading of Hegel. The proponents of what Stern calls the ‘standard story’ (e.g. Pippin, Pinkard, or Brandom) see Hegel as attempting to solve this Kantian paradox by socializing Kant: by making the community of subjects, structured by mutual recognition, the legitimate law-giver. No reference to any objectively valid moral contents of the moral realist type is made. The relevant X is the collective, and each individual is a ‘co-author’ of the relevant values, norms, reasons, principles and obligations.12 Mutual recognition partly means respecting each other precisely as such a co-author. At each step the ethical community may also rely on the traditional ‘ethical substance’ created and handed down by previous generations of the community. Hegelian freedom is actualized on this reading precisely in the exercise of such co-authorship. What is needed is one of the most basic Hegelian emendations to Kant’s normative rationalism: an understanding of normative statuses such as commitment, responsibility, and authority as social achievements. Hegel

9  John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 99–100. 10  Donald H. Regan, “The Value of Rational Nature”, Ethics 112 (2002): 267–91. 11  John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). 12  See also e.g. Heikki Ikäheimo, “Holism and Normative Essentialism in Hegel’s Social Ontology” in Recognition and Social Ontology, eds. H. Ikäheimo and A. Laitinen (LeidenBoston: Brill, 2011), 145–210.

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construes having bound oneself by applying a concept as occupying a certain sort of social position, having a certain sort of social standing.13 Social constructivism holds that it is not individuals alone who are sources of normativity, but it is the social creation or acceptance or ‘instituting’ that is the source of normativity, in some way which avoids the Kantian paradox. For example, Pippin and Pinkard think that in any historical circumstance, we’re being rationally restricted by the norms accepted so far—and while this is an open-ended process, it is not nothing—certainly not ‘anything goes’. And Brandom thinks that what we’re committed to is not reducible to what we think we’re committed to—others can hold us responsible for what else we ought to hold, given what we’ve already committed ourselves to. So there is considerable rational friction.14 Normativity is ‘found’ from the viewpoint of individuals, but ‘made’ from the viewpoint of the collective.15 In comparison to ‘arbitrary self-launching’, this does indeed introduce some rational friction, but it has not persuaded critics (such as John McDowell) who think this merely amounts to a collective form of the “frictionless spinning in the void”. 3 Assessment The ‘standard’ story is a relatively clear and straight-forward: it is constructivist through and through. I will here follow Robert Stern in pointing out that the “argument from autonomy to constructivism” may not be that cogent, and that there may be some textual difficulties in seeing (even) Kant as a pure constructivist, and I will additionally stress that such constructivism has the consequence of making the X infallible—which is an implication the proponents of this view (e.g. Pippin) may want to avoid.

13  Robert Brandom, Tales of the Mighty Dead (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 31. 14  See e.g. Stephen Houlgate, “Hegel and Brandom on Norms, Concepts and Logical Categories”, in German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. E. Hammer (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 138; and Robert Pippin “Brandom’s Hegel”, in German Idealism, 154. 15  Robert Pippin, The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 220.

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3.1 Was Kant a Constructivist? It is not clear how to interpret Kant on this issue.16 It is not that clear that Kant is consistently a constructivist who would regard the independent reality of demands of practical reason as heteronomy.17 Indeed, Kant states that the content of the law has no author: The lawgiver is not always simultaneously an originator of the law; he is only that if the laws are contingent. But if the laws are practically necessary, and he merely declares that they conform to his will, then he is a lawgiver. So nobody, not even the deity, is an originator of moral laws, since they have not arisen from choice, but are practically necessary; if they were not so, it might even be the case that lying was a virtue. But moral laws can still be subject to a lawgiver; there may be a being who is omnipotent and has power to execute these laws, and to declare that this moral law is at the same time a law of His will and obliges everyone to act accordingly. Such a being is then a lawgiver, though not an originator; just as God is no originator of the fact that a triangle has three corners.18 It is hard to square quotes such as these with straightforward constructivism, whereas the views discussed below will make good sense of them. 3.2 Fallibility and Progress as Problems While it is certainly heteronomous to be a slave of passions, or of other people, it is unclear why being guided by good reasons (when these are assessed by oneself, even though not created by oneself) would be a form of heteronomy.19 Indeed, meaningful self-legislation may even presuppose such independent reasons, to avoid the threat of arbitrary self-launching: meaningful selflegislation is done for reasons.20 Autonomy is compatible with, perhaps even presupposes, realism. 16  See Robert Stern, Understanding Moral Obligation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Oliver Sensen, “Kant’s Constructivism”, in Bagnoli (ed.), Ethics, 63–81. 17  In Stern’s words, “there are good grounds for thinking that Kant himself was a value realist of sorts—which of course makes it unlikely that he took such realism to be a threat to our autonomy,” Obligation, 26. 18  Kant, “Lectures on Ethics”, in Practical Philosophy, 76; quoted in Stern, Obligation, 40. See also “The Metaphysics of Morals”, in Practical Philosophy, 381. 19  Stern, Obligation, 41. 20  See Charles Larmore, “Back to Kant? No Way”, Inquiry 46 (2003): 269.

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Notably, the argument from autonomy has also been a matter of dispute within the constructivist camp: Pippin has argued that Brandom’s version is ultimately unable to draw the distinction between mere ‘positivity’ and freedom-friendly social norms realizing the progress of autonomy or freedom.21 Pippin wants to see the social achievements as fallible, and wants to defend the possibility of normative development. The question is: is there any standard for how something determined by X could be a mistake, a failure; or any standard for why a change in what X says is progress and not regress? Given that constructivism makes the constitutive source infallible, Pippin seems to lack resources to account for the possibility of development and fallibility.22 The reason is that constructivism makes the X an infallible source of value, normativity and deontic features. For something to be mistaken, there must be some criterion according to which it can be mistaken. In the constructivist view, there isn’t. (Whatever the constructivist view deems fallible is not thereby X). The same point concerns any change in the social norms: without an independent standard, any different social norms are just different, and no transition from A to B or from B to A can count as development. The two other views to be discussed below locate the appeal to social constructions in a different place in the theory and avoid the problems of infallibility or change. 4

Stern’s Story: Kant’s and Hegel’s Hybrid Views

The second story is Robert Stern’s own ‘hybrid’ reading of Kant, combining realism concerning moral contents, with a kind of constructivism or command theory concerning the source of moral obligatoriness, and the reading of Hegel as socializing this source of obligatoriness. Stern provides this interpretation in his book Understanding Moral Obligation. It is inspired by a medieval debate between Natural Law theorists (moral realists) and Divine Command theorists (constructivists), and especially by the intermediate position in that debate (held e.g. by Suarez and Culverwell). The intermediate position remained a minority view but Stern uses it to shed light on Kant and Hegel. The intermediate position holds that Natural Law does indeed determine what is intrinsically good and right, but a divine command is further needed to make it obligatory to do what is 21  Robert Pippin, “Brandom’s Hegel”, in Hammer (ed.), German Idealism, 164–170. 22  Cf. also Westphal, “Normative”, “Hegel” and “Justification”.

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independently right; obligatory in the specific moral sense, in the binding, imperatival character or guise. For these theorists, the relevant X is God, who is however also bound by Natural Law. [P]roponents of the ‘intermediate’ position such as Suarez argued that while there might be things that are good or even right for us to do without God commanding them, they could not have the normative dimension that is distinctive of morality unless this were so; on their part, by contrast, this was denied by natural law theorists such as Vasquez, who argued that no lawgiver is required in order to give certain actions the special normative character that belongs to the moral ‘ought’.23 Stern then interprets Kant as having a similar hybrid view, accepting value realism (or realism concerning moral contents), but replacing God with the autonomous moral subject. Kant’s argument from autonomy is directed on this reading not against realism, but against Divine Command as the source of obligatoriness: for Kant, the source of obligatoriness is self-legislation. The X is the autonomous moral subject. But self-legislation can only make what is already independently good and right into morally obligatory.24 Thus, on Stern’s view Kant distinguishes sharply between right and wrong on the one hand, and obligatoriness on the other hand. Stern’s Kant “does not treat the obligatoriness of what is right and wrong as independent in this way, for we give the content of morality its obligatory form, in so far as this depends on our limitedness as finite creatures”.25 Interestingly, “from the ‘absolute standpoint’, there is no duty and obligation, but only what is right and wrong”.26 And Hegel, then, on this story, socializes the relevant X, defending a Social Command view (together with realism or objectivism concerning the contents). Something is obligatory if socially made so, but only if it is independently reasonable.27 For all of these intermediate views, it does seem to follow that in the absence of a command from X nothing is morally obligatory. I will next discuss some problems there are in formulating this view and point out some downsides it has when successfully formulated. 23  Stern, Obligation, 46. 24  Stern, Obligation, 90. 25  Stern, Obligation, 90. 26  Stern, Obligation, 90. 27  This view seems thus to reject the content-independent nature of practical authority. See Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

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5 Assessment Makes Sense of Kant, but is There Textual Evidence concerning Hegel? This view makes good sense of Kant, especially the passages that pure constructivism has some trouble with: 5.1

A (morally practical) law is a proposition that contains a categorical imperative (a command). One who commands (imperans) through a law is the lawgiver (legislator). He is the author (autor) of the obligation in accordance with the law, but not always the author of the law.28 But does this kind of ‘regimentation’ of the obligatory and the good sound at all Hegelian? Is there textual support in Hegel to say that Hegel distinguishes moral contents and obligatoriness in this sense? This kind of conceptual regimentation, creating a duality, is in the general spirit of Kant’s philosophy, but does not sit that easily with Hegel. There is of course textual support for the view that Hegel thought that the state can pose obligations, but the validity of these obligations is not conditional on their content matching what is eternally good and right in the way that triangles have eternally three corners.29 There are further some substantive problems with such intermediate positions to be discussed next.30 Can One Distinguish Rightness, Wrongness, and Moral Obligatoriness in this Way? The first problem is whether wrongness and obligatoriness can be separated in the suggested way. A usual view is that any act is either morally permissible (right) or impermissible (wrong), and if it is impermissible (wrong), it is obligatory not to do it. If it is permissible (i.e. not impermissible), it is either obligatory or then optional (‘merely permissible’). On this under­standing, moral obligatoriness comes with moral wrongness and rightness—it is the very same conceptual, deontic dimension of moral deontology. 5.2

28  Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals”, 381. 29  Cf. Stern, Obligation, 90. 30  For critical discussion, see Stern, “Reply to My Critics”, in Inquiry 55 (2012): 622–54, especially Moyar’s paper and Stern’s response.

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Hegelian Constructivism in Ethical Theory ? Table 1

Obligatoriness and wrongness of acts and omissions To do the deed

Not to do the deed

Right/permissible

Obligatory Wrong optional/“merely permissible” optional/“merely permissible” Wrong/Impermissible Wrong Obligatory

It does not make sense to say that obligatoriness (in this sense) depend on commands, but wrongness does not, because obligatoriness and wrongness entail each other. The view must be rather either of the two following options. It can be that all these statuses (morally obligatory, morally optional, morally wrong) depend on commands, so that thanks to their intrinsic nature alone, deeds are only potentially obligatory, optional or wrong; or fit to be made obligatory, optional or wrong; as in table two: Table 2

Both content and command as necessary conditions of both wrongness and obligatoriness

Criterion 1: content

Criterion 2: command by X

Both criteria together:

Fit to be made obligatory Fit to be made optional Fit to be made wrong

Commanded by X to do Authorized/licensed by X to do Commanded by X not to do

Obligatory Optional Wrong

Presumably authorizations or licenses are equally relevant as commands, in that they give a permit for the agent to do or not to do without pangs of conscience—without the authoritative say, it would apparently remain indeterminate whether the thing really is permissible. Thus, Dostoyevsky’s view that if God is dead, everything is permissible turn out to be false on (the Divine Command version of) this view: if God is dead, nothing is permissible! Or, the view can be that while deeds can thanks to their features alone, be wrong, optional, and “obligatory1”, there is some extra feature added to them by the command, and both are needed for “obligatoriness2”. This extra feature

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is perhaps normative (being a weighty and important reason), psychological in one way (being contrary to desires); psychological in another way (being a matter of grave, devastating inner sanctions by pangs of conscience); social (being a matter of social and institutional sanctions and punishments), or theological (being a matter of divine sanctions). But this second dimension must concern equally wrong and obligatory deeds, so that we need also a notion of “wrongness2”, and then presumably also “optionality2”. Table 3

Obligatoriness1 and obligatoriness2

Criterion 1: content

Criterion 2: command by X

Both criteria together:

Obligatory1

Commanded by X to do

Optional1

Authorized, licensed by X to do

Wrong1

Commanded by X not to do

Obligatory2 (in a sanctioned manner) Optional2 (in a sanctioned manner) Wrong2 (in a sanctioned manner)

So, the repeat, the worry is that right, wrong, and obligatory seem to belong to the very same conceptual family, so some combinations will not do (realism about rightness and wrongness, command theory of obligatoriness). Note also that in Stern’s quotes by Baier and Mill which are taken to represent the social command view, wrongness and obligatoriness are treated together—they do not drive a wedge between right, wrong and obligatory.31 And indeed, Stern writes The crucial issue for our purposes now is that both Mill and Baier take it that being morally good is not sufficient for duty and obligation; it is also required that society holds us responsible for so acting, and will apply some form of punishment or sanction to us if we do not, in a way that puts us under an obligation to act in this manner.32

31  See Stern, Obligation, 152–153. 32  Stern, Obligation, 153, italics added.

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So perhaps the issue really is that between evaluative/axiological concepts such as goodness or value, and deontic/moral ones such as obligatoriness, rightness, and wrongness? There is no contradiction here: the good (unlike right and wrong) and the obligatory can indeed be distinguished, they are separate “moral dimensions” (Scanlon), but we can nonetheless ask whether we should separate them so starkly.33 5.3 Further Critical Notes In this subsection I will briefly mention four other issues that the hybrid view runs into. First, Stern points out that Kant on this reading seems to get the best of both worlds: Kant is thus able to side with the realist about the right, and thus avoid the spectre of emptiness and arbitrariness that threatens constructivism; but he is able to side with the anti-realist about the obligatory, and thus avoid much of the ‘queerness’ associated with the idea that the world in itself makes demands on us, and also avoid the threat to our autonomy that any such purely ‘external’ demand might seem to imply.34 But one may equally point out that Kant gets the worst of both worlds: on the one hand, he does inherit the ‘queerness’ of value realism, which pure constructivists would avoid. How could world itself provide the guidelines of how to value it correctly (which amounts to demands on how to value it)? It is in many ways a shorter step from demands on valuing to demands on acting (the step from the evaluative to the normative & the deontic) than from a neutral disenchanted universe to a value-laden enchanted one (the step from the descriptive to the evaluative). Additionally, this theory still leaves room for arbitrariness or contingency: it is up to the self-legislator to legislate whether something is obligatory or not (after all, if the relevant X does not legislate at all, then nothing is obligatory). This would make morality very undemanding, and get us very easily off the hook: roughly, by not commanding to oneself not to murder, the self-legislator can get away with murdering not being wrong. So it may be that the hybrid position gets the worst of both worlds: it is both queer and arbitrary. 33  See David Copp, Morality, Normativity, and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) for a combination of social constructivism concerning moral norms and realism concerning values and needs. 34  Stern, Obligation, 90.

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Secondly, one may also wonder whether there is one, ‘wholesale’ command that makes all acts that are independently right or wrong also have the imperatival guise; or are the commands given concerning each content separately in a ‘retail’ manner? The former seems a more economic theory, but the latter may make better sense of the sense of the phenomenology of demands and commands: we experience separate demands as separate. I will here merely raise the issue and point out that in principle there is room for both kinds of theories. Thirdly, one may further ask whether some forms of social command theory are really forms of realism. Here’s a passage from Kurt Baier: The fact that there are these wrongs, duties, and obligations implies merely that (i) there is adequate moral reason for me to do and no adequate moral reason for me not to do, that is, ‘compelling’ moral reason for me to do these things, and (ii) that there is an adequate reason for society ‘to insist’, that is, set up suitable social pressures to ensure that its members follow these compelling moral reasons (for, obviously, the mere existence of such compelling moral reasons does not actually compel people).35 Stern says it is point (ii) that is characteristic of social command accounts of moral obligation and duty.36 But here, every natural law theorist and Platonist can surely agree that there may well be reason for society to set up social pressures. It is just that it need not have any metaethical import for obligatoriness or wrongness. To speak about reasons for there to be social sanctioning, is really to remain squarely among the realist camp. (Social sanctions have presumably a function as sanctions independently of them being constitutive of moral obligatoriness).37 A final worry is that this view may end up assuming ahistorical moral contents (concerning right and wrong) in a non-Hegelian manner. It is not clear that a hybrid view, given that it appeals to objective contents for the validity of commands can make sense of changes in what valid social norms require. Can it make sense of Hegelian historicism? All and all, the view derived from the medieval “intermediate position” may be problematic in itself, and may be problematic as a Hegel-interpretation (while admittedly making good sense of some passages in Kant). 35  Quoted in Stern, Obligation, 152–153 (italics added). 36  Stern, Obligation, 151. 37   A related problem: making moral (as opposed to conventional, institutional etc.) properties—including moral obligatoriness—dependent on whether others are willing to exert social pressure seems hard to accept.

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Hegel’s “Sublated Constructivism” or “Mediated Realism”

The third view that I would like to discuss can be sketched with the help of four points: first, the structural superiority of Sittlichkeit over Moralität; second, fallibility of any historical version of Sittlichkeit, which suggests realism rather than social constructivism about ethical truth; third, the stress on mediated rather than immediate nature of realism, suggesting an epistemic role for prevailing social constructions; fourth, a normative difference that prevailing social and cultural formations may make to ethical truth (in the situation). First, this view takes the central difference between Kantian and Hegelian ethical theories to be the structural superiority of Sittlichkeit over Moralität. Hegel ‘socializes’ Kant by changing the form or structure that ethical theory takes. While both accept the modern universalistic respect for legal persons and moral subjects, Hegel conceptualizes these as skeletal aspects of an actualized form of life, Sittlichkeit. Thus, it preserves the need for social constructions, as the very fabric of ethical life consists of historical formations, which are social constructions. In modernity, the public ethos, historical formations, social practices and institutions ought to respect the subjective rights of individual persons, as ends in themselves. The structural priority of Sittlichkeit over Moralität can be put in terms of what is and what ought to be. Hegel describes the form of Moralität as that of endless Sollen, oughts, which remain unrealized (so that what ‘is’ does not coincide with what ‘ought to be’); whereas the structure of Sittlichkeit makes it possible that ‘what is’ coincides with ‘what ought to be’. Hegel is dissatisfied with the Kantian picture of high demands which cannot be actualized—for Hegel the demands can be actualized and are actualized in a well-ordered Sittlichkeit. Successful criticism makes itself redundant, when the reality is changed accordingly. The structure of ‘Morality’ fits the stage when the criticism hasn’t yet made itself redundant, the structure of a wellordered Sittlichkeit includes the critical moment but also the realization of the critical goals. Hegel was very much against the ‘evaporation’ of actual life into abstract critical subjectivity.38 With the proviso that there are important issues of conscience, and that everyone should make their moral minds up autonomously 38  Any particular historical stage of Sittlichkeit, with some defects in its contents (and in Hegel’s own times modern Civil Society certainly had its share of defects, especially the fact that it is never rich enough to prevent the generation of poverty and “rabble”) is to be overcome and superseded with new contents, new variant of Sittlichkeit, whereas a return to a morality of conscience in the absence of well-ordered ethical life would be serious step back.

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rather than under the tutelage of others, it is better to have shared institutional structures, public norms, shared practices and valuations, rather than everyone following their own consciences in absolutely all matters in the total absence of shared institutional structures, public norms, shared practices and valuations.39 This is partly for functional reasons: the public, shared form of ethical life makes coordination possible in ways that reliance on everyone’s conscience does not: there is a need for shared, public ethical life. Further, it is a substantively valuable thing that one’s conscience and considered opinions on the one hand, and the prevailing norms on the other, coincide. It is a form of alienation when this is not so, and the value of ‘being at home’ or reconciliation with the social world may be considerable (for Hegel, it is a central element of freedom). The structure of ethical forms of life has individual conscience as one constitutive aspect, relations of mutual recognition as another constitutive aspect, and shared historically formed ‘ethical substances’, socio-cultural practices and institutions, as a third aspect. These aspects are constitutive of the central value for Hegel, namely freedom. The structure of freedom is “being by oneself in and through the other”, and mutual recognition is central in cashing out individual freedom. Through recognition, free individuals are united in an inner way. The role of ‘ethical substances’, customs, traditions, institutions, is further central in actualizing mutual recognition and self-realization: freedom and self-realization take place through social roles (which, again, need not be something alien).40 It is perhaps worth emphasizing that although the ‘ethical substances’ are historical formations and thus social constructions, this does not imply a social contract view of ethical substances. For example, one can be oneself, and be free, via a social reality that is not one’s own making. Second, these forms of life come in different fallible historical variants to be judged by objective criteria of progress (especially, the degree to which they actualize freedom). Thus, a form of realism is presupposed. Historical contexts can be rationally compared and ranked, so that transition from A to B is progress, transition from B to A is regression. The idea is that various social formations are needed (principles, norms, practices, shared value horizons), but there are also independent reasons to 39  Hegel also speaks about liberating duties, in the sense that the well-ordered ethical life also relieves individuals from their need to deliberate: if what the individual does customarily does not invite criticism, then let the custom go on. 40  Cf. Arto Laitinen, “Broader Contexts of Non-Domination: Pettit and Hegel on Freedom and Recognition”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18, 4 (2015), 390–406.

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revise and criticize them as better or worse. One case of a progress is arguably the Hegelian transition from premodern to modern Sittlichkeit, embodying the principles of subjectivity, conscience, and autonomy.41 This view does not simply abstractly negate the need for social constructions or formations: they have a function but they can be criticized for their features, and thus are to be ‘sublated’. On this model which ‘sublates constructivism’ there are historically received and self-legislated principles, but there are also independent reasons to revise and improve such self-legislated principles (or: standards concerning what kinds of changes are improvements). Mere coherence will not do, as coherence can always be achieved in at least two ways (for example a framework containing both an explicit commitment to gender equality and an implicit practice of gender bias, can be made coherent either by getting rid of the gender bias, or by dropping the commitment to gender equality), and we need some independent criterion of which direction we should move into. But, third, the view is a mediated form of realism, critical of any immediate forms of realism. The crucial point is that social constructions are necessary in the world historical process of trial and error. It is mostly by living by the norms and conceptions of good, that their shortcomings can be detected. Armchair speculation or utopian imagination will not often be equally reliable. So the constructed and lived frameworks are a necessary epistemic device, to reveal independent truths via negation, defects and shortcomings. They are precisely not the authoritative source of truths. So, social constructions are necessary in a different way from what social constructivism would assume, and they must be embedded into an independent moral reality, as a vehicle of disclosing such a reality. Such a mediated realism is opposed to any immediate forms of naïve realism that e.g. Kantians are so fond of ridiculing (which relies on immediate ahistorical ‘intuition’, or ‘moral perception’, first impressions, instead on reflection and critical thought: as it were, senses, not intellect; which takes normative truths to be obvious to just anyone; and which is typically taken to be dogmatic—the theorist’s own substantive views are taken as true—maybe even infallibilist.). The motivation of mediated realism is by contrast to be able to preserve the fallibility of the conceptions of good, right and obligatory embodied in social practices, norms and value-horizons. Any form of constructivism has to make some X infallible, and mediated realism aims at avoiding that. 41  On the role of conscience in Hegel’s ethics, see Dean Moyar, Hegel’s Conscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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This view thus takes social constructions, socially sanctioned social norms, practices and valuations not only as a necessary structure that ethical reality takes, but also epistemically a necessary medium in our access to what is good, right, or obligatory.42 The view emphasizes the epistemic and constitutive need for social processes of trial and error. Experienced sufferings and injustices and felt misrecognitions are the epistemic guide to what is objectively bad about the present social arrangements.43 We can detect the downsides of a social arrangement by living them. Situated experience of participants (including suffering) provide (fallible) evidence of which conceptions of standards, valuations, norms, really are better. Fourth, this view historicizes normative truth in a distinct way. It does not take social constructions or shared practices as an infallible constitutive source of goodness, rightness or obligation, like the ‘standard story’. Further, it does not regiment between value and obligatoriness in the way Stern’s intermediate view does. There is a kind of historicity built into the view: what is of value, reasonable, right, in one historical circumstance may not be so in another. Even though some things are revealed to be objectively good, reason-giving or obligating, their normative relevance may nonetheless be blocked, disabled, filtered out because these aspects are not accessible to the participants of the life-form. So to speak, the Zeitgeist may not be ripe for them. Antigone’s actions cannot necessarily be evaluated with post-Kantian truths, even though these would be truths. In non-ideal circumstances some contents may be of great value, be reason-giving, and be right, which in more ideal circumstances are not (say, perhaps it may be permissible in some circumstances to own slaves). By contrast, the content/obligatory force—distinction may end up being too ahistorical, in ruling out non-ideal contents ever having validity. The opposite way in which the shape of the positive norms may make a normative difference should be emphasized as well. There may even be cases where the fact that something is publicly accepted as a norm is a reason for acting against it: we might have reasons to act against unjust norms (as in civil disobedience). It is not so that the prevailing Sittlichkeit has full 42  Note that this clearly Hegelian feature can perhaps be criticized for downplaying the power of anticipatory imagination. 43  There are elements in Axel Honneth’s and Charles Taylor’s views which resemble the view under consideration here. See e.g. Charles Taylor, “Heidegger, Language, and Ecology” in his Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995) 100–126; Axel Honneth, The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition (Cambridge: Polity, 2012).

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content-independent authority—by contrast, this view stresses the criticizability and fallibility of any given norm systems. But nonetheless, the norms may have authority. There is no general answer to what the individual ought to do, once it has been spotted that there are such and such problems with the prevailing social order. Should he or she aim to change the norms, but obey them until they are changed? Should they opt for civil disobedience right away? Should they do different things in different cases? It seems that no informative general answer is available. There are of course some implications to what an individual ought to do: If all aspects of positive morality, ethos, Sittlichkeit, are worth reconciling with, then the ethical instruction is clear: abide by the prevailing norms, positive morality, and fulfill the duties of your station. Hegel does not approve of an “anything goes conservatism” of the type that do whatever society tells you to do. Subjective autonomy or conscience has a say. In suitably bad situations, “when the custom cannot satisfy the will of better men” the right thing to do is go Socratic, or Stoic, and determine from oneself the content of the right and the good.44 A rival answer to what to do when one’s conscience and shared norms conflict is that in those cases one should always follow one’s conscience and private judgment. But this would rob the positive ethos, Sittlichkeit, of all authority: it would be to be followed only if it falls together with the views of one’s conscience, and otherwise one’s conscience is to be followed. If one should always only follow one’s conscience, and never act against one’s better judgment, we would end up with a version of subjectivism, Moralität, and not Sittlichkeit. So if there is a systematic tension between subjective conscience, mutual recognition and the ethical substance of customs laws and institutional arrangements, we know only that that tension is a defect, which ought not exist. But the ethical instruction for individuals is not clear: what to do in cases where the prevailing norms are not substantively rational? (Try to change the society via social movements? Civil disobedience? Abide by your role and wait for history to bring progress with it—after all, the Owl of Minerva flies at dusk?).45 44  PR, § 138. 45  Hegel does not exactly tell what an agent ought to do in a society with defects. And as it is likely that all societies will have defects, for an ethical theory not to tell what we should do in such societies, constitutes a major flaw, making it a somewhat useless ethical theory. But then again, for example David Ross’s pluralism lists various prima facie principles and tells us that it is impossible to arrive at an informative metaprinciple telling us what to do

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To sum up, structurally, epistemically and normatively there is crucial dependence of the ethical reality on historical formations, but the existing social reality has genuinely good or bad features. That is why this view counts as realism in its answer to the Euthyphro question: it is realism concerning the good- and bad-making features, but there is great emphasis that we have no immediate access to them, we can evaluate them only in the context of actual, deficient life-forms and social formations. 7 Conclusion The view that I have called ‘sublated constructivism’ or ‘mediated realism’ fares well with central Hegelian desiderata, especially the structural priority of Sittlichkeit over Moralität; historicity; fallibility, and the idea that the move from premodern to modern Sittlichkeit counts as progress. It also preserves the Hegelian distinction between what is genuinely ‘actual’ (as a realization of reason) and what is merely ‘existing’ (say, a practice which is not what it ought to be).46 This paper has merely aimed at discussing three plausibly Hegelian views on the debate on constructivism and realism, and showing that the third avoids some of the problems of the first two views. Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the third view in more detail is a task for another occasion.47

when two prima facie principles conflict (e.g. is it ok to steal to prevent a risk of someone losing a life?). In some cases it is ok to steal in some other cases it is not. 46  A promising fourth alternative to the three Hegelian stories would be that of “Deweyan processualist Hegelianism” (to coin a term) sketched by Arvi Särkelä “Good, Evil and Successful Recognition. A Processualist View on Recognitive Attitudes, Relations and Norms”, Nordicum-Mediterraneum 8, 2, (2013); and “A Restless Spirit. Immanent Critique as Inquiry into Inquiry in Hegel and Dewey”, in Sisäisyys ja suunnistautuminen, ed. A. Laitinen et al. (Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 2014), 74–95. 47  I would like to thank the editors, and the participants of the Venice Hegel conference “I that is We, We that is I”, 5th–7th June 2013, for very helpful critical comments. I would also like to thank Carla Bagnoli, Antti Kauppinen, Annabelle Lever, Juha Räikkä, Saul Smilanski, and other participants in workshops in Turku and Jyväskylä; and Carla Bagnoli, Andy Blunden, Onni Hirvonen, Ilmari Jauhiainen, Joonas Pennanen, Nikos Psarros, Guido Seddone, Titus Stahl, Robert Stern, and Bill Wringe for detailed comments to a written draft.

chapter 8

Hegel’s Theory of Action: Between Conviction and Recognition Francesca Menegoni Abstract: In his theory of action Hegel distinguishes between internal and external factors, which lead to the actuality and the value of the intentional action. As far as the internal elements are concerned, personal conviction has the priority. It precedes the decision that then becomes accomplished fact. Instead, the definition of the moral quality of the action requires the intervention of an external element, which is the mutual acknowledgment of free and autonomous self-consciousnesses within a community based on the language of reconciliation.

1

Hegel’s Theory of Action in the ‘I’ and ‘We’ Perspective

In a recent study Michael Quante has observed how the social nature of acting is one of the most up-to-date aspects of Hegel’s theory of action. By giving the right weight to the normative element of institutions and social practices, this theory is able to explain the complexity of action and its evaluation.1 I believe we can agree with Quante’s judgment provided we accept that Hegel’s thought, having previously acquired the awareness of what the basic elements of individual acting are, can shed light on the complexity of the social nature of action. Hegel describes the different forms through which the social and political practice unfold, only after having explained these basic elements. In the Elements of the Philosophy of Right this is particularly evident. In this work Hegel says that intentional individual action is “the expression of the will as subjective or moral”.2 Purpose and intention define the aim and contents of the action, whilst moral conscience and imputability set limits to the sphere

1  See M. Quante, Die Wirklichkeit des Geistes (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2011), 206. The volume follows an interpretative line that started with M. Quante, Hegel’s Concept of Action, trans. D. Moyar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 2  P R, § 113.

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of the agent’s responsibilities. This perspective widens to the social and political dimension in the third section of the Philosophy of Right. The logicalformal structure outlined in the chapter on Morality (Moralität) unfolds in the existing social and political relations of Sittlichkeit. The controversial relation between society and State and the institutions that govern family relationships, economical relations and administrative acts, intervene here by regulating the internal life of the State’s apparatus and international relations. Finally, history expresses its judgment over the accomplishments of this manifold set.3 I believe that the connection between the perspective on the individual agent and that which considers intersubjective relations (where those who act are groups, communities, institutions, States) in Hegel’s practical philosophy—apart from its widely known aspects connected to a distant time and to social relations and institutions that have long been transformed— is still worthy of attention. If we accept the idea that the basic structure of individual and social actions is the same, i.e. the realization of the purposes and intentions by bringing them to exteriority, we can then say that the major difference between the various forms of practice is the number of agents. In the first case it is a singular ‘I’. Should then the second case be a plural ‘We’? The ‘I’ and the ‘We’ suggest two different perspectives, as would seem from the radical full distinction between Moralität and Sittlichkeit? Or should these two different perspectives perhaps be regarded as closely intertwined? These are the questions from which I wish to begin. Without going through the whole of the Elements of Philosophy of Right, I will try to answer them through the final section of the chapter on spirit in The Phenomenology of Spirit, where the relation between individual and social dimension of action is discussed in a few yet crucial and complex pages. Here this relation is particularly articulate and gives us the opportunity to shed light on the complexity of the evaluation of action and the description of its constitutive elements. The Philosophy of Right focuses on the intentional action and investigates its motives, purposes, consequences in terms of responsibility, imputability, wellbeing, common good, or considers the activities that articulate the life of modern society’s institutions. On the other hand, the pages of the Phenomenology that I will be referring to describe what occurs to conscience when, ex ante, it approaches to action and, ex post, it reflects upon the concluded action. The distinction between these two moments is a clear one. Depending on whether the action is considered from a descriptive or evaluative, formal 3   See Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak, Modern Freedom. Hegel’s Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) and Ludwig Siep (ed.), G.W.F. Hegel: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005).

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or material point of view, through internal or external reasons, this distinction helps to keep the two levels of the same phenomenon separate. Only by keeping these two levels separate, as Hegel does, we can focus on the complexity of the individual and social action. The choice of this methodological approach is inscribed, as we will see, in a broader argumentative frame, where the ‘I’ and ‘We’ perspectives are closely intertwined. As the structural elements of the individual’s intentional action are present even where those who are acting are groups or institutions, in the same way the single I’s process of selfconsciousness cannot be separate from the cooperation to a common cause.4 This is what I will try to show here, first of all by considering the individual action. 2

The Origin of Intentional Individual Action

Behind every intentional action are primarily personal reasons. These reasons are called motives and lead towards the decision from which the action itself then stems. Hegel tackles the issue in many sections of his work underlining the importance of decision for the action’s fulfilment. For example, in the Elements of Philosophy of Right he claims that, keeping in mind the multiple desires and inclinations that move the agent’s will, the will does not only decide but also “makes its mind up” by choosing one of the many different possibilities that lie ahead, thus, becoming actual (wirklich) will.5 In this perspective, we can recall the several debts that Hegel’s theory of action has with Aristotle’s philosophy, in particular with the elements that induce movement in the De anima (III, 9) and the voluntary nature of actions in the Nicomachean Ethics (III, 1–5). In Aristotle’s theory appetite (orexis) is set as a central element for movement and action. He also distinguishes between the moment of deliberation (bouleusis), that precedes action, and that of choice or decision (prohairesis), whence the action starts.

4  The themes I’m briefly focusing on and referring to have been developed by various studies in different years. In particular may I refer to F. Menegoni, Moralità e morale in Hegel (Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1982); Soggetto e struttura dell’agire in Hegel (Trento: Pubblicazioni di Verifiche, 1993); Elemente zu einer Handlungstheorie in der “Moralität” (§§ 104–128), in Siep (ed.), G.W.F. Hegel: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 125–146; Action Between Conviction and Recognition in Hegel’s Critique of the Moral Worldviews, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (eds.), Hegel On Action (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 244–259. 5  P R, § 12.

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Hegel’s debt to the Aristotelian teaching is evident for instance in his Nuremberg lessons. When explaining to his students the idea of the subtended unity of what in conscience seems to be always divided between an internal sphere, represented by conscience and will, and an external one consisting of the existing world and the objective realization of the intended purposes, Hegel brings to their attention action itself. The action either gives the inner determinations of conscience an external reality or recognizes in existence the outcome of the will’s expression.6 This means that action is an expression of the unity of inner and outer. Thought analyses the completed deed and thus divides the action’s unity into its separate components. Just as action is considered in its unity, that thought then analytically splits in its components, so should the agent be. It would be strange to consider him/her as schizophrenically divided between irrational and rational motives. When considering action as an expression of unity, we can see how with the immediate need, that is driven towards its intended aim, the examination is closely associated to the means needed for the aim’s achievement and if these are adequate. This process compares the different goals and through a calculation chooses the ones that are supposed to give a greater satisfaction. In line with Aristotle’s thought, Hegel teaches his students that the synthesis of the appetitive movement and the reflective one is expressed as choice and decision.7 Regarding the determination of decision, however, Hegel seems to abandon the Aristotelian path and take that of the Kantian tradition when underlining a peculiarity of his own language. This is the distinction between etwas beschließen, to decide, to deliberate something and thus remove the vagueness in which a content is only a possible one, and sich entschließen, to decide oneself.8 The latter is not simply a decision. The sich entschließen underlines that conscience and will realize their own contents, i.e. their aims, through themselves and emphasizes how action is an expression of the independence and self-determination of will. 6  Hegel, Rechts-, Pflichten- und Religionslehre für die Unterklasse in Werke 4, 205, 216–7. 7  See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics (VI, 2, 1139 b 4–5, trans. D. Ross, Oxford University Press, Oxford, vol. 9), where Aristotle says that “choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man”. 8  “To resolve on something [etwas beschließen] is to cancel [aufheben] that indeterminacy in which each and every content is initially no more than a possibility. But our language also contains the alternative expression sich entschließen [to decide] which indicates that the indeterminacy of the will itself, as something neutral yet infinitely fruitful, the original seed of all existence [Dasein], contains its determinations and ends within itself, and merely brings them forth from within” (PR, § 12).

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To decide oneself through the Self gives to conscience (that is about to act) the chance to free itself from the palsy that follows from placing the reasons for acting sometimes in oneself, sometimes outside oneself. Here Hegel seems to repeat what Kant and Fichte had said before him by giving to the moral conscience, Gewissen, a very large responsibility. When we get to the actual moment of action, “conscience speaks involuntarily and unavoidably”9 and then decides, interrupting any form of thought, pondering, comparison between pro and contra. But where does decision itself come from? Hegel believes that it follows from an act of personal conviction and not from will. Only at a second stage does personal conviction resolve in the decision with which conscience chooses one of the many possibilities set before it. The time lapse between conviction and decision could even be very short but the two moments can never coincide. For instance we may consider the selflessness of he who risks his life by throwing himself in the water to save another’s life. The decision that causes the action implies a personal conviction rooted in one’s conscience. This belief does not exclude the possibility that one may risk his own life to defend someone else’s. I believe that this example, as simple as it might be, can show us the importance of the link between conviction and decision in all those cases connected to the notion of life, its beginning and its ending. The personal conviction of the agent is a subjectively sufficient but objectively insufficient way of “holding as true” (Fürwahrhalten). However, as Kant claims in the Critique of Pure Reason, this subjective belief has an immediate practical effectiveness, being it the condition required for the intentional action to be performed. Without personal conviction there cannot be either decision nor action. In the pages of the Phenomenology that Hegel devotes to Gewissen this aspect is made explicit by showing how personal conviction is a feature of knowledge and not of will. Evaluating the multiple circumstances that endlessly unfold backwards (the condition of possibility), sideways (let us call them concurrent circumstances or causes) and forwards (the consequences of the completed deed), the moral conscience believes its knowledge to be sufficient and apt to produce that specific decision and action, even if it is incomplete in many respects. The morally aware conscience (das gewissenhafte Bewußtsein) holds “this incomplete knowledge [. . .] to be sufficient and complete, because it is its own knowledge”.10 9 

Immanuel Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals”, in Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 530. 10  PS § 642 (GW 9, 346).

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Starting from knowledge, that the Philosophy of Right defines as “the right of knowledge”11 where “conscience expresses the absolute entitlement of subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from itself what right and duty are”,12 all the elements that concur in determining an intentional action a parte subiecti, flow in the personal conviction that precedes decision. The consequences of this “right of knowledge” are manifold and limit the agent’s moral responsibilities only to the contents of his knowledge. 3

The Value of Action

Personal conviction, that precedes the decision, is the internal factor from which the action stems. However this does not imply anything in terms of juridical, moral and social value of the act. Let us consider this second aspect, keeping in mind that according to Hegel, the determination of the significance and quality of the act depend on external and intersubjective factors, rather than on internal ones. In the transition from description to evaluation, Hegel takes a step forward beyond Aristotle and Kant. Hegel writes that action has value when the obligation of duty coincides in the agent with his own conviction. He also adds that the deed (Tat) has “subsistence and reality” (Bestehen und Wirklichkeit, not simply Dasein), as it is recognized in the common element of self-consciousness.13 Having spoken of the deed (Tat), we can now briefly recall some of the main aspects of Hegel’s theory of action, in which ‘deed’ itself is strongly distinguished from ‘action’ (Handlung). This distinction underlines the difference between “the heroic self-consciousness (as in the ancient tragedies like that of Oedipus)”, and the self-consciousness of modern man. The former “has not yet progressed from its unalloyed simplicity to reflect on the distinction between deed and action, between the external event and the purpose and knowledge of the circumstances, or to analyse the consequences minutely, but accepts responsibility for the deed in its entirety”.14 With the strict distinction between intentional action (Handlung) and completed deed (Tat), Hegel further rejects Kant’s philosophy through an intentional overturning of the terms used by Kant. For Kant, Handlung is a broad, generic term, referring to any causality indicating a subject that could also be 11  12  13  14 

PR, § 117. PR, § 137. PS, § 640 (GW 9, 344). PR, § 118.

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a natural element, so that to describe the action of a subject (Handlung for Hegel), he uses the word Tat.15 Beyond these considerations on the use of the words deed and action, the seemingly paradoxical idea that an action is real (wirklich) when it is recognized, seems to me to be particularly interesting. Hegel does not state that action is produced because it is recognized, since this would deny the value of personal conviction and decision. Instead, he wants to underline the distinction between two different processes occurring during the reflection vis-à-vis the action. The first describes the parts constituting the action, in terms of personal conviction and decision. The second evaluates the quality or value of the action. If moral consciousness decides and acts according to its beliefs, the evaluation of the act is not up to the single Gewissen as in Kant, but to the community of self-consciousnesses. What matters in determining the value of the action is not whether an intention was acted upon or not, nor the rectitude of such intention, but rather that all the acting self-consciousnesses recognize that a personal sense of duty is not established by a single consciousness, but results by the mutual acknowledgment amongst free and autonomous self-consciousnesses. Those who declare to be acting with rectitude and fairness—Hegel writes— do not lie.16 However, it is essential that they state their belief. Proclaiming it means displaying one’s reasons, and engaging in public discussion. It means being aware that one’s reasons have to be valid and might have to be protected against other reasons that are not in any way less valid. To decide over the conformity or lack of personal sense of duty, it is necessary for the ‘I’ to declare itself. Only through this manifestation the process of recognition amongst self-consciousnesses can take place. In this way the single Self “acknowledges all other selves and is acknowledged by them”.17 This means that the process of mutual acknowledgment in a community of selfconscious Selves, is based on the language used by the agent to display his/her motivations.

15  Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals”, 378. 16   P S, § 653 (GW 9, 351). 17  PS, § 654 (GW 9, 352). See A. Honneth, Von der Begierde zur Anerkennung. Hegels Begründung von Selbstbewußtsein, in K. Vieweg and W. Welsch (eds.), Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu einem Schlüsselwerk der Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 187–204.

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Recognition and Language

The reference to language allows us to make a further step towards understanding the statement that the completed act has significance and value by being acknowledged in the community of self-consciousnesses. Not every language and not every community can guarantee the value of the action. The case of the community of the beautiful souls who rejoice over their moral integrity is iconic. This community, satisfied by the members’ mutual assurances on the goodness of their actions, has a language, and, in addition, it experiments a form of recognition, however twisted this may be. This means that it is not enough for the agent to declare himself, and to lay the foundations for some kind of acknowledgment in order to have a guarantee of the quality of the action. Clearly, the value of the completed deed depends on the community and on the language, which cannot be that of culture, adulation, or disruption, nor the sigh of the beautiful soul, or the intolerant attitude of one who believes he can judge the depth of someone’s soul, or of one who does not listen to the reasons of those who have confessed to have acted wrongly. A community structured on the recognition of free and independent selfconsciousnesses is based on a particular language and on a reconciling word. In the Phenomenology, such word is defined as the “The reconciling Yea” (Das versöhnende Ja).18 In order for this word to be pronounced, it is necessary for the agent to state his reasons for acting. This way, the ‘I’ opens up to the external world and thus discusses with the others. This discussion only provides the possibility—not an assurance—for the condition of being at one with oneself in another to occur. This condition, for Hegel, is the essence of freedom, as well as the result of the process of acknowledgment. The “reconciling Yea” is fundamental in showing how important language is in the process of recognition. When the “reconciling Yea” is not said, the struggle for recognition persists. A struggle that, by subduing each other’s conscience creates a condition of dependence and absence of self-determination. On the contrary, the “reconciling Yea” expresses the liberation of self-consciousness from the night of the I=I. Here, language is much more than just a tool. It is the place where spirit is truly actualized amongst self-consciousnesses, the place where the ‘I’ becomes aware of his identity, since language is the “the middle term, mediating between independent and acknowledged self-consciousnesses”.19 18  PS, § 671 (GW 9, 362). 19  PS, § 653 (GW 9, 351).

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Unlike in the Elements of Philosophy of Right, Hegel shows here how spirit understands itself through language. Language, thus, is necessary to evaluate the quality of the action in terms of actual subsistence, efficiency, and moral value. The possibility of mutual acknowledgment depends on language, as the circularity and unity between the ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and the ‘We’ that is ‘I’ is realized. This equation well expresses the outcome of recognition and the meaning of Hegel’s social philosophy.20 Hegel distinguishes between the phenomenologically conceived process of recognition and actual recognition, that is given to the free and the equal in institutionalized contexts based on the notion of right. It is not by chance that we can then talk of the outcome of the process of recognition. In the Encyclopaedia Hegel writes: “The combat of recognition and the subjugation under a master is the appearance in which man’s social life, the beginning of states, emerged”.21 Thus he underlines the fact that it is only an exterior beginning and not an actual one. This last consideration leads us towards the conclusion of my talk. Just as not all language attains the “reconciling Yea”, that brings acknowledgment into act, not all communities can guarantee the value of the action being carried out. This theme is developed in the context of the philosophy of objective spirit, which focuses on the actions of individuals, groups and institutions. The interaction between individuals and institutions subtends the different expressions of right as realization of freedom.22 Hegel writes that the individual Self cannot realize itself without cooperating to achieve a common cause, and that there cannot be a common cause without the conscience and realization of the individual Self. In the 1817 Encyclopaedia (§ 434) Hegel specifies that if the individual Self is to have “the possibility of having a full status and position, he must generally be shaped and become something, by actively working to be recognized as a specific contributor to the universal cause”. This universal cause is the result of a twofold work. When the conditions that guarantee the self-realization of individuals are realized in the life of a political community, “without reflective choice the person fulfils his duty as

20  By underlining the importance of language for the existence and the mutual acknowledgment of consciences that are aware of their identity and the community to which they belong, Hegel certainly brings back the tradition that, starting from Aristotle (Politics, I, 2), has made language the essential element that distinguishes human beings and their way of relating to the world. 21  Enc. III, § 433. 22  PR, § 4.

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his own”.23 In a community where the general interest is cared for as that of the individuals we then have a mutual acknowledgment between institutions and individuals. The former have value as they are accepted by the latter that then feel represented by them and answer with trust.24 I would like to think of a community that not only transposes these fundamental principles in its constitution, but can also actively guarantee all its citizens the possibility to have a status and a position, the right to education and the dignity of being recognized as actors and contributors to the universal cause. (Translated from Italian by Christopher Martinuzzi)

23  Enc. III, § 514. 24  Enc. III, § 515.

chapter 9

The Normativity of Ethical Life Axel Honneth Abstract: In the following I will attempt to exonerate the contextualist Hegelian account of morality, which he introduces under the title ‘Sittlichkeit’ or ‘ethical life’, from the charge of mere conventionalism. I will try to show that his concept of ethical life furnishes the author of the Philosophy of Right with a set of historically immanent criteria that allow him to distinguish, within the horizon of a given form of life, between valid norms and merely accepted ones. It will be important to present Hegel’s method in a way that avoids, as far as possible, holding it hostage to his philosophy of spirit, which can hardly serve as an acceptable premise today.

Recent years have seen a widespread tendency to pay renewed attention to Hegel’s cri­tique of the moral standpoint. In contemporary practical philosophy it is no longer an uncontested truth that norms or laws can be called ‘moral’ only when they can be shown through an impartial testing procedure— conducted alone or in common—to be univer­sally obligatory or binding. There are various different reasons for the departure from this model of moral normativity, ranging from a focus on the question of moral motiva­tion to a critique of the merely prescriptive character of the obligations derived in this way. What has emerged as the decisive objection is the paradox faced by Kant and his successors that moral self-determination or self-binding presupposes a kind of freedom that can in turn be explained only by recourse to already existing moral norms.1 Suppose, the argument goes, that we wish to reserve the predicate ‘moral’ for those norms that we can conceive of as ‘freely’ gene­ rated through an act of autonomous self-subjection or through an uncoer­ ced consensus. In order to do so, we will sooner or later, but inevitably, have to bring moral norms into play so that we may first establish the agential freedom or the communicative accord that we have been presupposing.

1  For a summary exposition, see Terry Pinkard, “Das Paradox der Autonomie: Kants Problem und Hegels Lösung” in Thomas Khurana and Christoph Menke (eds.) Paradoxien der Autonomie (Berlin: August Verlag, 2011), 25–60.

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This commitment to prior norms is in effect conceded by Kant under the guise of the ‘fact of reason’, whereas dis­course ethics tends to obscure it through its seemingly innocuous reference to the need for “complementary forms of life”.2 Both of these forms taken by the commitment point to the same predicament: the general validity of certain moral norms must already be pre­supposed in order for the procedure of individual or communicative self-determination to be intelligible in the first place. This critique of the groundlessness of a purely con­structivist moral theory has led to a resurgence of approaches that set out from an antecedently given horizon of moral norms and rules. The pendulum of historical retrie­val whose operation seems to pervade all philosophical research has swung back to the­ories of morality that seek reconstructively to extract principles and obligations from norms already in existence. This new orientation brings with it a danger complementary to that of Kantianism, which some have been quick to label ‘neo-Aristotelianism’. To derive all moral norms from a historical context consisting of already accepted practical rules and forms of life, since it is they to which we owe our deliberative freedom, seems inevitably to amount to legitimizing a given moral order. The contrast between social acceptance and moral validity, which is a familiar feature of our everyday life, threatens to completely disap­pear, since we now lack independent criteria for distinguishing between norms that are merely socially practised and ones that are morally justified. It is not hard to predict that until this charge of conventionalism has been answered, the voices of Kant and his dis­ciples will continue to be a powerful influence in moral philosophy. Despite all the wor­ries about abstract formalism, historically conscious philosophers will continue to return to approaches that set out from the idea that moral norms must be thought of as the results of some test of impartiality, be it individual or communicative, real or merely hypothe­tical. To find a way of escaping from this unresolved tension, I will attempt to exonerate the contextualist Hegelian account of morality from the charge of mere conventionalism. I will try to show that his concept of ethical life furnishes the author of the Philosophy of Right with a set of historically immanent criteria that allow him to distinguish, within the horizon of a given form of life, between valid norms and merely accepted ones. It will be important to present Hegel’s method in a way that avoids, as far as possible, holding it hostage to his philosophy of spirit, which can hardly serve as an acceptable premise today. Hegel’s doctrine of ethical life will be a viable option for moral philosophy only if it can be translated into an idiom that does not rely on the ontological presupposition of a 2  Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 210.

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universally self-realizing spirit. In a first step, I will in this way—postmetaphysically, so to speak—identify the general criteria that Hegel sets out as immanent givens of any ethical form of life (I). In a second step, I am going to examine whether this provides us with clues for discerning a certain directionality of moral development (II). The demands that Hegel places on what he refers to by the umbrella term ‘ethical life’ are the positive results of the various objections he levels against Kant’s moral philoso­phy. The standpoint of morality, after all, is not simply to be abandoned. Instead it should be rid of its abstractness in such a way as to render intelligible why many past and present kinds of social practice already contain, to varying degrees, some form of the principle of universalization that Kant saw fit to juxtapose to reality as we encounter it. Existing or past social practices therefore qualify as ‘ethical’ by Hegel’s lights only if they enjoin us in an inconspicuous way—in the manner of customs rather than through external impera­tives—to respect other persons and accordingly to ‘infringe upon’ our self-love.3 Thus a neo-Aristotelian view on which each social form of life is normatively endorsed simply for its motivational and ethical power was alien to Hegel from the outset. Throughout his work he was far too entangled in the Kantian conception of moral autonomy, and far too invested in sublating it into the ‘objective spirit’ of institutional reality, to so much as consider reasoning from the mere social acceptance of arbitrary systems of norms to their normative validity. The abstractness, formality and motivational ineffectiveness for which he reproaches Kant’s idea of morality must have been correctively absorbed by his own concept of ‘ethical life’ in a way that of itself yields the criteria by which merely given normative practices can be distinguished from justified ones. A first requirement that practices must meet if they are to qualify as ethical, and thus to achieve a social sublation or embedding of morality, results from the paradox of moral freedom that I briefly explained at the beginning of my talk. If it is true that insofar as we exercise moral self-determination, we must presuppose the validity of those norms to which we owe the freedom thus exercised, then practices can be candidates for ‘ethical life’ only if their normative structure gives rise to this sort of freedom. Human activity counts as a socially realized form of morality not in virtue of being guided by any rules whatsoever but only in virtue of being guided by normative principles that allow the par­ticipants to mutually view each other both as their authors and as their addressees. Hegel is thus faced with the task of articulating a conception of 3  Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, in Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 56 (fn.).

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human practices that exhibits this structure of reciprocal empowerment and authorization, and even at quite an early stage of his work he addresses this task by developing his concept of recognition, follow­ing Fichte.4 This concept refers to a special set of social actions that have the following property: those who perform such actions know themselves to be subject to a certain nor­ mative obligation, which arises from the right of others to judge their actions by refer­ence to an underlying norm. When we take ourselves to love another person according to a determinate, socially acquired norm, we feel that we are subject to the resulting duties insofar as we accord to the loved one a status that allows him or her to hold our actions to the standards we are presupposing. In the case of formal right we know ourselves to be subject to the relevant norms because we accord all other legal persons the power and the ability to assess our practical interpretation of the obligations mutually accepted by all. Each act of recognition consists in according to one or several other persons the authority to judge the normative aptness of one’s own actions. In offer­ ing recognition, the recognizing agent ‘infringes on’ his ‘self-love’ insofar as he now knows himself to be bound by the norm with respect to whose application he has granted the other agent or agents a say. Thus on Hegel’s account a practice deserves the label ‘ethical’ only if a group of persons, which may vary in size, follows a norm to which each among them may in principle appeal to evaluate the actions of one of the other partici­pants. This condition excludes both unilaterally enforced interactions and action from mere routine, and only when the condition is met does social reality exhibit the interplay of selfdetermination and normative obligation that Kant thought could be understood only as an isolated act of reflection removed from everyday practice. I will here set aside the question whether and to what extent such practices of shared norm following, based on reciprocal recognition, presuppose the existence of collective intentionality. In his doctoral dissertation written in our department, Titus Stahl has gone a long way towards answering this question.5 I also need to mention here a further component of this initial characterization of ethi­cal practice, which belongs to it no less than the possible presupposition of collective intentionality, and without which Hegel’s whole approach would remain unintelligible. The kind of norm that a given group of agents 4  Cf. Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie. Untersuchungen in Hegels Jenaer Philosophie des Geistes (Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber Ver­lag, 1979); Andreas Wildt, Autonomie und Anerkennung. Hegels Moralitätskritik im Lichte seiner Fichte-Rezeption (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982). 5  Titus Stahl, Immanente Kritik. Elemente einer Theorie sozialer Praktiken (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2013), ch. 4, 191–255.

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follows by mutually granting each other the authority to judge their respective individual interpretations and applications of it also determines, at least in outline, in which role or in which aspect of their personality they can come to encounter each other in the first place. To return to Hegel’s paradig­matic example:6 when participants in a collective practice are guided by the romantic norm of love, they are able in their reciprocal evaluations to offer arguments that are more directly expressive of their emotional states than when they assess each other as members of a legal community. In this latter case, the only admissible considerations are ones in which emotions have already been to some extent neutralized, whereas in the for­mer case agents may object to some proposed application of a norm by citing reasons that simply articulate their emotional attitudes. This dependency of the admissibility of types of reasons on the collectively acknowledged norm leads Hegel to conclude that the act of reciprocal recognition underlying the shared obligations cannot be understood simply as an ascription of deliberative autonomy, but must be thought of as according others this or that particular kind of freedom.7 He can therefore say, putting things briefly, that in the context of the norm of love participants in a practice recognize each other as beings who have needs, whereas within the horizon of formal right they respect each other as ‘legal personalities’. What these qualitative distinctions mean in detail emerges only once we understand how they are respectively associated with different admissible reasons guid­ing the evaluation of actions. To recognize somebody as a creature with needs, or more briefly, as a lover, is then simply to accord him or her the authority to evaluate one’s own actions in light of the jointly accepted norm by appealing to reasons that are purely per­sonal and emotionally tinged. As a context of agency founded on mutual recognition, each ethical practice generates its own specific forms of deliberative autonomy and along with this its own specific type of personality, which is relative to the reasons that can be appealed to according to the jointly accepted norm.8 Hegel was not content, however, merely to demonstrate against Kant’s moral theory that the principle of universalization abstractly emphasized by the latter is always already practised in specific contexts of ethical activity. 6  Cf. PR, §§ 161–2. 7  These considerations are directed against Robert Brandom, who tends to reduce the idea of recognition to the mutual granting of a single type of deliberative autonomy. Cf. Robert Bran­dom, Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), chs. 2 and 3, 52–109. 8  Cf. Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), ch. 5, 92–130.

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He also held that the standpoint of morality illicitly opposes duty to inclination and reason to sensibility. A further task for him was therefore to show how it is that within an ethical practice these aspects are not separated to begin with. To this end Hegel tries to outline a second immanent account of all forms of ethical life, which he takes to be no less important than the first one. In his view we can speak of a social embedding or sublation of morality only when the norms validated through our reciprocal recognition provide for an interdependency between our duties and our inclinations. In opposition to Kant, Hegel insists that whenever the members of a social group have subjected themselves to some moral norm by reciprocally according each other the rel­evant kind of authority, the norm itself must be reflective of some ethical value that expresses the inclinations and intentions of each of the agents. Only thus is it possible for the collectively accepted obligations not to be experienced as confines or obstacles that stand opposed to an agent’s own purposes, but as “determinations towards freedom”, as one student transcript of Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of right has it.9 In Hegel’s view, as long as the norms endorsed through reciprocal self-subjection within a socially practiced morality are expressive of ethical purposes that each participant can view as a condition of his or her own self-realization, there is no gulf separating duty and inclina­tion and no opposition between reason and sensibility. In fact one should probably go so far as to say that on Hegel’s view, moral norms are conceptually inseparable from values if only because in the absence of substantive ethical content, those norms would hardly be capable of setting in motion a collective process of reciprocal self-constraint. There­fore Hegel identifies a second immanent criterion of ‘ethical life’ or ethical action: namely that the collectively accepted norms must be such as to display a certain ethical purpose.10 When normative rules cease to be amalgamated with values, the participants in a practice can no longer conceive of their mutually ascribed obligations as conditions of their respective self-realization, and their shared practice is then no longer an ethical one. It is already through this quite basic conceptual maneuver that Hegel makes the nor­mative validity of any 9  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts. Vorlesungen von 1821/22 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 157. 10  Hegel offers several different characterizations of this requirement on all ethical action, but generally he holds that it must be possible for the natural needs of individuals to be ‘molded’ by objective spirit through processes of ethical formation; cf., for example, PR, § 187. Elsewhere he seeks to capture the same condition by say­ing of ‘ethical substantiality’ that its ‘universal’ includes ‘the end which moves [the ethical character]’ (PR, § 152).

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system of norms depend on a historical process that is not under the control of the agents involved in it. Even though their mutual ascriptions of authority qualify them as the authors as well as the addressees of any given norm, it is not within their power to ensure that the norm continues to have ethical resonance as individual inclinations change over time. This raises the question what role history plays for Hegel’s concept of ethical life. Before I turn to that question I will first summarize how he pictures the re-embedding or sublation of morality into the reality of social action. As we have seen, Hegel wants to retain Kant’s view that moral actions are exercises of a certain sort of voluntary self-constraint or self-subjection. Yet for reasons having to do with his diagnosis of the paradox of moral autonomy, he does not accept that such actions could take place in a noumenal realm independent of any prior normative practice, as though moral norms were first to be generated or created through them. Instead he assumes that human individuals always find themselves already inhabiting a world of socially practised norms, which they can subsequently make their own by according the other participants in the practice the authority to assess their contributions to it. When this sort of recognition is reciprocally granted by all the members of a group governed by a certain norm, this gives rise to the kind of obligations Hegel calls “ethical”,11 which henceforth serve as the foundation of an ethical practice or form of life. But Hegel is enough of a realist to hold that practised norms stand a chance of being vindicated through collective appropriation only if the demands made by them are such that parti­cipants can view them as conditions of their own self-realization. Therefore he believes that ethical obligations and ethical spheres of action exist only where the relevant inter­ subjective norms point to choiceworthy ends or where they reflect generally accepted values. The two criteria just alluded to lie at the foundation of Hegel’s concept of ethical life. Social norms that are objectively valid, in contrast to ones that merely enjoy de facto acceptance, are distinguished both by the fact that they are appealed to as principles for the reciprocal evaluation of actions within a group and by the fact that they express val­ues affirmed by the members of the group. In Hegel’s view this conception of ethical practice imports back into social reality almost everything that Kant’s idea of ‘morality’ had presented as a separate principle opposed to that reality. Whenever a sphere of ethi­cal life is established—which Hegel holds to be indispensable for the reproduction of society—the curtailing of ‘self-love’ demanded by Kant is integral to everyday reality itself and does not require a search for special motivational sources. 11  Cf. PR, § 148.

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Thus for Hegel, the standard model of the social efficacy of morality is the collective appropriation of ethical norms, whose validity is owed to the fact that the members of a group mutually grant each other the authority to evaluate their respective applications of those norms. Yet Hegel is aware that the solution he suggests does not capture all of the implications that Kant intended his idea of moral autonomy to have. For applying the Categorical Impera­tive is meant to curtail our self-love not just in relation to the members of our particular group but rather in relation to all human beings, and thereby to ensure that we respect them in the way morality requires. It is well known that Hegel’s answer to this challenge is a philosophy of history whose task it is to demonstrate that the historical process as a whole can be understood as a progressive self-realization of spirit, which in its final stages brings forth ethical equivalents of Kantian moral universalism. My main concern in the second part of my talk, to which I will now turn, is not whether Hegel succeeded in presenting the universalist content of Kantian morality as the result of a progress in the consciousness of freedom. That will no longer strike us as plausible today. Instead I will ask whether his standard model of ethical life contains theoretical elements that could allow us to conceive of this sort of progress even without presupposing an objectivist philosophy of history.12 In reconstructing the immanent criteria contained in Hegel’s concept of ethical life, we have encountered two kinds of considerations that require us to take into account histor­ical processes and historical trends. First, we saw that Hegel conceives of morality as socially embedded insofar as it is the result of the collective institution of norms whose individual application and exercise are subject to reciprocal evaluation by the members of a group. Insofar as the participants in any particular form of ethical life grant each other a say in what counts as the adequate realization of a norm, their shared practice becomes subject to a certain historical dynamic, since each member of the collectivity may criticize the actions of the other or others and may call on them to act in a more adequate way. Even if Hegel did not always face up to the implications of this idea, it follows that morality, understood as the totality of the norms 12  The assumptions that form the premises of Hegel’s philosophy of history are discussed in a very convincing essay by Rolf-Peter Horstmann, “Der geheime Kantianismus in Hegels Geschichtsphilosophie”, in Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Die Grenzen der Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1991), 221–44. Cf. also Emil Angehrn, “Vernunft in der Geschichte? Zum Problem der Hegelschen Geschichtsphilosophie”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 35 (1981): 341–64. Martin Saar argues that when the relevant passages are properly taken into account, Hegel’s philosophy of history can also be seen as independent of objectivist premises: Martin Saar, “Fortschritt im Rückblick. Zum Zusammenhang von Geschichtsphilosophie und Philosophie­geschichte bei Hegel” (unpublished MS). This converges with my own suggestion further below.

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accepted in the relevant way, is characterized by an ineradicable element of historical revisability and openness. A second respect in which ethical life turns out to be dependent on historical processes emerges from the observation, made earlier, that Hegel considers the ethical resonance or expressiveness of norms to be a precondition of their successful adoption into ethical practice. In his view, a given socially practised norm will be appropriated by a group in the required way only if the members of the practice can jointly conceive of that norm as desirable for the sake of their self-realization. But individual inclinations and disposi­tions change over time, and therefore socially habituated ‘ethical’ norms may suddenly lose the motivational power that they owe to the values they embody. Thus in this respect too there is an ineliminable element of historical openness in all ethical life. At any given time, practical rules that until then used to enjoy intersubjective acceptance may cease to be followed and may consequently lose their ‘objective’ validity because they no longer sufficiently reflect the currently prevalent desires, intentions and ends. Even though Hegel acknowledges and explicitly mentions these two respects in which history enters into the ethical world, he does not make much of them in his presentation of progress in human history. He does at times mention the struggle for recognition as an engine of historical transformations and ameliorations, but generally speaking he relies on the ontological conception of a progressive self-realization of spirit advancing inde­pendently of any deliberate efforts on the part of human agents. Given the failure of this sort of objectivist historical teleology the question today is whether the elements of his­torical change inherent in Hegel’s concept of ethical life may perhaps be sufficient, or at least provide us with some clues, for making the idea of moral progress in history intelligible without presupposing the existence of an anonymous self-realizing spirit. Such a project would amount to an attempt to reverse the trajectory from Kant to Hegel in the philosophy of history while availing oneself of explanatory resources drawn from Hegel’s theory of ethical life rather than from Kant’s anthropology in order to outline a plausible, hypothetically intended conception of progress.13 In closing, I will limit myself to a 13  As Yirmiyahu Yovel has persuasively shown in his Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), Kant’s heuristically intended con­ struction of world-historical progress already relies on certain conceptual elements of a struggle for rec­ognition, though he conceives of this struggle—following Rousseau— as essentially consisting in a conflict fueled by vanity and pride. The goal of my own proposal is to combine such a heuristic explanatory scheme with a notion of struggles for recognition that assigns them an ineliminably normative dimension. This is what is meant by the suggestion that we retrace the path back from Hegel’s philosophy of history to Kant’s, by relying on ideas found in Hegel’s work itself.

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few remarks in this respect, which more than anything will reveal how many gaps remain to be filled in explaining such a possible progress in the realm of moral norms. We saw that on Hegel’s view, merely given, habitually practised norms are trans­formed into ethical obligations when the participants in the relevant practice mutually accord each other the authority to hold their respective actions to certain fundamental standards. Thus there can be no ethical sphere, no institutionalized domain of moral action, that is not anchored in relations of reciprocal recognition. This individual empowerment gives each participant the right to cite reasons that in light of a collectively shared norm speak against one person’s or several other persons’ particular way of put­ting that norm into practice. Generally speaking it is therefore part of the everyday exer­cise of an ethical practice that despite the emergence of shared habits, the application of the standards inherent in the practice remains subject to contestation since there is a con­tinual stream of novel objections and reservations. As in other areas of habitual action, such as ‘writing’ and ‘reading’, the ‘ethos’ of ethical life [die ‘Sitten’ der Sittlichkeit] is not rigid and fixed once and for all but exhibits a certain flexibility and reflective corrig­ibility that leaves room for revisions in the light of new insights. Within any given ethical sphere, the reasons that may be brought against accustomed ways of following its stan­dards are—on the one hand—relative to the fundamental norm of that sphere; but on the other hand these reasons may also emerge from new discoveries enabled by that funda­mental norm. In general, all norms that are capable of being collectively adopted and thus of being elevated to the status of ethical principles—such as the principle of ancien­try, the principle of care, or the principle of equality— are not only open enough to permit very different kinds of application, but also serve a cognitive function that makes them comparable to spotlights capable of illuminating ever new circumstances and states of affairs. Now suppose that participants appeal to such reasons in support of objections that over time lead to revisions in the way norms are applied, and thus to revisions in the ethi­ cal practice itself. The historical accumulation of these objections will have the effect of creating increasingly narrow constraints that each further critique must meet before it is taken into account. The various innovations in the practice of a given ethical norm, which in essence amount either to an increasing generalization or an increasing differentiation of that norm, are not lost from one generation to the next but gradually add up to yield thresholds that all future arguments offered by the members of the group must be able to cross. So conceived, the history of an ethical sphere is an unplanned learning process kept in motion by a struggle for recognition, since the participants con­tend for specific ways of applying an institutionalized norm according to their own

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respective situations and sensibilities. The further this struggle advances— that is to say, the more revisions have already been made to the practice of a given norm—the more restricted is the dialectical space that remains available for novel objections and grie­vances.14 In this way the history of an ethical sphere can be thought of as a conflictual process whereby a certain validity surplus initially inherent in every ethical norm is gra­dually stripped away. If we wish to remain within the space of normatively mediated conflicts and to main­tain that human history is a history of struggles for recognition, we need to offer an explanation of why over time certain ethical norms lose their collective acceptability and are gradually replaced by others that are more open and more universalizable. This brings me to the second point in Hegel where history plays a role in the formation of ethical life. In his theory of ethical life, rather than in his teleological philosophy of his­tory, Hegel argues that each conflict over the application of a norm brings about changes in the very desires and inclinations that first gave rise to that conflict. The struggle itself, we could say, has a socializing effect on those who take part in it, insofar as it forces them to better understand their own motives and thereby enhances the force of individua­lization. This, for example, is how Hegel views the modern institution of the family, where the adolescent in struggling for the love of others gradually develops motives that finally lead him or her to leave the familiar normative sphere altogether. When this idea of a socializing feedback effect of the struggle for recognition is transposed to larger his­ torical contexts, the implication could be that in the course of a protracted conflict over the adequate realization of a given ethical principle the motives of the parties to this con­flict are transformed to a point where they no longer consider the relevant norm to be desirable at all. Due to the pressures of individuation released by the struggle, their aims and inclinations and their conceptions of the good would then have changed to such an extent that they no longer regard the accustomed norm as having any intelligible value.15 Such an 14  This idea was at the basis of the reconstructive method I employed in the empirical and his­torical sections of Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014). 15  These formulations are rather provisional. Their intention is to suggest that the theory of rec­ognition offers an interpretation of the world-historical process that many modern thinkers—foremost among them Hegel and Durkheim—have described as a process of ‘individuation’ or ‘individualization’. The basic idea is that the aforementioned conflicts over the interpretation of institutionalized principles of recognition serve to increase the extent to which individual motives and particularities can be understood and owned up to. Those conflicts themselves force us to acquire a better understanding of such individual motives, so as to be able to cite them in our normative arguments.

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ethically faded or withered norm, over whose correct application the struggles of the past were fought, would then come to be replaced by a norm whose ethical purpose is sufficiently broad to present a foothold for newly emerging goals and ends. In this way the history of ethical life could be thought of as a series of institutionalized norms such that each successive norm exceeds the previous ones with regard to its ethical capacity and its accommodation of the good. It is of course true that on this view, too, agents are not in control of the historical coming and passing of their various inclinations and aspirations. But at least the history of these changing motivations would be mediated by the same struggle for recognition that also propels the moral progress found in the spheres of ethical life. (Translated from German by Felix Koch)

chapter 10

Freedom and Nature: The Point of View of a Theory of Recognition Lucio Cortella Abstract: Morality and freedom are neither natural nor supernatural but are social products, the result of relationships of recognition that are consolidated in phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes of formation and learning. Following the central thesis that Hegel illustrates in Chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit the author shows how the relation of recognition produces not only the constitution of our self-consciousness and the awareness of the distinction between consciousness and world, but also the discovery of the acquisition of our reciprocal dignity and autonomy, the birth of moral sense, and the institution of our fundamental ethical principles.

As is well known, Kant calls a “fact of reason” (Faktum der Vernunft) the consciousness of moral law,1 i.e., our awareness that we feel moral obligations towards actions, behaviors, intentions, choices. Assuming this as a ‘fact’ does not mean that such a consciousness is an empirically observable fact. No scientific observation could attest it. And yet this ‘fact’ is a part of our experience. To be sure, it is not a part of our cognitive experience—one that, thanks to empirical intuitions, reveals to us the existence of things and events. But the cognitive experience is not the only kind of experience that we can have. Before any action we can have at least two completely different types of experience: we can describe the action as a natural event or we can instead react to it morally, approving and justifying it or disapproving of it to the point of indignation. The indubitability of this “fact of reason” is, according to Kant, documented by moral judgments about actions—judgments completely different from descriptive ones, and which are made possible precisely because we can have a type of experience that is completely different from cognitive experience.

1  “The consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason”. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 31.

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The great Kantian ‘practical’ investigation sets out from this fact and attempts to reconstruct the transcendental conditions that make it possible. Kant’s answer is well known: the presence of morality in “all finite beings having reason and will”2 can be explained only if these beings are free, only if there is freedom as a condition of moral experience.3 This answer may be, within certain limits, also accepted by us: we can judge an action or behavior from a moral point of view only if we suppose that the subject of that action or behavior is responsible for it, if we think that the basis of that action is not a mechanical impulse but a conscious and independent deliberation—in other words, a free choice. Moral experience is inseparable from the attribution of freedom: we are moral beings only if we are free, because only if we are free we are responsible for our actions. If the Kantian rooting of morality in freedom can be reasonably accepted, what for us is difficult to accept is the assumption of freedom as something completely separate from our nature and its assignment to a supersensible dimension, a “realm of ends” placed beyond the natural world. Kant’s doctrine of the two realms obviously has its own specific reason: freedom cannot be found within the biological structure of our body, and scientific investigation of our genetic inheritance will never be able to identify something like freedom. If we are free the roots of our own freedom will be rooted in what might be called our ‘spiritual character’. But, here, the problem repeats itself, because either we accept, as Kant did, our simultaneous participation in two different ontological dimensions, or we have the burden of explaining how that ‘spiritual character’ has been formed from our biological nature. Of course, there is still the alternative possibility of explaining morality in a different way than Kant did, while making it compatible with the instincts of our human nature; for example, by understanding normativity as a cultural variant of the principle of biologistic self-preservation. Such a naturalistic explanation of morality, understood as the stabilization in rules and practices of what is useful to the survival of the species, eliminates the simple 2  Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 32. 3  “Instead of this vainly sought deduction of the moral principle, however, something entirely different and unexpected appears: the moral principle itself serves as a principle of the deduction of an inscrutable faculty which no experience can prove but which speculative reason had to assume as at least possible (in order not to contradict itself in finding among cosmological Ideas something unconditional in its causality). This is the faculty of freedom, which the moral law, itself needing no justifying grounds, shows to be not only possible but actual in beings who acknowledge the law as binding upon them”. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 49.

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observation that the logic of what is right is completely irreducible to the logic of what is useful and that such a utilitarian explanation makes completely incomprehensible precisely what Kant understands as a moral experience. Therefore, we are again forced back to the underlying problem. On the one hand we have to do with a moral experience totally irreducible to the logic of instinctual nature (and this is undoubtedly the element of truth of every metaphysical theory of freedom). On the other, we need to make that moral experience compatible with our biological nature and the evolutionary theory of the human race, showing that morality is a specific product of this history, a result that has its roots and its origin in the anthropological structure of the human (and this is what needs to be saved in the naturalistic explanation of morality). What I shall attempt is not so much to solve this problem as to advance some considerations that can save both these requirements—considerations capable of showing the connection between freedom and nature. To this end, I think that a theory of recognition, retracing the celebrated Hegelian investigation in Chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit, may be the best philosophical instrument to approach the problem. Hegel’s central thesis in this chapter is that subjectivity is the product of the recognition carried out by another subjectivity.4 The awareness of our individuality, of our distinction from others and from the surrounding world, the perception of our identity and role— in other words the capacity to look at ourselves with the same distance with which we look at objects—is possible only thanks to the recognition carried out by another subject. This does not mean that our individuality is only the product of a relationship. We are also nature, and this nature precedes that relation. Indeed the relationship of recognition and the centrality of its action in the construction of the self is made p ​ ossible by certain properties and natural abilities of human beings, first and foremost the ability to communicate. It is true that Hegel does not thematize the nature of the subject that precedes the relationship of recognition in this way. In fact, he thematizes it as a Begierde, a kind of lust or desire. This desire, however, is not directed towards things and natural objects, in which the subject cannot find any satisfaction, but rather to other subjects.5 He does not look for things but for relations—i.e., he basically expresses the

4  “Self-consciousness is in and for itself, in that and by the fact that it is in and for itself for another self-consciousness; i.e., it is only in being recognized.” PS, § 178, 111 (GW 9, 109). 5  “Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.” PS, § 175, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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need for the other.6 The Hegelian notion of Begierde reveals the specificity of original human relatedness: it does not emerge from an expansion of subjectivity, from its unselfish ‘extension’ towards the other, but because of its structural lack and limitation—its need. But only those who lack something can feel desire, and—in particular—lack the object of their desire. Relatedness is the specific way in which subjectivity attempts to make up for this deficiency and insecurity. It seeks comfort, support, reassurance in the other. The search for the other emerges, then, from subjectivity’s concern for itself, from the perception of its weakness, from the need of support for its instability. We can summarize the various components of the original human relatedness in the notion of recognition, and more precisely in the need to be recognized. Ever since birth, human beings need not only to be cared for, fed, nourished, but also to be supported, encouraged and loved. And this is a need that characterizes not only the initial stages of our existence but is prolonged in all subsequent ones, such as need for affection, friendship, cooperation, sociality. Now, satisfying such a need leads to a double result. First, subjectivity finds self-confirmation and obtains the desired balance to its instability and insecurity, the certainty of being at the center of the attention of others. But, secondly, there is then the discovery of the other, the discovery that the world around us consists not only of objects to use and manipulate but also of other subjects who are able to turn their attention towards us. The loneliness of the subject is thus questioned and the relatedness to which it is referred back reveals the actuality of a plural world. Here, a fundamental element characterizing the relationships of recognition appears: the subject cannot ‘feel’ himself recognized without recognizing in turn. You cannot feel yourself recognized by an inanimate object, a plant, or by someone who is not deemed ‘capable’ of recognizing. The condition for feeling oneself recognized is to ‘recognize’ this capability in the other. You cannot get support for your subjectivity without providing support to the

6  “Human Desire, or better still, anthropogenetic Desire, produces a free and historical individual, conscious of his individuality, his freedom, his history and finally, his historicity. Hence, anthropogenetic Desire is different from animal Desire (which produces a natural being, merely living and having only a sentiment of its life) in that it is directed, not toward a real, ‘positive’, given object, but toward another Desire.” Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, assembled by R. Queneau, edited by A. Bloom, trans. J.H. Nichols Jr. (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), 6.

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other. The relationship of recognition is either reciprocal or not.7 The moment in which you feel you are regarded as a subject is the moment in which you have regarded the other as a subject. While the other gives me the dignity of the subject I grant this dignity to him/her. This is done independently of the will and intentions of the subjects involved but imposes itself as an objective logic that they must accept if they want to feel recognized. The ‘price’ for the consolidation of our subjectivity is the consolidation of the subjectivity of others. The constitution of intersubjectivity cannot be an action by one side but must necessarily be reciprocal. This reciprocity has an essentially normative character. In fact obtaining a recognition means that someone has deemed us ‘worthy’ of her attention and her consideration. But since the relation of recognition is necessarily reciprocal, we must ourselves grant dignity to those who have recognized us. While I discover my dignity thanks to the other, I also discover the dignity of the other thanks to myself. The relationship of recognition is therefore not a relation of knowledge, an observational or descriptive experience, of the kind that we have with objects. I do not limit myself to ‘knowing’ the other nor is the other limited to ‘knowing’ me. What occurs is a reciprocal conferring of dignity. For this reason recognizing is not only knowing but also consists in establishing a normative relationship, in which both I and the other are recognized as worthy of attention and respect. In reciprocal recognition, then, the first fundamental ethical relation between individuals asserts itself—they have learned to know one another as subjects; that is, to respect one another. The basis of our moral sense is rooted in the relationships of recognition. Although Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit clearly identifies the objective character of the logic that imposes itself on those who are confronted with one another (what is at stake between the two self-consciousnesses is the objective work of the spirit, “I that is We and We that is I”),8 he does not adequately develop the ethical consequences implied in this relationship; that is, he does not see that this objectivity that imposes itself on subjects as the 7  “Thus the movement is simply the double movement of the two self-consciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as it does; each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what it does only insofar as the other does the same. Action by one side would be useless because what is to happen can only be brought about by both”. PS, § 182, 112 (GW 9, 110). 8  “With this, we already have before us the Notion of Spirit. What still lies ahead for consciousness is the experience of what Spirit is—this absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’ ”. PS, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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middle term over the extremes9 is, indeed, an ethical objectivity. This is the specific character of human communication, which is not a simple transmission of experiences and cognitive givens but, rather, is a normative communication, a transmission of values and norms. But with the first relation of mutual recognition a learning process (Bildungsprozess) has been set in motion, in which discovery of the other is intertwined with discovery of the self. The recognition is not a singular event. The constitution of our self-consciousness, even in the early stages of our existence, is not constituted by a single act but by a sequence of acts, by their iteration, by a process. No one can ever feel him/herself recognized once and for all. And the need to be recognized tends continually to recur even for those who have repeatedly gone through this experience. Recognition is a precarious attainment—fragile, and always questionable. So this process of learning can be strengthened and increased or interrupted and weakened. No recognition can ever guarantee against misconceptions, humiliations, offenses, neither can it immunize us against regressions, relapses, or the questioning of our identity and autonomy. The discovery of the self and of the other is therefore intimately linked to the history of our relations of recognition, a history through which we establish ourselves in our identity, but in which we are also called into question, transformed, reconstituted. The first acquisition of this training process is, as we said, the discovery of the other. But the discovery of the other is not equivalent to the discovery of just any object. Knowing a subject means discovering a point of view on objects—it means understanding that things can be viewed from a different perspective from our own. We notice others when we discover that we have become object of their attention, when our subjectivity has become an object of the gaze of others. Sartre thought that intersubjectivity was the result of the experience of being watched. When we become aware of being watched, it is then and only then that we see the other.10 Now, if we understand this gaze not as a purely observational behavior but as a normatively oriented attitude, we 9 

“Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself; and each is for itself, and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.” PS, § 184, 112 (GW 9, 110). 10  “My fundamental connection with the Other-as-subject must be able to be referred back to my permanent possibility of being seen by the Other. It is in and through the revelation of my being-as-object for the Other that I must be able to apprehend the presence of his being-as-subject [. . .] Being-seen-by-the-Other is the truth of seeing-the-Other”. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. by Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 256–257.

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can easily subscribe to Sartre’s thesis. However, the gaze of the other gives rise not only to our discovery of the subjectivity of others but—at the same time— to awareness of our own subjectivity. By recognizing we acquire the possibility of being observed by an external point of view and, thus, the opportunity to look at ourselves from that point of view. Our subjectivity, originally precluded to our eyes (because totally immanent in them and devoid of the necessary transcendence that is indispensable for any cognitive objectification), becomes accessible to us thanks to the recognition carried out by the other. The vision of itself that was impossible for the single isolated consciousness now becomes possible thanks to another consciousness. We now see ourselves thanks to and through the eyes of the other. Autonomous subjectivity arises precisely because of this gaze. The subject is not the product of itself but of intersubjectivity—i.e., of the special relationship made possible by the meeting between subjects. In this process our own individual identity is constituted. We learn what we are because of what others say about us. Our internal image is closely connected with our external image. Here, of course, we also have the root of the pathologies of subjectivity, the risk that the person turn out to be the product of the gaze of others, of their representations, their classifications. But this look is never just a single glance, just as recognition is never a single act of recognition. The idea that we have of ourselves is formed thanks to the constant comparison with the plurality of gazes, which are first private (in the family, in friendship, in affection), and then social, legal, and finally political.11 Our identity emerges from this plurality and from the re-elaboration that this very plurality makes possible for each one of us. Identity is thereby multiple, articulated, changeable. Recognition is therefore also a form of imitation. The specifically human characterization of natural mimesis does not only consist in assuming an adaptive attitude towards what is alien in order to survive in a hostile and complex environment. To imitate the other within a relationship of recognition means to make one’s own not only the behavior but also the attitude of the other, entering into his point of view, looking at things in the world from the point of view of the other. Adorno, quite rightly, said that “the human is in imitation” and that “a human being becomes a human being only by imitating other human beings”.12 In adopting the other’s perspective—imitating it—we learn the practice of recognition, we learn the fundamental mode through 11  See: Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). 12  Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. by E.F.N. Jephcott, (London: Verso, 2006), 154.

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which our humanity constitutes itself. The subject thus becomes not just a recognized subject but also a recognizing one, able to give to others what he himself has received from them. Entering into the logic of recognition means being ‘infected’; that is, entering and being welcomed into that world of social relations in which we recognize one another. The second acquisition involves our awareness of the characteristics of subjectivity. Learning that the world can be observed and described from different perspectives means putting an end to the identification between consciousness and the world. The world becomes an objectivity that does not coincide with our description of it but that can be interpreted in different ways. The awareness of an objectivity independent of us stems from the conflict of interpretations, from the denials suffered by our understanding of this objectivity, from the awareness that what we thought was objective was just our own point of view. It is here that the subject learns at its own expense that it does not coincide with the whole but is only a small part of it—that is, it learns its finitude and limitation. The attention of the other, which on the one hand fulfills our desire for reassurance and stability, on the other makes us perceive the power of the other, its capacity to influence, control, and condition us. In the relation of recognition we discover our dependence on the other, we discover ourselves to be affected, conditioned, and ‘invaded’ by him. And yet—here is the third acquisition—precisely thanks to this dependence we strengthen our belief in ourselves, we feel comforted and supported. If we are ‘worthy’ of the attention of another, we feel our importance, our centrality, our dignity. This experience is the basis of our sense of self-respect, which is vital to the formation of the moral image of human being; that is, the notion of person. The moral person is different from the legal person. The moral person not only has the right to equal respect—that right which considers all people equal in legal terms—but is also worthy of regard (of special attention), due to his dignity. We are aware of our status as persons because we have all passed through relations of recognition.13 The recurrence of demonstrations of recognition from others and the differentiation of this experience into distinct spheres thus becomes decisive. It 13  “Human dignity, as I would like to show, is in a strict moral and legal sense connected with this relational symmetry. It is not a property like intelligence or blue eyes, that one might ‘possess’ by nature; it rather indicates the kind of ‘inviolability’ which comes to have a significance only in interpersonal relations of mutual respect, in the egalitarian dealings among persons”. Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (London: Polity Press, 2003), 33.

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is essential that the recognition not be carried out exclusively by the persons involved but that it extend from private affective and family-type relationships to the social relations and, beyond them, to the legal and political relationships. It is in these contexts that our sense of autonomy and independence arises and is consolidated. I am all the more a subject the more I am recognized, the more I am strengthened in my identity. Autonomy—freedom—is not a fact of nature, but is the result of a process of learning, an achievement of the relations of recognition. Such freedom is not ours originally—no, nature has only endowed us with the ability to obtain it. Human beings are not born free originally: they become—indeed, they learn to be—free. Freedom is not a property of our nature, nor an attribute of the human substance—it is a capability, not a given. It exists only because we are able to exercise it, because we are enabled to act independently. And this kind of freedom is achieved only thanks to the consciousness of autonomy; that is, thanks to the awareness that we can count on ourselves and that we have in ourselves the capacity and resources to choose and act in a completely autonomous way. Self-confidence is the basis of this independence and such confidence is a specific product of recognition. In short, freedom is not something innate but has a relational and communicative genesis. This has radical consequences for the relations between individuals, and for the way we consider the relationship between our own freedom and that of all others. The theories of original freedom, which claim that human beings are born already free, immediately pose the problem of how to reconcile this individual freedom with similar claims to freedom by all others. If I am born already free then others are nothing but a problem for my freedom, because they will inevitably end up by limiting and conditioning it. But if my freedom is the result of the recognition performed by others, then the perspective changes radically. In fact, others can no longer be considered as limits to my freedom, because they are its very condition. Freedom lives in recognition, is strengthened thanks to it, and develops by passing through its various spheres and levels. Hegel clearly understands this character of freedom when he denies that it can be pure and simple “being-with-self” (Beisichselbstsein) in complete independence of the other: when the other is left outside of the self it inevitably is opposed to the self and therefore turns out to be its limit, an external conditioning from which freedom fools itself into thinking it has been emancipated. Freedom, to be truly free, cannot exclude the other but must include it in its concept. Being free means “being-with-self-in-being-other-than-self ” (Beisichselbstsein im Anderssein): being independent thanks to structural

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dependence on the other—not by abstracting from its existence, but by seeing it to be a component of individual freedom.14 This results in a radical responsibility of every individual towards the other, not only in relation to the specific others who have freed the individual during her learning process, but towards the potential countless others who continue to strengthen her feeling of independence and upon which the responsible use of freedom depends. We are ‘recognizing beings’ in a double sense: capable of recognizing other human beings but also capable of recognizing our debt to others. We are grateful to others, we have a sense of infinite gratitude. The acquisition of a feeling of ‘gratitude’ towards the other is the basis of the birth of moral sense. Morality is formed within and thanks to the relations of recognition. We learn to respect one another because we have ourselves been the object of respect, or rather because we have learned what it means to relate to a non-object, because we have ourselves experienced a non-manipulative and a non-objectifying approach. We feel the duty of attention to one another, because we have gone through processes of respect, care, and consideration. Once again, mimetic practice—which, as we have seen, is intimately linked to the processes of recognition—is decisive. When we come to be recognized we are forced to make the grateful attitude our own; that is, we are immediately involved in a dynamic of reciprocity. And such a dynamic invests all of the aspects that the recognition implies. In this way we learn to love as we were loved, and to respect as we were respected. All this is confirmed by the fact that we feel much more intensely morally obliged to persons who have themselves been especially attentive to us. Here the mimetic dynamics has precise consequences for our moral sense. In fact, we perceive a moral wound with greater intensity when the injury comes from those who we feel are closer to us. In these cases, the moral offense assumes the characteristics of a veritable betrayal of that bond of trust and reciprocity which the meeting between subjects has determined.15 14  Hegel discusses the relation of being-with-self with being-other in the last section of the Phenomenology of Spirit, titled “Absolute Knowing”. Here, the superseding of the object’s externality in relation to consciousness is expressed through the inclusion of being-other within being-with-itself as its moment: “Self-consciousness has equally superseded this externalization and objectivity, and taken it back into itself so that it is with itself in its otherness [Anderssein] as such” (PS 788, 479; GW 9, 422). Analogously, the conceptual comprehension of its own content on the part of consciousness comes about when the ‘I’ is with itself in its otherness: “It is only when the ‘I’ is with itself in its otherness that the content is conceptually comprehended [begriffen]” (PS, § 799, 486; GW 9, 430). 15  “This dependency on the other explains why one can be hurt by the other. The person is most exposed to, and least protected from, injuries in the very relations which she is

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Recognition gives rise not only to our moral sense but also to our normative vulnerability, that is, to our capacity to suffer when we are insulted, humiliated, or treated with contempt. In other words, recognition produces, within the natural human biology, what in Hegelian terms we might call a ‘second nature’. By this we mean a normative nature, thanks to which we acquire the fundamental good of autonomy (that is, the strength of identity that accompanies the sense of our dignity), but because of which we are also affected by a particular vulnerability, due only to the presence of morality within us. If we were not normative beings we would not suffer moral wounds, just as other animals do not: they can certainly be affected by physical or mental suffering but cannot be offended by moral abuse. It is in this reciprocity of mimetic relations that our fundamental ethical principles are rooted. Here, I refer to that reservoir of moral intuitions, values, and norms by which we orient ourselves in making choices: respect for the dignity of others, sharing their autonomy, the reciprocal assumption of obligations and rights. Of course, we first learn respect and the assumption of obligations with regard to a single person—that is, to the person who has actually recognized us. But, in reality, what we have experienced is the irruption of the other in our subjectivity. We have learned that not only we but also the other can and must become an object of respect. This experience of what Mead called “the generalized other”16 is further confirmed by the recurrence and differentiation of the experiences of recognition. We learn these fundamental moral norms as we come to accept the recognition granted us by another person. If we did not accept these norms the act of recognition could not even constitute itself. This gives rise to a moral sensibility that refers, in principle, not only to those who have recognized us but is addressed to all those who appear to us with the characteristics of the generalized other. It is an experience so universal that it regards also those who—for biological, psychological, or historical reasons—have never experienced a successful recognition. The sense of ‘compassion’—the capacity to share the suffering of less fortunate human beings, incapable of the autonomy and the awareness that characterize persons who have experienced relations of recognition—stems from precisely these relations. Just as the growing moral

most dependent on for the development of her identity and for the maintenance of her integrity—for example, when giving herself to a partner in an intimate relationship”. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 34. 16  See: George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society. From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, ed. by C.W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), § 20.

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sensibility with respect to other living beings—to animals first of all—must be understood in this context. The experience of recognition thus entails the acceptance of an ethics of recognition, an ethics that can be reconstructed on the basis of the assumptions implicit in this relation itself. It is a fundamental ethic, because it is the basis of all other individual and contextual ethics, but it is also a minimal ethic, because it does not bind us to specific and controversial value assumptions. It is therefore not necessary to ‘construct’ this ethic through the complex process of an argumentative consensus, because any procedural agreement of the moral arguments can only stem from the norms that best correspond to the ethical normativity that already stands behind the backs of the arguers and that constituted itself through recognitive relations. This fundamental ethic should not therefore be ‘constructed’ through an argumentative procedure but, rather, ‘reconstructed’ from the very relations that have formed our subjectivity and the sense of our morality. We can now answer the very first question, with which we began. Freedom and moral responsibility are rooted in nature and, to be explained, have no need of a supersensible dimension. Despite their rootedness in nature, however, they are beyond nature, because they do not obey mere natural impulses, or any logic of self-preservation, or social or individual utility. Rather, they depend on natural, communicative, relational, and mimetic abilities and, therefore, are in this sense a product of our biology. At the same time they go beyond the mere instinct of self-preservation and respond to a normative logic that does not exist in nature, which we may call the logic of freedom, since it is certainly not explicable in terms of cause and effect. From nature something non-natural emerges—something that nevertheless becomes an integral part of our human nature: a realm of norms and a universe of social practices, where what matters is right and wrong, good and evil, respect and offense. Morality and freedom are therefore neither natural nor supernatural but social products, the result of relationships of recognition that are consolidated in phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes of formation and learning. This, indeed, is the extraordinary capacity of human nature: its capacity to generate from inside itself something that no longer has to do with nature. Hegel placed this realm within the sphere of spirit, but he took pains not to break its fundamental link with its natural roots, simply calling it ‘second nature’. We are—after all—normative animals. Understanding this dual belonging is a task with which even a post-philosophical consciousness must necessarily settle accounts.

Part 3 Naturalism, Work and Power

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chapter 11

Nature, Subjectivity and Freedom: Moving from Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature Luca Illetterati Abstract: The paper offers a discussion of the concepts of subject and freedom within the context of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. The aim is to show how the basic structures of spirit do not achieve their determination in opposition to the natural world. The basic structure of the life of spirit represents a peculiar re-articulation and development of the life of nature. In this sense it is possible to propose a naturalistic view of Hegelian philosophy. Nevertheless, the possibility of a naturalistic reading implies a redetermination of the notions of naturalism and nature, that underpin what is nowadays called ‘naturalism’.

1 Introduction I intend here to focus my attention on the conceptualization Hegel offers of the organism in his philosophy of nature. The aim of my paper is to show the naturalistic roots of the notion of subject. Through this path I also intend to shed light on the way the connections between these different notions— organism, subject, freedom—are capable of producing a certain re-definition and re-determination of the immediate use of the terms with which these are usually represented in ordinary language and the way they appear, prima facie, in Hegel’s system. By developing a criticism of the immediate, intellectualistic and one-sided use of these concepts—nature, spirit, subject, freedom—Hegel provides a new definition for them. Such an operation, I believe, can allow us, in Wittgensteinian terms, to exit the pathological elements that a misuse of these terms can suggest.1 This process of conceptual re-definition and re-determination could also be of some interest in relation to the philosophical 1  On the possibility of a therapeutic interpretation of Hegelian philosophy and on the different ways of meaning ‘philosophical therapy’ see Michael Quante, Spekulative Philosophie als Therapie, in Hegels Erbe eds. Christoph Halbig, Michael Quante, Ludwig Siep (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 324–350.

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debate of these last decades on naturalism and anti-naturalism. More specifically, it could shed light on the different ways of inflecting the notion of naturalism in philosophical context. 2

The Kantian Roots

The possibility of comparing Hegelian thought to contemporary debates on naturalism can be justified on the basis that Hegel’s philosophy, as well as the debate on the possibility of a naturalistic philosophy itself, with different shades of consciousness, are seen as an overcome of what is generally and simplistically called Kantian dualism. Kant’s philosophy is often described as explicitly drawing a line between knowledge of nature and the knowledge of what is opposite to it, freedom. In the first pages of the introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Kant writes: Now there are but two kinds of concepts, and these yield a corresponding number of distinct principles of the possibility of their objects. The concepts referred to are those of nature and that of freedom. By the first of these a theoretical cognition from a priori principles becomes possible. In respect of such cognition, however, the second, by its very concept, imports no more than a negative principle (that of simple antithesis), while for the determination of the will, on the other hand, it establishes fundamental principles which enlarge the scope of its activity, and which on that account are called practical. Hence the division of philosophy falls properly into two parts, quite distinct in their principles—a theoretical part, as philosophy of nature, and a practical part, as philosophy of morals (for this is what the practical legislation of reason by the concept of freedom is called).2 Thus, for Kant philosophy is divided into two distinct parts that correspond to two types of concepts: 1.

In the first part, knowledge deals with the world that we can access through the senses, i.e. events that are driven by a need that is independent form any will. We can generally call this the knowledge of nature.

2  Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 59.

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In the second part, knowledge has to do with events that are dependent from a will and not from that same need we find in nature, but through a different and irreducible form of legislation.

The Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy, between philosophy of nature and that of freedom, seems to have somewhat contradictory outcomes and display strong problematical tensions between the two. By showing the foundations of our scientific knowledge of the world, the structures that make this knowledge possible and thus make it impossible to know other-worldly elements, in Kant’s first Critic reach an essentially naturalistic outcome. On the other hand, in the Critique of Practical Reason, where human actions are at stake, Kant’s thought reaches what can be seen as an antinaturalistic outcome. It is not by chance that those concepts that had been excluded from the knowledge of theoretical reason (soul, God and world) find validity, in practical reason, as immortal soul, existence of God and freedom. These are not objects of knowledge but are postulates we must accept if we want to give meaningfulness to moral law. For Kant, without accepting the concepts of freedom, of immortal soul and of God at a practical reason level, there cannot be a moral law. We can then say that in Kant’s system a naturalistic approach and a radically anti-naturalistic one seem to coexist,3 even if not without frictions. The philosophical debate on Kant’s philosophy is very much played on these frictions and problems caused by this coexistence. The different developments of German philosophy between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in its multiple articulations, can be seen in many of its aspects as an attempt (that stems from Kant’s Critique of Judgment itself) to overcome the dualism between naturalism, represented in theore­tical philosophy, and anti-naturalism, represented in practical philosophy.4

3  From this point of view we could say that the attempts that are being discussed at length in these years of naturalizing ethics are essentially attempts to go beyond the Kantian division between theoretical and the practical sphere (i.e. trying to bring the sphere of the Critique of Practical Reason inside the boundaries of the Critique of Pure Reason). Thus, this is an attempt to bring ethics, and with it all that is peculiar to man, in that natural philosophy in which the human world can be studied and considered as a natural object amongst natural objects. 4  To this background the renewed attention given to radical anti-dualistic philosophy (such as Spinoza’s one) refers to.

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Hegel’s Idea of Nature

When reading the first paragraphs of Hegel’s philosophy of nature we see how the concept of nature finds its first and most significant determination in an exterior form, as idea in the form of otherness, as that sphere of reality in which conceptual determinations, being exterior, can be seen as form of indifferent subsistence (gleichgültigen Bestehen) and of isolation with regard to one another (Vereinzelung gegeneinander).5 Externality (Äusserlichkeit) is the word that expresses and defines, in a Hegelian conceptual map, nature’s way of being. Otherness is the fundamental character of nature, from which its peculiar elements of its being derive and that distinguishes it from the idea of logic and that of spirit. Thus, externality determines all the particular configurations in which it is realized from beginning to end. Nature has yielded itself as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since the Idea is therefore the negative of itself, or external to itself, nature is not merely external relative to this Idea (and to the subjective existence of the same, spirit), but is embodied as nature is the determination of externality.6 Since nature is determined in the systemic structure that begins with the decision of the idea of letting its own particularity out itself (making itself exterior), and since it is the result of the decision and resolution of the idea itself, this division—and thus nature itself—is constitutive with respect to what the idea is in itself.7 If for Hegel the idea is “the absolute unity of the concept and objectivity”,8 in other words, if the idea is the subject-object, unity

5  See Enc. II, § 248. 6  Enc II, § 247. 7  The decision we are here referring to is the one Hegel thematizes in the last paragraph of the Science of Logic, when the absolute idea, having reached its full accomplishment as absolute freedom (thus, autonomy from any exterior element from it), decides, to let the moment of its own peculiarity out of itself autonomously. The term decision is here Entscheidung. It is important to remember that in German the term Scheidung implies a separation and a dissociation and that one of the meanings of Entscheidung, especially in a medical context, is crisis. On the connection between the idea in its complete freedom and its making itself as something else through a decision that is a resolution of the idea from itself see Luca Illetterati, “La decisione dell’idea. L’idea assoluta e il suo passaggio nella natura in Hegel”, Verifiche 34 (2005): 241–274. 8  Enc. II, § 213.

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of idea and reality, of the finite and infinite, of body and soul,9 its division is the fracture of that unity that determines the idea. What then is peculiar to nature in its way of being is again exteriority, as inadequate exterior determination towards the concept, inaptness and impossibility of fully understanding the conceptual structure of the peculiar determinations of nature. Thus, nature is for Hegel a multitude of forms which entail a conceptual unity that cannot be adequately thought by anyone of this multitude. Starting from this, philosophy of nature’s work amounts to the attempt of finding the idea in this world dominated by exteriority, from the division and fracture of the idea itself. Bringing the idea into light in nature does not mean, as we have mentioned above, juxtaposing a given logical structure on nature’s exteriority, nor to encapsulate the exterior forms of nature in a priori and predetermined logical categories. In other words, finding the idea in the world that determinates itself as a shattering of the idea’s structure does not mean to purify exteriority in the purity of logic, or to consider the otherness that originates nature simply as an appearance that a learned eye should be able to eliminate. This would resolve in concealing nature’s distinctive way of being by limiting its consideration to its logical side, and it would mean considering nature as something that nature is not, rather than nature for itself. On the contrary, to show the idea within nature means acknowledging the exteriority of nature as it is. Hegel writes that in this exteriority “the determinations of the Concept have in the externality the appearance of an indifferent subsistence and isolation with regard to one another”.10 Thus, its internal articulations appear to be separated and isolated from each other, lacking that particular fluidity that these have at a logical level. To use a philosophical wording of Hegel’s own time, these appear to be petrified and frozen.11 This is why, Hegel says, “nature in its determinate being displays necessity and contingency, not freedom”.12 If for Hegel freedom is self-determination (the capability of always being in oneself in the different forms of one’s own being), in nature, where each single concrete determination is inadequate to its own concept—that is, where the different exteriorizations never correspond to what they are at a conceptual level—we cannot properly speak of freedom. Not being free, nature appears as necessary and accidental, i.e. as what is not determined in itself but “through another”.13 9   Enc. II, § 214. 10   Enc. II, § 248. 11  See Alison Stone, Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy (Albany:

State University of New York Press, 2005).

12   Enc. II, § 248. 13   Enc. II, § 149.

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Necessity, accidentality and the lack of freedom are those elements of nature that follow directly from its being dominated by exteriority, in its most universal determination. Nonetheless, firstly, being nature in the shape of exteriority, of non-freedom, of inadequateness to its concept and finding its specific determination in the terms otherness, indifferent subsistence, isolation, necessity and accidentality, and secondly, being it described by Hegel as lacking reason, as the negativity, the falling short of the Idea, in its specific element, it is, all the same, exposition (Darstellung) of the idea itself. What Hegel calls the “unsolved contradiction” of nature14 originates here, in its being at the same time idea and exteriority (the idea that is eternal to itself, that is in the shape of its exteriority and of its shattering). In its determined way of being, nature is itself the unsolved contradiction. It does not correspond to what it is in itself or to its own idea. This character of nature, having in itself the idea as something inner and hidden that brakes and shatters in exteriority, can be clearly read in the paragraph in which Hegel discusses the classical way of considering nature as a system of stages: Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, the one proceeding of necessity out of the other, and being the proximate truth of that from which it results. This is not to be thought of as a natural engendering of one out of the other however, but as an engendering within the inner Idea which constitutes the ground of nature.15 Even if exteriority is the key word for nature, the thinking consideration (denkende Betrachtung) seizes in the infinite plurality of forms a distinctive way of development: a system of stages. This is particularly important because in this paragraph the extraordinary complexity of Hegel’s concept of nature fully emerges (what we can call philosophy of nature’s internal logic). On the one hand, the usual dialectic way of proceeding, that is fundamental in the whole Science of Logic, in which every stage of the sequence is the result of the previous one and should be considered as truth of the one it derives form, is here confirmed. On the other hand, the peculiarity of movement—and thus of logic—that is part of nature’s particular way of being and that makes it irreducible to a purely logical consideration, also emerges in it. In nature passing from one stage to another does not happen naturally (as Hegel puts it) and fluidly, but only in its internal idea. This is hidden to natural exteriority and can only be unveiled through the idea of philosophical consideration. 14   Enc. II, § 248 R. 15   Enc. II, § 249.

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The developing path that the system of stages represents is not exteriorly within nature (it is not nature in its exterior appearance). This does not exclude that there can be development and unfolding within nature, but means however, that it is something that only philosophy, as science of the idea, can grasp. This understanding of nature seems like an ordinate and staged system where each step is intimately related with the one that precedes it and the one that follows it in a progression that proceeds from simple to complex and from imperfect to complete—an image that since antiquity has acquired a strong explicative role and that implies in the world’s system the elements of wholeness, progression and hierarchy, was at the centre of the debates between eighteenth century naturalists.16 For instance, Leibniz had depicted the world of nature as a great chain that through fossils linked inanimate beings to the first forms of living beings and plants, and these to animals, all the way to the highest stage of nature, that is man. Leibniz’ idea of nature appeared to be governed by a continuity in which dividing lines and boundaries were ever more hard to find. Nonetheless, if the general schema suggested by Leibniz was generally acknowledged by the scientific community of the first half of the eighteenth century,17 many naturalists found it quite hard to apply the image of the scale or chain to their empirical study of nature. Thus, naturalists started to doubt the methodological value of the scale model and to see it more as a philosophical, if not poetical, description of nature rather than a scientific one.18 From an empirical transcription of the natural world’s point of view, the problem that first arose was the idea of continuity drawn by the model of the scala naturae. By keeping this problem in mind, we can see that the solution suggested by Hegel, if on the one hand can still be seen as linked to the idea of the scale (thought as a unitary and hierarchical structure), on the other it cannot be related totally to the classical ideas of continuity of the Leibizian tradition, and can be seen as coherent to the emerging difficulties set by the

16  On the history of this idea see the classic A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. A Study of an History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 1964. On the continuum as condition of possibility of a taxonomy in natural history, especially of the 18th century see also Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses—une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). For a more complex and varied picture see Giulio Barsanti, La Scala, la Mappa, l’Albero. Immagini e classificazioni della natura fra Sei e Ottocento (Firenze: Sansoni, 1992). 17  As Barsanti points out, for Bonnet, this is the case of Buffon, La Mettrie, Daubenton, Needham, Robinet (see Barsanti, La Scala, la Mappa, l’Albero, 20–24). 18  The questioning of the validity of the image of the scale started from the second half of the eighteenth century by figures such as Linnaeus, Voltaire, Blumenbach, Lamarck.

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empirical analysis of nature and certainly consistent with the Kantian transcendental turning point. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant had shown in what way the lex continui in natura should not be considered as a constitutive concept of the object, but only as a legitimate normative principle of reason,19 “for which a corresponding object can by no means be displayed in experience”.20 The continuous scale of creatures does not find in Kant any support for it being thought as an objective affirmation in the direct observation of nature. As Kant says, the steps of this scale are too distant from one another. However, this model is according to Kant a legitimate regulative tool of reason: a principle through which reason guides the empirical research towards a systemic unity. Hegel’s position finds elements of originality from the classical representations in the concept of transition (Übergang). In an understanding of nature essentially determined by exteriority, this concept cannot be seen as a real, evident and manifest development. The transition from a natural determination to another, is for Hegel (as well as for Kant) always something hidden, covered and internal. The inherent fluidity and dynamism of the concept and its tangible and conscious development in spirit amounts to something frozen and petrified in the realm of exteriority, in the difference between concept and objectivity and, thus, in nature. In the Hegelian terms, the process through which nature fulfils itself is not a transparent one. In nature we can only see the results, the products and the exteriorizations of this process. The internal mechanisms that connect such products are instead invisible. Since, for Hegel, the process of nature is internal, becoming external only through spirit and the grades of the scala naturae develop necessarily one after the other, but not according to the specific ways in which nature shows itself. It could be said that nature is a whole whose parts are connected (a systematic unity, in Kantian terms), but that, at the same time, such wholeness is only an idea, which, in nature, is instead torn and divided. This is because nature is in its essence exteriority, and the connection between its parts in its manifestations is neither real nor concrete. Instead, they can be read only through a rational consideration of nature.

19  Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Trans. Paul Gruyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 600. 20  Ibidem. As we will shortly see, to say that the Hegelian solution is in some way in continuity with the Kantian one, does not mean that Hegel flattens his positions on Kant’s. The latter’s ideas are absorbed in the Hegelian systemic horizon and are, through this, reinterpreted and overturned.

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It is precisely the externality which allows differences to fall apart and appear as indifferent existence, which is characteristic of nature; it is the dialectical Notion which is the inner principle of the same, and guides its stages forward.21 In this sense, then, Hegel does not reject Leibniz’s axiom that natura non facit saltus, neither he understands it like Kant, as one of reason’s regulative principles with no constitutive value for nature. By emphasizing Kant’s transcendental view, Hegel understands the principle of natural continuity—and of the structure of nature—as legitimated in the idea of nature, in its logicalidealistic element: but because of its exteriority nature appears instead as fragmented, petrified. For Hegel, nature is the unsolved contradiction, as on one hand it appears as exteriority and isolated fragmentation (with all the necessary consequences), and on the other, even if only in its exteriority and in a shape that derives from it, it is also idea. Nature is an unsolved contradiction because in its determined form, it only partially corresponds to what it is in itself in its essence. The accidentality, irregularity, and the conceptual indeterminacy of the formations of nature are not, as we have already underlined, illusory or a sort of Maya’s veil that philosophy, with its power, can tear apart to reveal nature’s hidden essence. Such “impotence of nature”,22 for which the determinations of the concept are abstract, and thus its configurations do not correspond to the conceptual structure, is a fundamental element that according to Hegel “sets limits to philosophy”.23 Philosophy has the task to unveil the traces of conceptual determination in nature, while being aware that in nature, accidentality exists. In this sense, philosophy of nature has to show what nature in its exteriority does not reveal, that is to say, the capacity to express in the concreteness of its products not only the accidental randomness, but also that irrational character that renders it manifestation of the idea and that makes it accessible to human thought. This system of stages (nature) finds its fulfilment in living beings: Nature is implicitly a living whole; more closely considered, the movement through its series of stages consists of the Idea positing itself as what it is implicitly, i.e. the Idea passes into it self by proceeding out of its immediacy and externality, which is death. It does this primarily in order

21   Enc. II, § 249 R. 22   Enc. II, § 250. 23   Enc. II, § 250 R.

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to take on living being, but also in order to transcend this determinateness, in which it is merely life, and to bring itself forth into the existence of spirit, which constitutes the truth and ultimate purpose of nature, and the true actuality of the Idea.24 Life is where nature fulfils itself, where that ideal trait that is always hidden in the various manifestations of nature’s exteriority can appear, since, in it, exteriority is partially absorbed. The living being is a unity of parts that are not simply separated from one another, but organized in relation to the totality that they make up. Similarly, it can relate to otherness without getting lost in it. For it, concept and objectivity are not separate. As always in Hegel, fulfilment is also a place where a way of being manifests the passage that it will take to overcome itself. Thus, on one hand, life is the focal point for nature’s unorganized multiplicity, and on the other, it makes nature overcome itself through the scission between concept and objectivity that characterizes nature as exteriority and otherness. For Hegel life is the union of union and non-union, that is to say, the capability to divide whilst remaining one with oneself, and to bear the weight of difference. However, in life, the partition between objectivity and its concept, between exteriority and idea, which determines the way nature appears, vanishes. This does not mean that the living being is not nature anymore. Quite the contrary, it is such only as long as it is nature. In living nature, the traits that imply overcoming exteriority emerge. This forcibly leads to a redetermination of the very concept of nature, as it opens it to an understanding of nature that transcends pure exteriority, and goes beyond the mere juxtaposition between the notions of nature and spirit. The external surfacing of the rational structure of nature in the living being is what makes nature permeable to spirit and to knowledge. If nature were something different and external to any rational dimension, it would remain unknown to the subject. The laws of nature would then be nothing else than a mind’s artificial construction, with no connection with actual things, a sort of virtual construction that would correspond only to our way of being without having any real hold on nature. It is not by chance that in nature the concepts not related to the purely external dimension of nature make their first concrete appearance, signalling decisively the dimension of spirit: subjectivity and freedom.

24   Enc. II, § 251.

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Animalitas, or Natural Subjectivity

At the beginning of the third part of the philosophy of nature in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), Hegel describes the organism as “an impregnated and negative unity, which by relating itself to itself, has become essentially self-centred and subjective”.25 To understand what these determinations constituting the fundamental characteristic of the organism are, it is necessary to look at that part of organic physics where Hegel discusses the significance of the life of animals. Unlike rocks and plants, where these characteristics are only formally or directly disclosed, but nor effectively and fully realized, it is with animals that they are actually made concrete. The concept characterizing the animal sphere is, first of all, that of subjectivity, a notion discussed for the first time in Hegel’s systematic development of a naturalistic context. But in what sense is it possible to say that animal is subjectivity? What does Hegel mean by stating that the animal’s way of being is a subjectivity’s way of being? Animals are thus described in the 1817 Encyclopaedia: Organic individuality exists as subjectivity insofar as its individuality is not merely immediate actuality but also and to the same extent suspended, exists as a concrete moment of generality, and in its outward process the organism inwardly preserves the unity of the self [die selbsti­ sche Sonne].26 To understand these words, and especially what Hegel means with the idea (which disappears in the English translation) that the animal, in its relation to the outside world, still has a sort of selbstische Sonne—an image that summarizes on a representative level the meaning it has in Hegel—it is necessary to explain the way plants had been conceived: incomplete organisms, characterized by a peculiar immediacy. Such immediacy implies that on one hand, plants cannot be authentic unities within difference. On the other hand, as plants have their determinacy outside themselves, they revolve around something else (the sun, or more generally, light).27 What makes plants a partial and immediate realisation of the concept of organism is their specific characteristic that, in Hegel’s words, they have another self outside themselves, an outside unity towards which they tend and on which they depend. This self outside themselves is primarily light, towards which plants turn, and that on 25   Enc. II, § 337. 26   Enc. ‘17, § 273. 27  See Enc. ‘17, § 269.

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them has the strongest power. Indeed plants do not move of their own accord, but are conditioned in their movements.28 The main element of animal subjectivity is the negation of such immediacy, appearing as a sort of liberation from the dependency that characterises plants in their relation with natural elements. The structure of an animal is such that the target towards which it aims is not, as with plants, external. Instead, it identifies with itself.29 Even when the organism’s activity, by starting from the need it is experiencing, moves away from its singularity and towards what is other, it always realizes itself. This means that the animal, in its inward activity, has a movement that, in moving outward, always has in itself its objective and its centre. This makes it a subject. Since it has in itself its centre—the centre around which its activity revolves, animal subjectivity is, according to Hegel, a concrete unity. It is not simply a formal unity, as in plants, where the parts are independent from the whole, and capable to keep on living once severed from the whole giving birth to new consistent wholes. That of animals is a concrete unity since it realizes through difference and internal ramifications. It is a unity in which the parts constitute the whole in a way that if they were separated from each other, they would stop being what they are, losing their coherency. The concrete unity of animal subjectivity is what makes animals individuals in an actual and tangible sense, a way of being that cannot be divided without being nullified in its ontological structure. Such a structure is always one with itself, even in its internal ramifications and always becoming other than itself.30 As subject, the animal has in itself the core of the principle of its unity and thus differs greatly from both rocks and plants as being the only one capable of self-movement. It is the only one capable of not being under—even if only partially—the control of exteriority (light, gravity etc.) and to self-determine according to its location, but also its own needs and reasons. It is not by chance then that in the very final section of organic physics the idea of freedom appears for the first time. For Hegel, the concepts of subject 28  Hegel thus writes: “light is this physical element outside the plant towards which it turns the same way man searches for other men” (Enc. II, § 344 A). 29  Karl Heinz Ilting and Franco Chiereghin have discussed this passsage from plants to animals. See: Karl Heinz Ilting, Hegels Philosophie des Organischen, in Hegel und die Naturwissenschaften, ed. Michael J. Petry, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1987), 349–368; Franco Chiereghin, “Finalità e idea della vita. La recezione hegeliana della teleologia di Kant”, Verifiche 19 (1990): 127–229. On the analogy of animal and sun see Enc. II, § 350 A. 30  Animals are the concrete realisation of life in nature since “it is the one that has all the parts in their freedom unites in it. It divides in it, gives them universal life and sustains them in itself as their negative, their force” (Enc. II, § 342 A).

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and freedom are deeply connected, to the point that the two words are sometimes used to express one another. Animals’ subjectivity is expressed precisely in the capacity to free from the necessary bond of the external forces that prevent the plant from even the smallest form of self-determination (and thus freedom). Hegel connects and explains the animal’s possibility and capability to change its dwelling place as the peculiar relation that it has with time. If the plant has to rely on light, especially when it comes to its movements, it is also dependent on nature’s cyclical passing of time for its growth, nutrition and reproduction. Animals instead, require what Hegel calls “free time”.31 This expression means that animals are, to a certain extent, independent from the external and natural time to which plants are subjected, which makes them autonomous and capable of self-determination. This free time manifests itself through self-movement, which cannot be merely understood as moving from one place to another. It is “ideal”32 self-movement, a condition that is origin to all those characteristics that define the animal way of being and that constitute the particular determinations that will eventually find new development at the level of spirit. These are the vocal faculties, animal heat, the interrupted intussusception, and, above all else feeling (Gefühl). The vocal faculty is, for Hegel, the organism’s expression of “free vibration within itself ”33 and in this sense expression of its subjectivity. Surely, the Stimme that characterizes animal subjectivity is not yet concretely realized in the symbolic production that will be recognized, at the spiritual level, of actual language. However, the Stimme, as manifestation of the animal’s subjectivity in its expression—pain, satisfaction or feelings—can be read as a sort of natural precondition to that symbolic ability that will develop only at the level of spirit. Vocality is not simply the consequence of some internal mechanism of the organism. Since it is exteriority of self-movement, it is self-production, a phenomenon through which animals express their self to give a form to their subjectivity and to their Gefühl.34 Only because the animal feels, it can express through its voice what could be called, without necessarily implying self-consciousness, its Self. Gefühl constitutes the determination through which the animal feels itself, its own self, submerged in pain, pleasure, satisfaction or suffering, in all situations which the Stimme can exteriorize and objectify. The animal’s subjective structure is further expressed by Hegel in the context of the relation with the outside world, which is an assimilative process. This relation begins through subjective feeling, connected 31   Enc. II, § 351. 32   Enc. II, § 351. 33   Enc. II, § 351. 34   Enc. II, § 351.

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to the self. And the first feeling is loss. Thus, animal subjectivity develops as the “push to suppress”35 such sense of loss. The assimilative process starts from a specific need determined by a structural deficiency, and by possibility, a characteristic found only in living beings and that determines their intimately subjective structure to feel such need and deficiency.36 Deficiency, need, intended as the perception of such deficiency, and the push to satisfy that need are fundamental elements in Hegel’s conception of living beings and natural subjectivity. The living being first of all has a need, which is an integral aspect of its essence. This means that if a living being did not have needs or deficiencies, it would not be a living being anymore. Any living organism, no matter its size or complexity, needs to demolish and rebuild its constitutive materials through its metabolic activities: assimilation, transformation and elimination. Being in need is the way a living being exists, and through the processes of transfor­ mation and modification takes in what is other from it, using for its own construction of what is external. A living being is in constant transformation, in a process in which the organism acts on itself and on the outside world in order to continue being in transformation, to keep on being itself. This being in constant need in order to exist (die Tätigkeit des Mangels) is what differentiates living from inorganic matter, which is always the same and does not have any constitutive lack.37 Saying that the living organism is marked by its need does not mean saying that it needs something else to be considered a whole. Therefore an organism needs something to be itself the same way a car needs gas. A living being is a process and it never stays the same. If two stages of this process were absolutely identical we could say that the being has ceased on living. However, it can still be defined as a system that is always a unitary whole.38 Thus, deficiency is not simply a weakness that can be overcome, or realizing that there is a missing piece that 35   Enc. II, § 359. 36  “Only living being feel loss” (Enc. II, § 359 R). In The Science of Logic Hegel writes that “pain is the prerogative of living nature” (SL, 684; GW 12, 187). See also Enc. II, § 358 A. It is important to underline that pain is not the same thing as loss—otherwise it would not be a living being privilege. It is the capacity to feel it. 37  The expression activity of lacking (Thätigkeit des Mangels) is used by Hegel to determine the structure of impulse (Trieb) belonging to living being. See Hegel, Zum Mechanismus, Chemismus, Organismus und Erkennen, in GW,12,. 259–298, 280. In relation to this text and its value for theory in general and Hegel specifically, see the Italian edition of Hegel, Sul meccanismo, il chimismo, l’organismo e il conoscere, trans. introduction and comments Luca Illetterati (Trento: Quaderni di Verifiche, 1996), 54. 38  See: Humberto R. Maturana & Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition. The realization of the Living (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1980).

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prevents the system from working. Deficiency is integral to life. If it is true that we consider complete beings that are complete vìs-a-vìs their constitution, and that life is acting on a deficiency, what life needs is need itself. Without it, life would not be life.39 Deficiency and need cannot be understood as defects or interruptions that can be solved to gain constant fulfilment. The peculiarities of life are not different from the negativity of the need. They are entangled in this way of being. Animals then do not simply lack something, but they also live and experience this deficiency within themselves. It is because of this feeling of lacking something, and the consequent inherent contradiction and pain, that the living being is the real subject. The subject is a term such as this, which is able to contain and support its own contradiction; it is this which constitutes its infinitude.40 The infinity connected to the subject in the passage above has to be understood as the possibility it has to let go of the concrete shapes of need and deficiency. The subject’s infinity is its capacity to perceive its contingency, to express its negativity, to live its limit and to push it. It is thus revealed how the subject can transcend itself the very moment it is determined as limited. Thus the subject’s essential finiteness, its limitation and structural insufficiency emerge as biological conditions. The tension the organism experiences to overcome its condition, to pass the limit, to satisfy its restlessness pushes it to engage with the outside world, and makes it what it really is. In this sort of double process, where animal subjectivity perceives itself as finite, and transcends its limits, only to discover itself, once again, as finite, is particularly evident in Hegel’s analysis of sexual relations and reproduction. In reproduction and sexual relations, individuality opens to the outside world in the hope of finding in another individual the completeness it lacks, to integrate, through this union, its ontological weakness, and “to bring the genus into existence by linking itself into it”.41 The other individual shares the same sense of deficiency, fragility and 39  To clarify the many meanings of necessary, Aristotle says “necessary means what it is impossible to live without” (Metaph., V, 1015 a 20). But since need, food and air are a form of deficiency, it can be said that lack itself is necessary. 40   Enc. II, § 359 R. 41  Enc. II, § 369. On similarities and differences between gender, Hegel insists in the 1805/06 Jena Naturphilosophie where he analyses sexual organs and quotes specific researches such as J. F. Ackermann’s and G. H. Schubert’s (see Jenaer Systementuwürfe III. Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes, GW 8, 173–174). It is possible to see a correspondence between men’s testicles and women’s ovaries, for instance, but beside all the possible analogies, there is an essential difference, whereby the female is characterized by being indifferent

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insufficiency—that “feeling of insecurity”—Hegel says that pushed it to look outside.42 However, this attempt is inevitably a desperate one. Unlike what is described in Aristophanes’ tale in Plato’s Symposium, sexual relations are not the integration and mutual fulfilment of two finite and isolated entities. Rather, they are the reason for the birth of a new individual, a new singularity that has the same feeling of deficiency and ontological inadequacy as the other two. The attempt to overcome such inadequacy is both reason and origin of its existence. The individual’s struggle is solved in nature with that bad infinity to which the individual is destined to succumb: This process of propagation issues forth into the progress of the spurious infinite. The genus preserves itself only through the perishing of the individuals, which fulfil their determination in the process of generation, and in so far as they have no higher determination than this, pass on to death.43 The genus exists only through the death of the individual, and thus is a higher form of life than the single entity, which is always divided in its universality. It is a natural form of life that however, sometimes, also transcends nature: In this new life, in which singularity is removed, subjectivity is maintained, and the genus has become, for itself, reality, becoming something higher than nature.44

and the male instead by opposition and by the division, from which follows that the male is the active element, the bearer of the principle of subjectivity, while the female is receptive, the matter must take the form (see GW 8, 173–174). The reference to the ancient Aristotelian theory, according to which the male provides the form and principle of change (archén tés kinéseos), while the female the body and matter, is obvious here (De generat. 1, 729a). The reference to Ackermann, who taught anatomy at Jena in 1804, is not devoid of interest because his works were probably a significant influence in the scientific training of Hegel. Ackermann had already published in 1806 a work in which he undertook to show the unsustainability, from a scientific point of view, of the phrenology of Gall against which Hegel wrote against at the same time in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Ackermann‘s work, published in Heidelberg in 1806, is entitled Die Gall‘sche-Hirn, Skull-, Organ-und Lehre vom Gesichtspunkt der Erfahrung. 42   Enc. II, § 369 R. 43   Enc. II, § 369 R. 44   Enc. ‘17, § 291.

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Spirit is what is higher than nature. Here, a reconfiguration between individual and universality occurs. This reconfiguration is gradual and it is never fully free from objectification, apart from the moments of complete awareness. Nature and the outside world that it embodies, and the tear of deficiency that it manifests in its most complex form, do not disappear in this reconfiguration. They gain a new and different meaning that reorganizes and gives new structure to that very same exteriority, deficiency, and need. 5 Conclusions In animal subjectivity nature—which is primarily exteriority—is fulfilled. Here nature reveals its conceptual structure that, in all its other manifestations, was always only internal and separated from any objectivity. If fulfilment is acknowledgement and revelation of what it really is, nature, through animal subjectivity, reveals a peculiar tendency to go beyond nature itself and that strict necessity that, according to Hegel, is a necessary characteristic of nature and being other. What is interesting is that this movement to overcome this strict law of nature does not act from the outside. It is in nature itself, thus allowing and making necessary a redefinition of the concept of nature itself. The broader conception of nature that makes Hegel think about the relation between nature and spirit as different, but never opposed worlds, does not seem to be unrelated to nature’s essence. The structure of subjectivity and the consequential freedom are not the outcome of some kind of infection of spirit on nature, or of an external influence that initiates something that would otherwise remain unscathed from this type of dynamics. Life is a manifestation of nature. The structure of subjectivity and the freedom that exists in it are nature’s highest achievement in terms of organization and structure. According to Hegel, the limitations of physical reductionism (and of strict naturalism) do not appear out of anti-naturalistic assumptions, but from the radical consideration of nature’s essence. From a certain perspective, Hegel’s position seems, on one hand, to go towards a naturalization of the subject, showing how the subject’s way of being (the subject is intended here as a structure revolving around itself, autonomous and self-determined) develops primarily in nature and, specifically, in animals. On the other hand, however, it also involves a redetermination of the idea of nature with a process that can be seen as a sort of denaturalization of nature, and that Hegel would describe as unilateral, intellectualistic and reductionist. Finding the genesis of subjectivity in nature prevents from thinking about it as a disjunctive element, as something that would appear only after

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nature and within the social practices and dynamics connected to it,45 or as the bursting in of a supernatural principle on a natural layer. However, understanding nature as the place where the subject literally takes shape prevents seeing it as simple exteriority with no freedom, the way in which, at least prima facie, it is constituted within a systematic structure. Thinking about the subject and about freedom in a radically naturalistic way prevents seeing nature and spirit as juxtaposed, as if opposing a determined-by-necessity nature with an independent supernatural reality. The opposition between nature and spirit starts, instead, from abstract conceptions of both notions. Through this process of conceptual redefinition aimed at overcoming intellectualistic abstractions, Hegel attempts to show spirit’s development in nature and nature’s redefinition in spirit. In this perspective, second nature is not only erasing first nature—what Hegel would have called natural nature—but it is a new redefinition of the complex human structure, of the subjective structure of man as an organism. Second nature, the grounds on which the human way of being and spiritual world develop, is rooted in human being’s free subjectivity, in his being a development of those characteristics that essentially define animals as such. Hegel aims at solving any form of dualism characterising some of the relations with the outside world and that are the origin of a certain spiritual and physical reductionism. For Hegel, spirit is not simply something different from nature. This dichotomy, to use Wittgenstein’s terms, is a classic conceptual pathology. Spirit cannot appear unless the natural bonds where it originates and develops are recognized. And if spirit is not different from nature, since it arises from human beings’ nature, it is clear that such condition necessitates a further development of the concept of nature. The opposition to a physicalist reduction of nature does not produce a spiritualistic ontology, nor a reduction of reality to the mind, as in a classical but radically idealistic reading. Materialism and spiritualism have sense only within the abstract and opposing logic that maintains them. They are unilateral determinations that, in the overlaying dualistic 45  The argument here highlights the limits of the interpretations of Hegel’s philosophy, which emphasized the social dimension as the original place where the structures of subjectivity and freedom are revealed. It is in many ways around this problem that the controversy between John McDowell and Robert Pippin develops. Pippin’s criticism of McDowell implies a conception of subjectivity and freedom in Hegel that is intended to show the elements that break nature and that are irreducible to any form of rationalism. Equally apparent in Pippin in his polemic against Devries’ emergentist Hegel: (see Robert B. Pippin, “Leaving Nature Behind: or Two Cheers for Subjectivism” in Nicholas H. Smith ed., Reading McDowell. On Mind and World (London: Routledge, 2002), 58–75.

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vision, are each other’s reversal. The appearance of subjectivity within nature, and the decline of animal subjectivity through relations that require freedom is proof of the need to let go (also in a therapeutic sense) of all the dualisms and abstractions that are at the origin of many forms of reductionism. This need is the fulfilment of Hegel’s system in its divisions as logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit, and its development as a whole in which every part makes sense only in relation with the others and with the whole.

chapter 12

Social Self and Work in The Phenomenology of Spirit Emmanuel Renault Abstract: This article contends that the contemporary interpretations of Hegel’s theory of recognition suffer from a twofold shortcoming: an underestimation of the natural presuppositions of recognition and a lack of attention to the fact that work sublates recognition. It argues that the sociality of the self shouldn’t be reduced to recognition since Hegel depicts the social self as a working self. The article is divided into four parts. The first one analyzes the function of the reference to nature in Hegel’s conception of self-consciousness. The second tries to make sense of the relationship between self-consciousness and work. The third tackles the issue of the sociality of the self. And the fourth refers to Dewey in order to clarify the contention that the social self is also a working self.

In contemporary debates about recognition, there are two contrasting ways of supporting a Hegelian model. The first one relates to what can be termed an intersubjectivist conception of recognition, the second one to an idealist or neopragmatist conception of recognition.1 These two interpretations contrast in many ways but in their reading of the Chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit, they seem to share a twofold shortcoming: an underestimation of the natural presuppositions of recognition and a lack of attention to the fact that work sublates recognition. They seem to underestimate two of its main polemical contentions: firstly, self-consciousness shouldn’t be conceived of through the contrast between spirit and nature, as it is the case for instance in Kant’s conception of the transcendental ego; secondly, full recognition of one’s freedom shouldn’t be conceived of through the contrast between freedom and work, as it is the case since ancient Greece, where the working people were 1  For the first of these two options, see Axel Honneth, “From Desire to Recognition: Hegel’s Account of Human Sociality”, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Dan Moyar and Michael Quante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 76–90. For the second one, see Robert. P. Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), and Robert Brandom, “The Structure of Desire and Recognition. Self-consciousness and Self-Constitution,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 33/1 (2007): 127–150.

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not recognized as free citizens deserving participation to political life, and as is also the case in the Romantic criticism of the modern division of labor. In what follows, I try to spell out which conception of the social self follows when the connections between nature and recognition and between recognition and work are taken seriously. I proceed in four stages. In the first one, I specify the function of the reference to nature in Hegel’s conception of self-consciousness. In a second step, I try to make sense of the relationship between self-consciousness and work. In a third step, I tackle the issue of the sociality of the self. And in a last step, I spell out some implications of the Hegelian approach to the social self. 1

Life and Spirit

In contemporary discussions, it seems to be taken for granted that Hegel’s account of recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit refers to a sociality of the self that is independent of any theory of nature. Spirit in general is conceived of as the independent realm of an intersubjectively constituted freedom which normativity contrasts with the lack of normativity of nature. It is as if recognition, introduced by Hegel as the transition from life into spirit, wouldn’t have anything to do with this transition as such, but would only specify the normativity of spirit. There are at least three ways of challenging these assumptions. The first one consists in showing that recognition is already at stake at the very level of natural beings. Since this point has already been made,2 I will put forward two other arguments which deal with the relation of spirit to nature. One of them relates to the theory of the transition from nature to spirit, as is arti­ culated in the Encyclopedia. The other argument concerns the chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit, namely, the interpretation of the relationships between self-consciousness and desire on the one hand, of self-consciousness and recognition on the other hand. According to the shared assumptions of the contemporary discussion, Hegel would approach the relation between nature and spirit in general, and between consciousness and self-consciousness in particular, from an idealist point of view: nature is posited by spirit, and it is in this sense that

2  See Italo Testa, La Natura del Riconoscimento. Riconoscimento Naturale e Ontologia Sociale in Hegel (Milano, Udine: Mimesis, 2010); “How Does Recognition Emerge from Nature? The Genesis of Consciousness in Hegel’s Jena Writings”, Critical Horizons 13/2 (2012): 176–196.

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self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness.3 But for Hegel, such an idealist approach to nature is just as one-sided as the Naturphilosophical approach that reduces spirit to a natural product. It is among other reasons because Hegel wants to overcome the one-sidedness of this idealist approach that he devotes a special section of the Encyclopedia to the natural basis of spirit.4 In his Anthropology, he famously depicts the “soul”, or “nature-spirit”,5 as “the substance, hence the absolute basis of all the particularizations and singularizations of the spirit”.6 The transition from nature into spirit is characterized by continuity as well as by discontinuity. Nature is already a series of levels of increasing complexity and a process of internalization, or integration, of the interrelated elements.7 In animals, for instance, physical and chemical elements are integrated in an organic whole, and the relations to the environment are regulated by drives and feelings. The animal has already a “soul”,8 and it is at exactly this level of animal subjectivity that the Philosophy of Spirit has to start. Hence, the Anthropology is a theory of the continuity of spirit with nature. Indeed, it is also a theory of what specifies the human soul: it is characte­rized by a higher degree of unification of drives and feelings through habits in a second nature.9 ‘Consciousness’ (studied in the ‘Phenomenology’) and spirit in the narrow sense of the term (studied in the ‘Psychology’) are also higher levels of integration of the interactions with the environment. At a certain degree, these quantitative changes in degrees of integration reverse in a qualitative change named freedom. Conversely, the qualitative change that defines spirit shouldn’t be conceived of independently of this series of quantitative changes. When Hegel defines spirit as “return to itself out of nature”,10 or as the “idea that, from its otherness, returns in itself”,11 he clearly claims against Kant or Fichte that freedom shouldn’t be conceived of only as a relation of spirit to itself, or as a feature defining a realm independent of nature. Spirit is neither specified by the act of positing itself as in Fichte, nor by the auto­nomy 3 

See for instance, Robert P. Pippin, “Natural and Mindedness: Hegel’s compatibilism”, The European Journal of Philosophy 7/2 (1999): 194–212. 4  This argument is developed in Emmanuel Renault, “The Naturalistic Side of Hegel’s Pragmatism”, Critical Horizons 13/2 (2012): 244–273. 5  Enc., § 387. Translations from Hegel’s Encyclopedia are the author’s. 6  Enc., § 389. 7  Enc., §§ 248, 250. 8  Enc., § 351. 9  Enc., §§ 409–412. 10  Enc., § 381. 11   Enc., § 18.

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of reason or by a normative authority (as in contemporary idealist and neopragmatist interpretations).12 It is defined as a relation to itself through its externality, or as an activity of positing its own presuppositions. This is why spirit, in the strict sense of the term that is considered in the third section of the Subjective spirit, is defined as a process of practical and theoretical appropriation of the conditions of its freedom, as a process of making being (Sein) his own (sein).13 In fact, theoretical spirit is nothing but the process in which objects given by intuition are gradually appropriated by a gradual transformation of intuition into representations, of representation into thoughts, and of thoughts into concepts.14 The same could be said for practical spirit since no freedom is possible without spiritual appropriation of drives and desires. Interesting enough, this appropriation process is sometimes depicted in the language of work, as “elaboration”, and even as “work”, for instance when the transformation of thoughts into concepts, or understanding into speculation, is conceived of as the “work of the negative”, or the “work of the concept”.15 There are good reasons to think that in the Introduction of chapter IV of the Phenomenology, Hegel intends to show that the issue of self-consciousness should be tackled from the point of view of this complex theory of the relations between nature and spirit. From the outset, Hegel points out that self-consciousness is not an immediate relation to oneself, as in the Fichtean conception of the absolute I as self-position. Instead, he contends that “self-consciousness is in fact the reflection out of the being of the sensuous and perceived world and is essentially the return from out of otherness (wessentlich die Rückher aus dem Anderssein)”.16 What are the implications of this approach to self-consciousness for Hegel’s account of recognition? 12  See for instance Robert P. Pippin, “On Giving Oneself the Law”, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 65–69. 13   Enc., § 443. The import of this conception of spirit has been highlighted by David Wittmann, “Faut-il lire Hegel à travers Kant?” in Hegel au présent. Une relève de la métaphysique, ed. Bernard Mabille and Jean-François Kervégan (Paris: Presses du Cnrs, 2012), 337–449. 14   Enc., §§ 2, 3 & R., 9 & R., 20 & R, 442 R, 445 & R. 15  The use of the notion of ‘work’ as a paradigm in the theory of spirit has been highlighted by Adorno in “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy”, in his Hegel: Three Studies on Hegel (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 17–20. See also Andreas Arndt, Die Arbeit der Philosophie (Berlin: Parerga-Verlag, 2003). 16   P S, § 167 (GW 9, 104). Here and in the following quotes, I’m using Terry Pinkard online translation, sometimes modified (paragraphs corresponds to those of Miller’s translation). Accessed September 7, 2014, http://terrypinkard.weebly.com/phenomenology-of-spiritpage.html.

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The best way to answer this question is to analyze the ways in which the concept of recognition is introduced in chapter IV.17 Making sense of the conceptual connections between self-consciousness and life is a challenge for those who endorse the idealist conception of the relations between spirit and nature. In such an interpretative framework, only two options are open. The first one considers that the internal relationship between self-consciousness and life is only metaphorical. The concept of desire would be used merely for describing a structural feature of the normative realm: normativity means claim to vali­dity and expectation (or “desire”) that this claim will be recognized as legitimate.18 The second option regards the relationship between nature and spirit through desire as merely negative. Hegel would have only tried to show that the self-consciousness should free itself from the process of life to achieve a true satisfaction, such a satisfaction being possible only through the moral claims raised by another self-consciousness.19 The first option fails to see that there are good systematic reasons to believe that “desire” could be more than a metaphor: self-consciousness presupposes the soul, and soul means notably what is described as a practical relationship with the environment through needs and desires.20 Conversely, it could be said that the second option remains too literal. It fails to see that Hegel’s point is not so much that the self-consciousness should free itself from the process of life in order to achieve a true satisfaction but, rather, that the self-consciousness has to set up new relations with the process of life, relations that shouldn’t be that of immediate negation, as in desire, but that of spiritual appropriation, as in work. Taking seriously the theory of the transition from nature into spirit enables us to understand that what is at stake in the introduction of chapter IV is not only to criticize monological conceptions of self-consciousness and to show that self-consciousness is intersubjectively constituted, as Fichte already pointed out in his Foundation of the Natural Right. Hegel intention is also to criticize intellectualist and idealist conceptions of self-consciousness. Whereas self-consciousness is classically understood, in intellectualist terms, as a mere cognitive relationship to oneself, Hegel highlights that it presupposes a practical relation to the otherness. Indeed, this had already been pointed out by Fichte himself, in the § 5 of his Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, 17  I what follows, I’m drawing on Jean-Michel Buée, “Vie et conscience de soi dans la Phénoménologie de l’Esprit”, Hegel-Jahrbuch (2006): 98–101. 18  See Robert P. Pippin’s criticism of literal readings of the introduction of the chapter IV in his Hegel on Self-Consciousness. 19  See Honneth, “From Desire to Recognition: Hegel’s Account of Human Sociality”. 20  Enc., §§ 359–365.

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where it is shown that self-consciousness presupposes a distinction between I and not-I, and that this relation presupposes an absolute “practical power” (praktisches Vermögen) that is denoted by notions such as “tendency” (Tendenz), “drive” (Trieb) and “effort” (Streben). It is clearly in tune with this argumentation that Hegel claims that the primary form in which an ‘I’ that is a self-consciousness relates to the otherness (or the ‘not-I’) is that of desire. But instead of following Fichte’s idealist conception of self-consciousness as the outcome of an absolute activity (a spontaneous ‘practical power’ attributed to the ‘absolute I’), Hegel points out that desire is primarily embedded in the life process.21 Against the idealist conception of the essential spontaneity of self-consciousness (as ‘transcendental apperception’ or ‘absolute I’), Hegel depicts self-consciousness as some kind of self-reflection that emerges from the life process. The way in which Hegel tries to connect the anti-intellectualist and the intersubjectivist dimensions of Fichte’s account of self-consciousness depends on his own definition of spirit as return to itself out of its otherness. Instead of referring self-consciousness to the practical resistance of the external world (the famous Anstoss), as in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, Hegel relies upon a theory of desire as practical appropriation of the external presuppositions of the life process. Instead of considering one’s being for another consciousness as the origin of a moral limitation of one’s will and, therefore, of the true representation of one’s freedom (the famous Anruf ), as in the Foundation of the Natural Right, Hegel depicts one’s being for another consciousness as a presupposition of one’s freedom that raises the challenge of the appropriation of one’s being for another (a challenge taken first in the immediate and inappropriate form of the struggle for recognition). As in Fichte, 21  Fichte’s theory of self-consciousness in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre is famously complex. One the one hand, self-consciousness presupposes a ‘pure I’, that is a cognitive spontaneous relation to oneself. On the other hand, it presupposes the practical spontaneous activity of the practical power, also attributed to the absolute I. In a way, this practical power also has a natural basis, since its primitive forms are denoted as ‘forces’ and ‘drives’. In this respect, there is already in Fichte a theory of the natural foundation of the spirit that has been elaborated further by the early Schelling; see Claudio Cesa, “La notion de pratique dans l’idéalisme du jeune Schelling”, in Dans quelle mesure la philosophie est pratique ? Fichte, Hegel, ed. M. Bienenstock, M. Crampe-Casnabet (Fontenay-auxRoses: ENS Éditions, 2000), p. 81–99. On the various Fichtean elements in chapter IV, see Paul Redding, “Fichte’s role in Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit, chapter 4”, accessed September 7, 2014, http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~pred9095/Redding_Hegel-Fichte .pdf. For a broader comparison between Fichte’s and Hegel’s accounts of recognition, see Franck Fischbach, Fichte. Hegel. La reconnaissance (Paris: Puf, 1999).

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self-consciousness is conceived of as consciousness of one’s own freedom, freedom being the essence of the spirit. But instead of being thought of as an overcoming of limitations or obstacles, as in Fichte, freedom is conceived of as appropriation of its natural and intersubjective presuppositions. Now, the appropriation of the natural presuppositions of freedom is at stake both in the dialectic of desire and in the struggle for recognition. In both cases, the same critique of the conception of the freedom of self-consciousness as being essentially independent of nature is at play.22 The desiring consciousness conceives itself as a freedom existing immediately for itself and being independent of the life process. But the experience of this first shape of selfconsciousness shows that desire is not independent but dependent of the life process. Willing to save its conception of freedom as being immediately for itself in the new framework of its relations to another consciousness, the selfconsciousness then tries to reduce the freedom of the other consciousness to a means of its own freedom (reducing the other to a ‘living thing’). What results from the fact that the other expects to be recognized as something more that as a ‘living thing’ is a struggle in which one self-consciousness endeavors to prove to another self-consciousness that life is nothing in comparison to freedom. But again, in the experience made in this second shape of selfconsciousness, it turns out that life is essential to freedom. It is only in the third shape of consciousness that freedom will be thought of in its mediations with nature. The lord/bondsman relation offers a first opportunity to actualize freedom through spiritual appropriation of nature rather than through immediate negation, namely through work as formative activity impacting external nature on the one hand, one’s own nature on the other. In the rest of the chapter IV also, the truth of the self-consciousness will depend on its relations to nature. For instance, the stoic self-consciousness will be depicted as the first attempt to identify the freedom of the self-consciousness with the life process. And it will be criticized for thinking of this identity in merely cognitive and formal terms, without any attempt to achieve a practical actualization of freedom.23

22  As noted by Frederick Neuhouser, in this volume, “Hegel on Social Ontology and the Possibility of Pathology”. 23  Freedom is then reduced to a theoretical appropriation of the life process that suffers from a lack of practical appropriation of it: “The freedom of self-consciousness is indifferent with respect to natural existence and for that reason has likewise let go of natural existence, has let it be free-standing, and the reflection is a doubled reflection. Freedom in thought merely has pure thoughts as its truth, a truth without any culmination in life,

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Recognition and Work

Up to now, I have outlined a reading of the chapter 4 that is underpinned by two claims: firstly, one should pay more attention to the relations between selfconsciousness and nature, and secondly, the truth of self-consciousness, or the true conception and actualization of freedom, depends not only on intersubjective relations to others, but also on practical relations to natural materiality. Both of these claims explain why work, that combines a practical relation to natural materiality (as transformation of nature) and to others (as producing for others, namely as production of the bondsman for the lord), plays a decisive role. The introduction of work in the discussion about self-consciousness has deeper implications than usually acknowledged. These implications do not only concern the general idea that rational actualization of freedom requires a Bildung process that transforms inner and outer nature into a second nature.24 In chapter IV, as well as in chapter VII,25 work is undoubtedly depicted as a formative activity, that transforms nature from an obstacle to freedom into a means of its actualization. But work is also thought of as a shape of selfconsciousness: its third shape, desire being the first and struggle for recognition the second. What matters above all is that work is the origin of a new conception of freedom, a conception of freedom that is truer than those that are associated to desire and struggle for recognition. Hegel claims that work is a specific source of self-conception that complements the limited contribution of desire and struggle for recognition to the conception of what the freedom of the self really is. Each of the three shapes of self-consciousness considered in the introduction and the section A of the chapter IV (desiring self-consciousness, selfconsciousness struggling for recognition, and self-consciousness involved in the lord/bondsman relationship) corresponds to a specific conception of freedom and to a specific practical attempt to actualize this conception. Now, the first two shapes of self-consciousness suffer from a same twofold limitation: freedom is only conceived of as being for itself (as in Kant or Fichte) rather than as bei sich sein, and the practical relation to otherness amount to immediate negation rather than appropriation of natural and intersubjective and thus it is also merely the concept of freedom and not living freedom itself, for initially it is in its own eyes merely thought itself which is its essence” (PS, § 200; GW 9, 118). 24  Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the reading of Hegel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980). 25   P S, §§ 703–704 (GW 9, 377–378).

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presuppositions.26 These shortcomings are overcome by the working consciousness both from the point of view of the conceptions of freedom, and of the practical attempts to actualize freedom. Work is the origin of a new conception of freedom in which it is no longer synonymous with internal spontaneity (that of the desire or of will to be recognized), but with a type of bei sich sein in the otherness. This is made possible by the fact that the otherness ceases to appear as an obstacle but becomes either a means of the productive activity or its product. This new conception of freedom is clearly at stake when Hegel highlights that “the working consciousness comes to an intuition of selfstanding being as its own self (Anschauung des selbständigen Seins, als seiner selbst)”.27 Hegel’s point seems to be that the experience of working involves a new conception of what a free action is. It is no longer specified by immediate negation (or ‘death’) of the obstacles to freedom, but by a process of transformation of these obstacles (or ‘negativity’).28 The freedom is located in the process of the interactions with the environment and not only in intentions or in the ability of producing results that meet the intentions.29 The result is a new conception of the self and a new conception of the world: a conception of the self as being nothing else than his deeds,30 and a conception the world as 26  Spelling out the various dimensions of Hegel’s conception of freedom is not possible in this article. It must nevertheless be kept in mind that the idea of being at home in the otherness entails at least two elements: a conception of freedom as appropriation of the otherness (so that being for itself no longer contrasts with being for another), and a contention that a true conception of freedom is required for a true actualization of freedom, that is also a true being at home in the otherness; see Frederick Neuhouser, Foundation of Hegel’s Social Theory. Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 17–21. 27   P S, § 195 (GW 9, 115). 28  Whereas the idealist conception of freedom is equated with the absolute negativity of death (the same criticism is at stake when the Grundlinien identify the Kantian or Fichtean freedom with death; see PR, § 5 R & A), the conception of freedom as bei sich sein is identified with a negativity actualized in the undergoing practical relations to the environment. In Hegel’s terms, the serving consciousness: “posits himself as such a negative [of the fear of death] within the element of continuance. He thereby becomes for himself an existing-being-for-itself. [. . .] he attains the consciousness that he himself exists in and for himself” (PS, § 196; GW 9, 115). 29  The discussions of the wrong conceptions of action and of the freedom of action will be elaborated in chapter V of the Phenomenology of Spirit, sections A-b/c, and B-C. On the relation between this theory of action, that differs from the one elaborated in the Grundlinien, and the conception of work, see Emmanuel Renault, Connaître le present. Enquête sur le présentisme hégélien (Paris: Vrin, 2014), ch. 9. 30   P S, § 322 (GW 9, 178–179).

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a place where freedom can be actualized. The result is also a new conception of what actualizing freedom means. Freedom is not so much bei sich sein in another self-consciousness (or appropriation of one’s own being-for-anotherconsciousness) than bei sich sein in otherness in general (or appropriation of the various presuppositions, intersubjective as well as material, institutional as well as natural, of freedom). Work, as a practical relation involving both a relation to another self-consciousness (as producing for others) and to natural materiality, provides then a model for thinking what is required for actualizing freedom. But all this belong to the philosophical description of this third shape of self-consciousness, not to its own experience as a working consciousness. Now, work is also depicted as a specific source of self-conceptions. As a matter of fact, the bondsman is deprived of freedom and of the recognition, but he acquires through work a conception of himself as having a set of capacities and as being the one who is able to use his own capacities to satisfy other’s desires and get recognition. In Hegel’s terms: the servile consciousness “comes to acquire through his own means a mind of his own, and he does this precisely in the work in which there had seemed to be merely some outsider’s mind (Es wird also durch dies Wiederfinden seiner durch sich selbst eigner Sinn, gerade in der Arbeit, worin es nur fremder Sinn zu sein schien)”.31 Then, retrospectively, it seems that the shortcomings of the struggle for recognition don’t come only from the fact that a true recognition can’t be achieved through asymmetric recognition. These shortcomings could also result from the fact that there is another source of self-conception than recognition, namely work as an acti­ vity in which one develops capacities and discover one’s own capacities, as an activity generating what could also be termed a ‘conscience of ability’.32 The fact that the third shape of self-consciousness is the truth of the second one suggests that the self-conceptions coming from work are truer than those coming from recognition, or that “work is the basis of true consciousness”,33 as Gadamer pointed out. Indeed, there is nothing in Chapter IV-A that expli­ citly supports this hypothesis, but it could be argued that it is only when I know what I’m able to achieve that I can know what I can expect in terms of recog­nition and in which sense the recognition of my deeds is a recognition of myself.

31   P S, § 196 (GW 9, 115). 32  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 71. 33  Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, 71.

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The Sociality of the Self

I have tried to show that Hegel integrates both of the two Fichtean accounts of self-consciousness: self-consciousness as emerging from the practical relations to objects, and self-consciousness as made possible by recognition. And I have suggested that instead of endorsing Fichte’s contention that what matters for self-consciousness is the resistance of objects and the limitation of my will by the moral demands raised by others, Hegel grounds true self-consciousness on an appropriation of the presuppositions of freedom, this appropriation being conceived of both at the levels of life, of recognition, and of work. This interpretation is fully compatible with the claim that one of the main implications of chapter IV is that the self is a social self: being self-consciousness is being for another self-consciousness and being embedded in social networks of recog­ nition as well as in social practices, such as work. But this interpretation is not compatible with two theses that are usually considered as decisive for a Hegelian conception of the social self, the first of which is that sociality should be identified with recognition (social ontological thesis), and the seco­nd that the sociality of the self depends solely, or primarily, on recognition (social psycho­logical thesis). Let’s us consider first the social ontological thesis. At first glance, it seems fully legitimate to give a social ontological mea­ning to the definition of the spirit as “the I that is a We, and the We that is a I”.34 This definition of spirit concerns undoubtedly spirit as objective spirit, notably if not exclusively, and since the interconnection between I and We is imme­ diately specified in terms of recognition, recognitive relations seem to belong to the basic structure of social reality.35 But the fact that social reality entails recognitive relations doesn’t mean that it could be identified with or grounded in such relations. Here, the question at issue is that of the main orientation of what could be termed a Hegelian social ontology. Indeed, there is no social ontology in the contemporary meaning of the sense in Hegel, but it would be wrong to assume that his philosophy is incompatible with any kind of ontological specification of the social, or to contend that Hegel’s concept of recognition has nothing to do with any specification of this kind. From a Hegelian point of view, it is not easy to decide from which ontological point of view the social should be specified. The most legitimate way of addressing this latter issue is probably to draw attention on the fact that the Objective 34   P S, § 177 (GW 9, 108). 35  On the various ways of grounding a social ontology on a Hegelian conception of recognition, see Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen, ed., Recognition and Social Ontology (Dordrecht: Brill, 2011).

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logic is supposed to ‘replace’ ontology,36 and that the highest (that is richest and truest) conception of reality presented in the Objective logic is articulated through the concept of Wechselwirkung.37 It is tempting to define society as a system of reciprocal-action (or interaction), and to consider that this system is characterized by a particular type of reciprocal-action (or interaction) between self-consciousness named recognition. Such an approach finds textual support in the fact that chapter IV compares the structure of the pure concept of recognition with the ‘play of forces’,38 a comparison suggesting that Hegel has conceived of recognitive relations in terms of Wechselwirkung. But we have also seen that in the Phenomenology, work appears as a basic social relation. It follows that the basic social relations are not only interactions between selfconsciousness, but also between self-consciousness and external objects, be they natural or artifacts. The theory of objective spirit confirms that the social is not only a network of recognitive relations, but also a system of interactions with nature through work, a system that will be termed the ‘system of needs’ in the Philosophy of right, and also a system of institutions. A society is undoubtedly viewed by Hegel as an institutionalized system of interactions (or Wechselwirkungen) but not only as system of interactions between individuals and groups, or between I and You, I and We, and Us and Them. It is also a system of interactions with nature and with various types of objectified activity. The interactions between individuals are mediated by interactions with institutions as well as by other types of beings such as the material goods possessed by the ‘persons’ that condition their ‘exchanges’ and their legal interactions, or such as the natural beings that work transforms in order to satisfy the needs. Far from being reducible to recognition or grounded on recognition, the social

36  Cf. Enc., §§ 155–157; SL, 42 (GW 21, 48): “The objective logic thus takes the place rather of the former metaphysics which was supposed to be the scientific edifice of the world as constructed by thoughts alone.—If we look at the final shape in the elaboration of this science, then it is ontology which objective logic most directly replaces in the first instance, that is, that part of metaphysics intended to investigate the nature of ens in general”. 37  Surprising enough, the importance of the concept of ‘reciprocal action’ (Wechselwirkung that shouldn’t be confused with the mechanical relation Wirkung-Gegenwirkung or ‘action-reaction’) hasn’t been taken into account in the history of Hegelianism and in the Hegel scholarship. Dewey, during his Hegelian period, could be considered as one exception; see Emmanuel Renault, “Dewey lecteur de la Science de la Logique” in La Science de la logique au miroir de l’identité, ed. B. Mabille and G. Gérard, forthcoming. 38   P S, § 184 (GW 9, 110).

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reality should be conceived of as a broader network of interactions in which recognitive relations are embedded.39 The social psychological thesis, according to which Hegel would have identified the sociality of the self to recognition, is not more convincing. What makes the self a self is a relation to oneself that monitors one’s behavior. Now, we have seen that the type of self-conceptions that monitors the behavior of a selfconsciousness is not only constituted in recognitive relationships with othe­rs but also in practical interactions with the environment, partly through the process of life, that is not social, and partly through work that is a social acti­ vity. Indeed, recognition is at play in working activities: work is a social activity in which my own mind (eigner Sinn) is connected with another mind ( fremder Sinn).40 But work is also an activity that is specified by the social logic of producing for others, a social logic that is not reducible to the logic of recognition. We have seen that in the Phenomenology, the very logic of producing for othe­rs, even when it is deprived of all forms of recognition, has specific effects on the self-conceptions. Among these self-conceptions, one finds the conception of oneself has being part of society, namely the conception of oneself as being part of a social relation defined by a form of cooperation and a common concern. As Hegel puts it in the 1817 version of the Encyclopedia: “this relation is in the first place and according to its identity a shared feature of the need, the desire, and the concern for satisfaction”.41 This has social ontological implications since the social reality is not only specified by particular interactions, but also by the fact that the individuals involved in these interactions can think of social reality as something that depends on their contribution.42 There is a specific social dimension in the work activity that shapes the conception of oneself as being part of a social network of cooperation (of a ‘relation’ defined by ‘the share feature of need’). It generates specific normative expectations toward the environment (a ‘concern for satisfaction’ of needs that are not only needs of recognition). These self-conceptions and expectations partici39  For an attempt to actualize Hegel’s theory of recognition from this social ontological point of view, see Jean-Philippe Deranty, “The Loss of Nature in Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition. Rereading Mead with Merleau-Ponty”, Critical Horizons 6 (2005): 153–181, and Beyond Communication. A Critical Study of Axel Honneth’s Social Philosophy (Dordrecht: Brill, 2009). 40   P S, § 196 (GW 9, 115). 41  Enc. ’17, § 356. 42  In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel seems to give a crucial role to the feeling of participating to society with my own work; for the discussion on the normative implications of this concern, see Axel Honneth, Freedom’s Right. The Social Foundation of Democratic Life, Trans. Joseph Ganahl (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), 182–198.

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pate in the monitoring of the behavior that defines the self. In one word, the implications for the sociality of the self can be put in the following terms: for Hegel, the social self is also a working self. 4

Social Self as Working Self

The meaning of the general contention that the social self is also a working self deserves further clarification. In order to articulate this meaning, it is no longer possible to draw on Hegel’s texts. In what follows, I will rather refer to John Dewey who is of interest here as a Hegelian as well as a thinker of the centrality of work.43 I will try to elaborate a pragmatist interpretation of the claim that the social self is also a working self, and I will proceed in three steps that correspond to three theses. 1. The first one is that the self is not only social because it is embedded in recognitive relations, but also because it is embedded in social practices. This statement can be understood in two different ways, the first of which being that there is a mutual presupposition between recognition and social practice: recognition can be conceived of as the presupposition of social interaction (as in Mead).44 But conversely, forms of social recognition can be conceived of as differentiated by the structures of specific social practices (as in Honneth’s distinction of spheres of recognition).45 In both cases, a question at issue is whether or not the dimensions of practice that are independent of recognition have specific subjectivation effects and normative stakes that impact the self. 2. The second thesis answers to this latter question: the participation in social practices has specific stakes and produces subjectivation effects that are irreducible to effects of recognition. What is at stake in my participation to social practices is not only the confirmation, through recognition, of the value of my deeds and of my very existence, or, more generally, the confirmation of a positive relation to oneself. It is also the possibility to develop and to realize capacities. To put it like John Dewey: men’s try to promote what is “enlarging 43  See Emmanuel Renault, “Mead and Dewey Hégéliens”, in La Théorie sociale de George Herbert Mead. Études critiques et traductions inédites, ed. A. Cukier and E. Debray (Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau, 2014), 86–105; “Dewey et la centralité du travail;” Travailler 28 (2012): 125–148. 44  See George Herbert Mead, Mind Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1934). 45  See Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995), 71–91.

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and improving experience”.46 Therefore, my participation to social practices is a way of becoming aware of what I can do and I can hope, two decisive components of the self-consciousness. Another specific stake of my participation in social practices is the appropriation of my social existence. What matters in social action is not only to meet social expectations (or ‘others’ mind’), but also to be able to recognize oneself in one’s own behavior. To put it like Dewey in Human Nature and Conduct, to be a self means to be able to relate to one’s social behavior as one’s own, while lack of appropriation means distorted self: the ‘me’ cannot exist without the ‘mine’. [. . .] Possession shapes and consolidates the ‘I’ of philosophers. ‘I own, therefore I am’ expresses a truer psychology than the Cartesian ‘I think, therefore I am’.47 It is true that denial of recognition constitutes an obstacle to self-appropriation, and conversely, recognition of the value of my behavior is a condition for subjective appropriation. But the feeling of doing the best of what I can do is another source of self-appropriation, as well as the feeling of fulfilling what I could hope. 3. Now, it seems that among the various types of social practices, work has the deepest impact on the self-conceptions related to what one could do and hope, just as it produces powerful contributions to self-appropriation. Let’s first consider its impact on self-conceptions. In contemporary societies, there are many empirical evidences that the experience of working is one of the most decisive means of self-discovery and the “primary source of favorable selfconcepts”, to put it like Robert Lane.48 These self-conceptions are not only coming from the specific forms of recognition that are immanent to the working activity.49 They also come from the fact that work is a form of social practice

46  See for instance John Dewey, Democracy and Education, in The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953, The Middle Works [MW], ed. by J.A. Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), here MW 9, 10–11. This is what Rawls points out in what he terms the Aristotelian principle: “other things being equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity”; see Theory of justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 426 (§ 65). 47  Dewey, MW 14, 83. 48  Robert Lane, The Market Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 248. 49  Recognition of the value of my contribution to society through the market, recognition of my efforts and of the quality of my activity through the hierarchy and the colleagues in

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that provides a continuity of development to fundamental practical, cognitive and moral capacities. As Dewey puts it in Democracy and Education: The opposite of a career is neither leisure nor culture, but aimlessness, capriciousness, the absence of cumulative achievement in experience, on the personal side [. . .]. Occupation is a concrete term for continuity. It includes the development of artistic capacity of any kind, of special scientific ability, of effective citizenship, as well as professional and business occupations.50 The fact that through work, one could get the feeling of being part of a society to which one contributes, is another source of favorable self-concepts: “A vocation means nothing but [. . .] a direction of life activities as renders them perceptibly significant to a person, because of the consequences they accomplish, and also useful to his associates”.51 Work doesn’t only develop and realize fundamental practical, cognitive and moral capacities, it gives the feeling of being able to be useful for others, a feeling that can be confirmed or not by recognition. In the latter case, it gives rise to powerful feelings of injustice. In the first case, it is the ‘key to happiness’.52 The contribution of work to self-appropriation is just as important.53 Dewey points out that work is a decisive factor of self-appropriation when he writes in Democracy and Education that “The vocation acts as both magnet to attract the work place. See Emmanuel Renault, “Reconnaissance et travail”, Travailler 18 (2007): 119–135. 50  Dewey, MW 9, 317–318. 51  Dewey, MW 9, 317. 52  Dewey, MW 9, 319: “An occupation is the only thing which balances the distinctive capacity of an individual with his social service. To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness. Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one’s true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling. A right occupation means simply that the aptitudes of a person are in adequate play, working with the minimum of friction and the maximum of satisfaction. With reference to other members of a community, this adequacy of action signifies, of course, that they are getting the best service the person can render”. 53  Important but all the more paradoxical. Contemporary work often constitutes an obstacle to self-appropriation. Its specific subjectivation effects depend notably on the fact that the appropriation of one’s social activity is more challenging in situations of waged work than in any other social practices, because of repetitiveness, technical constraints and social relations of domination (or work done for “another mind” in Hegel’s terms).

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and as glue to hold”.54 In fact, work provides three types of contribution to this self-appropriation, each of them being irreducible to the recognitive dimensions of work. Firstly, it provides us with a sense of continuity: “Occupation is a concrete term for continuity”.55 Secondly, it produces a coordination of various practical and cognitive capacities. A calling is [. . .] of necessity an organizing principle for information and ideas; for knowledge and intellectual growth. It provides an axis which runs through an immense diversity of detail; it causes different experiences, facts, items of information to fall into order with one another.56 In The School and Society, Dewey adds that work contributes to the unification of impulses,57 and that it balances the practical and intellectual phases of our existence.58 Thirdly, because work is also a means of satisfaction of needs outside of work, it helps to connect the various dimensions of the social life, at least as far as it doesn’t become “too dominant, too exclusive and absorbing”.59 5

Implications for Contemporary Debates in Social and Political Theory

I have just tried to make explicit the meaning of the contention that the social self is also a working self. Its implications for contemporary social and political theory are quite obvious. The communitarian critique of liberalism has pointed out that some of the political shortcomings of the liberal theory depend on a wrong conception of the self, the liberal self being thought of as atomic entity rather than as social self. This critique has led to the idea that the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s social theory depends notably on the fact that it provides a way of reframing contemporary debates about 54  Dewey, MW 9, 319. 55  Dewey, MW 9, 317. 56  Dewey, MW 9, 319. 57  Dewey, MW 1, 96. 58  Dewey, MW 2, 92. See also MW 9, 319: “It calls instincts and habits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It has an end in view; results are to be accomplished. Hence it appeals to thought; it demands that an idea of an end be steadily maintained, so that activity cannot be either routine or capricious. Since the movement of activity must be progressive, leading from one stage to another, observation and ingenuity are required at each stage to overcome obstacles and to discover and readapt means of execution”. 59  Dewey, The Collected Works, MW 9, 319.

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freedom and justice from the point of view of a theory of the sociality of the self and of a conception of freedom as irreducibly social good.60 Now, one can wonder if some political shortcomings of the mainstream political theory, and of contemporary attempts to actualize Hegel or to show his relevance, are not depending also on a conception of the social self that fails to take into account the centrality of work in the social and political experience. In the last decades, work has become, increasingly, a matter of social and political concern. This concern doesn’t only relate to unemployment and the lack of social recognition that specifies this social situation. It also relates to the development of casual work and to the precarisation of existence. This concern relates moreover to the new forms of work organization and the wor­king conditions that tend to deprive the working experience of continuity and of possibilities of subjective appropriation. These concerns recall us that work remains one of the main forms, if not the main form, of engagement with the social world and that if a democratic politics should consist in attempting to give collective resolution to the most serious social problems, it should tackle the issue of work in its various dimensions. These concerns also suggest that the workplace is a place where one could learn solidarity and collective resistance to domination, but also, conversely, a place where one could learn compliance to domination. It is notably because a democratic politics depends on what is morally and politically learned at work, and because it should aim at democratizing all the social spheres that are obstacles to democracy, that such a politics should tackle the issue of work in its various dimensions. Hegel’s philosophy is probably not the best means to tackle all these issues. Instead of being reduced to the Hegelian framework, they should be considered for themselves and in their various psychological, sociological and political dimensions. Nevertheless, these issues help us to spell out some implications of the fact that in chapter IV of the Phenomenology of Spirit, selfconsciousness is internally linked not only to recognition, but also to work.

60  See Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Axel Honneth, Suffering from Indeterminacy: An Attempt at a Reactualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000).

chapter 13

The Form of Labor: Individuation and Socialization Paolo Vinci Abstract: This paper focuses on the concept of labor in Marx’s thought in order to use this concept as a key to interpret the working processes in the contemporary society. The philosophical frame founding this point will be considered, clarifying the relationships connecting Marx to Hegel’s thought, as expressed especially in the Phenomenology of the Spirit. From the critical analysis of the labor form as it stands out within the capitalist social-economic structure, Marx elaborates an original form of socialization in which the self-realization of the individuals and the establishment of the social tie can occur simultaneously. This Marxian thesis is further compared with Hegel’s theory of recognition.

1 The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the complex interactions of the notion of labor in Marx’s thought highlighting, especially in the plot of the Capital, the richness of Hegelian references. In this way, a fertile field of connections between the two thinkers shall be established, in order to suggest a system of concepts capable to confront the social processes which still shape our present world. In the first chapter of the Capital, Marx proudly claims to be the first to “point out and to examine critically this twofold nature of the labor contained in commodities” and underlines that “this point is the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns”.1 This twofold nature of the labor points to the intrinsic antagonism of commodity, to its ‘being two things in one’ (“a complex of two things”):2 use value and exchange value. As regards the first, there is “a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is

1 Karl Marx, Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, Book One: The Process of Production of Capital, proofed and corrected by Andy Blunden and Chris Clayton (2008), Mark Harris (2010) (Moscow: Progress, PDF version), 29. 2 Marx, Capital, 29.

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determined by its aim”,3 the useful labor, which is expressed in a multiplicity of qualitatively diverse labors. This kind of labor embodies the form of organic change between man and nature, the mediation which constitutes human life and, considered as such, it is independent from whatever specific reference to a determined society. The kind of labor defined by Marx as ‘abstract’, the labor assumed as a pure expenditure of human energy and measured according to its temporal duration, corresponds to value, the element which permits that different commodities, despite their qualitative difference, are confronted and made the same in the exchange. With this distinction between concrete and abstract labor, Marx has not the purpose of suggesting the existence of two different kinds of labor, in such a way that there could be two activities to be performed separately. Labor is always a concrete thing, and it is always performed by some individual, but at the same time it shall be considered in its social character, inscribed in the general activity of a historically determined world. The question is to understand the relationship between these two aspects; the distinction between concrete and abstract labor is drawn in order to shed some light on the specific modality of the socialization of labor in a society where the commodity is the Grundform of wealth. The abstract labor creates value, thus generating the crucial character of the commodity as a product of labor meant to be exchanged. In this way, individual labors are socialized in the form of their opposites: while remaining concrete and useful, they assume, in a society based upon the exchange, the form of equal labor, ‘without quality’. Labor is abstract insofar as it is a modality of the socialization of labor within the generalized production of commodities. To understand its specificity means to reveal a form of society formed by independent private producers, autonomously deciding what and how much to produce, and getting in touch only in the market, through the exchange of their products. Value is, thus, a coagulation, a crystallization of human labors and, as such, it constitutes the connection between themselves, the form of their social relationship. Marx is interested in underlining that, from the independence of the producers, the social connection tends to separate itself and to become autonomous. As a value, the social relation is inherent in things and it loses its immanent bond with the producers: labor as a decisive modality of human relations acquires an unprecedented ‘social existence’, it hides itself within the commodities, which appear ensconced in themselves with value and, thus, of a social quality. 3 Marx, Capital, 29.

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Bourgeois society is thus configured on the basis of a dependenceindependence connection: individualism is reversed into a “system of general and mutual dependence through or by means of the products”.4 The result of the distinction between useful and abstract labor is consequently the denunciation of a form of society in which the relationship among individuals escapes their control and ends up to dominating them with the same sense of fatality of a natural process. Far from constructing a concept gathering the multiplicity of concrete labors—a generalization by our mind—the abstract labor is a ‘real abstraction’, the social form of labor in a society based on the private property and the exchange of commodities. The main thread of this discourse is to put into evidence the connection between value and labor, although Marx develops this connection in a direction which is critical of the classical political economy. Compared to Smith or Ricardo’s analysis, Marx’s line of argument there is a further question: that is, ‘why’ labor comes to be expressed in value, from which Marx reaches this decisive assumption: “the value form of the product of labor is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production”,5 and it is so that bourgeois production is acknowledged as a specific form of social production and thus historically determined. Those who, as it as is the case with classical economists, are not able catch the historical specificity of the value form makes the fatal mistake of understanding it as the eternal and natural form of social production. The capitalistic mode of production arises from a structural separation between quality and quantity, between material wealth and value as a ‘spectral objectivity’, in the reversal of what is human into processes dominated by objects, which assume a ‘mystical’ character. As explicitly claimed by Marx, this character needs to be unraveled by a specific kind of critical thought. The most appropriate definition of the status of the Marxian critique of political economy seems to me, then, that of knowledge of the forms, capable to unravel the specific bond between the material elements of the production process and its social form. To discuss the form of labor means, first of all, to be able to distinguish the labor in general from a historically determined form of it, thus unraveling the peculiar relationship between the material elements of wealth and their social form. The forms are phenomenal forms resulting autonomous and separated but which need to be genetically traced back to the intimate connection from which they arise. Marx generates here an 4 Marx, Capital, 73. 5 Marx, Capital, 57.

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unprecedented form of knowledge, capable to understand the real processes of separation and reversal generating a real appearance, which has to be understood as such, i.e. traced back to the reason of its coming along. 2 A survey of Marx’s concept of labor cannot be done without analyzing the theme of labor-power as an absolutely specific commodity, capable to create a value higher than the one employed for its purchase. In the chapter of Capital devoted to Primitive Accumulation, we find the reconstruction of the historical conditions which paved the way for the forthcoming, in the society, of free individuals able to stipulate a sale contract of their labor. The result of this is the encounter of social subjects moving on the terrain of circulation, “a very Eden of the innate rights of man”.6 Laborers alienate their ability to work through an act of free will, as on a peer basis with the possessor of the money. Marx underlines the twofold character of this freedom: if, on the one hand, it is the mark of an indirect belonging of the workers to the means of production, as it was the case with serfs, on the other hand it expresses the fact that the means of production have been expropriated from their owners; “capitalist production, therefore, of itself reproduces the separation between labor-power and the means of labor”.7 If labor-power is a commodity, to the point that it is used at the discretion of its buyer, labor is unfolded exactly while labor-power is consumed. Therefore, the system of exchange, meant as a world of equality, shows an indissoluble connection with inequality, with the control of the physical and intellectual energies of the laborer, who has sold them at the same time alienating something which is intrinsic to his living individuality. The distinction between concrete and abstract labor is reproduced in the distinction between labor and valorization process which is capitalistic specification thereof. In the process of valorization, the laborer works under the control of the capital, which considers him to be a part of itself, a moment of its dynamics of self-valorization. The dead, past labor, incorporating the actual source of value, that is the living labor, grows on itself; this process shows us the real nature of the capital, its being a social relationship between, on the

6 Marx, Capital, 121. 7 Marx, Capital, 401.

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one hand, the owner of money and production means, and waged labor on the other hand. At this point, it emerges the way in which the capitalistic mode of production revolves around the issue of surplus labor, i.e. the increment of value of the capital, and how this requires an increment of productivity introducing crucial changes in the role of labor-power and in the nature of labor itself. We are confronted with a crucial element for the history of capitalism, from Marx’s times until now. The capitalistic valorization imposes the perpetuating, actually the increase, of a pressure on the living labor of the laborers producing value. We have experienced something which is still before our eyes: the intensification of the control over the workers in the place of production, in such a way that a supply of living labor exceeding the necessary labor is secured. We cannot understand the current dynamics of the capitalistic socio-economic formation if we do not stem from the antagonism within production and if we do not acknowledge that the only limit to the totalization of capital is the opposition of the working class inside the processes of valorization. Within the sphere of circulation, everything appears as distorted and dissimulated; only by analyzing the production it emerges clearly that the living labor, i.e. the source of value, is extracted from the labor-power of waged laborers. Within the valorization process, the laborer becomes an extension of his labor-power, and he only counts as a supplier of living labor. The capital tends to act as a self-sufficient subject and to consider labor as a part of itself; but the amount of labor that can be extracted depends on a relationship of power, and the fact that the labor-power and living labor are laborers’ own, i.e. of flesh-andblood individuals, prevents that their subsumption within the capital may occur without residuals. The real men who carry on their labor bear an intrinsic element of autonomy (Selbstständigkeit) which constitutes the limit of the tendency of the capital to unfold in an all-embracing way. Labor will never be an accomplished property of the capital that purchased it: the concrete individual who offers his labor will always have, explicitly or implicitly, an autonomous life project, not coincident with its mere being labor-force. 3 What I would like to argue now is that the Marxian discussion of labor, which I tried to expose in some of its most relevant aspects, can be understood only if we trace it back to its Hegelian roots. Despite of his refusal of the speculative configuration of Hegel’s thought, Marx, as soon as in the Parisian manuscripts, declares somewhat programmatically that, in the Phenomenology of

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Spirit, Hegel connects the essence of labor to that of the man, intending the latter as a ‘self-producing’, a negative movement which implies a moment of objectification, alienation. The realization of subjectivity requires the opposition of subjectivity to itself, its exit and return in itself. In Marx—and this is the firm conviction I would like to express—we find an extremely deep reception of the Phenomenology, an unparalleled level of assimilation of the fundamental themes of the Hegelian masterpiece, which in Marx remain unaltered until the crucial years of the Capital. From this standpoint, I find schematic and inadequate the prevailing interpretative approach which connects the Phenomenology to Marx’s juvenile years and finds in the Science of Logic the theoretical operator generating the dialectical exposition of the economic categories. My assumption is that the Marxian reception of Hegel on the terrain of the critique of the political economy goes beyond a merely methodological assimilation, but consists in Marx’s appropriation of one of the ‘fields of experience’ that constitute the ‘place of birth’ of the dialectics, i.e. the specifically Hegelian form of thought. In this sense, reading Marx may give a decisive contribution to the understanding of the Phenomenology of Spirit. So, it is necessary to stem from a fundamental acquirement, common to Marx and Hegel: both of them propose a conception of labor according to which poiesis and praxis are superimposed. We can certainly argue that Marx conceives labor as a praxis, a manifestation of life, a self-realization of the man, an activity that brings its purpose in itself.8 Although labor has a connection with nature and is a production of things, it is nevertheless a typical human activity, with an intrinsically relational quality. In Marx, labor ‘requires’ a transformative praxis, because it already possesses such a character in itself. I think that it is possible to affirm that all of this can be found already in the discussion of the lord-bondsman relationship as it appears in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In this respect, it must be underlined that, in these well-known pages, Hegel inserts labor in the dynamics of self-consciousness becoming itself, therefore within a process whose completion is accomplished in the recognition of the judging and the acting self-consciousness, in that figure which is the ‘last’ one of the Phenomenology. In order to adequately understand Marx’s thought, the structure of selfconsciousness shall be taken as the starting point: that implies the emphasis on the character of non-substantialistic subjectivity of the self-consciousness, its development as a movement of losing and finding back itself, by which a selfconsciousness is always ‘for another self-consciousness’, in the sense that the self-consciousness can find its realization only in the encounter with another 8 See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 2, 40b.

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subjectivity, equal and different. The section devoted to lord and bondsman opens with the appearance of two figures establishing a relationship characterized by inequality and absence of reciprocity. This is the result of the ‘struggle for life and death’, from which an independent self-consciousness and a dependent one arise: the attempt of ‘abstracting’ from any determined existence and from life, leads self-consciousnesses to the acknowledgement of their inevitability and their reciprocal need for existence. The bondsman’s self-consciousness is the one that considers life as essential, and it is the one which shall show us the character of labor as a mediator between nature and what is properly human. According to Hegel, the shift from self-consciousness to the certainty of truth requires the sublation of singularity in the universality as well as the abandonment, through the recognition of the other, of the exclusive reference to itself. It is in these terms that it is prospected what Kojève calls an anthropogenesis, the individual’s conquest of the self, the very movement that Marx, in the Manuscripts, defines the ‘self-bringing into world’ by man. Back to Hegel, we can assume that, within this process, labor exhibits how subjectivity makes itself objective, as it constitutes the ‘verification’ of selfconsciousness into reality. In the Hegelian argument, we do not find what we may call an underlining of the emancipative function of labor, an intimation of the overcoming of its servile character. The ‘reversal’ of the lord-bondsman relation shall not be understood in this sense. What really provides us with an understanding of the Hegelian argument is the awareness that labor constitutes a movement of externalization and return in itself, which has a precise sense within the dynamics of recognition and constitutes a necessary aspect thereof, although not yet sufficient, i.e. the moment of finding the self in the other. The labor activity represents a relation towards life which is able to go beyond the self-reference proper to desire, which consists of aiming exclusively at the annihilation of the otherness. The activity of elaboration and transformation produces a reality marked by a human print. Human activity is a mediation which brings about positive results through negation. Hegel underlines that, at this level, there is a ‘unilateral and unequal’ recognition, which lacks, for its accomplishment, the lord’s self-negation and his being negated by the bondsman. Thus, not only we can point out the strategic role of negativity in the unfolding of the recognition dynamics, but in this dynamics there is also a specific role for labor. Labor is what gives effectuality to the dissolution, to the negativity which, in the bondsman’s fear of death, remained only in his interiority. Labor—and this is really important—becomes the means through which the being-in-itself comes to an accomplishment. Labor is, in the first place, the sublation of desire, of the pure drive to appropriation,

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as it is a “forming”, a “desire held in check, fleetingness staved off”.9 Towards the object labor enacts a negativity which is able, at the same time, to dissolve and maintain, making the object ‘something that endures’, in a transformative activity whose feature is surpassing destruction and immediate consumption. Labor is, therefore, the effectual expression of the dynamics which is proper to subjectivity, which objectifies and finds itself in the alterity recognizing the latter as equal to itself. This is a decisive, although partial, element of the movement of Anerkennung: the recognition in another, the self-finding in a distinct yet equal alterity. Hegel underlines that the bondsman recognizes himself in an independent object: therefore, through labor, the self-consciousness exits from itself and enters the ‘element of permanence’, thus coming “to see in the independent being [. . .] its own independence”.10 This is an unavoidable aspect of the self-realization of self-consciousness which lacks, for the recognition to be complete, only the symmetrical movement by another self-consciousness. From these Hegelian pages, the labor is understood as a making the object in conformity to the subject, mirroring therefore itself in its production. In this way, Marx embraces the Hegelian ‘turn’ which reversed the bi-millenary negative connotation of working activity and human labor stemming from ancient Greece throughout the whole Christian tradition. This alternative conception of labor as praxis, manifestation of the self, becomes, therefore, in Marx, the point of departure for a critical enquiry into the modality of its embodiment in the capitalistic conditions. But this is not sufficient to fully account for the presence of Hegel in the Marxian conception of labor. The truly crucial aspect is the one that provides the basis for the argument that the realization of the individuals comes only together with the establishment of a superindividual unity. This is the most relevant speculative result of the Hegelian theory of recognition, which comes to envisage its accomplishment in the contemporaneity of individualization and socialization. In the recognition between judging self-consciousness and acting self-consciousness, there comes the spirit, “the I that is We and We that is I”,11 Hegel’s solution for the contradictions of his time. The self-consciousness finds its realization only in another self-consciousness, in a movement of reciprocal acceptance of independence. The spiritual unity 9 10

11

PS, § 195, 118 (GW 9, 115). PS, § 195, 118 (GW 9, 115). Although it should be noted that the cited English translation is quite far from the original text in German: “das arbeitende Bewußtsein kommt also hierdurch zur Anschauung des selbstständigen Seins, als seiner selbst”, i.d., in my translation, “so the working consciousness comes through this to the intuition of the independent being as itself” PS, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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thus being produced is not a superimposed paradigm, but it occurs through a movement ‘from beneath’, where the self-consciousnesses are protagonists. So the spirit appears not as a substance, but as a modality of relation among finite subjectivities which in their accomplishment realize their being unity of particularity and individuality. From my point of view, it is extremely meaningful that the ultimate recognition of the Phenomenology is a coming to terms with the action, i.e. the acting self-consciousness. Arising from the strict bond of poiesis and praxis, which Hegel has never left out, action, in its being always of a single subject, keeps in itself some characters of labor and leads them to the level of universality where the recognition can occur. In this way, the ultimate recognition shows itself as the ‘last figure’ of the Phenomenology, capable of collecting and concluding the questions arisen since the first appearance of self-consciousness and developed in the lord-bondsman relationship. I would like to put in evidence that this perspective starts to be elaborated and fully accomplished in Hegel since the so called Jena Lectures or First Philosophy of the Spirit, in which, with the spirit of the people makes its appearance as a unity capable to safeguard multiplicity. We need to start from the single subjects as activity centres, for which the unity is constituted as a common action of all and everyone, where they do not remain in their immediate singularity. Hegel affirms that labor, in the superindividual unity of the people, becomes in its very singularity something universal, and he calls this ‘universal recognition’. This evaluation of labor seems to confirm its strict relationship with human activity, and this not only because Hegel maintains that “labor is not an instinct, but [a form of] rationality”;12 but exactly because it is through labor that the single individual becomes other and universalizes itself. Hegel anticipates Marx in his denunciation of the mechanized labor, highlighting its loss of value and its becoming abstractly universal labor. Here the universalization is really different from that of the spirit of the people: with respect to the fulfilment of needs, a ‘universal dependence of everyone from everyone’ is created and the dominance of nature through the fragmentation of labor, is reversed as an increased dependence from it. Hegel stigmatizes the degradation of workers and the separation of social bond as ‘something dead’, which imposes a reciprocal dependence and unfolds in a ‘blind movement’ similar to that of a ‘wild animal’. 12 Hegel, System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit (part III of the System of speculative philosophy 1803/4), (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1979), 246 (GW 6, 320).

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Therefore, Hegel prospects an alternative between two forms of socialization: one, which can constitute itself as an ethical, living work, and another, in which the unity is separated and presented as an ‘unfathomable’ combination. These considerations on the needs and labor can be put into relation with the analysis of the civil society in the Elements of Philosophy of Right, in which Hegel underlines that the causality of the economic mechanism creates a “system of all-round interdependence”.13 Here, there is a situation in which the individuals, in pursuing their interests, i.e. the autonomy of particularity, come to be subjugated to a social whole, which they silently cope with by remaining in a state of ‘semi-unconsciousness’. Marx appears as a lucid heir of this Hegelian instance, when, in the Grundrisse, he claims the necessity of overcoming the capitalistic form of socialization, where the personal independence generates an omnipresent material dependence. Bourgeois society is characterized by the scission between the individuals and their social relations; the latter appear as independent and opposed, in a separation of the immanent bond between the particular and the social character of work. To put into question the dominance of the capital means, then, to put forward an alternative form of socialization, based on the simultaneity of the realization of the individuals and the establishment of a common dimension, with the awareness that a similar balance of social unity and individual multiplicity should start from the safeguard of the sociality immanent in individual labor. 13 PR § 183, 221.

chapter 14

Attractors of Recognition Italo Testa Abstract: In this paper I analyze recognition as a kind of power. I analyze the notion of power in the general sense as some sort of causal capacity, and intro­ duce the distinction between the active power of doing something and the pas­ sive power of undergoing something. Such a distinction is needed in order to capture some central features of the phenomenon of recognition, and in particular the way that ‘being recognized’ and ‘recognizing’ are intertwined. I then argue in favor of both the conceptual and genetic priority of the passive power of being recog­ nized over the active power of recognizing. Furthermore, I introduce the notion of ‘attractor’ of recognition as a way to analyze some relevant features of the pheno­ menon of ‘being-recognized’.

In this paper I would like to analyze recognition as a kind of power. By way of introduction, in section 1 I consider four possible options on how to understand the relation between recognition and power, before opting for the strategy that considers recognition as a power both in the general sense of the term and in the restricted sense of social power. In section 2 I will analyze the notion of power in the general sense as some sort of causal capacity, and I will introduce the dis­ tinction between the active power of doing something and the passive power of undergoing something. I will then argue that such a distinction is needed in order to capture some central features of the phenomenon of recognition, and in particular the way that ‘being recognized’ and ‘recognizing’ are intertwined both in intentional and non-intentional, and in deliberate and non deliber­ ate processes of recognition. I will then argue in favor of both the conceptual and genetic priority of the passive power of being recognized over the active power of recognizing, and I will give a short historical reconstruction of some portions of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts in order to show that such a priority of Anerkanntsein (being recognized) is also the rationale of the Hegelian model of recognitive constitution of Self-consciousness and of Spirit. Furthermore, I will introduce the notion of ‘attractor’ of recognition as a way to analyze some relevant features of the phenomenon of ‘being-recognized’, and in particular of the power to attract recognition from others that is universally, even if asymme­ trically distributed between individual bearers of our specific life-form. Such an

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understanding of being recognized as a kind of biopower, realized also through a sketchy reading of the notion of ‘desire’ for recognition as it appears in Hegel’s account of Self-consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, will be the main step in order to obtain a characterization of recognitive capacity not only as a power in the general sense, but also in the more restricted sense of power as a relational and social power: that is as a power to induce some effects on other agents, whether they want it or not. In the third section the power to attract recognition will be then analyzed as a specific form of social power, based on what I will call ‘recognitional authority’, which can be characterized in non-normative terms, and held also in a non-deliberate way, and which basically consists in letting others recog­ nize or be recognized, whether they want it or not. In the fourth section I will try to use such a notion of social recognitive bio-power in order to grasp within recognition theory some aspects of bio-power that normally fall within the ambit of bio-political theories. In particular, I will argue that by the notion of recognitive attractors we can grasp the power of socialization that is the back­ ground power of our social practices in a way that captures both its recognitive and its biopolitical structure. In this sense I will try to extend the domain of the notions of ‘recognitive power’ and ‘attractors of recognition’ to power relations that subsist not only at the inter-individual level but also between individuals and institutions. 1

Four Ways to Understand the Relation between Recognition and Power

In their introduction to the collection Recognition and Power, Bert van der Brink and David Owen identify two species of the relation between recogni­ tion and power: 1. 2.

according to the first one, forms of power may “guide and circumscribe the interpretation of principles of recognition”.1 according to the second one, “the emergence and the demarcation of the principles of recognition [. . .] may themselves be the product of power relations”.2

1  Bert v. den Brink, David Owen (eds.), Recognition and Power. Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20. 2  Recognition and Power, 21.

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In both cases, the relation between recognition and power is understood in terms of the relation that subsists between recognitive normative principles and power relations, where the latter are understood in the first option as external conditions of interpretation and application of independently given normative principles, and in the second option as conditions of emergence and individuation of such principles, which are finally revealed as mere deriva­ tions or ideological concealments of power relations. I would now like to identify a third option in the way the relation between recognition and power may present itself. Accordingly, 3.

recognition may be a constitutive aspect of some kind of social power.

I think this is one possible way the notion of ‘rational form of ideological recognition’ Axel Honneth introduces in Recognition as Ideology may be interpreted.3 Both justified (appropriate) and unjustified (not appropriate because lacking material fulfillment of the symbolic premises and expecta­ tions on which they rest) ideological forms of rational recognition, are related to what Honneth calls “regulative power”. Regulative power is here understood as a kind of “ability to engender modes of behavior by promising the advan­ tage of an increase in self-esteem and public affirmation”.4 Being attributed, or perceived as having some positive evaluative qualities, makes it possible for some agents to draw to themselves such positive qualities in a way that expressively confirms and actualizes them, and thus empowers their identity. Here recognition is understood as a constitutive element of a power—of a regulative power—but is not yet framed as a power itself. One can grasp the notion of recognition without using the notion of power, whereas some forms of power—those that are recognitively constituted—cannot be grasped with­ out referring to the notion of recognition. In fact, recognition seems here to be constitutive of a power insofar as it is the element that puts some norma­ tive constraints on power. Regulative power constituted through recognition is here understood as a normative social power: a power that empowers the agents through the normative affirmation of positive evaluative qualities of such agents. Recognition is constitutive of social power insofar as its norma­ tive structures “might in fact bring about an increase in regulative power”;5 normative principles of recognition, while constraining, restricting or limiting 3  See Axel Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, in Recognition and Power, 323–347. 4  Honneth, Recognition as Ideology, 342. 5  Honneth, Recognition as Ideology, 347.

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our behavior under some aspects, also positively enable us to act, insofar as they increase under some other aspects our regulative power. 2

Recognition as a Capacity

First of all, one could say that recognition is a power in the wider sense of the term, where power is a sort of causal capacity: which seems at first to consist in the capacity to produce some effects, to bring about some state of things, to initiate chains of events. Such an understanding of recognition as some sort of capacity—understood as a kind of doing—is generally implicitly presup­ posed by theories of recognition. And please note that such a characterization in terms of capacity is rather independent from the way the act of recognition is specified by different theories (is it mainly an identifying, an evaluative, an attributive, or a normative attitude?). Let’s take for example Honneth’s charac­ terization of the main features of recognition.6 Accordingly, recognition: i) is an affirmation of positive qualities of evaluative aspects of individual subjects or groups; ii) is relative to intersubjective action (it is a stance, “an attitude realized in concrete action”); iii) should be contained in the main scope of such an action, and not just be a secondary or unintentional scope of it; and iv) is a genus containing different species. One can easily see that recognition is here understood as a capacity that enables us to do something (to affirm some qualities, to attribute value. . .), to act in some specific ways. 2.1 Active and Passive Power Yet, this sense of power as a capacity of doing something, even if specified in an action-theoretical perspective as a capacity of doing what one wants do to,7 is still a rather general one, where power just means a causal power of produc­ ing some effects, bringing about some state of things. Furthermore, such an understanding of recognition as a capacity of doing something, which seems to be implicit in the way recognition is often conceived, may be somehow mis­ leading and distort the phenomenon it should clarify, because it proceeds from an unilateral notion of capacity/power understood as something active— a kind of doing—and neglects the fact that power can mean also the capac­ ity of undergoing something—a kind of becoming and being. Powers are to be 6  Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, 329–330. 7  See for example Joseph Raz, Practical Reason and Norms (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 98: “Power in all its forms is related to the possibility of realizing one’s wishes”.

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understood not only as active but also as passive powers: and I think that, once we take into account such a distinction, then the phenomenon of recognition, as we shall see, can be seen in a novel light. The distinction between active and passive power is basically the distinc­ tion between the power of initiating, producing a change, and the power of undergoing a change. Active powers and passive powers of living beings include both non-intentional (or pre-intentional) activities and changes (such as causal functions, vital operations), and intentional activities and changes (such as mental activities and states), that is, activities and states intention­ ally directed at particular objects or states of affairs in the world (I will call intentional1 such activities and states characterized by directedness or aboutness, which are identified by the determinate contents of the corresponding intentional states—believing, desiring, intending—be it complete proposi­ tional contents or else something less organized). Furthermore, both active and passive powers include both non-deliberate and deliberate activities and changes. They include activities and changes that are exercised and happening unwillingly, be it because they are happening spontaneously—as when I hap­ pen to see something or to be seen, although I didn’t intend to look at that or to be looked at—or else because they are induced or forced; but they also include activities and changes that are deliberately, willingly, intentionally exercised or happening (which I will call intentional2, meaning activities and changes that are intended, as when I intend to go to a movie, or I intended to be looked at by someone else). Such a distinction between active and passive powers goes back at least to Aristotle, who in his Metaphysics introduced the categorical distinction between active potentiality (dynamis)—in the entity initiating change—and passive potentiality—in the entity undergoing change:8 all movements occur at the interaction of these two potentialities, seen as different categorical aspects of one and the same process. Such a distinction applies to all living processes, from vegetative, to reproductive, including human non rational and rational activities and experiences. 2.2 Active and Passive Recognitive Power One can easily see that the phenomenon of recognition satisfies such a defini­ tion of both active and passive power. This is already testified to by the verbal form, which includes both the active form—‘recognizing’—and the passive form—‘being recognized’—and could be further developed by looking at the way the different meanings that the term has in ordinary language and in 8  Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.1, 1046a.

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scientific languages relate sometimes to the active form and sometimes to the passive form.9 Recognition consists not only in the power of recognizing, but also in the power of being recognized. One may say that recognition is both an active power—a power of doing something, that is of recognizing—and a passive power: a power of undergoing something—that is of being recognized. As is the case in general for active powers and passive powers, it is also true for both active and passive recognitive power that they may be both non-intentional1 and intentional1, non-intentional2 and intentional2. As for intentionality2, some authors would like to restrict recognition to actions which contain it as the main scope of the action,10 but I would like to present some arguments to loosen such a restriction. In fact, recognitive power may be exercised actively by performing some acts at will (as for example when I recognize you as being a good student by saying to the rest of the class that you are a good student, or by giving you a good mark). But active recognitive power may be exercised also non-intentionally2, that is in a non deliberate way: for example, as an unintentional outcome (a side effect) of some other acts of ours, be they intentional1 (as happens in the master-slave dialectic with the master, who somehow unwillingly recognizes his servant by subjugating him, by becoming dependent upon his service) or non-intentional1 (as happens with human infants who recognize their caregivers by the somehow mechanical, and not directed at a determinate intentional content, activity of suckling). Let’s now come to the case of passive recognitive power and how it relates to intentionality2. As previously stated, the power of being recognized is a power which can be held, and actualized, passively. First, one does not necessarily need to act—in some cases, you don’t need to do anything in order to be rec­ ognized in some aspect. And deliberately not to act could be a way of gaining more recognition, of having more recognitive power on others. The actual­ ization of the passive power of being recognized does not even need to be accompanied by intentional deliberation of not acting in order to be recog­ nized, that is it may be actualized in a non-intentional2 way, irrespective of our will, as happens in some cases of deference (and it seems that those who, because of some status they hold, do not need to act at all in order to be recog­ nized, are thus the most powerful ones in this respect).

9 

For a semantic and lexical analysis of recognition in European modern languages and in the philosophical tradition see Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. D. Pellauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) and Italo Testa, La natura del riconoscimento (Milano: Mimesis, 2010). 10  See for example Honneth, “Recognition as Ideology”, 330.

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2.3 The Power of Being Recognized Of course recognitive processes occur at the interaction of these two poten­ tialities, which may happen in different subjects—where someone is being recognized while the other subject is recognizing them—but also as categori­ cal aspects of the same subject—who may be recipient under some aspect— subjected to recognition—and agent under some other aspect—subject of recognition; acting under some circumstances, and being acted upon under different circumstances. Notwithstanding such an intertwinement, there are many reasons in favor of the priority of the passive power over the active one in the way we are to understand the phenomenon of recognition. First, whenever we recognize, we are in some sense moved by recognition: it is the passive power of being recognized of the recognizee that somehow (in a non-deterministic way) moves, inclines the recognizer, attracting her recognition: in this sense, even the recognizer is characterized by some degree of passivity, since she is undergoing a change, where her active capacity of rec­ ognizing is being actualized by someone else and is as such a sort of response to that. Thus, the act of recognizing is a responsive act. Which means that the passive power of being recognized, that is of attracting recognition, implies a corresponding passive power of being moved by it, that is of being attracted by recognition, which can be located in the other or in oneself as other. Such a reciprocal correlation between being attractors of recognition and being attracted by recognition is implied also by the “doubling [Verdoppelung]”11 thesis underlying the Hegelian constitutive model of recognition, according to which the “movement of recognition [Bewegung des Anerkennens]” constitu­ tive of self-consciousness is reconstructed as something that happens in the same way on both sides of the interaction and also within each side (that is both inter-subjectively and intra-subjectively). Once we leave aside the “act [Tun]” jargon that in the Phenomenology of Spirit sometimes affects Hegel’s account of such a movement, we are ready to realize that the underlying dou­ bling process of recognition within the form of life that is being described regards what we might call ‘attracted attractors of recognition’. Secondly, if we follow the broadly Hegelian socio-ontological model of recognitive constitution, being recognized is the conceptual condition of the possibility of recognizing: the active power of recognizing is constituted in the mutual process of being recognized. Which in a genetic perspective means that I can develop and acquire as an interactive habit the active capacity of recognizing by way of being recognized by others (including myself as other). I think this is the reason why Hegel, when he develops systematically for the 11  PS, § 178, 111 (GW 9, 109).

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very first time in his 1805–6 Realphilosophie his notion of recognition as the basis of his understanding of ‘Spirit’ (Geist), on the one hand he introduces from the very beginning, analyzing the ‘Concept of Spirit’, the notion of ‘being recognized’ (Anerkanntsein) as the conceptually most primitive one—what he names “immediate being recognized”.12 On the other hand, when he develops his genetic account of spiritual forms of life, he moves from a ‘natural’ imme­ diate form of being recognized—which is manifested in phenomena such as intercourse, care and love. Such ‘natural’ phenomena manifest our being bearers of a form of life, of a Gattung whose structure is recognitive.13 In this sense Hegel writes: “Such recognition is to come about. There must become for them what they [already] are in themselves. Their being for one another is the beginning of it”, and spells out this kind of recognitive passive biopower this way: “The individuals are love, this being-recognized without the opposition of the will”.14 Furthermore, Hegel understands the upper, institutionalized levels of Spirit as interactions where the phenomenon of ‘being recognized’ is reconstituted in its immediacy through the mediation of more complex and ‘universal’ forms (such as language, right, work, market, civil society, and State) of social and historical mediation. To sum up, Hegel identifies the conceptual and genetic role that the passive capacity of ‘being recognized’ plays within recognitive constitution. The one who is recognized is recognized as immediately counting as such [geltend] through his being—but this being is itself generated from the concept; it is a recognized being [anerkanntes Seyn]. Man is neces­ sarily recognized and necessarily gives recognition. This necessity is not his own, not that of our thinking in contrast to the content. As recogniz­ ing, man is himself the movement [of recognition], and this movement is what negates [hebt auf] his natural state: he is recognition; the natural merely is, it is not the spiritual aspect.15

12  Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), in Leo Rauch (ed.), Hegel and the Human Spirit: A Translation of the Jena Lectures on the Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6) with Commentary (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 120 (GW 8, 224). 13  See on this Italo Testa, “How does Recognition Emerge From Nature? The Genesis of Consciousness in Hegel’s Jena Writings”, Critical Horizons 13, 2 (2012): 176–196. 14  Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), 114 (GW 8, 218). 15  Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), 111 (GW 8, 215).

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Hegel understands here the development of the active power of ‘recognizing’, of being anerkennend, as something that develops from the dynamics of being recognized that manifests itself already in our natural individual form of life, and that moves from unqualified, immediate forms of being recog­ nized towards the spiritual, that is the more and more qualified, determined, universal forms of being recognized. Even the activity of recognizing finds its full accomplishment insofar as it is recognized (by others and oneself as other), and thus actualizes the power of being recognized, which is both at the beginning and at the end of the process of recognition that is being described (“There must become for them what they [already] are in themselves”). That’s why Hegel affirms here that “being-recognized is the spiritual element”,16 that is, the fundamental structure of Geist. Such a priority of the notion of being recognized over the notion of recog­ nizing does not mean that the passive capacity and active capacity are sepa­ rate phenomena. As is already clear from what I have said, for the individual bearers of our form of life the capacity of being subject to recognition and passive in respect of it, is part of a larger process, whereby the recognizee can (even though this may never happen because of some circumstances) become the active subject of recognition. That is to say that such a passive power is proper of living beings as individual bearers of our form of life, that is of a form of life where such power can normally develop into an active one. Which does not mean, as I will argue later, that such a capacity of being recognized cannot be at some point detached from the very possibility for individual liv­ ing subjects to develop the active capacity of recognizing, and be transferred either to inorganic subjects (such as collective subjects, institutions), or else to objective beings (such as norms) who behave differently—some of them are not possible active subjects of recognition—and nonetheless maintain some features of the capacity of being recognized, and in particular the capacity to trigger a recognitive response. 2.4 Attractors of Recognition So far, I have made explicit the primary role of the phenomenon of being recog­nized by way of the notion of passive power. Furthermore, I have tried to make it clear how the power of being recognized does in some sense elicit recognition. And I have already labeled such a feature as the property of being an attractor of recognition. I would now like to dwell a little more on that. In this sense, recognitive beings are first of all attractors of recognition: even when they eventually come to develop the active power of recognizing 16  Hegel, The Philosophy of Spirit (1805–6), 173 (GW 8, 278).

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(which may never be the case for some), they can do that by way of having had, of maintaining and actualizing the passive power of being recognized. And if we assume that we are endowed with natural functions that predis­ pose the bearers of our form of life to develop recognitive attitudes through social habituation, then we are dealing with something that may be called a basic passive recognitive bio-power of attracting recognition and, according to the ‘doubling’ thesis underlying the constitutive model, of being attracted by recognition: a two-fold passive power of recognition out of which active recog­ nitive powers develop, and in which they have to find their accomplishment in order to be constituted as such. Let me add some details about ‘attractors’. Here it may be helpful to have a look at how the notion of ‘attractors’ is used in the theory of dynamic systems. An attractor is “a set of states (points in the phase space), invariant under the dynamics, towards which neighboring states in a given basin of attraction asymptotically approach in the course of dynamic evolution”.17 This may help us to grasp the fact that recognitive attracted attractors not only exert a sort of a pull on neighboring states of the system under consideration, but also induce similar states on what is attracted. Thus, attracted attractors of recogni­ tion do not just trigger active recognitive acts: what they tend to do is to induce in the other the passive power of being attracted—and consequently the active power of recognizing as a way to possibly respond to the other’s passive power of attracting recognition. By that they finally induce and implement in the other the power of being an attractor of recognition. Attracted attractors of recognition tend to attract other attracted attractors of recognition, which brings us back to the ‘doubling’ thesis. Along these lines one could give a novel reconstruction of the rationale that could have moved Hegel to apply the notion of Begierde in order to describe some aspects of the recognitive process. In his Jena writings he introduced “being recognized [Anerkanntsein]” as the most primitive notion to be used in order to grasp the phenomenon of Anerkennung and its constitutive role for Spirit. In the Phenomenology of Spirit he then further developed his analysis of “being recognized” by introducing the notion of ‘appetite’ (Begierde), what is usually called, with a term that I think is less appropriate, “desire” for recognition.18 Here the very notion of appetite for recognition captures exactly some aspects of the attractiveness exerted by the power of being 17  See for example: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Attractor.html. See also The SAGE Handbook of Innovation in Social Research Methods, M. Williams, W.P. Vogt (eds.) (Los Angeles, London: Sage, 2011), 124. 18  PS, § 174, 109 (GW 9, 107).

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recognized that is primarily connected with those individual “living beings” (“the object of immediate appetite is a living being”)19 that are bearers of our form of life, of our “Gattung”.20 The appetite for recognition is the fundamental drive that moves those natural beings that have not yet culturally developed the full capacity of actively and deliberately (self-consciously) recognizing, but that are already attracted by other individual living bearers of their form of life as by attracted attractors of recognition. Such an appetite cannot be satisfied by just any object, but only by an object that is itself moved by the appetite for recognition. An object that has both the passive capacity of being recog­ nized and the passive capacity of being attracted by recognition, and as that only as such can give satisfaction to its appetite: a satisfaction which would finally consist in being recognized. In this sense for Hegel self-consciousness is already in ‘itself’ a capacity of being recognized—it holds the passive power of being recognized even before having developed into an active recognizer— and has to become ‘for itself’ “something recognized [ein Anerkanntes]”: that is, it has to develop itself into a form of life that can be recognized by others (and by itself as other) as a recognizer, what I will later call an acquired, higher form of the capacity of being recognized (“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 acknowledged”).21 Thus, the constitution of active self-conscious recog­ nizers finds its accomplishment in being-recognized, since it is only by being recognized as recognizers by others (and by themselves as others) that are themselves attracted attractors of recognition (hence moved by the appetite for recognition), that they can become recognizers.22 The phenomenon of ‘being recognized’ is in this sense both at the beginning and at the end of the movement of recognitive constitution that Hegel recon­ structs. The appetite for recognition is the desire for being recognized that drives those that are attracted attractors of recognition: an interaction that Hegel describes firstly at a level which already takes place in a nonintentional1 and non-intentional2 manner, in a rather undetermined, spontane­ ous and somewhat causal form (and this is another reason to prefer the trans­ lation of ‘Begierde’ with ‘appetite’), and that he captures with images that refer 19  20  21  22 

PS, § 168, 106 (GW 9, 104). PS, § 173, 109 (GW 9, 107). PS, § 178, 111 (GW 9, 109). In this sense one may argue that, whereas Aristotle affirms the conceptual priority of active power over passive power (Metaphysics 9.1, 1046a11–13), Hegel’s reconstruction of the process of recognition seems on the contrary to be based on the primacy of passive power.

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both to mirroring mimetic processes (“each [. . .] therefore also does what it does only in so far as the other does the same”)23 and to the interplay of physi­ cal forces (“play of Forces [Spiel der Kräfte]”),24 which makes it explicit, with its reference to gravitation, that what is happening is somehow a phenomenon of reciprocal attraction between attracted attractors. But what does it mean exactly that the passive power of being recognized is a capacity which can be held without being exercised actively? Let me say first of all that of course one can always actively and deliberately promote (by means of physical force, coercion, manipulation or influence) the passive power of being recognized (as happens, for example, with those that follow some advice to enhance their Klout score), but what is being actualized through some other activity is still the passive power of being recognized. Secondly, the fact that the passive power of being recognized can be held without being exercised actively—even in an indirect way—has to do with the fact that to have the power of being recognized is the same as to be an attractor of rec­ ognition. Attractors of recognition can elicit recognitive responses even with­ out necessarily intending to do that, just because of being attractors (but of course this happens in various forms and degrees, since the property of being an attracted attractor of recognition seems to be universally but not equally distributed within our form of life, for both natural and historical reasons). In this sense attractors of recognition seem to play some sort of causal role—trig­ gering, elici­ting, or inducing some kind of responses—which cannot be easily analyzed as, or reduced to, a normative role. And this is one of the reasons that will lead us later to understand recognition not only as a power in the general sense of the term, but also as a specific form of power in the restricted sense of social power. 2.5 Relational Power A further specification that we should give to recognitive bio-powers, is that they are to be understood not just as powers, but as relational powers. In fact, they consist not only in producing effects, of bringing about some state of things in the world, but they also consist specifically in producing effects on other attracted attractors of recognition. If one accepts the possibility of fram­ ing this within an action-theoretical perspective, then such a relational power affects the attitudes of other agents—which is directly implied by the same structural relation that subsists between recognizing and being recognized.

23  PS, § 183, 112 (GW9, 110). 24  PS, § 184, 112 (GW9, 110).

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Social Power

So far, we have been talking about recognition as a power in the general sense of the term (meaning power as some sort of causal capacity). But now I would like to frame recognition in the restricted sense of power as a social power. Recognition is a relational social power in the restricted sense of power.25 Social power may be understood as being a relational power to induce some effects on other agents, whether they want to or not. Please note that a social power may affect other agents both in a negative and in a positive way. Such effects on others may negatively limit their agency, putting constraints on their free action, or else they may positively empower their agency—their capacity of doing what they want to do—and thus enable them to pursue novel courses of action. Both ideas are contained in the very notion of recognition, since other agents are here understood not only as being external limitations of the exercise of our free agency, but also as a genetic and conceptual condition of the possibility of the development of our recogni­ tive powers (and thus of free agency itself, if one assumes, as happens in the Hegelian model of the constitution of self-conscious freedom, that recognitive powers are constitutive of free agency). And it is just because of its produc­ tive—and not merely repressive—side that recognition is the social power it is, since it is by enabling and empowering other subjects that recognition may induce them not only to unwillingly do some things, but also to willingly do some things (be it to follow some behaviors, or to have some beliefs, desires or preferences that conform to the recognitive patterns promoted by that power) that may be contrary to their rational interests, as happens in the cases of voluntary servitude. 3.1 Is There Anything Specific in Recognitive Social Power? Once we conceive of social power in the restricted sense as making others do (or not do) something, whether they want to or not, we should further ask whether recognition can add something to the picture of social power. Is there a form of social power that is in some sense specifically recognitive? This would make sense if we could find some specifically recognitive way of making others do things through specific recognitive mechanisms.

25  On the restricted notion of power as social power see Steven Lukes, Power. A Radical View, 2nd edition (Houndmills Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), 73: “In this more restrictive but widespread understanding, ‘power’ is explicitly relational and asymmetrical: to have power is to have power over another or others”.

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We could gain such an insight if we reconsider the fact that recognition is not just the power of actively doing something, but also, and foremost, the passive power of undergoing something, that is of being recognized. Such a passive power is the power held to some degree (which may vary from case to case) by attractors of recognition. But attracting recognition is something that affects the behavior, the agency of others, since it is both their recognitive acts and their recognitive passive power that are thus attracted (and maybe also empowered). In this sense, having the passive power of recognition is already a specific way of making or letting others do or undergo something. Just because of its reflectivity (attracting recognition is something that induces recogni­ tion: it’s a power that induces the same kind of power in the other on whom it is exerted), the passive power of recognition is already a form of relational social power. Once we consider the peculiar relation that subsists between passive and active powers of recognition, and how the priority of the first over the latter constitutes the property of being an attracted attractor of recognition, then we can come to see that recognitive power is a kind of authority whose first and most primitive instance is constituted by the passive power of being recog­ nized. It is first of all a passive authority to attract recognition, and because of that it can develop in an active authority to produce recognitive acts, an active authority which is in itself related to the passive power of being attracted by recognition—since, as we have already seen, it is responsive to it—and which cannot be constituted without being recognized by others. Recognitional authority, thus, can be grasped at a level which is not yet a normative one, nor an institutional one. In its simplest form, recognitional authority is to be understood as the kind of authority held by those biological beings who are socially attracted attractors of recognition, and as such presup­ pose some degree of acceptance by others: a sort of acceptance which at this basic level is not yet collective acceptance mediated by social norms,26 as is the case for institutional acceptance, but rather much more a sort of mimetic acceptance held by those that, being to some degree attracted by the passive recognitive capacity of the other, respond to it in a positive way. Making or letting others recognize or be recognized, is thus a specific form of social power. It is not only an occurrence of social power, but also an occur­ rence which is characterized by specific recognitive means, since the mecha­ nism that lets other recognize is itself based on a recognitive property, that is 26  For a detailed analysis of forms of social and institutional recognitive acceptance, see in particular Arto Laitinen, “Recognition, Acknowledgment and Acceptance”, in Social Ontology and Recognition, 309–347.

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the property of being an attractor of recognition. Of course there may be more active and deliberate ways of letting others recognize and be recognized, that is by using coercive mechanisms (a threat of physical force, sanction, manipu­ lation or intentional forms of influence): but already the most simple case of just being an attractor of recognition enables us to some degree to let others recognize or be recognized, and thus is a kind of social power. Such a power of letting others recognize and be recognized can be held whether they want to or not: this means that it may be held both in cases where it limits the volition of others, and in cases where it is willingly accepted by others (including cases of voluntary subjection), which does not mean that no power relation subsists. Furthermore, such a power of letting others recognize or be recognized can be both non-intentionally2 and intentionally2. The social power of recognition is the power of, willingly or not, letting others recognize and be recognized whether they want to or not. Such a power can be held even without having the intention to hold it, that is in a non deliber­ ate way—an aspect which is strengthened by its intimate connection with the passive power of being recognized and the kind of attraction that such a pas­ sive power may elicit. If we now go back to Honneth’s characterization of the 4 main features of recognition, then we see that, once we understand recognition as a power which is not only active but first and foremost also passive, and once we use such an understanding to grasp a specific notion of social power, then this has some consequences first on the way we should conceive feature number 2)— that is the idea that recognition should be restricted to intersubjective action, and understood as a stance, “an attitude realized in concrete action”. The action-theoretical perspective, in fact, cannot exhaustively characterize the phenomenon of recognition, since it seems to grasp it mainly from the per­ spective of intentional active ‘agents’ of recognition—i.e. from the perspective of recognizers, performers of active powers of recognition—and cannot give an adequate account of the perspective of ‘recipients’ of recognition—of the constitutive role that the passive power has for there to be attractors of recog­ nition, and consequently recognizers. All of which implies that the extension of the action-theoretical perspective should be limited, and not considered identical to the domain of recognition theory. This is due to the fact that recognition is a condition of intentional agency—a genetic and conceptual condition for there to be intentional agents: for intentional agency to emerge, maintain itself, and be conceived—and thus cannot be wholly grasped with the conceptual tools of the action-theoretical perspective. Secondly, feature 3) should be discharged—that is we should discharge the criterion stating that for there to be recognition in a specific sense, then

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recognition should be contained in the main scope of an action, and not just be a secondary or unintentional scope of it. This is due to the fact that recogni­ tion may be both non-intentional1—it may not always be referred to, and be identified by, a determinate intentional content—and non-intentional2—may not always be the result of a willing, deliberate intention to action or in action.27 From this point of view, the tendency, typical of most theories of recognition, to characterize such a phenomenon from the outset in exclusively intentional terms, and to relate it exclusively to the level of an already constituted person­ hood, and to the field of action theory, underestimates the extent to which recognitive powers work as sub-personal mechanisms, on a level beneath intentional consciousness and higher personal structures, even though they may play a role in their emergence. 4

Bio-Power and Biopolitical Power

I have tried to understand some aspects of recognition in terms of social power. I have tried to conceive of the simplest case of recognitive social power at a level which is not yet intrinsically intentional and normative. Furthermore, I have tried to grasp the simplest case of recognitive power at a level which is not intrinsically institutional, that is at the level of the bio-social power of being attractors of recognition. This does not exclude, as we have seen, that such a power can be transferred to social objects, groups, and collective insti­ tutional social subjects. 4.1 Precursors Such a connection between power, life and recognition has already been noted in the history of the theory of recognition: Rousseau, for example, noted in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality that in the state of nature the origin of social relations of power lies in the different ability to attract looks—some, intentionally1 and/or intentionally2 or not, are less able to attract the gaze of others, whether they would like to or not. And Hegel himself, in his Self-consciousness chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, seemed to assume that recognition is possible not only within the free, reflexive and deliber­ ate relations between equal agents whose intentional1 and intentional2 selfconsciousness are already fully constituted and institutionally articulated, but also within asymmetrical power relations that emerge from pre-intentional 27  For such a distinction between prior intentions and intentions in action, see John Searle, “The Intentionality of Intention and Action”, Inquiry 22, 1–4 (1979): 253–280.

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biological natural life. There is a whole story to be told here, but for present purposes I won’t undergo such an enterprise and I will mainly concentrate on how the relation between recognition understood as bio-power and contem­ porary bio-political theories may be understood. 4.2 Recognitive Bio-Power and the Power of Socialization Foucauldian theories of power and bio-political theories tend to conceive of social power as being something anonymous, widespread, and pervasive. This model covers both the microphysics of power—the power relationship between individuals—and its macrophysics—social power held and exercised by discursive orders, disciplinary practices, and institutions, on individuals and on other orders, practices, and institutions. Bio-political theories, in this sense—as noted by John Searle28—tend to consider the power of socialization as a Background power—then as a power mostly held and exercised at the non-intentional(1 and 2) or pre-intentional level of capacities, dispositions and functions that operate beneath our daily practices. But please note that contemporary theories of recognition (such as Mead’s, Habermas’, and Honneth’s) tend to think of the recognitive constitution of intentional subjects and of their personal structures on the model of socializa­ tion in sociological terms, that is on the basis of the model of individuation through socialization. Along this model recognizing capacities, and the prac­ tices to which they give rise, then, must be thought of as constitutive aspects of the power of socialization. Hence, the characterization of recognition as bio-power developed so far may be an adequate tool to grasp the structure of the power of socialization in such a way that captures both its recognitive and its biopolitical structure, thus enabling us to bridge the gap between these two critical-philosophical traditions. We have to think not only that there is a level of subpersonal recognition (in addition to the personal, interpersonal, and institutional levels), con­ nected with some recognitive bio-powers, but also that there is a biopolitical dimension of recognition (distinct from the axiological and from the deontic dimensions of recognitive powers)29 that operates also at the subpersonal and

28  John Searle, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 155ff. 29  On the distinction between personal, interpersonal, and institutional levels of recog­ nition, and between the axiological and the deontic dimensions of recognition, see Heikki Ikaeheimo, “Recognizing Persons”, Journal of Consciousness Studies 14, 5–6 (2007): 224–47.

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impersonal levels (as is the case in many aspects of the socialization process).30 The introduction of the biopolitical dimension of social recognitive power is particularly useful in order to understand an aspect of recognitive phenomena that might otherwise escape the theoretical model. So far, I have construed recognition as bio-power mainly at the level of dyadic relation. But in social practice such a relationship often, if not always, involves a third party—thus it is a triadic one—involving a We which mediates the relationship between ego and alter: I that is We, and We that is I, to quote Hegel’s plastic formula­ tion of this subject matter. The fact is that several recognitive phenomena are about already institutionally mediated relations between individuals, or about relations between individuals and institutions, if not about relations between institutions and other institutions (understood in a broad sense, which include informal and formal institutions). Here the characterization of biopower as a power of attracting recognition could be fruitfully extended. 4.3 Institutional Recognitive Macropowers Certain social practices and institutions are recognitive subjects which attract and perform recognitive acts: in the sense of both providing recognition; of claiming to be recognized by the people who are subject to them; and of having the power to let themselves be recognized and to let others recognize or be recognized. But the way in which those powers are held and exercised by recognitive institutions is rarely active, explicit, personal, discreet, deliberate, and instead is mostly passive, anonymous, distributed, and pervasive. Furthermore, the relationship between individuals and the social practices and institutions having recognitive powers tends to be vertical rather than horizontal, and implies an asymmetry of distribution of recognitional autho­ rity. These institutions are endowed with recognitive powers in the restricted sense of social powers, insofar as they tend to let people do or undergo things whether they want to or not: they tend to let themselves be recognized by others, whether they want to or not, and to let others recognize and be recog­ nized by certain things. Holding or exercising the social power of recognition is not identical either to physical force, or to coercion, that is to the intentional and active exercise of a power based on the explicit threat of physical force or 30  For a different way to develop the idea that there is an ‘impersonal’ aspect of institutional recognition, see also Heikki Ikaeheimo, Arto Laitinen, “Recognition and Social Ontology: An Introduction”, in Recognition and Social Ontology, 10, where the ‘impersonal’ side of institutional recognition is understood as responding to someone as a bearer of a role or a position, and contrasted with the ‘personal’ way of responding to someone as an irreplaceable person.

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sanctions. These are rather special cases of social power. The way such insti­ tutions exercise their socializing power over individuals or over other insti­ tutions, is much more a non-intentional2 way of enjoying a passive power of being recognized, a kind of (asymmetrically distributed) recognitive attrac­ tiveness they have accumulated and which elicits recognition. 4.4 Social Pressure and the Microphysics of Recognition But the biopolitical model is also useful to help us rethink the recognitive inter-individual relation and the role it plays within the model of individu­ ation as socialization, in contexts where the inter-I-you relation is already mediated by institutions. In the process of recognitive constitution of social self-consciousness, in fact, each individual, being equipped to some extent with recognitive powers, and therefore with recognitional authority, is a social ‘administrator’ of recognitive power firstly because she is a social ‘attractor’ of recognition.31 That is, each individual is potentially placed in front of other people as an attractive representative of the recognitive community (and in some cases as a representative of some of its institutions). This is the phe­ nomenon of social pressure that each individual, as holder of the power to let others recognize and be recognized, that is as an attractor of social recogni­ tion, voluntarily or otherwise has, and eventually actively exercises on other individuals. Recognitive power is an asymmetrically widespread power that everyone may have and possibly exercise over anyone, insofar as they have some sort of recognitional authority. This way we can manage to re-describe background bio-political power (with its anonymous, pervasive traits) in recognitive terms. In this way we not only manage to re-describe recognitive relations—between individuals and individuals, between individuals and institutions, and then between institutions and institutions—as power and authority relations. But most of all we manage to characterize the notion of power in specifically recognitive terms. 31  Whereas Robert Brandom seems to understand the “authority” of the “administrators” of recognition on the basis of an autonomy based model of “authority”—understood basically in intentional, active, deontic terms as being the “author of” something (paradigmatically a norm)—I propose to understand their being authoritative as administrators as having a foothold on their being attractors of recognition (which means that such an authoritativeness does not per se imply their being “authors of” anything). See Robert Brandom, “Some Pragmatic Themes in Hegel’s Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel’s Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms,” European Journal of Philosophy 7, 2 (1999): 164–189.

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4.5 Subjectivation The recognitive constitution of subjectivity and intersubjectivity implies that the recognitive power is not only a power in the general sense—a capacity to produce some state of things in the world—but that it also works as a social power in the restricted sense (a capacity to induce some state of things on other agents, whether they want it or not). We have thus obtained the characterization—through the conceptual tools of contemporary theory of recognition—of what with the conceptual tools of Althusser’s and Foucault’s theory would lead to the description of socialization practices as practices of subjectivation through subjection to a normalizing power.

Part 4 The Logic of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity

∵

Chapter 15

Hegel on Recognition: Self-Consciousness, Individuality and Intersubjectivity Alfredo Ferrarin Abstract: Hegel criticized all philosophies that begin with an I as their founding principle. But exactly what is his presumed overcoming of an egological perspective? In this paper I would like to show the role of recognition in intersubjectivity in Hegel’s philosophy. My thesis is twofold: first, intersubjectivity, self-consciousness and recog­nition are quite distinct notions; second, self-consciousness is not the result of recognition, so that all attempts at grounding a universal self-consciousness on the Chapter on the struggle between lord and bondsman in the Phenomenology of Spirit cannot make good on their promise.

Se vuol ballare signor contino il chitarrino le suonerò Lorenzo da Ponte, Le nozze di Figaro

∵ By and large, in modern philosophy the social dimension is made possible by an imaginative effort that projects me outside the self-centered horizon of my senses. In this view the other is the result of an inference from our originally self-enclosed mental sphere. Imagination and sociality go hand in hand in Hobbes, Rousseau, Hume, Smith. Unlike his predecessors, Kant does not presuppose sociability as a predisposition, let alone a given reality. He makes it instead the criterion of common sense which in turn is but an idea of a measure we try to approximate as we reflect, the aim and ideal of an enlarged mentality.2 Nevertheless, on the link between imagination and sociality Kant is in line with the tradition prior to him. 1  I wish to thank Italo Testa, Luigi Ruggiu and Lucio Cortella for their invitation, as well as Sabina Tortorella and other participants in the Venice Conference for their questions and comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2  Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), § 40; see also Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2006), § 6. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004322967_016

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Why does this primacy of imagination in intersubjectivity seem so alien to Hegel? We know Hegel found the beginning with an I a very abstract and doomed perspective. But exactly what is his presumed overcoming of an egological perspective? In this paper I would like to show the role of recognition in intersubjectivity in Hegel’s philosophy. My thesis is twofold: first, intersubjectivity, self-consciousness and recognition are quite distinct notions; second, self-consciousness is not the result of recognition, so that all attempts at grounding a universal self-consciousness on the Chapter on the struggle between lord and bondsman in the Phenomenology of Spirit cannot make good on their promise. 1

Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity

Let me begin by reconstructing in this section the highroad that leads Hegel to raise the problem of intersubjectivity the way he does. In the Berlin Encyclopaedia Hegel claims that consciousness and selfconsciousness are the appearance of reason.3 Reason is the unity of concept and reality, finite and infinite, the idea in its immediate form.4 Unlike Kant Hegel does not regard reason as a faculty—even the faculty that produces an a priori synthesis. Like Kant, however, Hegel takes reason as life. For both reason is practical—not in Kant’s sense of the supposed primacy of practical reason, but in a very basic pragmatic sense as life, dynamism and involvement in its interests and activities. In Hegel the definition of reason as life implies that, because the unity of concept and reality is not assumed from the start but has to be produced, reason wants to find and possess itself in reality. In order to be at home in the world, reason must become, that is, it must posit itself as what it is. This is why reason is at first impulse, i.e., the drive of giving content to its knowledge and, conversely, to suppress givenness and posit it as an objectivity it considers identical to itself.5 If we follow the description of life in the philosophy of nature, in particular § 359, we realize that, like pain elsewhere, lack is the privilege of the living. Unlike limits for inanimate things, which are defined by them as by external boundaries they simply undergo, lack comes with the inner thrust to overcome it. Being able to endure it is what the infinity of subjectivity amounts

3  Enc., §§ 413 ff. All translations from Hegel’s are the author’s except where otherwise noted. 4  Enc., § 214. 5  Enc., § 425.

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to. Instincts are the way the concept promotes itself to existence. Need is the condition of the concept’s self-realization. In Kant reason’s life concerns the interests and ends of reason and the activities intended to fulfill them. But in reason it is not individuality but first and foremost universality I strive to, and common sense does not particularly tarry over my own other but leaps to the ideal ‘We’. Furthermore, Kant’s description of reason’s life is analogical, so that what can be called the declension of reason into a first person remains quite abstract as well as opposed to the empirical I. In Hegel the picture is much more concrete because he strongly insists on reason’s embodiment and does not begin by translating reason into a universal subject in such a way that empirical and pure I fall asunder. From this vantage point we can see that Hegel’s problem with the egological perspective is not its monadic core. The problem, I suggest, is that the world is not really shared as long as the ego we start from is a theoretical I. A pure I cannot be the answer. And Hegel’s picture is more concrete because he must not simply postulate an inner relation between individual and universal self-consciousness but show how the one becomes the other from and through its finitude and embodiment. We know that whatever assertion or statement Hegel makes changes its meaning depending on its stage or level in the system and the context it is embedded in. The principle that the true is the whole is so vital that taking anything out of context vitiates irremediably all conclusion. What Hegel says may be true for the stage of consciousness or thought-determination he is examining rather than for us or in itself; it can be one-sidedly and incompletely true, an assertion to which its opposite still has to be countered until both are resolved in a more comprehensive unity. So the preliminary qualification required in everything we say is the indication of the work and chapter we move in and refer our remarks to. If we place Hegel’s points on selfconsciousness and intersubjectivity in the entirety of his system, we immediately realize that we cannot extract a univocal thesis to be taken as a truth either valid universally or pervasive of all figures. Self-consciousness in the struggle for recognition in the 1807 Phenomenology is one thing, in the Encyclopaedia ‘Phenomenology’ quite another. Self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness, but also the manifestation of reason. Self-consciousness finds its truth in another self-consciousness, but it also has an independent structure prior to and regardless of the encounter with the other in which it nonetheless discovers itself. And so on. But as soon as we realize that, we realize we must also acknowledge that more qualifications are needed before we even start to draw our focus closer. I will propose as the premiss of my considerations two elementary points,

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knowing fully well that what seems evident to me is most likely going to be disputable for others. (1) Hegel’s conclusions present at least three distinct phases: (a) the development of his earlier views in the Jena period prior to the Phenomenology (with the further subdivisions of the System der Sittlichkeit, the 1803–4 and 1805–6 system projects), (b) the 1807 Phenomenology itself, and (c) the later systematic conception to be found in the ‘Phenomenology’ and ‘Psychology’ of the ‘Philosophy of Subjective Spirit’ and in ‘Objective Spirit’. If so, then the first point that requires comment is the use of ‘recognition’, which, preponderant until 1806 at all levels (as Siep and Testa have shown), is thematically central in but substantially restricted to the struggle between two self-consciousnesses in the 1807 Phenomenology, and later further narrowed in the Encyclopaedia. (2) This simple consideration leads us to see that recognition, reciprocity and intersubjectivity are by no means identical. There are spheres of more immediate and natural reciprocity as well as more complex objective relations of intersubjectivity between which the stage where I discover I am an individual self-consciousness that depends on another I’s recognition is merely intermediary and instrumental (if not surprisingly problematic, as we will see). These are methodological points, but they are sufficient to grant a number of preliminary conclusions. As to principle (1) with regard to the evolution of this concept in Hegel’s philosophy, we can say what follows. From his earliest days Hegel has mistrusted all attempts at beginning with a free autonomous subject. His appeal to Aristotle in Jena must be read in this light: against the abstraction of a pure I, we must see self-consciousness as rooted in nature, in a community, in institutions which to the I are its constitutive second nature. Ethics cannot be separated from either nature or politics. Individual freedom is nothing without the substance that constitutes its inner core. Accordingly, the pure I cannot come without embodiment or shared practices and activities, i.e., without a form of unification. The reconciliation between freedom and substance takes the form of recognition. The model of recognition is dominant for all spiritual and social practices. In Ludwig Siep’s summary, Hegel’s Jena philosophy of spirit presents four moments: (i), the constitution of a common consciousness among selfconscious individuals; (ii), everyone’s claim to have dignity and worth for the other even in his or her separation and distance from them; (iii), the mutual respect of rights, functions and institutions that bind all; (iv), the awareness that individual and universal consciousness and will are reciprocally dependent. As a result, recognition entails my knowing myself as a moment of the universal substance which in turn is the result of everybody’s doing.

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Hegel’s philosophy of spirit is thus the genetic formation of institutions and of consciousness at the same time. Here individual and universal selfconsciousnesses arise through one and the same movement.6 By contrast, the Phenomenology of Spirit tells a different story. That is no wonder, for the Phenomenology is a critique of the appearance of knowledge in consciousness’ voyages of discovery. Consciousness has to be led upwards to recognize the logic that moves it, until it sees that no difference between itself and speculation remains on its way. Truth and consciousness’ certainty must become one. Consciousness, self-consciousness, reason and spirit can appear as separate shapes, however, insofar as the subject of the movement is not aware of what goes on behind its back. Absolute knowledge, or speculative logic (the identity of logic and metaphysics, thinking and being), are therefore not the product of consciousness’ movement, but are known by consciousness at the end of its calvary as the truth that had been operative all along. This new position, made possible in 1807 by Hegel’s freshly gained definition of the ‘Absolute’ and of ‘logic’, cannot rest on something like recognition because consciousness’s experience and speculative truth are quite distinct and mutually independent. The conclusion I draw from this point is that in the 1807 Phenomenology recognition amounts to acknowledgement and discovery on the part of consciousness. Even if it is the acknowledgment and discovery of a practice we share and thereby contribute to constitute, its productive or constitutive role is limited. For this reason its latitude is so drastically reduced in comparison with the Jena system projects. Further evidence that Hegel progressively narrowed the role ascribed to recognition is his philosophy of spirit after the Phenomenology of Spirit. In Nuremberg, Heidelberg and Berlin Hegel still uses recognition, but drives a wedge between theoretical spirit (i.e., intelligence), practical spirit (i.e., will), and objective spirit. As a result, language and spirit’s self-realization in the formal moments of the will and in political institutions, which in Jena were equally treated in conjunction with if not under the aegis of recognition, are now separated. That is, they are deduced in different sections and thereby assigned different functions in different thematic scopes. Instead of forming the condition for the validation of rational institutions in objective spirit, recognition survives in the much truncated version of the Phenomenology of the Encyclopaedia. But this recognition is independent of language, right, institutions, the State, as it is appealed to only to explain the doubling (Verdoppelung) of self-consciousness as one moment of subjective spirit. The Phenomenology 6  Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg: Alber, 1979), Ch. 1, § 3.5.

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has become one stage of spirit’s evolution. At the same time, it is now a part of science, not an introduction to science. The Encyclopaedia ‘Phenomenology’ is in other words a theory of consciousness, not a criticism of it. In its turn consciousness, meanwhile reduced to the philosophical stance of opposition to objectivity and Reflexion, now forms the condition for spirit’s free self-relation and assumes a well-defined historical connotation as it is related to the modern subjectivism of the period from Descartes to Fichte.7 Hegelians therefore know better than to find in recognition the seed of a political philosophy, let alone a philosophy of history, the prefiguration of Marx’ class struggle, or even a romanticization of desire as desire of the other’s desire. This, however, does not mean you cannot have recognition in interpersonal relations such as love and friendship. In fact, and here I come to some conclusions regarding principle (2) on the difference between recognition and intersubjectivity, recognition is the thread that weaves personal individual relations together. Its natural form is love, which is finding oneself in the other. But the resulting unity is not the simple sum of two. It is a superior unity in which each member finds meaning, purpose and substance. This relation is reciprocal; the unity is sought for. In it we give up our independence. In the words of the 1805–6 Realphilosophie,8 it is the unity of being-for-self and being-for-other. “By the fact that each one knows oneself in the other, each overcomes itself as a being for itself, as distinct”.9 It is a natural dissatisfaction, rooted in the body and sexuality, that moves us to find satisfaction in another. As in Rousseau, then, the first form of sympathy takes place in the form of feeling. Given the importance of love for Hegel from his Frankfurt to his Jena years, it is tempting to see in this idea the model of Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, but it is a temptation worth resisting. For Aristophanes’ model of fusion annuls individuality. In Hegel’s idea of love two individuals are not simply looking for a fusion, in fact, they overcome this ephemeral unity by the intuition of themselves in a third element, an external object that will presumably survive them: the child. Fusion consumes like a flame that burns out (engrossed with each other, Aristophanes’s lovers die of hunger: Symposium 191a–b). An immediate unity has no substance or endurance. Love pushes to objectivize itself in a mediated object, the representation of enduring unity: marriage, family, and its patrimony. Thereby immediacy makes room for mediation. In Aristotle’s words, in this unity the other is another self and friendship 7  See my Hegel and Aristotle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 284 ff. 8  Jenaer Systementwürfe III, in GW 8, 209. 9  G W 8, 210.

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of pleasure may unwittingly become a different form of friendship. In Hegel we find a different conception: in this objective bond flesh becomes spirit, as it were. Crucial for all this is the independence of the other self-consciousness. In reciprocity lovers at first give up independence, but the other’s alterity is not effaced. If anything, it is sanctioned officially by the institution of marriage. From this relation between two people the consciousness of a ‘we’ first arises. Still, this remains a natural bond. The satisfaction of finding myself in the other in love must give way to more public forms of recognition, and of satisfaction. Reciprocity between two self-consciousnesses is not the same as the universal self-consciousness which is arrived at only in the socially shared world: in the plurality of self-consciousnesses that feel and act as one. Aristotle moved from oikos to polis through demos alone (the village). In Hegel, the family is not followed by the state without further ado. Hegel needs a further mediation, civil society or more fundamentally its subject, selfconsciousness. Another way to make the same point is this. What the I asserts in love is the truth of a superior unity. With it come its own lack of independence and its renunciation to self-centered will. Love itself prefigures higher, more complex forms such as ethical life, in which self-consciousness is not only in relation to others like it but also to the whole, a ‘we’: spirit, universal self-consciousness. Before we attain to recognition of wills that integrate each other in a whole, however, we must pass through the recognition of wills that assert themselves as independent of one another. Conflict is here inevitable. Before we see why, let us draw our final conclusions from the themes of this section. The first worth stressing is that Geist is the proper level at which we can speak of intersubjectivity as the substance and bond of a universal selfconsciousness. In Hegel’s mature philosophy this means in objective spirit’s ethical life. For the Phenomenology of Subjective Spirit as well as the first two forms of objective spirit, Abstract Right and Morality, concern an individual self-consciousness not yet identical with its ethical substance. Shared practices happen at the level of rational institutions in which we freely participate and which shape our very being together.10 Spirit’s intersubjectivity is the ‘I that is We, the We that is I’. In Hegel’s mature thought recognition is constitutive neither of intersubjectivity nor of self-consciousness. Second, it cannot be. For from social recognitive practices I can never arrive at self-consciousness. The I does find and discover itself in another, but cannot

10  Cfr. Angelica Nuzzo, “Phenomenologies of Intersubjectivity: Fichte Between Hegel and Husserl”, in V. Weibel, D. Breazeale, T. Rockmore (eds.), Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 97–117.

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draw its identity from other Is.11 Social roles and practices, language, normative relations of recognition will never be able to constitute the peculiar relation to oneself that self-consciousness is. They do fill the I’s life, give it substance and scope, but only insofar as they are recognized by an I. However, pretending that they give rise to an I and at the same time that the I recognize them—i.e., that the I constitute them through social interaction—is circular.12 Taking self-consciousness as “a social achievement” strikes me as unintelligible.13 Self-relation cannot be grounded on recognition. If anything, it is recognition that is made possible by two self-relating subjects. An interpretation in which a relation constitutes its relata (self-consciousnesses, in the case at hand) rests on a category mistake: in the terms of the Science of Logic, the conflation of the thought-determination ‘Something and other’ taken as a universal bond and ‘Being-for-self’ (Fürsichsein). The former is the finite relation to 11  Among others, Sartre ascribes—mistakenly, in my view—this conception to Hegel: JeanPaul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square 1966), 290–92. 12  Peperzak writes: “The concrete identity of the I with itself is the ground (or essence or truth) of the mutual recognition that is the appearance of that ground”: Adriaan T. Peperzak, Modern Freedom (Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 156. Also consider that the ‘I’ is a personal pronoun because it is used by a selfconsciousness. All interpretations that take the first person as exclusively reducible to the use of an indexical among others efface the phenomenon they claim they want to explain. In the late 1970s Tugendhat criticized Dieter Henrich’s theory of selfconsciousness as oriented to a subject-object model and proposed instead a theory loosely based on a Wittgensteinian use of the pronoun I. See Ernst Tugendhat, Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung. Sprachanalytische Interpretationen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1979). Henrich retorted that the semantic explanation of the I through an indexical is circular, for I cannot say ‘I’ unless I attribute to myself a form of self-cognition or selffamiliarity (Vertrautheit mit sich). From the use of the reflexive pronoun I cannot get to self-consciousness or to ‘I’ as a subject, and no reflexive relation in the world (selfmovement, self-destruction, a river that digs itself a bed are Henrich’s examples) can account for my being an I as subject. Self-consciousness rests on a form of familiarity with itself that cannot be derived objectively (see Henrich, “Noch einmal in Zirkeln. Eine Kritik von Ernst Tugendhats Erklärung von Selbstbesusstsein”, in C. Bellut and V. Müller-Scholl, (eds.), Mensch und Moderne (Würzburg: Königshausen-Neuman, 1989), 93–132). Henrich does not have Hegel in mind when he replies to Tugendhat (who does: the last part of his book is provocatively entitled Kehraus mit Hegel!). See my discussion in “Autocoscienza, riferimento dell’io e conoscenza di sé”, Teoria XII (1992): 111–52. 13  The words in scare quotes are Robert Brandom’s. For a critique of his view of Hegel see my “What Must We Recognize? Brandom’s Kant and Hegel”, in Verifiche XLI 1–3 (2012): 203–19.

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other, the latter is true infinity. A reciprocal relation is by no means identical to a reflexive relation. In the terms of the 1807 Phenomenology, self-consciousness is not yet spirit. In fact, self-consciousness must struggle to become precisely that, the ‘I that is We, the We that is I’, spirit. The ‘We’ is not some sort of Collective Mind or a selfsame metaphysical substance independent of, transcending, and pre-existing finite individuals. It is the work and actions of each and every one of us. And this is Hegel’s point. Reason is life and subjectivity, infinite relation to itself. It appears in this guise as and to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is understandable in terms of reason, not viceversa. Self-consciousness is not an ultimate origin. 2

Recognition, Fear, Labor

This is not a relativization of self-consciousness, but it is indeed a relativization of the chapter on the struggle for recognition of the 1807 Phenomenology. It is also the reason why I cannot agree with Bob Pippin who holds that this is “the most important chapter in all of Hegel”.14 The problem is not one of preference or opinions on the relative rank-order of a chapter. His view is vastly exaggerated because it rests on a misguided foundation, his belief that “Hegel’s presentation is motivated by the internal inadequacies of the Kantian notion of apperception in general”.15 Relativization means understanding the chapter in its context, but in no way is it my intention to downplay it. It will always be one of the most fascinating examples of dialectic as reversal, and of Hegel’s genius. In this second section I would like to expound its main points and bring a comparison with Hobbes to bear on my analysis and conclusions. The first three chapters of the Phenomenology have shown to consciouness— to the understanding—the dawning of infinity. In it consciousness sees its own process of generating, holding fast to, and destroying conceptual distinctions. Consciousness’ object, which at first was other than itself,16 turns out to be thus nothing but itself. This point is expressed by Hegel in these words: 14  Robert B. Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), vii. 15  Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness, 16 fn. For a comparable view see also Italo Testa, La natura del riconoscimento. Riconoscimento naturale e ontologia sociale in Hegel (1801–6) (Milano-Udine: Mimesis, 2010), 38, 65. 16  PS, § 166, 104 (GW 9, 103).

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to consciousness, it and the object are separated by a difference that is not one. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness. This however means that self-consciousness is this return to itself (which is indeed its aptest definition). Thus it contains in itself consciousness as sublated, and consciousness’ world as negated and inwardized (“the whole expanse of the sensuous world is preserved for it”,).17 Self-consciousness thereby brings with itself a contradiction: it looks for itself but finds its other. The contradiction naturally takes on a dynamical form. Self-consciousness realizes it must begin with the object, remove it and turn back upon itself. In this return to itself, it regards the other as subordinate, a sheer appearance. Its object must be negated in self-consciousness’ pursuit of its own self. Desire is this form of negation of the object instrumental to selfconsciousness’ self-assertion. In fact, self-consciousness’ identity is inseparable from desire. Self-consciousness is necessarily practical and is life, will, the movement of self-affirmation and pursuit of satisfaction.18 Life is infinity, a self-identity not constrained by its particular modes of being, a constant relation to its other through which it maintains itself as it transforms itself and its object. As the logic has it, life (the idea in its immediacy qua sensibility, irritability and reproduction) is a universality that individuates itself. But the self-affirmation that destroys the object so as to fuel the certainty self-consciousness has of itself is too unstable to ground self-consciousness’ individuation. Self-consciousness realizes it needs the subsistence of the object, for without it it cannot get any satisfaction or assert itself genuinely. As it finds that an ever renewed consumption is in need of ever new objects, so that it is led to reproduce its object, and its desire, over and over again, selfconsciousness realizes the limits of consumption and thus experiences the problem of the object’s independence. The object turns out not to be that subordinate to self-consciousness after all. The truth of self-consciousness’ desire is that self-consciousness can achieve its satisfaction only insofar as it relates to an other now recognized as independent. This other in turn negates itself at the same time and in the same way. Only another consciousness can do that, i.e., negate its own natural determinations and maintain itself in and through this negation.19 Because it is desire,

17  PS, § 167, 105 (GW 9, 104). 18   “The unity of self-consciousness with itself [. . .] must become essential to selfconsciousness, i.e., self-consciousness is Desire in general” (PS, § 167, 105; GW 9, 104). 19  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hegel’s Dialectic, trans. P. C. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 62 ff.

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self-consciousness must relate to another self-consciousness. As a result, “selfconsciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness”.20 Self-consciousness doubles itself.21 This movement, which has been presented as if it were the action of one self-consciousness, is in truth the action of both self-consciousnesses involved. Recognition is this doubling by which I find myself in the other who mirrors me, and viceversa. But if this is the aim of the movement, i.e., an I-thou relation that prepares the birth of a ‘We’, it is not the shape in which it first appears to self-consciousness. At first is an inequality in a struggle. Self-consciousness realizes that it strives to affirm itself at the expense of independent others like itself. This is why from desire conflict necessarily arises. This is not, as it were, a struggle for life, but a struggle in which each party shows it wants to be superior to life by risking it in order to prove itself. What each wants is the recognition that its own certainty of itself has truth, that is, that it prevails over the other. Life and the I are separated (entzweit).22 But faced with the sudden concrete risk of death, one of the two capitulates and prefers life over independence. This is a submissive and slavish resolve to the eyes of the lord who has meanwhile prevailed, for the slave is more attached to life than to his I (to his dignity and freedom). That is, for the lord only his being-for-self counts. For the bondsman instead dependance upon the lord (i.e., being-for-other), life and self—demoted though it may be—are intertwined. The lord’s life is reduced to futile enjoyment and consumption, that is, consumption of goods prepared for him by the bondsman (“il chitarrino” Figaro intends to play for the Count in the Marriage of Figaro as in the epigraph of this essay). The stage of consumption falls back on to the previous stage of indefinite repetition of satisfaction without any progress in the lord’s being at home in the world. His being-for-self progressively thins out and becomes insubstantial. The lord relates to the bondsman as to an inferior from whose recognition he can hardly be gratified. He also relates to things through the bondsman. “The aspect of its [the thing’s] independence he leaves to the bondsman, who works on it”.23 Thereby the recognition shows to be one-sided and unequal. This is a problem for the lord because his independence is recognized by a slavish self-consciousness. He is mirrored by an inessential selfconsciousness, and now this relation appears to him as the truth of his self. 20  PS, § 175, 110 (GW 9, 108). 21  Gadamer, Hegels Dialectic, 62 ff. “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged” (PS, § 178, 111; GW 9, 109). 22  PS, § 168, 106 (GW 9, 104–105). 23  PS, § 190, 116 (GW 9, 113).

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But a worse problem, and the reason why the relation begins to be dialectically inverted, is that the lord who enjoys things through the mediation of the bondsman has estranged himself from them. While for the lord things have no independence, for the bondsman they have to be vanquished through labor. Work disciplines desire and puts a stop to fear. Work “is desire held in check, fleetingness staved off; in other words, work forms and shapes the thing. The negative relation to the object becomes its form and something permanent”.24 As in Kant’s Conjectural Beginning of Human History where the checking of desire is the beginning of culture, here work is a formative activity through which self-consciousness begins to consider itself in its products. The bondsman recognizes himself in the products of his labor (“I made you!” is his subdued but proud cry). Work, even as it is imposed on him by the lord, acquires for the bondsman the sense of a self-objectification. It is his freedom become thinghood. The bondsman’s self-consciousness finds itself in the thing. In this intuition he thus becomes explicitly for itself. Now what is the point of these famous pages? These pages are like the Phenomenology as a whole: incredibly rich and complex, they can be read at multiple levels for the sake of historical narrative or a description of subjectivity with important psychological, psychoanalytic and existential overtones. And yet, they are confusing enough that one must disentangle the philosophical systematic lesson Hegel wants us to draw from the otherwise less essential conclusions it also grants. The philosophical systematic lesson is this: Hegel is showing generally how for consciousness the presuppositions behind its back first present themselves to its consideration. In these pages in particular he is showing the bare truth of self-consciousness’ experience: how reason enters the world practically and negatively through the shaping of recalcitrant things, how subjectivity acquires an objectivity and a permanence that can only be established through the mediation of—through the bondsman’s labor on— things, how the bondsman posits himself as this negativity and eventually acquires a higher self than the lord.25 No such thing as feeling with or imagining the other has yet surfaced, for at first each self-consciousness takes its self-hood as itself alone. The other self-consciousness in its independence comes up as a sudden shock, and the struggle for recognition grows out of the unexpected check following from the discovery of the other’s independence and threat. The struggle is a transition from a solipsistic I to an independent world, whereby the solipsistic I is 24  PS, § 195, 118 (GW 9, 115). 25  He “posits himself as a negative in the permanent order of things, and thereby becomes for himself, someone existing on his own account” (PS, § 196, 118; GW 9, 115).

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still well before and quite far from Smith’s self or Husserl’s ego (it is almost autistic rather than solipsistic). More importantly, the relation is an abstraction. For all the richness of its implications, it is the barest and emptiest relation. We know nothing of the two self-consciousnesses’ life other than this: the lord is a being-for-self, while the bondsman is a being-for-self, being-for-other and work. It is sufficient to try to picture these two self-consciousnesses more concretely to understand how abstract this relation is. Do the lord and the bondsman have a family (parents, children, a wife)? If they do (and nobody was born in a void), does what Hegel calls the natural form of recognition they must have experienced before the struggle have any bearing on it? That is, does it teach them anything about what to expect or fear or anticipate? It seems obvious that these are not questions it is interesting, pertinent or even possible to ask because all that matters to Hegel is the truth of the experience each self-consciousness makes in their conflict, and that is that work is one way in which reason makes the world its home and freedom makes its first appearance. This philosophical systematic lesson is all Hegel cares to establish. Still, this is not the end of the story. If the bondsman realizes he is free even in his servitude (in a way his lord cannot achieve because to him freedom comes with estrangement from the world), what bears stressing is that the bondsman’s freedom is won. It is won at the expense of fear. The quote from the Psalms “The fear of the lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom”26 seems to come out of nowhere. But Hegel’s Biblical references hardly ever do, and this is no exception. It seems to me that labor has rightly been made much of by interpreters, but upon closer reading of the last paragraph of this chapter it is the couple fear-work that together calls for commentary. Fear must be taken as “absolute fear”, the fear to lose his life that infects the bondsman’s being through and through and jeopardizes “the entire contents of its natural consciousness”.27 “The two moments of fear and service [. . .] are necessary, both being at the same time in a universal mode”. Without work fear is not objectified. It remains “inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself ”. The inner must become outer. Conversely, without fear, i.e., if moved only by “a lesser dread” or generic anxiety, work produces “only an empty self-centered attitude”. Work is the absolute command dictated by fear of death. Fear and work are not simply two sides that happen to be conjoined. Rather, fear is inwardized in work and finds its shape in work in turn. In Stanley Rosen’s 26  PS, § 195, 117–18 (GW 9, 114). See Peperzak, Modern Freedom, 155. 27  PS, § 196, 119 (GW 9, 115).

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phrase, “work disciplines fear into self-consciousness”.28 Negativity must be a dramatic form of negativity in which everything is at stake. Nothing less than that constitutes the bondsman’s self-consciousness. Echoes from Hobbes are numerous. In both Hobbes and Hegel, self-consciousnesses are naturally antagonistic, in Hegel because self-assertion is desire and a negative relation to others, in Hobbes because “in the nature of man” we find competition, diffidence, glory, which all lead to war.29 In both, fear, desire and freedom are inseparable. Work disciplines fear for Hegel, while for Hobbes work (and age) correct vainglory.30 In both, fear is fear of violent death and, because it advises prudence, the beginning of wisdom.31 Like in Hobbes, for Hegel desire is not a feeling among others but a passion I take as essentially pertinent to, if not definitive of, my identity and consideration of myself. For desire is not something I happen to feel, but a self-consciousness’ subjective stance. If challenged, it must be defended; if justified, it is what I take myself to want, so it becomes an object I invest with my sense of self, something worth fighting for and standing by. Desire becomes a claim I make to which I may want to commit myself. This is the difference nicely expressed by Pippin between being subject to desires and being the subject of my desires.32 There is a major difference, however. Unlike in Hobbes in Hegel fear can be quenched and desire cultivated and deflected. Consider how desire is channelled. In Aristophanes, the satisfaction of eros gave way to concern for the other needs of life in the city (Symposium, 191c); in Hegel, after being realized in the family as love, desire is realized in work; in Hobbes, it must be directed to the work of building the city. But the sovereign controls fear. That is, he or she can never take it away from us or alter desire. Hobbes must do without a

28  Stanley Rosen, G. W. F. Hegel. An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974), 163. 29  “From this equality of ability ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore, if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end, which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only, endeavour to destroy or subdue one another”. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. E. Curley (Indianapolis-Cambridge: Hackett, 1994), Book 1, ch. 13, 75. 30  Hobbes, Leviathan, Book 1, ch. 6, 32. 31  See Jacques Taminiaux, Dialectic and Difference (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1985), 24. 32  Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness, 32.

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second nature. For him it is a pious self-delusion that you can cultivate desire or improve human nature.33 Finally, in Hegel it is true for us, not for self-consciousness, that the I is a We. It is for us that recognition is mutual and free.34 For self-consciousness, by contrast, at first is “an inequality” and the I is not a We. This is another difference from Hobbes. He takes his bearings from a situation of equality but never allows atomic individuality to become (feel and act as) a We. In fact, the pride that he finds ingrained in us is precisely the lack of recognition of everybody’s equality. 3 Conclusion Hegel’s self-consciousness is not a social achievement. This is not to say with many contemporary philosophers that the I is a primitive notion or that the irreducibility of self-consciousness to social practices entails its primacy. There cannot be any ambiguity about that, for to Hegel the criticism of the abstract beginning of modern (especially transcendental) philosophy still stands. Selfconsciousness arises out of consciousness in the 1807 Phenomenology, and spirit emerges out of nature in the ‘Philosophy of Subjective Spirit’ of the Encyclopaedia. That is, the ‘I’ becomes, as does the ‘We’. They are constituted and are not a natural given (or a transcendental or metaphysical condition). If we cannot conclude to the primacy of the ‘I’, I think we must realize it is no less impossible for the ‘We’ to constitute the ‘I’. The struggle for recognition of the 1807 Phenomenology in particular cannot be the ground of sociality. Recognition in the two self-consciousnesses’ struggle is too much of an abstraction to be a paradigmatic, let alone foundational social phenomenon. The struggle is not only too abstract. Worse still, recognition is, strictly speaking, absent. True, self-consciousness exists only as recognized and finds satisfaction only in another self-consciousness; later, in Chapter VI on Spirit, recognition will have produced the basis for the interaction of persons at the ethical, juridical and religious levels. My point however is that this does not happen in the Struggle for recognition chapter. The satisfaction hoped for and aimed at is not achieved there. The Struggle for recognition chapter of the 1807 33  Human beings obey laws of nature for Hobbes. Thus they are not without a nature proper as in the humanistic tradition from Pico’s Orazione and Bacon’s Prometheus according to which they can become whatever they make of themselves. 34  PS, § 184, 112 (GW 9, 110).

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Phenomenology stands to intersubjectivity as a prophet to a messiah: it is an announcement of a kingdom come. Universal self-consciousness is not the result of that chapter, either. Selfconsciousness discovers it is not simply desire or singularity. It discovers the problem of dependence, and with it the problem of a universality that transcends its singular point of view. But this does not make it a universal selfconsciousness yet. The chapter is the moment where the thou first arises in the isolated selfconsciousness’ horizon, and with it the incipient realization that I depend on others as others depend on me. But it is a rudimentary stage well before any imagination of or involvement with the other. As sense-certainty began with no more than the ‘this’ (here-now), so at the beginning for self-consciousness is only an ‘I’ (here). The effort at putting myself ‘there’—in another’s shoes—is ahead of us still. Correspondingly, we are still far from all talk of an interiority as constituted in relation to others and from the risk feared by Rousseau that in society we live in the opinion of others. Several further mediations are required to get to that level of artificiality. For Rousseau death and foresight were unknown in the state of nature and had to be entertained in imagination. For Hegel’s self-consciousness death is lived as a concrete real danger; the other is a shock as he is a suddenly independent rival and a threat; terror is self-consciousness’ experience. Something like foresight or a representation of the future is yet to dawn to this self-consciousness.35 35  This is true of the 1807 self-consciousness, but less so of the Encyclopaedia recognitive self-consciousness. There Hegel does mention a concern for the future (“The form of universality thus arising in satisfying the want creates a permanent means and a provision which takes care for and secures the future”, Enc., § 434), but the whole context of the deduction of self-consciousness changes. (I wish to thank Heikki Ikäheimo for remin­ ding me of the § 434 passage.) The differences between the 1807 Phenomenology and the parallel treatment of this theme in the Encyclopaedia are fairly obvious. Here (Enc., § 433) the relation is unequal in that by preferring life the bondsman “gives up his claim to recognition.” By working for the lord, which means by silencing his natural being, he forms his individual will. Here the beginning of wisdom is still the fear of the lord (whose will instead remains immediate and is reflected back to him in his own image of the slave), but at the same time it means more clearly the transformation of his appetites. This selfexternalization, the bondsman’s great conquest, is the freedom from his natural being through which his self-consciousness becomes here (Enc., §§ 435–436) without further ado universal self-consciousness. In both versions, through the pages on the struggle for recognition we have attained to freedom alright (which explains why Hegel leaves the struggle in its main gist roughly unaltered from 1807 to 1827, whether it leads to stoicism

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There is then a major difference between self-image, which does become relevant in these pages, and imagination. While the self-image that the lord receives back from the bondsman is disappointing and insubstantial and the image in which the bondsman mirrors himself is the product of his work (the things he has shaped and transformed), imagining an other can only happen at a more complex stage, when a relation is in principle possible. No genuine relation is established between lord and bondsman. Their experience, their Umkehrung des Bewusstseins, is not made possible through their relation. Each makes his own individual experience. They do not interact; they react to the other’s threats and actions. We must conclude that recognition, which is the aim of the struggle, is not reached at its end. Neither the lord nor the bondsman can find himself in the other.36 Recognition strikes for its failure, or to say the least its conspicuous absence. The lord cannot find himself in the lowly image of the bondsman. For him, recognition can at most mean the bondsman’s tribute to his superiority.37 For the bondsman in turn recognition is the homage he pays to the lord’s pride before his eventual downfall, but it is one-sided, not lasting, shallow. The experience that is decisive and foundational for him has nothing to do with recognition, for it is the acknowledgement that his attachment to life has been transformed. It is now his involvement in the world through the negation of its natural being. The superiority to life that the lord had displayed turns out now to be as proud and vain as the insubstantial negativity of his unlimited enjoyment and consumption. The bondsman who dirties his hands in things instead is the rational and concrete negativity of self-objectification removing the otherness of nature. Still, neither finds or imagines himself in the other. We can now understand better why for Hegel imagination is hardly decisive and why he would not frame the question of recognition in terms of imagination to begin with. As we have just seen, Hegel’s struggling selfconsciousnesses are not in a real relation that transforms them. What Hegel or to universal self-consciousness as the premiss for spirit), but in the new form inequality has taken, i.e., the conquest made possible by the bondsman’s work. In Enc., § 433 Hegel goes to the point of mentioning the “external or phenomenal commencement of states” through force which had no role to play in the 1807 Phenomenology (or in his argument in § 433 or beyond anyway). 36  The title of Enc., § 430 in the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, Das anerkennende Selbstbewusstsein, is therefore proleptic for the aims of Hegel’s deduction there. 37  “But for recognition proper the moment is lacking that what the lord does to the other he also does to himself, and what the bondsman does to himself he should also do to the other. The outcome is a recognition that is one-sided and unequal” (PS, § 191, 116; GW 9, 113).

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sees in their struggle is only a conflict that must be recomposed and overcome until reciprocity sublates asymmetry. But when it does, it is not because of an acknowledgement of the other in imagination. For recognition is nothing mental or subjective. What counts for Hegel is the establishment of a second nature of shared practices, activities and institutions. What counts for him, that is, is not how individuals imagine others like themselves, but that they share a solid objective basis for their common life. For Hegel something like an imagination of the other is still limited and insufficient insofar as it pertains to subjective spirit alone. It has not yet shaped spirit’s objective life as it must. For Hegel individual self-consciousness must become universal self-consciousness. If recognition is not the experience that each self-consciousness makes in the struggle, it plays a role in intersubjectivity once it is assumed as achieved— and it is achieved as the certainty that pervades objective relations. In 1807 Hegel does not show how recognition arises; he shows it in action in later chapters of the Phenomenology. Rather than an explicit and deliberate act on the part of self-consciousness, then, recognition is the basis and life-pulse which permeates intersubjective relations. In it the demand that I be recognized as an independent agent is at the same time the certainty active in shared practices, institutions and beliefs—a Sollen that is a Sein. It is therefore one thing to claim that a norm counts as such only by being endorsed and it is only in the context of a shared life that what we do has the meaning it does. It is quite another, which seems mistaken to me, to draw the generalized conclusion that for Hegel one is a self-consciousness or an agent by being recognized as one.

Chapter 16

“I that is We and We that is I.” The Phenomenological Significance and the Logical Foundation of Intersubjectivity in Hegel Franco Chiereghin Abstract: In what follows I will aim at showing that the expression ‘I that is We and We that is I’ cannot be taken to be a formula that points to an adequate foundation of the intersubjectivity, until we limit our consideration to the Phenomenology of Spirit. In this work such a formula expresses the way in which consciousness experiences the spirit: a way that always involves the opposition between the consciousness and its object. On the other side, I will try to individuate—in the Science of Logic, precisely in the doctrine of the concept—those dynamics that can provide the complete logicalontological grounds of intersubjective relations.

At the end of the introductory part of the Section devoted to Self-consciousness, Hegel points out that, when the object of self-consciousness is another self-consciousness, then the concept of Spirit is present ‘for us’.1 In that claim, two elements are relevant for our starting assumption: the phenomenological use of the term ‘concept’, on the one hand and of the term ‘for us’, on the other hand. To say that the spirit is present in its own concept, means that the spirit shows itself in its fundamental structure, but such a structure only lets appear the side of its unsolved contradictions, so it is not developed according to the totality of its determinations yet. Rather, the concept is braked (this is Hegel’s expression) through the phenomenological route and, even if it conditions the consciousness’ experiences, it remains like a never completely possessed deep end of the consciousness itself. So the spirit in its effective working is present, but not to the consciousness, rather only for us. As it is well-known, with this expression Hegel hints at the point of view of science, that is characterized by him as the absolute knowing. At the beginning of the Section ‘Self-consciousness’, the absolute knowing is still far from being at the reach of consciousness, but nonetheless it is not absent from the phenomenological horizon either. On the contrary, it is present in this horizon from the first moment (Hegel states that the absolute is 1  P S, § 175, 109–110 (GW 9, 108).

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already ‘with us’),2 because it informs ‘our’ capacity of grasping the experience of consciousness in the totality of its constitutive elements. That point just hinted at is specified by Hegel in the short explanation, he provides, of the way in which the spirit is already present at the level of Selfconsciousness. He warns us that what will come to be shown from now on in the phenomenological route, will be the exposition of the way in which the consciousness experiences the spirit. All that means that the spirit will not come to be present as it is in itself, but as it appears in being filtered through the experience of consciousness. Hegel adds to that considerations about the general character of the oppositions from which such an exposition will be afflicted. On the one hand, the spirit will appear as an ‘absolute substance’ (so not as a ‘subject’ yet), on the other hand we have the different self-consciousnesses in opposition both with each other and with the substance. The substance, just because it is ‘absolute’ and so it is absolved from any form of dependence on anything else, is perfectly free and independent with respect to the oppositions occurring in it, so it is the unitary ground of the different self-consciousnesses and of their contrasts. At this point the characteristic chiasm comes into play: “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’ ”.3 Expressed in this way, the formula of intersubjectivity is still empty, so all depends on the way in which it will be filled: is the phenomenological route sufficient for providing this formula with an adequate content, or does it still remains further on from a satisfactory foundation and determination of it? To attempt to give an answer to such a question, we need to come back to the significance and function of the ‘spirit’ in the Phenomenology. In this work the ‘spirit’ is presented as one of the so-called phenomenological ‘moments’, undoubtedly the broadest one, populated by the richest set of ‘figures’. Anyway, if we interpret the term ‘spirit’ under the meaning it has in the other Hegel’s systematic works, we may meet with an undue generalization. To get the specific phenomenological value of the term, we need to consider one of those very rare places in the Phenomenology where Hegel reflectively speaks of the very structure of the work and offers some brief but essential indications about the criteria he has followed in exposing the experiences of consciousness. The passage is to be found at the beginning of the moment 2  P S, § 73, 47 (GW 9, 53). The way in which the absolute is with ‘us’ is not that of a complete doctrinal construction, but it is expressed by the power of a Fragen, a questioning that concerns the experience of consciousness in its totality. On that, see my La “Fenomenologia dello spirito” di Hegel. Introduzione alla lettura (Roma: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1994), 44–46. 3  P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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Religion: it is important that, before the transition to the absolute knowledge, Hegel feels the need of summing up the route that has been covered so far, and the need of relating this route to what still misses in order to reach the goal.4 He presents the phenomenological route as divided into two totalities. The first, that he calls ‘zusammengefaßte Totalität’, ‘taken-together totality’, includes the moments Consciousness, Self-consciousness, Reason, Spirit; the second, that he calls ‘einfache Totalität’, ‘simple totality’, includes the moment Religion. Each of the two totalities perform a specific task toward the absolute knowing: the first one leads to completion the very ‘form’ of absolute knowing (but, at the same time, only the form of it), the second one presents the content of absolute knowing (that is the absolute itself, but exposed in the inadequate form of a Vorstellung, a representation). We are concerned with the first of these totalities, specially with the way in which the ‘spirit’ is characterized in it. Hegel says that the spirit is the basis for the preceding moments: they find their effective reality only in the spirit indeed. The way in which Hegel delineates the fundamental traits of the spirit, may constitute a way of making explicit the chiasm hinted at above. Indeed, he points out that the spirit is the substance of the universal operating, which “is equally the universal work produced by the action of all and each as their unity and identity”.5 It strikes me as evident that by pointing to the unity and equality of all and each one, Hegel is just providing a different formulation of the expression ‘I that is We and We that is I’. If that is the product of the activity of spirit, we need to ask ourselves which the fundamental character of its working could be, because that character will inform all the phenomenological figures that appear within it. About what that character is, Hegel could not be more clear. He claims that the spirit, as being the fourth moment of the zusammengefaßte Totalität, is to be meant “as immediate Spirit, which is not yet consciousness of Spirit”.6 So the immediacy is the character that reverberates on all phenomenological figures contained within the moment ‘spirit’, then a character that inevitably ‘marks with itself’, so to speak, also that kind of unity and equality of all and each one, which is produced in this moment. On the other hand, it is not infrequent—in the systematic works of Hegel’s maturity—to find Hegel’s judgements about the level at which the phenomenological route is placed: such judgements apparently warn the reader not to overvalue the ontological status of this level. So, for example, in the 4  See PS, §§ 678–680, 412–414 (GW 9, 365–366). 5  P S, § 439, 264 (GW 9, 239). 6  P S, § 679, 412–413 (GW 9, 365).

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Phenomenology Section contained in the Encyclopedia of 1830, Hegel stresses that the well-known Master-Slave dialectic, so the struggle for recognition and the submission to a master, are only the ‘appearance’ through which “states have been initiated out of the social life of men”.7 Indeed, the ground of such a phenomenon is the force, that cannot be on its own the ground of the right. Because of that the Mastery/Servitude relation “is not the substantial principle, but the external or apparent beginning of states”.8 Because of their very incapacity of conceiving the spirit as it is in itself and for itself, Hegel can makes a general evaluation of Kant- and Fichte’s thought, considered as philosophical systems that are limited to the perspective of ‘consciousness’. Just insofar as they have not been able to go beyond the phenomenological horizon, both these philosophies show that they have attained neither to the concept nor to spirit as it is in and for itself, but only to spirit as it is in relation to another.9 The passage just quoted is important, because it contains the indication of a reference to the Science of Logic, which is necessary in order enable us to grasp the rational texture posited as the very ground of the spirit. Indeed, Hegel matches the spirit to the ‘concept’, and it is in the concept— to be meant according to the specific value it has in Hegelian logic—that it is possible to find the rational basis of the spirit, as we will see more specifically now. But insofar as the verum, besides being index sui, is index of the defective states that pretend to posit themselves as ‘true’, then in the Science of Logic it is also possible to find the ground of the phenomenological perspective of consciousness and of the limitedness and partiality of its access to the genuine content of the spirit. Also about that point Hegel is very clear in the Encyclopedia. What is distinctive of the experience of consciousness, he says, is that the consciousness is trapped into a relation to its object, a relation that is necessarily contradictory. Initially, the consciousness detaches from itself the object as its own ‘other’ and so provides it with an independent existence; after having made experiences of such an object, the ‘other’ or the object show themselves as being identical to the consciousness.10 As a consequence, “consciousness is 7   Enc. III*, § 433. 8  Enc. III*, § 433. 9   Enc. III*, § 415. 10  Consider the Master/Slave opposition and the appearance of each term in its own opposite; that very same scheme lies as the ground of all oppositions that afflict the figures of

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therefore the contradiction between the independence of both aspects and their identity, in which these aspects are sublated”.11 So, that is just the kind of contradiction that inheres to all determinations of the Logic of Essence. In the second book of the Science of Logic, in fact Hegel articulates a dense net of polarities and relational dynamics in which each logical determination posits the relation to its own ‘other’ as essential to itself, and nonetheless each logical determination continues to advance the pretense of having an independent existence also out of the relation itself. For this reason Hegel can claim that the “spirit as consciousness is only the appearance of spirit”,12 inasmuch as it appears in such a contradictory dualistic form. At a first sight the attempt to find a reference to the concreteness of intersubjective relations in the Science of Logic, seems to be doomed to failure. In fact Hegel himself rules out that possibility imperatively. If, as we have seen, the Spirit as a phenomenological moment lacked the awareness of itself and was not yet “the consciousness of the Spirit”, on the other hand “the selfconscious spirit [. . .], as such, does not fall to be considered in the science of logic”.13 The logical forms are independent from the concrete contents, be them belonging to the nature or to the spirit. But independence does not mean extraneousness: on the contrary, the pure thought “is the very heart of things, their simple life-pulse, even of the subjective thinking of them”.14 It is not the moment ‘spirit’, like, for example, the opposition between human law and divine law in the ethical world, or the opposition between faith and intellect in the self-alienated spirit, or the opposition between the absolute freedom and the terror, until the case of the beautiful soul, so to the evil and the forgiveness of it. 11  Enc. III*, § 414. 12  Enc. III*, § 414. 13  SL*, 586 (GW 12, 20). 14  S L*, 37 (GW 21, 15). The possibility of envisaging the rootedness of the Science of Logic into the ethic-social dimension, as well as the possibility of find in that word the conceptual tools for an adequate understanding of intersubjectivity, has been considered in depth by many scholars. Among them, I want to remind the reader of Michael Theunissen, Sein und Schein. Die kritische Funktion der Hegelschen Logik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1978); Hinrich Fink-Eitel, Dialektik und Sozialethik. Kommentierende Untersuchungen zu Hegels «Logik» (Meisenheim a. G.: Hain, 1978); Herbert Schnädelbach, Vernunft und Geschichte. Vorträge und Abhandlungen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1987); Jürgen Ritsert, Das Bellen des toten Hundes. Über Hegelsche Argumentationsfigur im sozialwissenschaftlichen Kontext (Frankfurt a. M. – New York: Campus, 1988); Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Robert B. Pippin, Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Alessandro Bellan, La logica e il suo “altro”. Il problema dell’alterità nella Scienza

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surprising, then, that Hegel more than once appeals to concrete manifestations of the spirit, in order to exemplify crucial nodes of the logical thought: so he points to the ways in which the logical essentialities stand as grounds of the intersubjective relations. Such exemplifications are relatively seldom in the ‘Logic of Being’ and in the ‘Logic of Essence’: there, they mainly shed light on the defective ways of realizing intersubjectivity; although, such exemplification becomes more and more rich and frequent as soon as we come to consider the ‘Logic of the concept’, which is the basis of the process of the spirit. So, for example, in the ‘Logic of Being’ Hegel admits that “Being does, of course, belong to spirit”, but nonetheless “its intensity is such that in it the form of merely immediate being and all its categories are sublated”.15 A similar transformation occurs with the categories that belong to the sphere of quantity. Within that sphere Hegel shows, for example, that extensive magnitudes and intensive magnitudes do not reciprocally exclude, rather they necessarily go together. Now, exactly that twine is testified much more radically at the level of the spirit. Here the intensive depth goes with universality, whose extensive character hints at the richness of intersubjective relations: in the spiritual sphere, high intensity of character, of talent or genius, is bound up with a correspondingly far-reaching reality in the outer world, is of widespread influence, touching the real world at many points. The profoundest concept also has the most universal significance and application.16 Finally, a further example may be adduced from the conclusive moment of the logic of being, from the ‘measure’. Here, again, Hegel rules out any possibility that the dialectic of measure has significance for the life of the spirit and particularly for the locus par excellence of intersubjective relations, namely, della logica di Hegel (Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2002) to which I refer also for the rich examination of the secondary literature on the theme; Lucio Cortella, Autocritica del moderno. Saggi su Hegel (Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2002), 261–289; Terry Pinkard, Reason, Recognition and Historicity, in Subjektivität und Anerkennung, eds. B. Merker, G. Mohr, M. Quante (Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2004), 48–59; Robert B. Brandom, La struttura del desiderio e del riconoscimento. Autocoscienza e autocostituzione, in Lo spazio sociale della ragione. Da Hegel in avanti, eds. L. Ruggiu and I. Testa (Milano: Mimesis, 2009), 261–289. 15  SL*, 224 (GW 21, 216). 16  SL*, 223 (GW 21, 215).

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the State: “in the realm of spirit there is still less to be found a characteristic, free development of measure”.17 Nonetheless, despite such programmatic declarations, the exclusion of measure from the range of spiritual relations seems to disappear in the final part of the section, where Hegel focuses on one of the most interesting features of its treatment of measure. Thus, he takes into consideration the specific dialectic according to which the quantitative increasing, when pushed beyond a given threshold, generates a qualitative gap. Among the examples adduced by Hegel, the conclusive ones come, again, from the world of the spirit: the first comes from the morality, the second comes from the life of the State. The substitution of a moral quality with another, if considered from the point of view of the sphere of being, appears to depend from a difference in magnitude. For example, if a behaviour that we would qualify as being ‘careless’, is quantitatively increased, it will change its own quality so to become a legal violation or a vice: It is through a more and less that the measure of frivolity or thoughtlessness is exceeded and something quite different comes about, namely crime, and thus right becomes wrong and virtue vice.18 The same happens in the life of the States: even if both their laws and their constitution remains the same, as soon as their territory gets bigger and their citizens increase in number, their very qualitative character changes so they become something else: The state has its own measure of magnitude and when this is exceeded this mere change of size renders it liable to instability and disruption under that same constitution which was its good fortune and its strength before its expansion.19 Such references to the intersubjective dimension of the spirit in the sphere of being are possible because—even though in a form that is preliminary and poor in its determinations—some dynamics already appear here which enrich themselves on the way and arrive until the logic of concept, which is the very systematic ground of intersubjectivity. In fact Hegel stresses that, at the level of the sphere of being, the individual appears with its poorest logical 17  SL*, 332 (GW 21,328). 18  SL*, 371 (GW 21, 369). 19  SL*, 371 (GW 21, 369).

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determination, the Dasein, the determinate being as a negation of becoming. But, as soon as we move to the ‘something’—the first advancement beyond the abstraction of the Dasein, a first negation of the negation is realized, in which we can see “the beginning of the [Subject]”.20 That first appearance of the subjectivity, even in its indeterminacy, is a beginning of the greatest importance, because it connects all the logical itinerary to its highest point, where, in the subjective logic of the concept, the intrinsically processual nature of subjectivity develops the whole potentiality of the negation of negation. The simple ‘something’, Hegel says, is determined “first, as a being-for-self and so on, until in the concept it first attains the concrete intensity of the subject”.21 I will not linger on those references to the concrete manifestations of the life of the spirit, which can be found in the logic of essence, because (as we have seen above) the route of Phenomenology of Spirit offers many figures that embody in themselves the dialectical articulations that are to be found in the second book of the Science of Logic. I will just remind the reader of a meaningful characterization of the determination of the essence, that sheds light on the value of such dialectical articulations, but also on the limits of their capacity to signify the spiritual relations. In his constant polemical attitude toward the use of symbols or numbers instead of concepts, Hegel inserts a very critical judgement about the possibility of employing the categories of essence (for example, the force and its exterior expression, the relation between substance and accidents, or that between cause and effect, and so forth) in order to signify the spiritual relations: the current determinations of force, or substantiality, cause and effect, and so on, are likewise only symbols for expressing, for example, vital or spiritual relationships.22 To grasp the insufficiency (though not the complete extraneousness) of the determinations of the logic of essence for expressing the truth of the spiritual relations, we need to consider the symbolic function of them. Hegel has expressed in various occasions his view about the nature of the ‘symbol’ as well as about the insufficiency of the symbol with respect to the level of concept.23 20  SL*, 115 (GW 21, 103). 21  SL*, 115 (GW 21, 103). 22  SL*, 325 (GW 21, 321). 23  On this aspect, see the final part of my article “La funzione dell’inconscio ne ‘Lo spirito vero’ della Fenomenologia dello spirito e le dinamiche dell’inconscio nel ‘Simbolismo inconscio’ delle Lezioni sull’estetica di Hegel”, Verifiche 35 (2006): 133–197.

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Such an insufficiency essentially depends on the ambiguous character of the symbol.24 The matter, indeed, is open to many possible interpretations: that may well mean richness, but at the same time it means indeterminacy, uncertainty, distortion. In other words, the symbolic value of the determination of essence lacks truth with respect to conceptual relations, because in their universality an indeterminacy is present, which would end up corrupting and falsifying the concretely existent forms of the life of the spirit. As we have variously hinted at above, the rational basis of the concrete spiritual relations is realized only at the level of the ‘concept’. If we ask ourselves why the chiasm ‘I that is We and We that is I’ urged in the Phenomenology, finds only here (at the level of the concept) the dynamics in which it can be embodied in order to adequately express intersubjectivity, the answer is straightforward and it is just one: “the concept is the free [actuality] [das Freie]”.25 In fact the intersubjective relations are authentic insofar as they are self-constituted as an expression of freedom so they must embody in themselves the dynamics of the concept, because “freedom reveals itself as the truth of necessity and as the mode of relationship proper to the concept”.26 As it is well-known from a historical and speculative point of view, freedom arises—according to Hegel—from the very core of the Spinozian substance, so from that which appears to be its opposite, namely, from necessity. In Spinoza’s view, both the substance and the relations involved in it are dominated by necessity, still it is a necessity Spinoza does not consider at all as something opposed to freedom,27 insofar as in his view something is free if it acts according to the necessity of its own nature alone, a nature which determines itself by itself through acting.28 In fact, in the Spinozian substance there are at least two features that constitute—to Hegel’s mind—the necessary ground for the rise of freedom: on the one hand, the substance involves a liberation from the finiteness, because the finite does not possess any reality for itself, independently from substance: on the other side, the substance breaks the chain of transitive causes and shows itself as being grounded on itself as a causa sui. 24  On the ambiguity of the symbol in Hegel, see Willem A. De Vries, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity. An Introduction to Theoretical Spirit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), 142. 25  Enc. I*, § 160. 26  SL*, 578 (GW 12, 12). 27  Indeed in Spinoza’s view the fortuitous and the accidental, rather than the necessary, are the contrary of the free; taking necessity as opposed to freedom is something absurd, something to which the reason is repellent. See Baruch de Spinoza, Epistolae, LVI, in Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt, vol. IV (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1924), 259. 28  See Baruch de Spinoza, Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata, I, def. 7, in Opera, vol. II, 46.

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But just here, where Spinoza seems to get nearest to the subjective dynamics of the subject, still, according to Hegel, Spinoza cannot reach the dimension of subjectivity: The great intuition of the Spinozistic substance is only in itself the liberation from finite being-for-itself; but the concept itself is for itself the power of necessity and the actual freedom.29 Even when the finite appears to be able to redeem its own finiteness, as it happens with the amor dei intellectualis, that still does not entail either the extension of the energies of subjectivity to the totality of being (the elevation of the substance to the status of subject), or that revolution of those conceptual frameworks which are implicit in Spinoza and which Hegel, on the contrary, wants to develop within his own philosophy. According to Hegel, the full deployment of the energies of subjectivity is to be found in the ways in which the concept proceeds in determining itself, by starting from its fundamental character, namely, the universality. As “free power”,30 the universal determines itself through a process of selfdifferentiation which results in the individual through its own particularization. As an example of this movement—so, as an example of the concept as concretely existent—Hegel adduces the I: The concept, when it has developed into a concrete existence that is itself free, is none other than the I [. . .] the I is the pure concept itself which, as concept, has come into existence.31 As a Dasein of the concept, the I is not its highest realization, but nonetheless it possesses in its own internal dynamic the force for going over and above the mere Dasein so to posit itself as an ‘I that is We and We that is I’. The I is an autonomous centre of activity, that is first of all “pure self-related unity”, I=I.32 In such a self-reference, the I manifests the capacity of abstracting “from all determinateness and content and withdrawing into the freedom of unrestricted equality with itself. As such it is universality”.33 But at the same time, such a movement of abstraction constitutes its own determinacy, namely, 29  Enc. I*, § 159 R. 30  SL*, 603 (GW 12, 35). 31  SL*, 583 (GW 12, 578). 32  SL*, 583 (GW 12, 17). 33  SL*, 583 (GW 12, 17).

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its particularity, that “is no less immediately individuality or is absolutely determined, opposing itself to all that is other and excluding it—individual personality”.34 An “absolute universality which is also immediately absolute individuation”:35 that is the nature common to the concepts and to the I. If the I posits itself as a simple Dasein of the concept, that depends on that the moment of individuality in the I has the character of a singularity which is exclusive with respect to the other. Nonetheless, just that exclusion is anyway a way of being related to the otherness, so here the transformation of the I begins, a transformation from a simple Dasein of the concept to the Wirkichkeit of the free intersubjective relations. That can happen insofar as the I seizes the deepest dynamics of the concept, a dynamic that represents, at the same time, the very definition of freedom. The capacity of the concept to self-determinate and organize itself as an autonomous totality, is the most distinctive character of the subjectivity, a subjectivity which deeply informs the very relations it institutes and entertains. If “with the concept, therefore, we have entered the realm of freedom”,36 freedom does not bound the subject within a monadistic solipsism, rather it exhibits in Hegel a distinctively relational nature. Freedom is the capacity of the subject to face the extreme of the alienation and still to find itself in the absolutely other, as another ‘oneself’. Firstly, the I “as a person is impenetrable subjectivity, as of an atom”, the free power of the concept, that acts in itself, makes the I to cease be just an “exclusive individuality, but explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other has its own objectivity for its object”.37 Insofar as that universality determines itself the subject stands in relation to an externality, is open to the influence of other things and thereby becomes actively opposed to them. What is there comes forth from its being-within-itself and enters into the universal element of connexion and relationship, into the negative connexions and the interplay of actuality, which is a continuation of the individual into other individuals and therefore universality.38 Of course, the freedom of intersubjective relations is not an immediate privilege of the I that has transcended its own exclusive and atomistic individuality. 34  SL*, 583 (GW 12, 17). 35  SL*, 583 (GW 12, 17). 36  SL*, 582 (GW 12, 16). 37  SL*, 824 (GW 12, 236). 38  SL*, 628 (GW 12, 57).

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There is an intermediate step, still insufficient (that is hinted at in the word ‘continuation’, see the previous quotation), in which the relations manifest what we could call the ‘mechanism’ or the ‘chemism’ of spiritual life. I have mentioned two moments of the logical route that have appeared ‘scandalous’ to the eyes of the critics, as being examples of inacceptable irruption of empirical elements within what should consist of pure logic essentialities. Although, the apparently provocative aspect of the examples adduced by Hegel, should make us remember that what matters in mechanism or in chemism is the purely logical-relational meaning which lies behind the apparently ‘representative’ or empirical surface of these moments. No surprise then, if the first exemplification of a mechanical process is not taken from the physical world, but it is the “spiritual communication [geistige Mittheilung]”.39 With this expression Hegel means a twist of relations between persons, which pass from one another in a way which is not unsettled by any negativity: there is ‘communication’ in which a determinateness continues itself from one person into another unimpaired, and universalizes itself without any alteration whatever—as a scent freely spreads in the unresisting atmosphere.40 He continues, just a few lines below: Laws, morals, rational conceptions in general, are in the spiritual sphere such communicable entities which penetrate individuals in an unconscious manner and exert their influence on them.41 The same happens with the exemplifications of chemism. In the Section called ‘The Process’, Hegel considers the affinity of the chemical elements, in virtue of which they come to overcome their independent existence so to melt into a unity that composes the reciprocal differences through neutralizing them. Such a unity can be considered as their middle term, so whilst the real difference belongs to the extremes, the middle is “the abstract neutrality, the real possibility of those extremes; it is, as it were, the theoretical element of the concrete existence of chemical objects, of their process and its result”.42 The allusion to the ‘theoretical element’ should not surprise us. Hegel calls ‘chemism’ the logical form of a relation an example of which—though not the 39  SL*, 716 (GW 12, 137–138). 40  SL*, 716 (GW 12, 137–138). 41  SL*, 716 (GW 12, 138). 42  SL*, 729 (GW 12, 150).

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only one—is the behaviour of chemical elements. Besides the Goethe’s ‘elective affinities’, also other things are examples of that relation, like meteorology, the ‘person’ at a certain level of its own development, the sexual relation, the spiritual relations of love or of friendship, and so forth.43 In all these relations, each term is animated by an internal dynamism that leads it to join with its own ‘other’, so that it removes its own unstable independence and melts with the other into a unity that is the neutral middle of them. But neither with the Mechanism nor with the Chemism does freedom reach a complete realization of intersubjective relations, because in both cases the negativity is either absent or only partially present. In the Mechanism we have the simple ‘continuation’ of each individual into the other, not unsettled by any negativity; in the case of Chemism the negativity is present in the extremes, but it is neutralized into the compound which results from the extremes. For example, among the two components of water, hydrogen is highly combustible, oxygen is a combustive agent, but when unified in their neutral middle, the water, they are able to extinguish the fire. It is clear that for such a kind of relations the negativity is still far from exhibiting that radical dimension which is present in the complete realization of freedom and which is active in the relations immanent to the concept instead. Considered as the very deep structure of the free subjectivity, the concept is power that ‘forms and creates’. Therefore the concept is constitutively open the other from itself, so it is just in such a relation with its otherness, that the freedom’s way of acting concretely manifests itself. The concept, Hegel says, is itself and its opposite, and this again is the universal itself as its posited determinateness; it embraces its opposite and in it is in union with itself. Thus it is the totality and principle of its diversity, which is determined wholly and solely by the universal itself.44 The dynamics of the concept does not involve either the flow of an unperturbed relation between different moments or the neutralization of their difference: in the concept both the hardest opposition and the act of finding itself into the extreme opposite, are present. Hegel further points to the ‘invasive’ nature of such an act of finding itself again: the concept is itself and and takes its other within its embrace, but without doing violence to it; on the contrary, the universal is, in its other, in peaceful 43  SL*, 727 (GW 12, 148–149). 44  SL*, 606 (GW 12, 38).

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communion with itself. We have called it free power, but it could also be called free love and boundless blessedness, for it bears itself towards its other as towards its own self; in it, it has returned to itself.45 Such a dynamism includes the maximum of opposition and reaches its full explication with the absolute idea, for which a characterization as of ‘the most free’ is well deserved: in its acme as an absolute idea, the idea “makes itself the supremely free [sie sich zum Freisten macht]”.46 The absolute idea should not be represented “as the dead stillness, as a simple weak image, without either impulse or movement” but, on the contrary, by virtue of the freedom which the concept attains in the Idea, the Idea possesses within itself also the most stubborn opposition; its repose consists in the security and certainty with which it eternally creates and eternally overcomes that opposition, in it meeting with itself.47 In the dynamism of such an opposition which, overcome by the idea, each time revives and eternally melts with the idea itself, we can finally find the speculative ground of the ‘I that is We and We that is I’. I conclude by remembering the way in which all that is resumed and deepened by Hegel in the annotation to the § 159 of the Encyclopedia of the ’30. Here are claims that may seem to be characterized by an element of utopia, very unusual for Hegel. In fact, I think they precisely indicate the telos of the intersubjective relations which aim at being expression of freedom. In this annotation Hegel repeats that the accomplishment and the overcoming of the necessity of Spinozism is “the liberation” that is realized in the “the process of its going-together with itself in an other”.48 In the actualization of this process, the otherness is not a limit any more, nor is it something external or extraneous, from which the freedom depends, on the contrary the freedom that is achieved in this way is not the flight of abstraction but instead the liberation of having itself not as other but of having its own being and positing in something else actual with which what is actual is bound together by the power of necessity.49 45  SL*, 603 (GW 12, 35). 46  SL*, 841 (GW 12, 251). 47  SL*, 759 (GW 12, 177). 48  Enc. I*, § 159 R. 49  Enc. I*, § 159 R.

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The impressive series of equivalences with which Hegel concludes the annotation, shows how much that logical-conceptual process of liberation is full of consequences as soon as it becomes the substance of spiritual relations. He states: a) “As concretely existing for itself, this liberation is called ‘I’ ”. The I is subject of liberation insofar as it has overcome the opposition of consciousness, that is what the Phenomenology focuses on. By letting to act the infinite power of thought, that defines the essence of the thought itself, the I is the capacity of overcoming any limitation, of abstracting from anything, of not letting be hold by anything; but at the same time the I possesses the infinite plasticity that allows it to assume any form. b) “a liberation is called ‘free spirit’ ”. The spirit is free when that which the thought knows to be its own essence is the same as that the will wants, namely, the freedom. In that way the spirit that knows itself as free and wants itself as its own object, does not have any other goal and content than the freedom itself.50 c) “as feeling, [this liberation is called] ‘love’”. This presence of the feeling (toward which Hegel has not spared his sarcasm) in the process of liberation, may surprise us. But here Hegel is concerned with the ‘free love’ we have encountered in the Science of Logic. And the love is free when it loves in the other what entirely constitutes the other in his/her dignity, namely, his/her freedom. The liberation is, with respect to feeling, the love, and it occurs when what each one loves and appreciates in the other is just what the other has of most precious. Only in this way the one who loves can find his/her own freedom in the other’s freedom which he/she loves and appreciates. d) “as enjoyment [this liberation is called] ‘blessedness’”. If the liberation consists of finding in the real other not the extraneous but its own being, the beatitude will consist of a form of pure pleasure that is enjoyed in producing works of freedom: free relations of free individualities. In this way the dream of “living on a free earth with a free people” is realized, so we could say to the instant—just as Faust, old and blind, does—“Verweile doch, du bist schön!”.51 Indeed, now we could finally talk of an ‘I that is We and We that is I’.

50  See Enc. III*, § 482 & R. 51  Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust (lines 11580–11582).

Chapter 17

The Community of the Self Leonardo Samonà Abstract: The essay examines the hermeneutical criticism of Hegelian recognition, showing that this is based on the thesis of a reductive vision of the meaning of the negative in the Hegelian dialectic. According to hermeneutical thinking, despite his criticism of the abstract universal and his understanding of negation as relationship, Hegel doesn’t get definitely rid of the merely ‘logical’ sense of negation in terms of exclusion or elimination. Thus he conceives recognition as a definitive overcoming of diversity, and therefore of otherness. However, reconsidering the radical Hegelian recognition of reciprocity, the essay attempts to reverse this critical thesis showing how the very hermeneutical defence of diversity may be considered as the most concealed resistance to the extension of the meaning of the negative.

The formula, ‘I that is We and We that is I’ defines the first appearance of the ‘concept of spirit’ in the chapter on self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology. The relationship between self-consciousness and the spirit, which at this place is tightened to the point of coincidence, on the other hand seems to be articulated in a relationship between two poles: on the one hand the self as the I or the many self-consciousnesses, and on the other the We or universal selfconsciousness, which is the ‘concept of spirit’. The self-consciousness is the real ‘turning point’ of consciousness only as spirit, that is to say as this absolute substance which is the unity of the different independent self-consciousnesses which, in their opposition, enjoy perfect freedom and independence: ‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’.1 Universal self-consciousness in this text is the telos of individual selfconsciousness, since self-consciousness is the concrete expression of universality, its becoming reality, and only inasmuch as it is universal does it become properly itself, that is to say, according to the Hegelian mode of expression in the same passage in the text, “unity of itself in its otherness”. This definition of self-consciousness is more than the simple definition of reflective consciousness of itself. It indicates not only the unity of consciousness with its object, 1  P S, § 177, 110 (GW 9, 108).

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but the unity of different self-consciousnesses, each with its own independence from an external object. It expresses the (concrete) universal as seen by Hegel: the universal which has the form of identity or the unitary way of being which is proper to self-consciousness. In this form, self-consciousness is exactly the spirit, unity which includes diversity in itself. As unity of different self-consciousnesses, as universal self-consciousness, the spirit seems to have its concrete existence in institutions, in the state rather than in the individual, in the community rather than in the single person, in the ‘We’ rather than in the ‘I’. Besides, the possibility of saying ‘We’ has its foundation in the unity of the different entities that encompasses the different self-consciousnesses and thus poses itself as a whole. Even the ‘We’ that follows the phenomenological movement of consciousness, of selfconsciousness and the spirit, has the retrospect gaze of reason that has reached ‘absolute knowing’. Thus conceived, the ‘We’ concludes the process of recognition in a whole entity that seems to absorb the particular into the universal, the single into the objective and institutionalized reality of the community. Symmetry, which seems so essential to the movement of recognition, in this perspective would only be an initial moment of its profoundest dynamism. Recognition among equals (which Ludwig Siep has called the first level of recognition),2 as it is inscribed in advance in the circular relationship that binds the I and the We, would ultimately be aimed from the outset at a recognition in some way ‘asymmetric’ of the single self-consciousnesses in the ‘superior’ reality of community institutions. The latter, for their part, do not seem in principle to be involved in mutual recognition. And they thus remain fixed in a position of sovereignty that is essentially non-relational and absolutist, which helps to keep the Hegelian conception of politics distant from a democratic culture in the non-hierarchical sense in which we see it today. The deep drive towards a dimension of human relations that is so to speak ‘horizontal’—which certainly is due to the Hegelian dialectic of recognition— in Hegel, however, appears to be constrained within an insuperable domination of the political community over the individual, with effects that are essentially authoritarian on the state configuration as the realisation of ethical spirit. Only the religious community seems to be conceived by Hegel as structurally founded on ‘forgiveness’, abolishing the positions of domination. Distancing oneself from the Hegelian view of the ‘We’ is linked to a more general rejection—which today we perceive in the fundamental trends of 2  Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg-München: Alber, 1979), chap. V; Aktualität und Grenzen der praktischen Philosophie Hegels (München: Fink, 2010), in particular 243–262.

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contemporary philosophizing—of the metaphysical trait of so-called Hegelian holism. This is because, as it appears refractory to any ‘external’ contribution of a measure that can correct and bring back within the limits of a human practice the systematic proceeding of knowledge, without residues it includes the particular in the whole, the negative in the positive, plurality in unity. However, Hegel seems to return to the metaphysical ordering of the beings in a teleological key, that is to say after having brought principles down into the historical process, and then after having deeply shaken the fixity of the metaphysical order, which clearly distinguished the eternal being from the moved one. As a consequence, in our criticism of the Hegelian absolute we often find ourselves reintroducing the dialectic tools with which Hegel radically questioned the abstract universal. The result is an ambivalent relationship with the Hegelian process of making the foundation immanent: a process that is criticized in one sense because it fails to reach its goal due to the persistence, in Hegel, of hierarchical presuppositions from the metaphysical tradition; and it is criticized in the opposite sense because it has gone too far, that is to say to the point of swallowing up any form of transcendence, even ‘horizontal’, which is necessary for accommodating otherness and plurality. With the same dual mind one fights the trend of the Hegelian system towards closure in a self-referential absolute: that is to say, his dialectical tools are used to develop the holistic potential of rational understanding, and then the same tools are fought when they move irresistibly towards the absolute outcome of his system. Even in the case of the formula that we are discussing here, it is difficult to take on board the devastating criticism of the abstract universal without being involved in the radicalized revival of the absolute that Hegel derives from that criticism. In this connection, there is no doubt, on the one hand, that the circle between the I and the We cannot be explained disregarding the pages that immediately follow, which describe the interpenetration of different selfconsciousnesses as the basis of their own singular essence. We can even say that the ‘horizontal’ trait of recognition develops such strong criticism of the relations of domination as well as of the universal abstract as to be essential in the whole subsequent development down to the absolute spirit: at no point in the journey of the spirit can the universal remain permanently outside the relationship of reciprocity with the particular. And yet it is equally true that the propulsive thrust of the critical power of recognition, which at every stage ‘relativizes’ the laboriously sought universal, ends in the final reaffirmation of the universal, which proves to be the very motor of the pathway and sums it up conclusively in itself. Still today, many readings of Hegel engage in the fight against such a systematic outcome of his dialectic, also regarding the

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relationship between the I and the We, demanding ‘reforms’ of Hegelian dialectic, through which to discriminate in it ‘what is alive and what is dead’. However, I would like, rather, to dwell on those positions that, with the explicit ambition of questioning the Hegelian project in its fundamental assumptions, derive the effect of asymmetry between self-consciousness and spirit from the very argument of reciprocity, that is to say from recognition among equals itself. This is the route taken by some ‘hermeneutical’ readings of the Hegelian dialectic of recognition. It is precisely in reciprocity that they seek Hegel’s misstep. And they involve in the criticism the whole process of recognition, thus rendering superfluous the more usual attempt to separate the outcome of the absolutist ‘We’ from the horizontal dynamics of Hegelian recognition, with the intention to save this latter. Similar readings are more incisive to the extent to which they do not in any way underestimate the historicizing and relativizing power of the formula, ‘I that is We and We that is I’, admit the opening trait of the circular movement expressed in it and grasp its placing in a context in which reciprocity has undeniable importance. Indeed the concept of spirit emerges in that of self-consciousness when it has already gone all through the search for its own enactment in the immediate negative unity of life and has already discovered, in the circular rhythm of the latter, the abstract, endless denial of the other, and therefore the incessant recurrence of unity in the opposition between the two extremes—the universality of the process and the individuality of living—which each affirms itself at the other’s expense. Self-consciousness, whose immediate self-referentiality Hegel characterized as appetite or craving (Begierde), i.e. as an antinomian thrust both to eliminate and to become the other, has however sought in life the way to overcome the opposition, and hence has then turned to the whole process; thus it does not stop at any of the individual moments of the circle of life, which each take all power away from one another. In the immediate or natural form of life this whole never comes into existence: and so the craving for life actually drives self-consciousness towards another self-consciousness, that is to say towards a form of life that preserves itself by denying itself, thus reconciling the extremes and therefore presenting itself as universality, which in this context has the character of ‘genus’ or ‘species’ (Gattung). In the species, life mediates itself with itself, becomes itself: Hegel defines it as ‘another life’, to the extent to which it does not preserve itself by excluding the other, but by finding itself in the other. The species that sums up in itself the richness of life without consuming it is self-consciousness. In it the universal, what unites the different entities, is concretely enacted as it makes itself a moment of unity itself. With these

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steps, self-consciousness as desire, in its immediate existence, is referred to another self-consciousness, in which it perceives its own essence. Hegel at this point evokes the concept of spirit. The strong interaction between the two terms, the I and the We, which defines such a concept, certainly prescribes for self-consciousness a path towards universality. In this connection, as a unity of subjective and objective, self-consciousness has its own essence and universality and besides is its concrete and effectual form. Selfconsciousness is directed towards the universality of reason and spirit. Indeed, as Hegel specifies retrospectively, in the summary of the previous parts with which he opens the chapter on ‘Religion’, self-consciousness is still present in the oppositional and particular dimension of consciousness in all the figures that precede ‘Religion’, and that hence should be read as consciousness of self-consciousness, consciousness of reason, consciousness of the spirit. Only when it is the very essence of the spirit that gives itself absolute concrete existence ‘in and for itself’ does the self-consciousness of the spirit manifest itself. In the circular formula with which the spirit is present in the chapter on self-consciousness we hence have to see implicitly announced the very long journey of formation. Through this journey, immediate self-consciousness, that is to say consciousness of self-consciousness as a universal essence, will have to dispose of the nihilistic and appropriative traits of craving and to inscribe desire in the relation proper to freedom and knowledge in which it is realized. Against this background takes on its proper weight the passage from self-consciousness as an impulse towards life, towards the unexpected encounter with another self-consciousness. In it the desire for self-consciousness does not in the least find satisfaction of its aspiration to immediate universality that attracts it in life, but rather the beginning of a radical transformation of the role of mediation of the other in the relation between self-consciousness and itself. In this framework the circle described by the formula, ‘I that is We and We that is I’ can be read in all its dynamizing force, which also involves the universal in movement towards plurality and individuality: the formula, indeed, indicates in the ‘We’ the peculiar form of unity that derives, according to the words used by Hegel, from “perfect freedom and independence [Selbständigkeit]” of the different self-consciousnesses “being for themselves”. The spirit is not evoked by Hegel within the scope of self-consciousness in reference to the universality of the ‘genus’ or ‘species’. It is instead announced with reference to the relationship of self-consciousness with another self-consciousness. It is this relationship that counts ‘for us’. Of course, self-consciousness as longing still only perceives in the other self-consciousness its universal essence.

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But, precisely, in this perspective, wholly seeking to remove the extraneous in order to become one with its essence, for it the spirit is not yet present. And the pathway that at this point it goes towards will actually be the progressive emergence of the antinomian traits of this drive, so that achievement of “self-consciousness of the spirit”, which only occurs in ‘Religion’ and ‘Absolute Knowing’, will not in the least correspond to the end that the longing aimed at. On the contrary, the self-consciousness of the spirit will be the result of the passage through a progressive increase in the autonomy of the object, through forms of unification that are more and more inclusive of diversity, to the point of finding their fulfilment in free ‘self-alienation‘ and in unity with the other, which are proper to the absolute spirit. Only if radical freedom of the other is given, that is to say if its diversity can extend as far as opposition to unity, only if even opposites can exist together, is that form of unity given that is called spirit: in it I is We. Unity of the spirit requires plurality of self-consciousnesses and a free relationship between them. And this unity, in turn, has the character of self-consciousness: as a “unity of itself in its otherness” self-consciousness exists in fact only inasmuch as it does not have in the other what is simply opposed to it, what is to be wiped out in its diversity, but what is equal to it only as other. This is the sense in which self-consciousness is already the concept of spirit: and this is the sense in which the We, towards which self-consciousness will have to learn to move, is the I. If it is not self-consciousness as Gattung, as species, as universal essence, that constitutes the spirit, one will have to see in the pathway of Phenomenology not only a journey of self-consciousness as a particular and abstract consciousness towards universal self-consciousness, but just as much a progressive descent of universal essence into what is other than it and its progressive unification with this other. This may explain why the ‘institutions’ that are present in the Spirit (that is to say in what is then explained as consciousness of the spirit) cannot constitute the final realization of concrete universality, for the full manifestation of which we have instead to wait for ‘Religion’ and ‘Absolute Knowing’; likewise, later it is not the objective Spirit, but the absolute Spirit, that will be the adequate mode of existence of the spirit that, in the world of objectivity still marked by natural particularity, is ultimately announced as the inexorable tribunal of reason on the natural existence of institutions. The fact that Hegel’s theory of the state retains forms of domination proper to the abstract in this sense would not be opposed to two of the main pillars of his philosophy, that is, freedom of self-consciousness and his vision of the historical process as a step forward in consciousness of freedom.

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His conception of freedom may instead derive an inherent limitation precisely from the way of treating reciprocity of recognition, already in what Siep calls its first level. Gadamer, through the presentation of three forms of recognition, clearly proposed criticism of Hegel as a position oriented not so much towards the suppression of the other, as towards suppression of the other’s difference. Of the three forms of “experience of the You”, as Gadamer significantly calls them in the tripartite division outlined in Wahrheit und Methode, the fact is that the Hegelian one is certainly an alternative to the first. The first form is that in which “we understand the other person in the same way that we understand any other typical event in our experiential field”.3 In this first attitude the You is comprised within the ‘objective’: and thus it ensures in a particular way the capacity to experience the thing, and indeed becomes the means supremely able to guarantee the unified organization of experience, that is to say including active intervention on the thing. Human behaviour is linked to typical and predictable traits; it is only recognized in what is ‘typical and linkable to rules’. The extension to the You of this method of universalization is nothing but full enactment of the objectifying power of knowledge. The fact that the You, being on the subject’s side, coincides with it, does not modify, we might say, the objectifying attitude. The You, being on the subject’s side, indeed ensures decisive confirmation of the objectivity of cognitive practices, the effective attainment of the world by the subject, the actual objectifying power of the subject. This reduction of the other to the identical (typical of an objectifying and ‘scientific’ attitude) is not the work of Hegelian dialectic, which instead introduces in the movement of understanding explicit recognition of the other as a You. This second type of experience of the You cannot, however, be a radical alternative to reductionism of the objectifying method; this is because, albeit in a different way, that is to say assuming the You as an alter ego, it continues to maintain understanding in the logical framework of the reduction of the You to the I. The relationship is here mediated by the reflection of each of the two terms in itself. In such a relationship, to any conduct of one there corresponds a behaviour of the other, and to each reflective process of assimilation in one direction there corresponds a process in the opposite direction, so that the historicity of the relationship between human beings structurally implies struggle. However, in this type of relationship, the tendency of each single self-consciousness to withdraw into itself, abandoning the relationship, is not only rooted originally in the dynamism of oppression of the other (in this effect, not adequately understood, 3  Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Mars (London / New York: Continuum 2004), 352.

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Gadamer identifies the limit of “historical consciousness” of historicism); in addition, even when it is introduced without any residues into the ‘dialectic of reciprocity’ and into equality, it has already begun to lose all forms of individuality in relation to what is common. What is lacking in this dialectic? Ultimately, a sort of metaphysical residue, which prevents structural opening towards the other at the very moment when, unequivocally breaking away from a thought which aims at mere formal confirmation of the identical, at suppression of the extraneous or its subjugation, the Hegelian concept instead effectively placed at the centre of its theoretical project familiarization with the extraneous and self-recognition in the other. But then it is precisely in reconciliation of opposites through their equality, it is precisely in the dialectic of reciprocity, that lack of openness towards others is nested. The ‘struggle’ for recognition must not deceive us: on the contrary, in unity placed above differences it prefigures the only possible way to overcome the conflict between different beings. Only in this overcoming does selfconsciousness finally reach itself. And it thus confirms the primacy of the identical over the different while it subjects itself inevitably to a path through which the negative is finally removed in the perfect self-transparency of absolute self-consciousness, to which nothing more is opposed. In sum, what is missing in this reciprocity is real willingness to let the other exist, to “allow something to be affirmed in me that is opposed to me”. Hegel fails to see in this willingness to let the other exist the “logical structure of opening”, but in it only reads the conflict that is to be overcome. And so it precludes access to the third form, that is to say the authentic form of recognition of the You, and goes towards absolutization of the objective spirit and of the ‘We’. Being open to others, which expresses the third mode of recognition—the hermeneutical one—, is not simply painful renunciation of a natural closure of the Self in itself, or even less the lucid and disenchanted acceptance of the irreducible war of everyone against everyone. Indeed, in allowing the other to exist there is generated the most authentic possibility of the ‘We’, starting from reference to a horizon that gives commonalty and yet is always ‘mobile’ and historicized. Opening (and here one cannot avoid bringing into play Heideggerian concepts) is the very way in which truth enters into the conceptual framework, that is to say by becoming close but remaining inappropiable. In this sense opening (in the etymological meaning of the Latin a-pertum: dis-closure) is the very root of the community, which in the belonging of negation to truth has its originally unifying trait, a trait that does not allow itself to be decided by human wars for its conquest and monopoly. Heidegger sees in Hegel the thinker who perhaps best understood the belonging of the negative to being

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itself: but he could not break away radically from that presupposition (which for Heidegger is the true limit of metaphysics), according to which negation coincides ultimately with elimination and exclusion. Based on this presupposition, which opposes the innovative power of his thought, all Hegel’s dialectic is aimed at the radical overcoming of the negative in the positive and at final entry into a truth as “light without shadows [schattenloses Licht]”.4 By contrast, truth, as opening, is the approaching of the other as other, the remaining disclosed of what is subtracted, or of difference. Against this Heideggerian background, Gadamer’s critique of Hegelian recognition suggests an essential connection between freedom, community, and recognition of asymmetry in human relationships, in contrast to which, instead, recourse to equality (of opposites) becomes an index of survival of relations of domination in a democratic society too (for example in the form of social conformity). In this sense, the ‘We’, insofar as it is oriented towards the superiority of institutions over the individual, in Hegel is not in contrast with the more radical trait of recognition between equals, but rather shows Hegel’s incapacity to root reciprocity in acceptance of difference, and hence in the structurally asymmetrical foundation of the relationship, without which reciprocity itself cannot operate. For hermeneutic thought, instead, reciprocity arises from accepting the other, from ‘gratitude’, as Ricoeur says, exploiting the polysemy of the French word reconnaissance. Interposing itself in the sphere of recognition, recognition in the sense of gratitude marks a moment of acceptance distinguished by the relationship of mutuality, which is set in motion without ever being able to reabsorb its own origin. In this light, reciprocity needs to be rethought in the role of a regulative principle, while, as Ricoeur observes, its character of a ‘transcendent’ law, of which the individual actors appear to be mere willy-nilly performers,5 has to be removed. In sum, gratitude links together the progresses of recognition, which never finally attain the goal of fulfilled reciprocity and justice, to a free initiative of giving, an alternative to the struggle and the real mover, in its promotional power that is always partly hidden from the donor and the donee, of every social relationship. Recognition as gratitude nurtures what Ricoeur, rather than reciprocity, prefers to call, more dynamically, mutuality of the relationship. The community needs to be understood on the basis of its being rooted in the free and asymmetrical relationship of gratitude. In its essence and its institutions, mutuality remains 4  Martin Heidegger, Grundsätze des Denkens. Freiburger Vorträge 1957, in Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge, Gesamtausgabe 79, ed. P. Jaeger (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1994), 2nd lecture. 5  Paul Ricoeur, Parcours de la reconnaissance (Paris: Stock, 2004), 376.

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fundamentally distinct from reciprocity, since it accepts the original asymmetry of the relationship with the other and builds up progressive reciprocity (and the institutions that implement it), as it integrates into its own dynamics the element of gratuitousness, which secretly guides the process from the beginning and can never entirely get out of its own concealment. This approach radically historicizes the ‘We’: any form of community draws on gratitude, and this is acceptance of asymmetry and at once concealment of it in the renewal of the mutuality of the gift in institutionalized forms of reciprocity. The asymmetry of the other remains the principle, always partly subterranean, which continually re-opens to the other the social institutions in which the reciprocity of recognition is implemented. Insofar as reciprocity is instead made to dominate as a principle, opening towards the other proves in one way or another to be prevented by it. These theses affect Hegelian thought all the more critically in that they avoid radicalising ‘hospitality of the extraneous’ to the point of opposing it without mediation to every community institution. On the contrary, hermeneutics is practised as the way to recover the community in the tireless work of translating the world of the other into one’s own. The hermeneutic perspective makes openness to the other the only “logical structure”, as Gadamer calls it, capable of unifying. In this sense, it measures all forms of community on the basis of the capacity for tolerance, fluidization of disproportion in mutuality, in a sense even of ‘oblivion’ of its own asymmetrical principle, which incessantly goes back to questioning the limits of the community itself and instead demands an incessant revival and adaptation of mutuality. A community that is ‘open’ in this way is nourished by the tension between what is its own and the extraneous, instead of attempting total ‘overcoming’, which inexorably ends up demanding integration without residues of the individual in the superior form of existence of the community. In a sense we could say, returning to a Hegelian vocabulary, that hermeneutics attempts to enclose the absolute spirit in the historical dimension of the objective spirit. And instead it sees in the Hegelian passage to the absolute spirit the attempt to carry the reciprocity between the I and the We to the point of rendering superfluous acceptance of the different and the open dynamism of mutuality, and even up to the point of solitude without any more community of the absolute spirit. This leads to a seemingly paradoxical result: elimination of the asymmetry, through subjection of the negative to the positive or of difference to identity, in the end leads to a loss of reciprocity itself, which, when it is seen as a ‘transcendental’ principle, inexorably tends to pure self-reference. The outcome of reciprocity, which is so to speak a despotic one, is already manifested in the domination of the ‘We’ over the individual self,

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as we can read it in the figures of the objective spirit. But the most radical foundation of the penetration of absolutism into institutions would actually be the final gathering of the ‘We’ in universal self-consciousness, that is to say in the absolute spirit, against the efforts of Hegel himself to maintain in it the moment of difference. Hegelian ‘conciliation’, we could say, would betray the legacy of metallagé, Pauline reconciliation between God and the world through the gift of Christ.6 Versöhnung (which etymologically could perhaps be interpreted as ‘restoration’) would lose the mediation of gift and forgiving, sacrificed to perfect rational identity. It is not easy to challenge the hermeneutic reading of Hegel’s system, and not only because of its deep resonance in our ethical and political sensitivity. What gives it its strength is actually the argument, inherited by Heidegger, which challenges the effective Hegelian capacity to understand the relational, even ‘affirmative’ character of negation: that affirmative character which lies at the bottom of the purely destructive, and in this sense exclusively ‘logical’, use of negation. Hegel, in the last analysis, is accused of having a teleological orientation—almost coercive with respect to the innovative strength of his thought—towards the final elimination of negation in the perfect return of the absolute spirit to itself. However, it also has to be noted that hermeneutic revaluation of the asymmetry in the relationship with the other fights in turn with the assumption of an irresolvable tension between individuality and community, between freedom and equality. The search for hermeneutic understanding is effectively tireless work of acceptance of extraneousness in the space of the community and communication. But in this work it must assign to the community a position of structural contrast with otherness and ultimately with gratitude itself, both of them in turn kept sheltered from the pristine purity of their originality. Towards the other, the community works to introduce increasing amounts of reciprocity, in an irresolvable tension between tolerance and intolerance in relation to the asymmetry of the other; while gratitude inevitably bows to the exercise of discernment between the good that comes from the other and the evil that likewise may come from the other, or between the assumption of agreement with the other and the possibility of misunderstanding structurally rooted in contact with the other’s otherness. This discernment, however, distorts the originality of gratitude, of acceptance of the other as other, of acceptance of his or her freedom, when otherness is conceived as being, in principle, irreducibly alien to the good of the community. Hermeneutics too thus reveals difficulty in admitting a foundation of negation that is so to speak relational, 6  2nd Corinthians, 5, 18.

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and thus in abandoning the fundamental role of discrimination and exclusion. We may wonder, in other words, if the excess of the other with respect to what is common, his or her opposing unity (freedom measured from the individual’s capacity to oppose the rules) does not tacitly claim, ultimately, a limit to recognition. Or even, certainly in a provocative way, whether reference to asymmetry does not manifest the persistence of a despotic conception of the principle of a hierarchy order in relationships. A new light is shed on Hegel’s philosophy in turn, precisely by the hermeneutic challenge: it appears to be characterized by a radical critique, in any case certainly an obstinate one, of domination, and of the hierarchical principle expressed in it, at the very moment when, in a wholly special and outdated way, it does not give up the idea of again proposing the inclusion of diversity in unity and of the negative in the positive. For Hegel the absolute is not what is separated from the other, but on the contrary what becomes the other and is in unity with the other. This is the ‘logical structure’ which constitutes the self-consciousness of the spirit. On the one hand it is intrinsically communityoriented, while on the other hand it defines the community in the form of the Self, which is enacted properly in the mutual freedom and independence of single self-consciousnesses. This type of effectively universal community has its absolute reality, for Hegel, in the Gemeinde, in the religious community, seen as the supreme manifestation of the divine, intimately connected with reconciliation and forgiveness. The Gemeinde ultimately remains the paradigmatic form of the spirit as ‘I that is We and We that is I’. Its most concrete realisation remains so to speak contended between religion and philosophy. The state derives from it the troubled history of its adaptation to descent of the universal into the individuality of self-consciousness and to entry into the ‘We’ that this descent produces in individuality itself. In the dimension of the ‘exterior’ existence of social institutions, as part of their ‘natural necessity’, that is to say in the objective spirit, the spirit is in fact not yet present in its most concrete form, and precisely for this reason in its manifestation there still survive asymmetry and hierarchy, the abstract and despotic trait of the universal. It is not by chance that Hegel, in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, defines the universal character of the idea of the state as Gattung, which is “absolute power against individual states” and “finds its reality in universal history”.7 This natural existence of institutions in its impersonal configuration cannot block the life of the absolute spirit, which Hegel calls the Self of the “thinking spirit”:8 life that is freed from the 7  P R, § 259. 8  Enc. III, § 552.

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“selfishness [Selbstsucht, self-seeking] of craving”. Its most concrete existence is in the free spirit of man raised to the universal. Into it there descends the fullest interpenetration of I and We, of unity and plurality both in the recognition of love, proper to Religion (the Trinitarian figure that does not yet operate, so to speak, the most radical self-alienation in the finite consciousness of man), and in the recognition proper to thought, which also includes the latter opposition and this passage through the negative, which is indispensable for the enactment of the spirit of self-consciousness. Both in the political sphere, and in the universal community of religion, and in the narrow one, ‘for few people’, of philosophy, the ‘We’ derives from the descent of the absolute spirit into the individual self-consciousness, through which alone the way is open for the self-recognition of the individual in the universal self-consciousness. What may seem (and is in part) the Hegelian legacy of the PlatonicAristotelian conception of the superiority of the bios theoretikós over the bios politikos is, however, profoundly corrected by a non-despotic conception of the divine, which has complex and certainly problematic consequences for the entire design of Hegelian thought. In any case, such a conception of the spirit gives an extremely robust background to the itinerary of inclusion and immanentization to which Hegel submits what Gadamer called ‘familiarization with the extraneous’.

Chapter 18

The Political Surplus Value of Subjectivity in Hegel Geminello Preterossi Abstract: The essay analyzes the relationship between the subject and politics in some central passages of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which allows for a conception of subjectivity to emerge that is much richer than post-modern simplifications. Here Hegel combines the deduction of sovereignty and the genealogy of the subject: the affirmation of the subject/individual and that of the subject/State is a parallel path. The institutional consequences that Hegel draws from the subjectivitysovereignty connection are in the sense of a rationalization of power that does not fall into the formalist error of removing the decisionist and symbolic sides.

Starting at least with modernity, subjectivity and politics have marched at the same pace. The twentieth century has also been the period of the crisis of the subject, diagnosed by the negative thought which, pointing out its lack of foundations, the dark sides of the subject, would seem to have uncovered its intrinsically nihilistic nature, demystifying its rationalistic pretensions and dialectical narrations. Furthermore, there is scarce doubt that the critique of the Eurocentric subject unearthed marginal and subordinate subjectivities, revealing the exclusion criteria that have long been implicit in the subject of Western abstract rights (gender, race, property, wealth and so on). But is deconstruction the only philosophical answer to this crisis? Is the liquidation of the Western normative heritage the only appropriate reaction? In other words, what remains of the subject, after and beyond its deconstructions? Are we really sure that self-determination and the will to participate are simply tricks, old normative relics, or even conflicting opposites? Does the contrast between the insatiable rights of individual sovereignty and the social bond not imply yielding to a univocal, re-naturalized conception of freedom, that endorses the abandonment of the Hegelian ground of the mediation between subjective and objective freedom? And why is the symbolic language of rights, of life plans, of claims of recognition and social dignity circulating in the world? Why is it being autonomously appropriated, as the sole alternative to neoliberal globalization? What does all this tell us? Does it not point to a productive outcome of the freedom-democracy connection that is not just practical, but also theoretically relevant, and therefore to be engaged with and consi­ dered again? © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004322967_019

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Perhaps the appearance of that original decisional void in which subjectivity manifests itself, is after all more an appearance than a reality, because it expresses an energetic orientation that is destined to be filled up with content and to experience transformations and integrations of sense. Therefore, it has a further, and more complex, meaning than that of a static nothingness. Furthermore, the critique of the abstract subject has fueled the struggle for the effective universalization of seriously-taken rights—the same struggle that has led to the thematization of a fully-fleshed subjectivity, which is at the center of a new constitutionalism that arises from the bottom upwards, a constitutionalism of needs. It is thus not easy to reduce this story of fierce conflicts and emancipatory conquests to a mere ideological illusion. There is, in other words, another line of subjectivity, one that corresponds to the complexity of the effectual history of freedom and to its most aware philosophical elaborations, which have assumed the spurious and asymmetrical, and therefore politically productive, character of the construction of subjectivity. And this, certainly, is the case of Hegel.1 In my opinion, there are two, opposed but complementary, paths to be explored in the domain of this critical rehabilitation of the subject: the first is the non-nihilistic subject-order connection, thematized by Hegel under the headline of the sovereignty-individuality circuit, of ethical life-decision. The second path is the extreme challenge of subjectivity as a claim of sense that is its own, irreducible, even heretical but non arbitrary, which pioneers the road to the construction of a new, post-traditional and, to some extent secularized, sense of the forms of political cohabitation. In a passage of bravura of his Philosophy of Right, Hegel unites the deduction of sovereignty with the genealogy of the subject. In § 278, he highlights 1  The bibliography on the problem of subjectivity in Hegel and its implications for the political and the speculative is very extensive. I will mention: Manfred Riedel, Theorie und Praxis im Denken Hegels. Interpretationen zu den Grundstellungen der neuzeitlichen Subjektivität (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1965); Klaus Düsing, Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik. Systematische und Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Prinzip des Idealismus un zur Dialektik (Bonn: Bouvier, 1983); Franco Chiereghin, Dialettica dell‘assoluto e ontologia della soggettività in Hegel. Dall’ideale giovanile alla Fenomenologia dello spirito (Trento: Verifiche, 1980); Francesca Menegoni, Soggetto e struttura dell’agire in Hegel (Trento: Verifiche, 1993); Hegel’s Theory of the Subject, ed. D.G. Carlson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Jean-François Kervégan, L’effectif et le rationnel. Hegel et l’esprit objectif (Paris: Vrin, 2007); Axel Honneth, Das Recht der Freiheit. Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011); Lucio Cortella, L’etica della democrazia. Attualità della Filosofia del diritto di Hegel (Milano: Marietti, 2011); Subjektivität und Autonomie. Praktische Selbstverhältnisse in der klassischen deutschen Philosophie,ed. S. Lang and L.-T. Ulrichs (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013).

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the constitutive connection that bonds sovereignty and subjectivity: the affirmation of the subject/individual and the subject/State is a parallel path. The subject is a political concept, in the dual sense that it produces political effects and presents logical and systematic analogies between the individual and the collective plans. In effect, making the struggle of the universal against the particular, against what is simply ‘given’, concrete and effectual implies the individualisation of the universal itself. It is, indeed, an internal movement: by presenting the affirmation of the universal, determined by the sovereignty of the State, and the dynamic of self-universalization that goes together with the action of the individual will that fills itself with concrete content, Hegel exposes the self-dissolution of the particular and the conquest of a universalistic standpoint, which is not given nor abstract, but is a result of social interaction. What constitutes sovereignty? Idealism—that is, the fact that the particular existence (of the parts, of powers etc.) is sublated, and cannot be absolutized: “sovereignty is the ideality of every particular authority”.2 At the same point in the text, this ‘idealism’ is compared to different aspects, that are a sort of exemplification: first an ‘organic’ dimension, where oppositions are fluidified (as in the animal organism, where parts are not parts but limbs). Then, the principle of self-negation, that is proper to the will that acts: the universality which determines itself as individuality gives a specific content to itself, gathers itself into a concrete subject, and at the same time, does this, and is only able to do it, because it experiences the negative operation of the will (acting even on itself) regarding all of the content, that therefore is not valid in itself, but because it is appropriated and elaborated. (It is quite meaningful that Hegel refers to § 7 of the Introduction, where he presents a theory of action that, as well as culminating in the ethical bond, actually seems to establish it ‘from the bottom’ upwards, starting with the needs and actions of individuals; but I will return to this subject later). In other words, the sovereign will, like the individual one, is the “the absolute and self-determining ground”:3 a foundation, to be such, must determine itself and not be imposed by a transcendent authority, that is necessarily hetero­ nomous, derived from a positive tradition, etc. The movement of foundation is circular, even paradoxical, because there is no true foundation if not as a selffoundation, i.e. in the radical questioning of its being ‘presupposed’. The only possible presupposition in a post-substantial world, i.e. in the time of the subjectivation of substance, is the ‘subjective’ movement of presupposing (that is, 2  P R, § 278 R, 315. 3  P R, § 278 R, 315.

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self-presupposition), and of filtering the given contents (the inherited presuppositions) through a destructive force (decision) that, procuring its content, innovates, transforms and, only in this way, ‘founds’. Hegel affirms that to better understand this node, it is necessary to have the concept of the “true subjectivity of the concept”.4 There is, thus, a logical parallelism, a substantial isomorphism, between the concept of the concept (that is such because it incorporates the power of the negative that determines the universal) and the modality by which political objectivity is produced (as it transcends the intention of the individuals but is the overall product of the process activated by the determination of the plural wills): universality can only be truly such, and not a mere abstraction, if it is a “determinate determinateness”, “absolute negativity posited for itself”, i.e. “singularity”.5 Only in this singularity, scorned by abstraction, the concept finds that depth which is capable of generating contents, “in which the concept grasps itself and where it is posited as concept”.6 It is, thus, through the dynamics of singularity, destructive and productive at the same time, that the concept becomes ‘for itself’, enters in its reality without dispersing itself, but rather, creates the condition for its own recognition. And maybe it is in this frame, which intertwines the practical and the theoretical dimensions, action and concept, that the ontological background can be found, the speculative root of that ambivalent historical process of subversion and translation of ethical contents, which twentieth century thought has summarised under the noun of ‘secularization’. (Of course this is not present in Hegel as an explicit conceptualisation, but the issue certainly is). The institutional consequences that Hegel draws from the subjectivityobjectivity connection go in the sense of a rationalisation of power that does not fall into the formalistic error of removing its decisionist or symbolic side: sovereignty is not pure discretion, but a symbol of the political unity and the apical point of closure of the system; sovereignty can effectively operate this re-establishment of unity in a legal, constitutional condition (which means that it is organised for the welfare of the State). What we have in Hegel is a strong investment in institutionalisation, that shouldn’t mean, however, an total juridification of power. Sovereignty simplifies the complexity of the modern State, re-establishing it in its principle of unity, and at the same time, it is the original presupposition that made possible the articulation of the material constitution (Verfassung) of the Leviathan. It is no accident that 4  P R, § 278 R, 315. 5  S L 540 (GW 12, 43). 6  S L 546 (GW 12, 49).

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sovereignty operates as much in conditions of normality as it does by resorting to the exception: on the one hand, the ‘private’ and particular side of individual subjectivity (the satisfaction of needs, the care for interests) results, without excessive deviations—both spontaneously and thanks to the necessary work of orientation by the government—in the general purpose. On the other hand, the political subjectivity of the collective manifests itself in the situation of emergency (where there is the expression of a kind of ‘pure’ sovereignty). In § 279 of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel highlights how, in the general concept of sovereignty as self-determination (that connects the two extremes of the individual and collective will), there is the implicit problem of the concrete subject of decision, and therefore of the coupling of the State’s sovereignty to a power of last instance. As can be read in the well-known note added by Gans, the seal of decision impressed by the sovereign with his name is important, but it is not an arbitrary act—the contents of it, determined in advance of the act of sealing, is: this is the peak above which it is impossible to rise. In any case, we are not interested here in a discussion of the monarch’s real powers, but in the historical-conceptual frame through which Hegel justifies the circuit of political subjectivity and sovereign subject, personality of State and person of the decision-maker. One of the fundamental differences between ancient and modern times, states Hegel in the same Addition, is that in modernity the decision on what has to be decided must be explicitly announced by the man himself with an ‘I want this’: the decisive point is voluntarism, the acknowledgement of the impossibility to turn to forces which, being an expression of an unconscious substance, exonerate the self-consciousness from its responsibility (oracles, auspices, divine signs, etc.). The subject must become more robust, must find a motivating context, in order to sustain the onus of decision, the vertigo that gives strength to lean over the abyss and produce a swerve. In Greek substantial ethics too, there was the need for the source of a decision, but it was transferred somewhere beyond. Socrates’ daemon marks the start of the interiorisation of decision: “the beginning of a self-knowing and hence genuine freedom”.7 Hegel notes also in the Philosophy of History that Socrates “made himself an Oracle, in the Greek sense”, because he “posited the Individual as capable of a final moral decision, in contraposition to Country and to Customary Morality”.8 This made the individual the potential foundation of politics (even if Hegel did not draw political conclusions from this): “He said that he had a δαιμόνιον within him, which counselled him what to do, and revealed to him what was 7  P R, § 279 R, 320. 8  Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 2001), 289.

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advantageous to his friends. The rise of the inner world of Subjectivity was the rupture with the existing Reality”.9 Therefore, the objective world can no longer be an undisputed presupposition (according to which thought is identified with customary morality), but it has to be acknowledged as a collective product, to be reflected on and with which to be reconciled. The modern world will be an order of a second level, determined by the detachment of the subject and the need for recognition: this is why the social bond must be constantly tied again. There are figures who announce and prepare the principle of subjectivity before modernity. In this sense, Socrates and Jesus are two icons of the subject: both are àtopoi, ‘heretics’ in their own way, subversives in a world stiffened by the exterior law; both obey an interior voice. It must be said, anyway, that Hegel himself oscillates on the possibility to fully superimpose them, because Christ incarnates the ‘speculative’ concept of the Spirit, the unity of God and Man, of Absolute and Negative, and for this reason has a role of a decisive watershed in the history of universalisation, whilst Socrates is a figure of great moral height, the pagan anticipation of the need for subjectivity, but he has an exemplary character within the world of the polis. It surely is an example of great relevance, since Hegel compares him with Luther, who reaffirms the concept of Christianity by rediscovering the way of interiority socratically.10 Briefly, we have therefore a prehistory of subjectivity, that is, various milestones in relation to the various configurations of political decision-making and experiences: a) the interior decision that emerges in the beautiful Greek ethical life and corrodes it; b) the Christian incarnation, that humanises God (showing that the infinite is in the finite) and creates the premises for a universal community that offers resources of sense to politics but also the space for its autonomy (the truth content of revealed religion is the same as that of the modern political State, but in the form of popular representation: therefore the philosophical realisation of Christianity in the plane of the Objective Spirit is the State, as a solidary community of citizens); c) the abstract universality of the juridical personality invented by the Roman right (but Hegel seems not to insist very much on this); d) the revolution of conscience represented by the Reformation. This prehistory, of course, does not invalidate the centrality of modern rationalistic philosophy,11 but forms its substrate. 9   Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 289. 10  Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 363. 11  It is with Descartes, Hegel states, that we are finally ‘at home’, thanks to a ‘new beginning’: “In this new period the universal principle by means of which everything in the world is regulated, is the thought that proceeds from itself; it is a certain inwardness, which is

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It seems that it can be said that the philosophies of the subject are the theoretical apex of the socialisation of the deposits of subjectivity that have cumulated over time, originated by the identifying power of symbolic figures and by the memory of their experience. The political meaning of subjectivity lies as much in the individualistic interiorization of decision as in its communitarian actualisation, on a dual track of the internal and the external, the I and the We, which accompanies the emergence of freedom and its juridical configuration. The connection of subject and sovereignty is at the centre of the reflection on political theology in modernity and in its crisis. A debate where Schmitt and Blumenberg are intertwined in a central knot, and that often has Hegel in its background.12 In the second edition of Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Blumenberg defends his thesis of the full self-sufficiency of modern rationality and attacks the theorem of secularization, confronting its most insidious version—the one by Schmitt. Schmitt claims to unveil, in the constitutive logic of modernity, a theological-political claim that is not based on a substantial continuity with tradition, but on a formal and structural analogy between theological-metaphysical and political-juridical concepts.13 From Schmitt’s perspective, the self-affirmation of the juridical artifice holds a theological-political device that conditions its efficacy, in other words a decision that unavoidably points to a secularized form of transcendence, contradicting the possibility of an integral foundation of modernity without remains. Blumenberg’s strategy unfolds in the separation of rationalism and voluntarism:

above all evidenced in respect to Christianity, and which is the Protestant principle in accordance with which thought has come to the consciousness of the world at large as that to which every man has a claim. Thus because the independently existent thought, this culminating point of inwardness, is now set forth and firmly grasped as such, the dead externality of authority is set aside and regarded as out of place. It is only through my own free thought within me that thought can however be recognized and ratified by me. This likewise signifies that such free thought is the universal business of the world and of individuals; it is indeed the duty of every man, since everything is based upon it; thus what claims to rank as established in the world man must scrutinize in his own thoughts”. See Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, trans. E.H. Haldane (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1892), vol. 3, 468–469. 12  As is apparent in the theoretical line of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde; see the collection of essays, edited by the author, Diritto e secolarizzazione. Dallo Stato moderno all’Europa unita (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2007). 13  See Hans Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 89–102.

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Here one must not lose sight of the difference between rationalism and voluntarism, insofar as it comes through in the philosophy of history. Rationalism has the advantage that it can base its mode of operation on impersonal ‘mechanisms’, that is, it need not rely on rational subjects— even of the ‘world spirit’ type—and their rationality alone [. . .]. Voluntarism is necessarily dependent on a subject, be it only a fictional one. Hence it requires ‘persons’, be they only ‘legal persons’. Decisionism cannot function without a ‘sovereign’, be it only a metaphorical one.14 The analysis of the Hegelian deduction of sovereignty is inserted within this theoretical movement. Blumenberg acknowledges its importance, but he aims to contradict the interpretation according to which it would be a chapter of political theology (of subjectivity). It is true that in Hegel there is generally an ontological rationality (which is absent in Schmitt),15 but the fact that it is realised exactly through the concept of will shows how much Hegel, too, sees the push of modernity in that productive force of will, which Blumenberg shrinks from. Blumenberg argues that the Hegelian legitimacy “does not come from the uncaused beginning, the necessity of which is supposed to lie in the concept, either; rather it comes from that ‘consolidation’ that fills the abstract with concrete contents”.16 It is certain that legitimacy is completely accomplished and exposed in that process of thickening of the will, that allows the objective world of freedom; but, without the beginning that is explored in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right, without the decision for the finite, no energetic device for the production of ethos could be activated: legitimacy is not fixated at the beginning, but it is also not resolved in the process. Above all, result and process would not be activated without the swerve of the deciding will. Moreover, the notion of ‘condensation’ remains too undefined, an event without an origin. Doesn’t it, too, imply a considerable ‘need’ of a presupposed sense? To retrospectively protect it from Schmittian decisionism, Blumenberg runs the risk of a re-substantialisation of Hegel, depriving him of his specific contribution: the political nature of reason. The recalling of the ‘rationalism of the ontologicum’ and the apparent undervaluation of the meaning of the Hegelian appeal to the concept of will risks producing a true misunderstanding of the speculative concept of reason in Hegel, just as the ontology would not be subjectivity of the concept and activity of the Negative. Of course, Hegelian modernity is far more complex and rich in content than Schmitt’s (because it is 14  Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 99–100. 15  Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 100–101. 16  Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 100.

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not nihilistic), but it is, in any case, marked by concepts such as decision (which opens to subjective freedom and makes it objective ), conflict (as the matrix of humanization in the struggle for recognition),17 determined negation (that realizes the universal by ‘soiling it’): and it is the very presence of these notions that allows the connection of ‘logical’ and ‘political’, putting the reassuring version of liberal rationalism into a crisis. In other words, Hegelian reason incorporates the political (institutionalized) as well as the theological (secularized): it is not a coincidence that § 270 of the Philosophy of Right, devoted to the relation between politics and religion, whilst clearly stating the secularity of the State, develops such a wide, complex and articulated reasoning of the connection between rational legitimation and ‘theological’ (but not ‘confessional’) meaning of the political order: a meaning that political reasons translates (or maybe substitutes?) in a secular language. And subjectivity, which in our time is the explicit protagonist, is also marked by this persistence of the ‘political’. But to what extent can these ‘original’ and immediate elements be rationalized? Can they even be expunged? Or is there a rationalisation, not abstract but effectual (the ‘mediation of mediation’), which presupposes and maintains them, despite keeping them under control? It can be argued that Hegel, in his constant questioning of the subjectpolitics connection, has meant to elude the theoretical traps of contractualism, overpassing this yet still remaining on the terrain of a modern, i.e. rational legitimation, one that is not founded on the principle of authority and on tradition and order. In the Philosophy of Right this strategy is not only pursued with a blistering critique of the aporias of the contract, but also with the proposal of genesis of order, capable of explaining its existence in another way, eluding these aporias. As we already recalled, in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right (a sort of ‘rational psychology’, presupposed to the exposition of the properly political-juridical figures), Hegel constructs a genealogy of the ethical life in the theory of action. Determination, the “decision for the finite”18 by the will, supplies content to the act of willing and creates an objective world of 17  Here I will not examine this fundamental point, where the contractualist illusion is unravelled by the exhibition of how subjects are not ‘given’ but ‘produced’ by an interaction that already brings in itself the marks of the ‘political’. I will just allow myself to refer to the analysis carried out in my La politica negata (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2007), 29 ff. The struggle for recognition is one of the strategies that allow Hegel to answer to the question: who are the subjects, where do they come from? Accepting this challenge, that is unavoidable for Hegel, implies that recognition cannot be understood in a sanitised, moral sense, but that it must be constituted through the incorporation of the agonistic dimension and the asymmetries proper to political belonging. 18  PR, § 13 R, 47.

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connection and reciprocal dependency: this is the thickening of the will, and freedom no longer appears as a solipsistic vertigo, but finds ‘contexts’ where it can meet other freedoms. But is the theory of action also capable of explaining the political State? Yes, and no: it is not its cumulative product from the bottom (there is an original difference between the whole and the parts), but certainly the partial ethical life established by inter-action prepares it. Furthermore, in its ‘constitution’ there is room, at various levels, for the right to individuality, up to the very top of the political body (we already recalled that § 7 is directly quoted in the Remark to § 278 on sovereignty). The problem, rather, would always be how to reconcile freedom as a collective political principle with the self-determination of the subject, avoiding that surplus-value be exhausted by the individualistic erosion. (This is why § 260 is still so relevant). A point to be kept well in mind is that the theory of action, founded on the concept of will, also gives rise, and conspicuously so, to civil society, to the contradictory and conflictual ‘belly’ of the ethical life. It is therefore significant that § 19 refers to §§ 148–150, where the issues are the Triebe and their function in pushing towards socialisation. There is also § 20, which refers to § 187, where the notion of Bildung as the process of the formation of subjectivities is essential: a ‘formation’ that should not be understood in a strictly ‘humanistic-rhetorical’ sense, because it is also a hard training, that flattens (Glättung) asperities and obstinacies. Therefore, on the one hand the will needs the energetic push supplied by the Triebe, to determine itself and fill up with content; on the other hand, labour and social organisation hone the individual particularities and civilise them, but not without a price. The Hegelian theory of action is complex because it gives account, on the one hand, of the ambivalent processes of individuation and socialisation that are characteristic of the post-traditional order of modernity; on the other, it places the subject in the ‘political Leviathan’. Obeying the same logic that is proper to the concept (as “infinity as self-referring negativity”),19 the will unveils the political character of the speculative, and the speculative character of the political: the determined universal is hegemonic and it incorporates the decision.20 This partisan and spurious dimension of the universal, objectified through the contingency of individual action, can have only two lines of political explication: from the bottom, as a socio-institutional connection 19  PR, § 7 R, 41–42. 20  The construction of the universal is always political-symbolical. This politicisation of the universal can be operated only by the subject, by his polemical negativity. See, on this topic, Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject. The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 2000), 70–125.

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of individual needs and legal forms; from the top, as the transcendence of the collective and the Archimedean point of the order. To be sure, some doubt can linger regarding the stability of the passage from the individual track of the action to the communitarian one, where the diverse acting wills intertwine and coordinate: it is precisely the passage from Me to Us, a passage that must not jeopardise the return from Us to Me. Why does the thickening will not proceed on a solipsistic track, but transcends itself collaborating in the concretisation of a world of inter-subjective relations? Is the thickening of the content of will enough to cause this? Does any passage to action really imply and build bonds? Like no one else, Hegel constantly plays on both planes, avoiding movi­ng from ‘one’ presupposition (individualistic or communitarian), and breaking free from the paradoxes of Fichtean inter-subjectivity. Nevertheless, it is not always clear if the tension between these two planes is always resolved, or if their point of encounter is really stable. True, Hegel has built a dual point of hold for his pendulum movement between Me and Us, on the terrain of the philosophy of history (as the process of subjectivation of substance, i.e. of post-traditional socialisation of the sense), and on that of speculative logic (where we comprehend that the will is not a ‘substrate’, it is not the ‘presupposed subject’, something static, but is action as self-mediation and return to self, i.e. the ‘concept’ that the Understanding can’t conceive).21 But it is equally certain that the connection of history and logos happens only on the mobile bridge of subjectivity. But in the final instance, what is this subjectivity? Of course for Hegel it constitutes the vector of the history of the Spirit as the history of freedom, and yet it is not so easy to define it, to capture it. Originally, subjectivity is not content, a presupposition, but a surplus, a swerve to the immanence of the objective world, of customary morals, of the various praxis, etc.: an active, and oriented, assumption of attitude. As ‘deciding’, it has an ordering function, but also something unfathomable in its origin. As a critical-erosive function, it distances itself from the merely ‘positive’, but this self-thematization is not destructively nihilistic, because it filters and re-elaborates ethical-political contents. It is therefore true that the political projection of the modern subject unravels the objective order, but at the same time it regenerates it. If subjectivity is a transcendence that departs from itself, it unavoidably entails as much a dispersion in the world as the re-grasping of itself. In the Hegelian perspective, which is very onerous in metaphysical terms, this happens in view of the reconciliation with the deposit of sense elaborated by that universal labour of the human genre, that is the Geist: the subject, however stubborn and radical, not 21  See on this topic the explicit reference to the Logic in PR, § 7 R.

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only is productive, but operates within a process that, in its turn, transcends it, but where the subject can still reflect himself. The point, even for a thought that claims to be a post-metaphysical one, is that any construction of a plan of immanence entails the incorporation of some form of transcendence, and this is one of Hegel’s great lessons. This can be interpreted in a fully secular sense (precisely as self-transcendence of the immanence). And it is just here that the issue of the ‘incarnated’ subject, and its current political value, comes into play once more. It is an issue that no perspective can avoid, if it wishes to maintain a critical-normative, but not abstract or impolitic, point of view on the existent. I close with some questions that, leaning beyond Hegel, concern democracy as the radicalisation/accomplishment of the modern order of the subject: how can the need for recognition that is held by the democratic promise be ensured? Is it possible, today, to produce a surplus of sense from the bottom, a paradoxical democratic political theology? If democracy, as a post-traditional regime, implies the availability of resources, capable of reining in the disintegrating effects of the dynamics of individualisation and socialisation, where is it possible to find the sources of this ordering surplus, once the contexts of collective recognition, offered by labour, by the form of the Nation-State, by political parties are weakened and fragmented? Do not the vital ethical-political subjectivities, which are needed by democracy in order not to become barren, presuppose hegemonic narrations and struggles, loaded with normative and symbolic engagements? Or do we truly believe that it is possible to force the complexity of the form of democratic life onto a pure “decisionist” act, which in itself is empty and unfounded, in favour of values such as the humanistic development of individuality and the protection of rights?

Index of Names Ackermann, Jacob Fidelis (197–198n41) Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund 4 and n4, 175 and n12, (205n15) Althusser, Louis 249 Anghern, Emil (164n12) Anscombe, Gertrud Elisabeth Margaret (70n6), (72n17), 79, 83 Antigone 144 Apel, Karl Otto 11 Apollo 96 Aristophanes 198 Aristophanes see Plato Aristotle 32, 35, 36, 69, 86, 87, 92, 93, 95, 114, 149, 150, 152, (155n20), 225 and n8, 234 and n8, (240n22), 256, 258 Arndt, Andreas 205 Austin, John Langshaw 83 Bacon, Francis (267n33) Bagnoli, Carla (127n2), (133n16) Baier, Kurt 138, 140 Barsanti, Giulio (189n16) Bellan, Alessandro (10n30), (275n14) Bentham, Jeremy (69n3), 73, (78n35), 84 Bergbohm, Karl 68 Berlin, Isaiah (75n27) Bernstein, Richard Jacob 6–8 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich (189n18) Blumenberg, Hans 28, 305, 306 Böckenförde, Ernst-Wolfgang 305 Bradley, Francis Herbert 19, 109–111, 117–22, 124 Brandom, Robert Boyce 5–12, (18n43), (19n44), 20, 22, 66–67, 99, 100, 101, 127, 129, 131–132, 134, (161n7), 203, (248n31), (260n13), (276n14) Brink, Bert van der 231 and n1 Brink, David O. 114, (115n18) Buée, Jean-Michel 206 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc (189n17) Butler, Judith 3 Campbell, Charles A. 115 Chaos 96 Carlson, David Gray 300

Cesa, Claudio 207 Chiereghin, Franco 26–27, (194n29), 300 Coleman, Jules (78n35) Collins, Ardis B. (6n14) Copp, David (139n33) Cortella, Lucio (10n30), 18, 19, 22–23, (253n1), 300, (276n14) Corti, Luca (11n33) Croce, Benedetto 3 and n2 Culverwell, Nathaniel 134 Da Ponte, Lorenzo 253, 263 Daubenton, Louis Jean-Marie (189n17) De Vries, Willem A. (7n16) Deranty, Jean-Philippe 215 Derrida, Jacques 3, 121 Descartes, René 258, 304 Devries, W.A. (7n16), (200n45), (279n24) Dewey, John 7, (146n46), 202–203, 213, 215–219 Dostoyevsky 137 Dove, Kenley R. (7n16) Durkheim, Émile 31, 71, (167n15) Düsing, Klaus 300 Dworkin, Ronald (78n35) Faust 285 and n51 Feinberg, Joel (69n3), (76n30) Ferrarin, Alfredo 26, 27, (258n7), (260n12) Ferry, Luc (75n27) Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 102, 151, 160, 204–210, 212, 258, 274, 309 Figaro see Da Ponte Findlay, John Niemeyer (9n24) Fink-Eitel, Hinrich (275n14) Fischbach, Franck 207 Foucault, Michel (189n16), 3, 249 Frank, Mandfred 27 Frey, Raymond (73n20) Gadamer, Hans-Georg 4 and n5, 28, 211 and n32–33, (262n19), (263n21), 292 and n3, 293, 294, 295, 298 Gall, Franz Joseph (198n41) Gebhardt, Carl (279n27)

312 Gentile, Giovanni 3 and n2 Gilbert, Margaret (50n1) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 122, 124, 283, (285n51) Green, Thomas Henry 19, 109–117, 119, 122 Gregor, Mary J. (151n24) Grotius, Hugo 68 Habermas, Jürgen 4 and n6, 11–12, 14, 23, (158n2), (176n13), (179n15), 246 Hacking, Ian 84 Halbig, Christoph (6n14), (11n37), (128n4), 183 Hardimon, Michael O. 5 and n12 Harris, Henry Silton 88, 94 Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus 68, 78 Hartmann, Klaus 9 and n27 Hauriou, Maurice 17, 70–72, (79n36), 81, 84 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1–28, 49, 31–48, 56–67, 69, 71, (73n21), (74n25), 81, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 109, 119, 122–125, 127–131, 134–136, (141n38), 142, (143n41), 145, 147–156, 157–167, 171–172, 173–174, 177–178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202–215, (217n53), 218–219, 220–229, 230–231, 237–240, 245, 247, 253–270, 271–285, 286–298, 299–310 Heidegger, Martin 293, 294 and n4, 296 Henrich, Dieter (7n18), 27, (260n12) Hobbes, Thomas 74, 95, 102, 253, 261, 266–67 Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb 17, 73, 75–77, (80n40), 82, 84 Honneth, Axel 5 and n9, (12 and n39), 18, 19, 21–22, (67n40), (144n43), (153n17), (161n8), (175n11), 202, 206, 214–215, 219, 232 and n3, 233 and n6, (235n10), 244, 246, 300 Horstmann, Rolf-Peter 11 and n36, (164n12) Hösle, Vittorio (6n14), 11 and n34 Houlgate, Stephen (6n14), (132n14) Hume, David 253 Husserl, Edmund 81, 265 Ikäheimo, Heikki 15–16, (131n12), 212, (246n29), (247n30), (268n35) Illetterati, Luca 23, 24, (186n7), (196n37) Ilting, Karl-Heinz (194n29)

Index Of Names Jesus 304 Jhering, Rudolf von 78 Kant, Immanuel 10, 12, 19, 20, 36, (74n24 and 26), 80, 81, 102, 114n16, 116n20, 122, 123, 127–136, 139–141, 150, 151, 152, 153 and n15, 157–165, 169–170, 184, 185, 190, 191, 203–205, 209–210, 253–55, 261, 264, 274 Kelsen, Hans 69, 73 Kervégan, Jean-François (14n40), 15, 17, 300 Khurana, Thomas (19n45) Kierkegaard, Søren 32 Kimmerle, Heinz (10n31)  Knox, Thomas Malcolm 104 Kojève, Alexandre 3 and n2, (172n6), (209n24), 226 Kreines, James (15n40) Kronos 96 Kuhrana, Thomas (157n1) La Mettrie, Julien Offray (189n17) Lacan, Jacques 3 Laitinen, Arto (15n41), 18 and n43, 19, 20–21, (142n40), (149n4), 212, (243n26), (247n30) Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste (189n18) Lamb, David (9n24) Lane, Robert 216 Lang, Stefan  300 Larmore, Charles (133n20) Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 189, 191 Leiter, Brian (78n35) Lévinas, Emmanuel 28 Linnaeus, Carl Nillson (189n18) Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken (189n16) Lukes, Steven (242n25) Mabille, Bernand (14n40) MacCormick, Neil 70, (79n38) MacIntyre, Alasdair 84 Maker, William (6n14) Mander, Willam J. (115n19) Marx, Karl 25, 31, 47, 103, 220–229, 258 Maturana, Humberto (196n38) McDowell, John 6–12, 23 and n47, 55, (131n11), 132, (200n45) Mead, George Herbert 179, 214–215, 246 Menegoni, Francesca 18, 19, 21, 147–156, 300 Menke, Christoph (19n45), (157n1)

Index Of Names Merker, Barbara 276n14 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 3 Mill, John Stuart 138 Miller, Kaarlo (83n49) Mohr, Georg 276n14 Moore, George Edward 8 and n19 Moyar, Dean (128n3), (136n30), (143n41) Needham, John Turberville (189n17) Neuhouser, Frederick (9n26), 15–16, (57n20), 125, 208, 210 Nicholson, Peter P. (112n12), 115 Nietzsche, Friedrich 32, 38, 72 Nisbet, Hugh Barr 96 Nohl, Hans 104 Nuzzo, Angelica (259n10) O’Shea, James (7n16) Oedipus 152 Owen, David 231 and n1 Pallas Athene 96 Patten, Alan (9n26) Peperzak, Adriaan Theodor (148n3), (260n12), (265n26) Pettit, Philip (142n40) Pico della Mirandola (267n) Pinkard, Terry 5 and n12, (6n14), 9–10, 14, (19n44–45), 20, (23n48), 127, 129, 131–132, (157n1), 205, (275n14), (276n14) Pippin, Robert Buford (6n14), 9–10, 14–15, (19n44–45), 20, (23n47), (27n51), 127, 129, 131–132, 134, (200n45), 202, 204–206, 261 and n14, 266 and n32, (275n14) Plato 32, 88, 198, 258, 266 Preterossi, Nello 26, 28 Prichard, Harold Arthur 19, 110–113, 125 Quante, Michael (6n14), (11n37), (15n41), (18n43), 147, 183, (276n14) Rawls, John 127, 129–130, (131n9) Raz, Joseph (73n22), (76n31), (78n35), (135n27), (233n7) Redding, Paul (6n14), (8n22), (10n29), 207 Regan, Donald H. (131n10) Reinach, Adolf 17, 80, 81 Renaut, Alain (75n27)

313 Renault, Emmanuel 23, 24–25, 204, 209, 213, 215, 217 Renner, Karl (82n46) Ricardo, David 222 Ricoeur, Paul 28, (235n9), 294 and n5 Riedel, Manfred  300 Ritsert, Jürgen (275n14) Robinet, Jean-Baptiste-René (189n17) Rockmore, Tom (6n14), (8n22) Rorty, Richard 5–9, 120–121 Rosen, Stanley 265–266 Rosenberg, Joel (7n16) Ross, Angus (51n5) Ross, David (145n45) Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (47n2), 72, (166n13), 245, 253, 258, 268 Ruggiu, Luigi (6n14), 15, 17–18, (10n30), (253n1), (276n14) Russell, Bertrand (8 and n20) Saar, Martin (164n12) Samonà, Leonardo 26, 27–28 Sandis, Constantine (18n43), (149n4)  Särkelä, Arvi (146n46) Sartre, Jean-Paul 3, 174–175, (260n11) Savigny, Friedrich Carl von (71n15), 79 Scanlon, Thomas 139 Schmidtz, David 118n25 Schmitt, Carl 17, 28, 81–83, 85, 305, 306 Schnädelbach, Herbert (275n14) Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich (197n41) Schweikard, David (15n41) Searle, John 16–17, 49, 54–56, 63, 65, 70, 83–85, 86, 90, 91, 97, (245n27), 246 and n28 Sellars, Wilfrid 5–8, Shafer-Landau, Russ (128n4), (129n6) Shapiro, Scott J. (78n35) Sidgwick, Henry 112 Siep, Ludwig 4, 5 and n8, (6n14), 11 and n37, (58n26), (148n3), (149n4), (160n4), (183n1), 256, (257n6), 287 and n2, 292 Sieyès, Emmanuel 75 Skorupski, John 113–114 Smith, Adam 96, 103, 222, 253, 265 Smith, Nicholas H. (23n47), 200 Socrates 303 Spinoza, Baruch de 95, (185n4), 279, (279n27–28), 280

314 Stahl, Titus (160n5) Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin 11 and n35, (26n49) Stern, David (23n48) Stern, Robert (14n40), 18, 19–20, 127, 129–132, (133n16 and 18–19), 134–135, (136n29–30), 138–140, 144 Stone, Alison (187n11) Suarez, Francisco 134–135 Taminiaux, Jacques (266n31) Taylor, Charles 5 and n11, 7 and n17, (129n5), (144n43), 219 Testa, Italo (6n14), (10n30), (15n41), 23 and n48, 25–26, 204, (235n9), (237n13), 253, 256, (261n15), 276n14 Theunissen, Michael (275n14) Tortorella, Sabina (253n1) Tugendhat, Ernst (260n12) Tuomela, Raimo 83

Index Of Names Vieweg, Klaus (6n14), (153n17) Vinci, Paolo 23, 25 Voltaire, François (189n18) Waldron, Jeremy (76n31), (77n32), (82n47) Waluchow, Will (79n35) Weber, Max 16, 49–53, 60, 65 Welsch, Wolfgang (6n14), (153n17) Westphal, Kenneth (7n16), (127n3), (129n7), (134n22) Wildt, Andreas 160n4 Williams, Robert R. 5 and n10, (6n14) Windscheid, Bernhard 68 Winter, Carl (279n27) Wittgenstein, Ludwig (9n24), 200 Wittmann, David 206  Wood, Allen William 5 and n12, 109, 125, (128n3) Xifaras, Mikhail (79n37)

Ulrichs, Lars-Tade 300

Yovel, Yirmiyahu (166n13)

Varela, Francisco (196n38) Vasquez, Gabriel 135

Zeus 96 Zizek, Slavoj 308

Index of Subjects Acknowledgment 21, 54, 153–6, 157, 161, (163n21), 226, 240, 257, 269–270 see also recognition Action, acts 1, 13, 26, 43, 50, 70, 72, 74, 79, 91, 92, 98, 102, 115–125, (128n3), 135, 144, 147–156, 160–166, 169–173, 185, 220, 228, 235, 242, 244, 263, 276, 301, 307–309 Collective 7 Evaluation of  148, 153, 154 Individual 102, 147–149, 308 Intentional 147–149, 152, 235, 244, 245 Legal 79 Real 153 Reciprocal action 213 and n37 Social 15, 16, 18–22, 50–56, 80, 147–149, 160, 163, 216 see also Handlung Agency 20, 79, 119, 120, 161, 242, 243, 244 Alienation 33, 40, 47, 142, 225, 281, 291, 298 Altruism 109, 111, 113, 117, 119, 122 Analytic Philosophy 2, 6, 7, 8, 9 Anthropogenesis 226 Anthropos 86 Appetite 95, 96, 149, 239–240, 269, (289n35) see also Desire Aristotelian, Aristotelianism 12, 25, 89, 95, 127, 129, 150, 158, 159, (198n41), (216n46), 298 Authority 13, 16, 45, 59–63, 76, 98, 130–131, (135n27), 137, 143, 145, 160–164, 166, 243, 301, 307 Normative authority 12, 24, 43, 44, 205 Recognitional authority 25, 231, 243, 247, 248 Autonomy 12, 19, 22, 75, 87, 89, 94, 99, 102, 104, 128, 128, 130–135, 139, 143, 145, 161, 163, 164, 177, 179, (186n7), 204–205, 224, (248n31), 291, 304 Deliberative autonomy 22, 161 Independence and dependence 177–178 Moral autonomy 20, 159, 163–164 Being 276–277, 280 Bildung, Bildungsprozess 174, 209, 308

Blessedness 285 Bondsman and lord 33, 43–48, 60–63, 208–209, 211, 225–228, 253, 254, 263–266, (268n35), 269 Bootstrapping 15, 18, 23 British Idealism (109n17) Capital 220, (221n3), 222–223, 225 Categorical imperative (118n25), 136, 164 Chemism 282–283 Choice (prohairesis) 149–150 Civil disobedience 144–145 Civil society 17, 41, 88, (141n38), 229, 237, 259, 308 Claims, claim-rights 32, 74–78, 80–84 Classical political economy 220, 222 Cogito 94 Collective acceptance 54–56, 58, 63–64, 243 Communication Community of 294 Human 174 Spiritual 282 Community 20, 21, 27, 51, 86, 87, 100, 101, 103, 104, 113, 131, 147, 154–156, 161, 189, 256, 286–287, 293–297, 304 Political Community 86, 155, 287 Recognitive Community 21, 101, 248 Religious Community 297–298 Social Community 20, 21 Conatus 95 Concept 26, 27, 57, 205, 271, 274, 276–281, 283, 302, 303, 306, 309 Conciliation, reconciliation 13, 57, 62, 142, 147, 256, 293, 296, 297, 309 Conflict 13, 18, 102, 105, 167, 176, 259, 263, 270, 293, 307, 308 Conscience (128n3), 137–138, 141–143, 145, 148, 151 Consciousness 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 104 Constitution (Verfassung) 302, 308 Constructivism 1, 13, 18, 19, 20, 22, 127–134, 136, 139, 141, 143, 146, 284 Ethical (moral)- 127, 158 Hegelian- 20, 128–129

316 Constructivism (cont.) Kantian- 21, 127–133 Social-  20, 21, 91, 127–128, 130–132, 134, 141–144 Contract 79–81, 88, 95, 142, 223, 307 Convention 17, 69, 70, 79 Conventionalism 22, 157, 158 Conviction 21, 64, 65, 151–152 Critical Theory (Frankfurt School) 4, 5, 11, 13, 31 Deed 137, 150, 152–153 see also Tat Decision 149–152, 303, 305–308, 310 Deliberation (bouleusis) 149, 170 Democracy 219, 299, 310 Depersonalization 52, 58 Desire (Begierde) 44, 92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 171, 172, 203–208, 226, 227, 258, 262–264, 266–268 Deweyan (146n46), 149 Disability 76 Divine command (theory) 128, (129n6), 130, 134–135, 137 Drive (Trieb) (37n16), 308 Duty 17, 116, 121, 135, 138, 140, (142n39), 145, 152, 153, 162 see obligation Ego (and I) 254–55, 259–60, 265 Egoism 19, 109–117, 119, 122, 126 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences 16, 24, 37, 203, 204, 214, 274, 284 Essence  275–276, 278–279, 285 Ethical perfectionism 57, 65, 66 Euthyphro-question (-dilemma) 128, 131, 146 Facts 70 Brute 70, 78, 83 Institutional 70, 78–85 Social 16, 91, 71 Fallibility/infallibility 127, (129n7), 130, 133–134, 141, 143, 145 Family 41, 113, 148, 167, 175, 177, 258, 259, 265, 266 Fear 33, 55, 56, 60, 62, 64, (201n28), 226, 264–266

Index Of Subjects Formations 146 Ethical- (162n10) Historical- 141–142, 146 Social- 130, 141–143, 146 Freedom 39–48, (128n3), 131, 134, (135n27), 142, 170, 183, 184, 185, 192, 194, 279–281, 283–285, 305–309 As capability 177 And nature 169–170, 180 And recognition 177 Concrete freedom 16, 57–58, 60–67 Individual freedom 102, 142, 177–178, 256 Social freedom (67n40), 125 see Liberty God 87, 128, 130, 133, 135, 137, 185, 296, 304 Good, goodness 49, 56–58, 64–66, 110–125, 128, 133–136, 138–139, 143–146 Handlung 152–153 Hermeneutic, hermeneutics 2, 4, 10, 14, 26, 27, 286, 289, 293–296 Historicism (128n3), (129n6), 140, 144, 146 History, universal 297 Holism 9, 92, 288 Social holism 19, 27, 109, 110, 113 Humanity 57, 82, 84, 176 As institution 84–85 Institutional definition of 84 Humean 18, 127, 129 I see ego Imagination (128n3), 143, (144n42), 253–54, 264, 268–270 Immanence 309–310 Immunity 17, 75–77, 80, 81 imputation, imputability 147 Individual, individuality 27, 70, 71–72, 87, 88, 91, 102, 105, 123, 171, 193, 197, 223, 228, 253, 255, 258, 267, 281, 308, 310 Individualism 88, 89, 92, 95, 103, (128n3), 222 Institution 1, (9n26), 14, 15, 16, 17, 26, 54, 55, 57–59, 60, 63–64, (67n40), 69, 70–73, 79, 81–84, 87, 89, 90–91, 92, 101, 102, 138, (140n37), 141–142, 145, 147, 148, 155, 159, 166–168, 213, 237, 238, 243, 245, 246, 247–248, 257, 259, 287, 291, 294–296, 302, 307, 308 Duration of 71, 73, 79

Index Of Subjects Function of 71 (Directive) idea of 70, 71, 73, 79, 80, 84 Institutional agency (arrangement) 79, 80 Institutional guarantees 81–83, 85 Institution-personne [personified institution] 72, 73, 81 Legal 71, 72, 79, 80, 80–82 Objective identity (individuality) of 71–73 Public 82 Institutionalism 69, 71, 92 Intention 72, 83, 115, 147, 244, 245 We-intention 83 Intentionality 59, 60, 61, 90, 235 Collective 22, 83, 84, 90, 96, 160 Intersubjectivity 26–27, 93, 173, 174, 175, 249, 254–256, 259, 268, 270, 271, 272, 275–277, 279 Intuition 130–131, 143 Kantian, Kantianism (7n16), 10, 13, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 80, 81, 114, 116, 119, 121, 122, 127–132, 141, 143–144, 150, 158, 159, 164, 170, 184, 185 and n3, 190 and n20, (210n28), 261 Labor 4, 25, 43, 45, 47–48, 96, 102–103, 203, 220–229, 261, 264 see work Language 87, 90, 94, 100, 103, 153–155 Of reconciliation 147, 154–155 Law, legal 68, 69, 71, 77, 79, 82, (129n5), 130–131, 133–136, 140, 145 Administrative 81 Civil 80 Institutionalist theory of 69 Law-giver (129n5), 131, 133, 135–136 Legal positivism 68, 76, 78, 84 Legal relationship 79, 80, 81 Natural 68, 78, 79, 134–135, 140 Positive 68, 69, 78, 79, 80, 81 Private 73, 82 Public 73 Roman 72, 74, 79 Rules of 71 Liability 76 Liberation 89, 100, 154, 194, 279–280, 284–285

317 Liberty 74–77, 80–82 Basic, fundamental 82–83 Negative 76 Personal 82 see Freedom Life 1, 2, 24, 31–48, 72, 85, 87–88, 113, 118, 120, 124, 151, 183, 197–198, 203–208, 209–210, 221, 225, 226, 254–55, 260–63, 265–66, (268n35), 269, 277, 278, 279, 282, 289–290 Animal, natural life 15–16, 18, (32n1), 36, 37–38, 57, 93, 95, 101, (167n6), 183, 192–194, 199, 289  Ethical life 14, 18–19, 21, 42, 108, 109, 122, 125, 139, 141–142, 157–159, 162–165, 167–168, 259, 300, 304, 307, 308, 310 Life-form, form of life 16, 18, 24, 32, 47, 53, 57, (58n23), 60, 65, 67, 88, 141–142, 146, 157–159, 198, 231, 236–241, 246, 289, 297 Ontology of life 49, 53, 57, (58n3), 60, 67 see Social ontology Social life 13, 18, 33–34, 42–43, 53, 60, 65, 84, 122, 155, 218, 274 Lord see Bondsman Love 22, 28, 62–63, 113, 159, 160–161, 163, 164, 167, 178, 237, 283, 285, 258–259, 266, 283–285, 298 Market 51–53, 102, 103, (216n49), 221, 237 Marxist, Marxism 3, 10 and n31, 13, 23, (82n46) Materialism 45–47 Measure 276–277 Mechanism 190, 195, 282–283 Recognitive mechanism 242, 243, 245 Mediation 60, 63, 86, 89–90, 100, (174n9), 208, 221, 226, 237, 258, 259, 264, 268, 290, 296, 299, 307, 309 Metaphysics, metaphysical 1, 4, 10, 18–20, 25, 32, 68, 89, 95, 101, 113, 117, 171, (213n36), 234, (241n22), 257, 261, 267, 288, 293, 294, 305, 309 Post-metaphysical 9, 11, 13–15, 26, 159, 189, (213n36), 310 Social metaphysics 11, 18, 26 Myth 7, 70, 71 Mimesis 175, 178 Modernity 13, 87, 92, 102, 141, 297, 303, 305, 307

318 Morality (Moralität) 22, 53, 109–111, 118, 125, 135, 139, 141, 145–146, 148, 157–159, 162–164, 169–170, 303, 304 Moral conscience (Gewissen) 147, 151, 153 Moral experience 169 Moral law 130, 131, 133, 169, 170, 171, 185  Moral quality 55, 147, 153, 155, 277 see also value Moral sense 173, 178, 179 Motive 53, 65, 111, (114n16), 115–116, 149, 150, 167 Multicultural, multiculturalism 9, 99 Nature 15, 23, 69–70, 79, 87, 89, 91, 97, 100, 101, 170, 171, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 198, 199, 200, 201 Human 68, 85, 170, 180, 216, 267 Naturalism 1, 13, 14, 23–25, 68, 78, 84, 97, (129n5), 170, 171, 183–185, 193, 199–200 Second nature 12, 17, 22, 69, 91, 101, 179, 180, 200, 204, 209, 256, 267, 270 Necessity 47, 103–104, 187–188, 199, 200, 237, 279–280, 284, 297, 306 Needs 26, 27, 41, 59, 87, 161, (162n10), 196–197, 206, 213, 214, 218, 228, 229, 266, 303, 308 Negativity 40, 95, 188, 197, 201, 226, 227, 266, 262, 282–283, 302, 308 Negative 33, 40, 186, 205, 225, 266, 286, 193–296, 302, 304, 306, 308 Normativity, normative 19, 49, 70, (73n78), 79, 80, 91, 97, 98, 99, 101, 131–132, 134–135, (139n33), 140, 142–145, 141, 144, 146, 157, 170, 180, 203, 206 Deontological theory of 73 Informal 70 Institutional norms 59, 82 Normative essentialism 16, 57, 66–67 Normative truths/facts 128–129, 143–144 Public/social norms 22, 58, 62, 63, 134, 140, 142, 144, 163, 243 Objectivity 60, 73, 86, 91, 109, 173, 174–176, 186, 192, 222, 264, 281, 291, 292, 302 Obligations, obligatoriness 17, 20, 52, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80–82, (121n30), 127–131, 133–140, 143–144, 152, 157–158, 160–163, 166, 167, 179

Index Of Subjects Organism 32, 34–35, 87, 88, 89, 183, 193–197, 301 Otherness 16, 24, 28, 57, 90, 95, 97, (178n14), 186, 187, 192, 204, 205, 206–207, 209, 210, 211, 226, 269, 281, 283, 284, 286, 288, 291, 296 Person, personhood, personality 22, (61n31), 42, 52, 56, 59–61, 70, 72–74, 76, 79, 81, 109, 114, 130, 141, 161, 245–247, 255, (260n12), 267, 281–283, 287, 292, 304 Moral 72, 74, 176 Legal 68, 78, 141, 160, 161, 176, 306 Personification 58, 61, 62 Phenomenology of Spirit 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 21, 24, 26, 27, 33, 40, 42, 44, 46, (61n31), 90, 91, 92, 148, 151, 154, 169, 171, (172n6), 173, (178n14), (198n41), 224, 202–205, (210n29), 213, 214, 219, 220, 224–225, 228, 231, 236, 239, 245, 253–258, 261, 264, 267, 268, (269n35), 270, 271, 272, 274, 278, 279, 285, 286, 291 Philosophy of Right 17, 20, 26, 28, 33, 46, 59, (61n31), 64, (67n40), 122, 123, 147–149, 152, 155, 157, 158, 213, (214n42), 229, 297, 299, 300, 303, 306, 307 Platonism  140 Poiesis 25, 225, 228 Poverty (141n38) Power 2, 13, 23–26, 55–56, 74–77, 80–81, 91, 95, 159, 160, 176, 207, 223–224, 280, 281, 283, 284, 297, 299, 302–303, 305 Active/passive power 25, 230, 234–235, 236, 238, 239, (240n22), 243, 244 Biopower 25, 231, 237, 247 Deontic power 17, 55–56, 59, 64, 83–84 Regulative power 232–233 Relational power 241–242 Social power 23, 25–26, 230–232, 241–244, 246–249 Pragmatist, Pragmatism 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 18, 23, 24, (129n6), 202, 205, 215 Praxis 25, 225, 228 Privilege see Liberty Procedure 22, 72, 79, (128n4), 157, 158, 180, Progress 20, 22, 127, (128n3), 133–134, 142–143, 145–146, 164, 165 and n13, 166, 168 Property 54, 59, 64, 72, 76, 79, 80, 81, 222, 299 Purpose 35, 41, 84, 110, 115, 147

Index Of Subjects Quantity 222, 276 Rationality 12–13, 64, 95, 228, 305, 306 Realism (ethical/moral) 19, 20, 127–131, 133–135, 138–143, 146 Reason 9, 19, (128n5), 88, 92, 146, 254–255, 262 264, 273, 290, 291, 306, 307 Fact of reason 158, 169 Reasons  38, 149, (128n5), 110, 131, 151 Desire-independent 55 External 147–149 Internal 147–149  Recognition 3–5, 12–16, 18, 21–26, 27–28, 33, 42–45, 47, 58–64, 78, 91, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 131, 142, 144, 145, 153–155, 160–163, 165–167 171, 172, 180, 202–219, 221, 226–227, 230–249, 254–64, 267–270, 286–289, 293–295, 297–298, 307, 310 And human dignity 173 Attractors of 25–26, 231, 236, 328–241, 243–244, (248n31) Being recognized 25, 156, (172n4), 230–231, 234–241, 243–244, 270 Ethics of 5, 22, 179–180 Hermeneutical 292–295 Horizontal 58–59, 65 Logic of 173, 214 Mutual/reciprocal 21, 22, 91–92, 97, 100, 101, 103–104, (128n3), (129n7), 131, 142, 145, 160–162, 163, 174, (260n12), 287 Normative character of 173 Recognitional authority see authority Spheres of 175, 176, 215 Struggle for 13, 22, 24, 154, 165 and n13, 166–168, 207–209, 211, 255, 261, 264, 267, (268n35), 274, 293, 307 and n17 Reification (52n11) Rechtsinstitut see legal institution Right/wrong 127–130, 134–140, 143–145 Rights 17, 55, 59, 60, 64, 68–95, 141, 179, 223, 256, 299, 310 Actionability of 69, 77, 80 As bound to a status 81, 82 Basic (Fundamental) 68–69, 82, 84 Choice theory of 78 Constitutional 82 Correlation of _ and duties 73, 75, 82, 83 Declaration of 68, 69, 75

319 Deontological approach of 74 Human 68, 75, 83–85 Institutional approach to 73, 74, 81, 83, 84 Interest theory of 78 Justification of 78, 80 Legal 69 Liberal conception of 82, 84 Liberty-rights 77, 82 Moral 69 Natural 69, 73 Negative 17, 84 Political character of 77 Positive 17, 69, 84, 85 Pragmatics of 75, 77 Semantics of 75, 77 Social 75 Subjective 68, 69, 141 Theory of 81, 83 Types (classes) of 75 Rules 70, 71, 78 Constitutive 17, 70, 83 Institutive 70 Objective 71 Regulative 70 Sanctions/punishments 138, 140, 144 Secularization 302, 305, 307 Science of Logic 24, 26, 28, 93, 186, (196n36), 225, 260, 270, 274–276, 278, 285, 302 and n21 Self-consciousness 16, 21, 27, 39–48, 58, 94, 97, 149, 154, 171, 174, 203–214, 225, 226, 245, 254–257, 259–260, 262–263, 267–269, 272, 286–290 Self-legislation 130–131, 133, 135, 139, 143 Self-realization 19, 20, 22, 110, 116, 117–119, 122, 124–126, (128n3), 142 Self-respect 176 Sittlichkeit 33, 130, 141, 143–146, 148, 157, 166, 256 see Ethical life Social command 130, 135, 138, 140 Social ontology 14–17, 24, 31–48, 49–67, 83, 86, 90–91, 93, 212–213 And life 33–48, 49, 57, (67n40) And spirit 33–48, 90–91 Function in 32, 34, 35, 38–9, 41 Social Pathology 15–16, 31–34, 40, 44–8 Function in 33–5, 39, 44

320 Social philosophy 1, (9n26), 16, 32, 33, 155 Social psychology 214–218 Social relation 27, 50–53, 54, 60, 91, 148, 176, 213, 214, 221, 223, 245, 294  Social self  215–218 Social thesis 110–113, 117, 119, 122–123, 125–126 Social world 24, 46, 49, 54–55, 84, 124, 125, 142, 219 Socratic  131, 145, 304 Solipsistic 27, 59, 94, 94, 264–265, 308, 309 Sovereignty 28, 266, 287, 300–303, 308 Species (Gattung) 36–38, 43, 237, 240, 289, 291, 297 Spinozism 284 Spirit 70, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 104, 203–209, 271–277, 279, 285 Absolute 11, 27, 28, (42n27), 288, 291, 295–298 Objective 2, 27, 28, 33, (42n27), 60, 71, 109, 155, 159, (162n10), 212, 213, 256, 259, 291–296, 304 Subjective 16, 58, 205, 256, 259, 267, 270 State 28, 58, 59, 64, 70, 75, 77, 86, 87, 88, 92, (96n16), 109, 113, 124, 148, 257, 259, 274, 277, 287, 291, 297, 301–310 Status function 17, 54–56, 83–84 Stoic, Stoicism 145 Subject/Subjectivity 37–40, 42, 45, 47, 87, 88, 89, 183, 186, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201, 272, 278, 280–281, 285, 299–300, 304–306, 308, 309

Index Of Subjects Subjectivism 4, 92, 145, 258 Substance 40, 92, 131, 142, 145, (173n8), 204, 256, 259–261, 272–273, 279–280, 285, 286, 301, 303, 309 Symbole 195, 232, 278–279, 299, 302, 305, (308n20) Tat 152–153 Thing 71, 74, 76, 77, 83 Personified 74 Transcendence 175, 288, 305, 309–310 Transcendental 17, 81, 131, 170, 190, 191, 202, 209, 294, 295 -idealism 131 -pragmatics 11 -realism 131 Truth 68, 128–129, 141, 143–144, 192, 204, 208 and n23, 209, 226, 255, (260n21), 262, 278, 279, 293–294, 304 Unconscious 18, 35, 39, 93, 229, 282, 303 Universality  27, 94, 101, 120–123, 198–199, 226, 228, 255, 262, 268, 276, 279–281, 286, 289–291, 301, 302, 304 Value 85, 147, 152–155 see also moral quality Will 70, 72, 147, 149, 151, 302, 303, 306–308 actual will 149 Work 23–24, 202–218, 261, 264–66, 269 see Labor